Four Days Plus Counting Time

Election Jitters: Here we are, the last weekend before Election Day, record numbers of people have already voted, the courts continue to screw around with election rules, and the level of paranoia is through the roof.  Trump is doing his Trump thing, holding more crowded, unmasked rallies, telling his crowds that his recovery is proof that the virus is nothing to worry about so what if they’ll be lucky to find a hospital with an available bed or get any of those super drugs that he received on the taxpayers dime.  His spiel is consistent with news out of the White House, that radiologist Scott Atlas and his team of like-minded herd immunity advocates are now controlling the virus response, or lack thereof.  So far two attendees at one of Trump’s earlier rallies in North Carolina have tested COVID positive which means that the Tar Heel state is likely to experience a campaign cluster, no surprise as CNN doctor Sanjay Gupta reports that 82% of the time infections jump in counties following Trump shindigs.  Though it’s too early to know who or how many people will turn positive as a result of yesterday’s Tampa rally, we already know that a number of attendees had to be carried out due to the 87 degree heat, something that Trump joked about while querying if they were “friend or foe.”  According to Don Jr, the fact that the daily virus count is now about 87,000 is nothing to worry about because “no one dies anymore” which comes as news to the families of the more than 1000 people who died virus related deaths yesterday. On the plus side the virus mortality rate has ticked down but unfortunately with so many people contracting the virus, the death count remains unidirectional.  For his part Biden was on the road yesterday too, holding socially distanced car rallies something that really humors Trump, who asserts that in addition to bringing in socialism, riots and suburban rot, a Biden victory would lead to the cancellation of Thanksgiving, Christmas, graduations, and all weddings forever. 

Politics Unusual: Voter suppression continues to rear its ugly head so, as a result of still another court ruling, voters in Minnesota are now being told to take their absentee ballots to the polls or drop boxes if they want them counted and, in anticipation of a post-election appeal that could result in the disqualification of late arriving ballots, Pennsylvania officials plan to keep them out of the initial count so as not to taint the ballots that arrive by election day.  After the video of Georgia Democrat Jon Ossoff telling his opponent incumbent Senator David Perdue that “it’s not just that you’re a crook” went viral, Perdue cancelled their next planned debate. Perdue, now known as “Chicken” Perdue, has decided that cozying up to Trump during his upcoming Georgia super spreader event would be a better and safer use of his time.  And he might be right, that debate thing doesn’t appear to be working out for Republicans. Failing to acknowledge that there just might be a teeny, tiny bit of systemic racism in Maine probably didn’t help Susan Collins any and her anemic effort to distance herself from Trump hardly pleased anyone on either side of the political spectrum.  Neither Mississippi Republican Cindy Hyde Smith nor Alabama Republican Tommy Tuberville are participating in any debates and Iowa’s Joni Ernst may ultimately lose her seat over her failure to know the price of soybeans. Overall, the polls remain relatively steady.  Nationally, Biden still holds an 8 point or so lead over Trump.  Most pollsters say that the Democrats midwestern blue Wall is holding and the new and old swingy states of Florida, Georgia, Texas, North Carolina, Iowa, Ohio and Arizona continue to look frighteningly swingy no matter where you stand politically. The bottom line, nervousness is warranted because we’ve been here before.     

Crime Chronicles: Thus far the slime that Trump’s echo chamber keeps trying to throw at Hunter Biden, and by extension former VP Joe hasn’t stuck. As to that slime, NBC reports that the Hunter Biden “dossier” that went viral on right wing websites and that was disseminated by people like Rudy Giuliani appears to be from a fake “intelligence firm” and that its author “Martin Asper” doesn’t exist. That said, neither the NY Post nor Tucker Carlson have given up on trying to damage Biden.  Carlson is still talking about his trove of once lost now found incriminating documents and the NY Post reports that their sources say that Hunter has been under investigation by the FBI for money laundering for some time. It’s not clear that their reporting is accurate nor is it clear that anyone cares.  As to questionable, behavior, yesterday the NY Times reported on the efforts made by Turkish President/autocrat Erdogan to get the US Justice Department to drop an investigation into a major Turkish bank’s financial crimes some of which included engaging in banned trade with Iran. That institution, Halkbank, has ties to Erdogan’s friends and family.   Erdogan, also wanted the US government to send back Fethullah Gulen, the Turkish cleric/permanent US resident living in Pennsylvania that Erdogan holds responsible for a failed coup attempt. Erdogan first tried to pressure the Obama administration for help by telling Obama he could improve the two countries’ fraught relationship by firing then SDNY US Attorney Preet Bharara to make the bank case go away but was publicly rebuffed by then VP Biden who told him that under our system of government US presidents can’t tell the Judiciary what to do, a quaint concept that died after Trump took office.  Once Trump was in the White House, the persistent Erdogan tried again figuring correctly that Trump, who earns money from Trump branded Turkish hotels, might be more receptive. With the help of one time Attorney General Matthew Whitaker and current AG Barr but over the objections of the since removed SDNY US Attorney Geoffrey Berman, Erdogan almost got his wish until Trump pulled back after getting mad at the Turkish leader over Syria.  By the way, Berman’s reluctance to cooperate was one of the things that got him fired. We also learned yesterday from a report published in Foreign Policy that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, the cabinet member who has been known to nod off during WH meetings, continued to serve on the board of a Chinese joint venture while overseeing the trade war with China.  In summary, Trump continues to hammer Biden for corruption and for being easy on Iran and China while more damning evidence of his corruption and conflicts of interest surface and few, if any voters, seem to care. 

There will be no NY Marathon this weekend but we still get an extra hour of sleep, as if anyone is sleeping.  Stay safe and #WearAMask.

 

 

Five Days Plus Litigation Time

Baby, It’s Cold Outside:  Trump has upped his game, now in addition to exposing his throngs of loyalists to the killer virus, he’s all in on sending them to the hospital with hypothermia.  On Tuesday night his cash strapped, logistically inept campaign team failed to adequately arrange bus transportation back to the parking lot area after his Omaha rally, leaving a crowd of his dedicated attendees freezing for hours. As Vanity Fair succinctly put it: “Donald Trump courts senior citizen vote by nearly freezing half a dozen to death.”  While Trump freezes and tells endless lies to audiences around the country, the press continues to criticize candidate Joe Biden for doing some of his campaigning from the safety of a Delaware podium.  Biden may be on to something though, staying in place and issuing pointed barbs at Trump’s lies, abject disregard for his fanbase, and virus stoking appears to be paying off or at least paying off so far.  Biden, who does plan to hit the road today continues to hold a steady,  statistically significant lead in the national polls and appears to be holding his own in the “blue wall” states where Hillary lost by very small margins. Moreover, if the polls are to be believed (2016 PTSD, means that I always have to say that) he is also leading, albeit by smaller margins, in some of the states like Iowa, North Carolina and Arizona that Trump won by more than just a Russian hair in 2016. Biden is also ahead in Florida, but Florida is Florida, the state’s Republican machine is powerful and efficient and it’s Trump “home” state so reduced Sunshine State expectations are in order. It’s hard to know what’s really happening in the previously reliably red Georgia and Texas but voter registration is way up in both states, a large number of the new voters are younger and more likely to lean blue and now, the Cook Political Report has joined NBC in moving Texas from lean Republican to toss-up.  On the Georgia front, if you have a chance check out last night’s Perdue-Ossoff Senate debate where Democrat wannabee Ossoff positively skewered incumbent Republican Perdue for his votes against the ACA and his cavalier attitude towards the pandemic. Polls show Ossoff and Biden up 1% over their respective opponents, in other words the outcome of both those races is far too close to project. 

The Third Branch: With the presidency and control of the Senate in jeopardy and the loss of even more ground in the House likely the Republicans are aggressively pushing for help from the courts because if you can’t win an election with actual votes the next best thing is going all in on voter suppression.  Yesterday, the Republican contingent took a hit when the Supreme Court ruled that North Carolina and Pennsylvania could accept and count ballots mailed on time but received a pre-determined number of days after November 3.  Newbie Justice Amy Coney Barrett didn’t participate in either decision.  To be clear, Judge Amy didn’t recuse herself, the Court reported that she didn’t weigh in because she hadn’t had the time to get up to speed on the two cases.  That’s significant, because a few of the Justices, including Gorsuch, Alito and Thomas said that they would be open to revisiting the cases after the election if those late ballots affect the outcome, and by affect the outcome, they probably mean if Biden wins as a result of those “late” ballots.  This time around Justice “Beer” Kavanaugh said nothing, but that could be because of all the criticism he received for the sloppy, inaccurate opinion he wrote in the case involving Wisconsin mail-in votes.  In that opinion Kavanaugh cited Vermont as an example of a state that hadn’t made any concessions to its “ordinary voter “rules to accommodate the pandemic.  Vermont’s Secretary of State sent Kavanaugh a letter chastising him for being wrong as the state has made some changes, and asked for a correction.  Last night Kavanaugh actually “tweaked” his opinion to reflect the Vermont criticism.  He didn’t change his decision or his view, he just kind of corrected one of his mistakes.  The bottom line, if the election is close, the Republicans will take to the courts and when they get to SCOTUS they are likely to find a receptive audience.  

Liars Lie: Justice Kavanaugh isn’t the only one who got caught “misrepresenting the facts.” It turns out that Director of National Intelligence Ratcliffe who got his job as a reward for being a total Trump fanboy,  was doing some prevaricating of his own last week when he asserted that the Iranians were doing devious things to our electoral process to hurt Trump.  That “hurt Trump” part was not in his script because there’s no evidence that it’s true, he just added it, off the cuff, during his remarks, catching the other security directors off guard.  As to one of those other security directors, the FBI Agents Association appears very concerned about those likely true rumors that Trump plans to cut FBI Director Wray after the election.  The group which represents more than 14,000 active and retired FBI Special Agents, took the unprecedented stop of sending letters to both Trump and  Biden in support of Wray. The letters urge both candidates to allow him to complete his statutorily-created, ten-year term for “the stability, credibility, and integrity of the Bureau.  Then there’s trusty son in law Jared Kushner, yesterday author Bob Woodward released another one of the interviews that he taped while writing his most recent book. In that interview, which took place back in April, Kushner bragged to Woodward that Trump had cut the doctors and scientists advising him on the then unfolding coronavirus pandemic out of the process because what’s the point in listening to medical experts anyway?  Kushner actually said that Trump was "getting the country back from the doctors" in a "negotiated settlement,” proclaiming that the US was moving swiftly through the "panic phase" and "pain phase" of the pandemic and that the country was at the "beginning of the comeback phase."  Kushner then said that there could still be a lot of pain ahead but at least we’ll be getting back to work.  Well, give him some credit, he was right about that pain part. The known coronavirus death count is now around 228,000 and those experts Kushner would prefer to ignore, are telling us to cancel holiday travel plans while warning of dire things to come.  Even the good news isn’t as good as it should be, it looks like the Regeneron mono-clonal antibodies really do help moderately ill individuals but though Trump benefited from them and likes to brag about his nonexistent role in their development, there’s not enough capacity to produce the amounts needed to help the ever growing masses of people contracting the virus because when more than 70,000 people  a day show up COVID positive, that’s a lot of people who might need those antibodies. One more thing that falls into the “are you nuts” lie category, last night pundit Tucker Carlson told his audience that he had personally seen really damning, authentic documents proving Biden family crimes but that he had express mailed them back to his office and that they had all “mysteriously” disappeared in transit.  Oh, and he didn’t make any copies or scan any part of those real authentic docs before sending them off.  Yup.        

Et Cetera: Yesterday, Miles Taylor, the former Chief of Staff at Homeland Security outed himself as Anonymous, the writer of the 2018 NY Times op-ed and follow-on book that trashed Trump.  Taylor, who left the government in 2019, is no innocent.  He participated in some really awful stuff while at Homeland, most notably the child separation policy and in his book he acknowledged that his problem was with Trump, the person, not with all of his policies.  Still he gets some, though not much credit, for coming forward but save the applause for people like the CIA whistleblower who came forward about Trump’s Ukraine quid pro quo and has had to live under strict security measures ever since as a result of threats against his life, threats that multiply every time Trump tweet attacks him and that were further fed by Senator Rand Paul who read his name out loud during the impeachment hearing.  And let’s not forget Alexander Vindman who was pushed out of the military or the fired former Ambassador to the Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch or virus guru Fauci who now has to travel with burly body guards.  And so on.

 

Six Days

Campaign Trail:  The number of new US coronavirus cases is now averaging more than 70,000 a day, virus hospitalizations are up 46% and medical experts are warning of a dark winter, but nothing to worry about because the virus has been dealt with brilliantly. At least that’s the position of the White House Office of Science and Technology; yesterday they announced that they considered “ending the pandemic” to be one of Trump’s “major first term accomplishments.”  To that end, Trump who seems to be pushing to get that daily infection number into the six figures as soon as possible because, duh, obviously more is better, continues to pack his days with super spreader rallies. During one of those rallies he told his largely un-masked, closely packed crowd that he had to win because if he doesn’t and if Joe Biden is assassinated after taking office, we’ll be left in the hands of that “monster” Kamala Harris, you know the woman with the “demonic” laugh. Assassination talk from a sitting leader whose fans cling on to his every word, what could go wrong?  In addition to going after Biden, Trump  continues to attack Democratic Governors suggesting that he’s got them under surveillance.  He’s particularly agitated by those swing state ones who aren’t all in on his devil may care approach to dealing with the virus.  Of course being personally attacked by Trump has consequences, 60 Minutes moderator Lesley Stahl is now getting death threats and has joined the list of Trump targets needing protection.  As to death plots, while taking credit for his Justice Department’s capture of the extremists who’d been planning to kidnap and kill Michigan’s Governor Whitmer, Trump also said that he doubted that she was ever really in danger, maybe that’s another thing he can take up with FBI Director Wray when he fires him as Wray’s FBI recently discovered that those not so dangerous plotters had accumulated a stash of bomb making materials.  The Justice Department is now considering adding that to the indictments against those “nice people on both sides” kidnappers who wanted to do away with Whitmer.   Trump is also quite annoyed that despite his assertion that we’ve turned the corner, whatever that means, the press remains focused on “COVID,  COVID, COVID.” From Florida where he’s holding socially distanced car rallies for Biden, Former President Obama, who appears to be enjoying how much he gets under Trump’s skin, mocked Trump saying that he’s just jealous of COVID’s higher media ratings.  Though a number of still shell shocked veterans of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign are concerned that Biden isn’t spending all his time in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, the states where Trump eked out the wins that led to his 2016 electoral college victory,  Biden was off in Georgia yesterday, trying to turn that state, which hasn’t gone for a Democrat since Bill Clinton, blue, or at the very least, give Democratic Senate Candidates Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock an assist. In a sign that Biden’s expand the map strategy may not be that farfetched, NBC’s pollsters recategorized Texas which hasn’t voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1976 from lean Republican to “toss-up.”  And in case you were worrying, you’ll be relieved to know that Melania has recovered from her bout with COVID and/or has a new post-nup that requires her to hit the campaign trail.  Yesterday, the long time birther told her audience that “children watching and learning about politics deserve a better display of political responsibility.”  Seriously, she said that. For what it’s worth, the national polls remain steady and Biden’s leads in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin seem solid but we’ve been here before.    

Money, Money, Money:  The NY Times posted another article about Trump’s questionable finances. In this one they dive into the details behind the $270 million of debt that his lenders, primarily Deutsche Bank, forgave after he failed to make payments related on his Chicago Tower project.  There’s not much new in the article, the back story related to that unsuccessful project have been in the public domain for a while, much of it is detailed in David Enrich’s Dark Towers book,  but the NY Times does note that Trump used the taxable gain associated with the forgiven loan to offset taxes from other earnings, pointing out that it’s quite possible that he overreached and that his tax avoidance scheme may be among the things that NY State is investigating.  Also in the financial realm, the Washington Post’s David Farenthold posted another one of his articles on how Trump and his organization have been ripping off taxpayers.  In this one Farenthold details some of the line items that make up the $2.5 million that the US government has paid for the use of Trump properties since 2017.  That figure represents only the amount that Farenthold has managed to track down so far, there’s more out there but he only reports when he finds receipts. You might be a bit distressed to know that the Trump organization charges the US taxpayers $3 per glass of water and that the FBI holds on to and pays for some expensive digs at Trump’s Bedminster club because they never know when Trump or one of his kids, as in Ivanka, might decide to travel to NJ for a jaunt. 

Justice:  Since the COVID House swearing in ceremony was just for show, Justice Amy was officially sworn in by Chief Justice Roberts yesterday.  Though there’s no indication that she’ll comply, the Luzerne County Board of Elections has asked her to recuse herself if the Supreme Court reconsiders its decision to reject efforts by Pennsylvania Republicans to force them to refuse to count ballots postmarked by election day but received as late as November 6. The Luzerne Board noted that “the nomination and confirmation of a Supreme Court justice this close to a presidential election is unprecedented,” adding “as concerning as that is, what is even more troubling is the language”  Trump “has used in consideration of this nomination, linking it directly to the electoral season at hand, with implications for his own re-election.” We should know very soon where Justice Amy stands.  In other court news a federal circuit judge in Manhattan ruled that Trump can be personally sued for defamation in connection with the E Jean Caroll rape allegation. Not buying that defamation is part of Trump’s job, the judge rejected the Justice Department’s attempt to step into the case.       

 

 One Week or an Eternity

The Supremes:  At the end of the day only one Republican, Senator Susan Collins, crossed over to vote against Amy Coney Barret’s confirmation so Judge Amy is now Justice Amy Coney Barrett.  Last night during another celebration at COVID House she was sworn in by Justice Clarence Thomas of the infamous coke can.  Judge Amy tried to reassure skeptics that she’ll be fair minded by saying that “A judge declares independence not only from Congress and the president, but also from the private beliefs that might otherwise move her,” but she said that with a heavily spray tanned Trump lurking over her shoulder.  That’s the same Trump who as recently as last week reminded us that he’s looking forward to her voting to overturn the entirety of the Affordable Care Act and who previously told us that he would only appoint justices who’d vote against Roe v Wade, and she apparently had no qualms about participating in what was clearly a campaign event for her favorite candidate, so count me among those who find her claim that she’ll leave her private beliefs at the door hard to believe.  During the Amy garden party, whoever controls the House Judiciary GOP Twitter account snidely tweeted “Amy Coney Barrett confirmed. Happy Birthday @HillaryClinton.” Is it any wonder that so many Democrats are calling for changes to the process for seating SCOTUS justices? To that end Joe Biden repeated that if he wins next week or whenever the election is decided, he plans to set up a bipartisan court commission, giving its members 180 days to come up with a solution to the mess that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has gifted the nation.  As to elections, yesterday SCOTUS issued another voter squelching decision, declining by a 5 – 3 vote to lift a lower court ruling preventing swing state Wisconsin from counting mail-in ballots that arrive up to six days after Election Day, an accommodation that was supposed to undo the damage caused by Postmaster General DeJoy’s war on timely mail delivery during the pandemic. Chief Justice John Roberts, who recently sided with the Court liberals to let a similar Pennsylvania provision stand justified his move to the dark side by saying that "This case involves federal intrusions on state lawmaking processes,” while the Pennsylvania case was about “the authority of state courts to apply their own constitutions" but he probably meant that with Amy about to join the court, he sees the writing on the wall and would rather be the head of a majority conservative contingent than join with those loser libs. As to the conservatives, Justices Brett Kavanaugh who worked on the infamous Bush v Gore case back in the day, went even further.  “Beer” Brett justified the Wisconsin decision by saying “If the apparent winner the morning after the election ends up losing due to late arriving ballots, charges of a rigged election could explode.” If that sounds familiar and scary as sh-t it should, it’s what Trump’s been saying for months in his tirades against mail-in voting.   

Human Resources:  Late last week, while few were watching, King wannabee Trump signed an executive order removing job protections for long term civil servants.  The order gives Trump the power to purge thousands of federal workers in order to replace them with “politically appointed hacks who would spend the next four years doing Trump’s bidding” something that could also impede a Biden administration for months even if Trump loses, at a time when it will need to act fast on things like the virus and reassembling health care protections.  That order was so disturbing to life-long Republican Ronald Sanders, a Trump appointee to the Federal Salary Council, that he resigned on Sunday saying that it “is nothing more than a smoke screen for what is clearly an attempt to require the political loyalty of those who advise” Trump “or failing that, to enable their removal with little if any due process.”  By the way, it’s likely that virus guru Fauci now falls into the category of professionals that Trump could axe going forward.  Jared Kushner, the guy skewered in that prominent bill board over Times Square, doesn’t have to worry about Trump firing him because nepotism is so on brand in Trump world.  That said, Trump might want to hide him away for a few days. Yesterday the tone deaf Jared, who was born rich and who benefited from his father greasing his path into Harvard by throwing a million or more at the tony ivy’s admission office told Trump’s Fox & Friends echo chamber that “One thing we’ve seen in a lot of the Black community, which is mostly Democrat, is that” Trump’s “policies are the policies that can help people break out of the problems that they’re complaining about but he can’t want them to be successful more than they want to be successful.” In other words, Jared’s all in on the racist stereotype that Black people don’t succeed because they aren’t trying hard enough. He then went on to say that a lot of “those” people protesting the George Floyd killing were more concerned with “virtue signaling” than in coming up with “solutions” and by solutions, he likely means joining the Trump “LAW & ORDER” train. 

Politics Unusual:  As the daily count of new coronavirus positives skyrockets, hospitals fill up and ICU beds run short Trump continues to hold super spreader rallies in swing locales. In addition to saying that the raging virus has turned a corner to oblivion and calling for a laundry list of Democrats to be locked up, he’s now saying that NJ Senator Cory Booker, the former Mayor of Newark who he keeps threatening (or promising?) will invade white suburbs, never lived in Newark and for good measure he’s also threatening to punish Tom Wolf, the Democratic Governor of Pennsylvania, for “shutting down” his state and not being more cooperative about hosting  super spreader rallies.   Democrats Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are off to Georgia and Texas, two states that look temptingly up for grabs though given their history of successfully suppressing minority votes probably aren’t, yet.  That said, Beto O’Rourke has been working hard to expand the Texas voter base and Stacey Abrams has been doing a similarly remarkable job in Georgia so with the possibility of winning some key down ballot races as well as a total of three Senate seats teetering on the edge, two in Georgia, one in Texas, those visits could pay off even if they don’t mean electoral college votes this go round.

 The polls are the polls. Keep breathing.

 

A Week and a Day

Eight Days: So, how’s the sleeping thing going with you?  I was in the laundry room at four this morning which is all you need to know about my current sleep patterns.  VP Pence should be missing a few winks too, concerned not just about his job longevity but about his health, or at the very least the health of those around him.  Over the weekend, despite Chief of Staff Mark Meadows best efforts to keep it from the public, we learned that at least five people in Pence’s direct orbit have tested COVID positive.  Those five include his Chief of Staff Marc Short, his body man Zach Bauer and advisor Max Obst. Nevertheless Pence, who insists that he and mother Karen have repeatedly tested negative, still plans to continue campaigning, exposing everyone he encounters, on his plane, in his air tight car and on the trail to his germs because he’s been deemed  “essential,” as in essentially if he doesn’t keep campaigning, he’ll be replaced by JFK Jr or Nikki Haley. A skeptical person might surmise that Pence whose eye was inflamed when he debated Kamala Harris has already had COVID and is in fact the super spreader who shared the virus with the rest of his team. That, of course, would jibe with what Mark Meadows told CNN’s Jake Tapper yesterday, that “we’re not going to control the pandemic because it’s a contagious virus.”  In other words the White House isn’t even pretending to try to contain it anymore, they’re just relying on herd immunity, hopefully helped along by those oft promised vaccines, and therapeutics, the ones that work on the margins, some of which, like the monoclonal antibodies and Remdesivir, are only available to the select few. So it appears that Scott Atlas, the radiologist with no epidemiological training, has fully supplanted virus guru Fauci and expert Dr Debby as the general on the virus frontline. As to the virus, around 225,000 are dead, we’re coming off a bunch of record new infections days, hospitalizations are up, Utah’s running out of ICU beds and medical staff, Texas’s Governor Abbot is turning the El Paso convention center into a makeshift hospital, and even NY Governor Cuomo is playing whack- a-mole with virus “clusters.”  Not to worry though as Trump’s newest campaign line is that US coronavirus deaths are overcounted because “doctors get more money and hospitals get money” if they say people died of COVID rather than the other comorbidities they have.  That’s Trump attacking dedicated medical professionals after they provided him with every imaginable treatment on the taxpayer’s dime during his bout with COVID.  By the way several members of Trump’s Fox echo chamber including Fox News President Jay Wallace and Anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum are now quarantining, the result of having come into contact with a COVID positive individual on their flight back from last week’s debate. 

Human Resources: On the staffing front the Daily Beast reports that Mark Meadows, as in the chief of staff who just told us that the virus is contagious, has spent $75,000 of the campaign funds he raised back before he moved from Congress to the White House, on things like cupcakes, jewelry and fancy meals.  The last guy to get caught doing things like that was Duncan Hunter, the former Congressman from California who flew his giant pet rabbit on a private plane at donors’ expense;  Hunter is now a convicted felon.  Ivanka and Jared’s lawyer Marc Kasowitz, the attorney the Trumps hire to threaten frivolous lawsuits when they can’t get Attorney General Barr to go after their critics, has threatened to sue the erstwhile Republicans that make up The Lincoln Project for posting two huge highly damning billboards of the tone deaf couple in NY’s Times Square.  The Lincoln Project guys don’t seem at all concerned. Trump illogically told a crowd of big money Republican donors that he expects to lose the Senate but retake the House.  According to AXIOS he also plans to dispose of CIA Director Gina Haspel, FBI Director Christopher Wray and Defense Secretary Mark Esper and possibly Attorney General Barr once he “wins” reelection. Apparently Haspel’s crime is that she works him like a counterintelligence target and thus far has refused to release “secret” documents that she thinks should stay secret.  Wray, of course is in bigly trouble for speaking truth about the Russians and Esper is up the creek because he’s refused to say that he’ll call out the military to stage a coup of Trump doesn’t like the election results.  

Politics Unusual: As to the election, the ultimate human resource event and the subject foremost in everyone’s mind, polls for what they’re worth show Joe Biden leading nationally by about 8 to 9 points leaving Trump with few paths to victory.  Of course, we’ve been here before so enough said and last time around the Democratic wall of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania turned out to be a combination of a Maginot line and a fictitious Mexican construction project.  As to Trump’s assertion that he thinks that the Republican’s will win the House, no one expects that; in fact the reliable Cook Political Report actually expects the Democrats to pick up as many as nine seats while possibly losing only one in Michigan, remarkable because Pelosi’s crowd already picked off all of the vulnerable ones in 2018.  On the Senate front, the Democrats stand a good but not guaranteed chance of taking over control from Mitch McConnell, though it’s likely that the ten seats that some pundits have been saying are in play probably aren’t really in play and Michigan’s Gary Peters is still considered vulnerable while Alabama’s Doug Jones faces what may be an insurmountable climb to victory.  As to Mitch, he will likely get his life’s wish by the end of today as it looks like the Amy Coney Barrett confirmation will be sealed up during the day and contrary to expectations, Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski who voted against proceeding with the nomination process, revealed over the weekend that she plans to vote for Barrett’s confirmation.  Apparently illogical Lisa is no longer concerned about reproductive rights or the Affordable Care Act. Word is Trump plans to celebrate Handmaid Amy’s ascension to the Court with another White House lawn party because it’s not like the other one turned into a super spreader event, right?    On the Health Care front, something’s up with Mitch McConnell, he looks like he’s been through a shredder, his hands and face are black and blue.  McConnell, a polio survivor, does fall frequently but some of those bruises look like they are from more than just another podium dive.  Speaking of dives, that 60 Minutes episode ran last night, the won where a petulant Trump walked out because Lesley Stahl actually asked him tough questions and had the nerve to fact check him.  Not a good look for Trump especially since Stahl’s cohort, Nora McDonnell asked Joe Biden a number of tough questions too and he just barreled through them, not always with good answers but somehow he didn’t leave in a huff nor did he give his inquisitor a huge bound “health care plan” book that wasn’t anything but a stack of blank pages and unrelated executive orders. 

Et Cetera:  The NY Times reported on Trump’s charitable contributions in an article that used Trump’s financial records to confirm what the Washington Post’s David Farenthold ferreted out a few years ago, that Trump isn’t all that charitable and that most of his donations involved tax scams. After the editorial side of the Wall Street Journal published an opinion piece that tried to make hay out of the scurrilous assertions that Joe Biden used his time as VP to advance his and son Hunter’s financial interests, the WSJ news staff reported that there was no basis for those assertions.  To make up for that WSJ walk back, Peggy Noonan, the one time Reagan speech writer/pundit, criticized Kamala Harris for being too gleeful and for dancing on the campaign trail.  Oddly enough Noonan didn’t have anything to say about Trump and his YMCA jig, though the SNL cast did in one of their funnier weekend skits.  Pick yourself off the ground, it’s going to be a long eight days.

 

Ghosting

Election Countdown:  The last debate is behind us.  Trump managed to control his inner seethe a little while odiously saying that he’s done more for Black people than anyone and is the least racist person in the room or anywhere;  that the separated, caged kids had been taken from coyotes rather than their parents and that anyway they’re being well treated so all that was fine; that we’re learning to live with the virus;  and that his health care plan will be here in two weeks.  Trump also tried to spear Biden with the shards of the Giuliani laptop, bringing up China and Hunter as frequently as possible, probably not the best strategy given his crime family and his Chinese bank account but totally in character given his tendency to project his crimes onto his adversaries.  As is his nature Trump lied a lot, so much so that CNN’s star fact checker Daniel Dale likened calling out Trump’s lies in real time to Lucille Ball’s attempts to manage those bon bon’s streaming off the assembly line in the famous “I Love Lucy” candy episode.  Dale noted that Biden lied a couple of times too, but that his paled in comparison to Trump’s.  Biden, who stumbled and stuttered a bit, wasn’t perfect but had clearly done his homework.  He got in a few good zingers, calling Trump a regular Abe Lincoln when he asserted he was the least racist person around, saying that Americans were learning to die with the virus rather than live with it, and effectively tearing into Trump’s comments about the separated children.  Humorously, he mangled the name of the Proud Boys, accidentally rebranding them as the Poor Boys.  He also managed to dodge Trump’s attacks on Hunter while also defusing Trump’s insistence that he was controlled by the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic party, reminding Trump that he, not Bernie, was the candidate. Addressing the country, Biden also said “you know who I am, you know who he is…you know his character and you know my character.” We can only hope that enough people get that or at the very least understand that four more years of Trump’s character is likely to be lethal, not just metaphorically but really.  In summary, Trump didn’t have that pivotal moment he needed, Biden held his own, and NBC’s Kristen Welker, despite Trump’s pre debate attacks, did a relatively good job, which probably explains why Trump was caught mouthing it’s all bull sh-t in her direction as he departed the podium to the not very welcoming Melania, well at least until he politely nodded in Welker’s direction after realizing that he was being one upped by the ever gracious Biden who had gone over to thank her for her efforts. 

Politics Unusual:  For some reason in the run up to the debate Trump and his team of facilitators thought that releasing the unedited White House tape of his interview with 60 Minutes’ Lesley Stahl was a good idea.  Putting aside that the tape was supposed to be for the archives and that releasing it was a violation of the WH’s agreement with CBS, the decision to release it made little sense as it was far from flattering.  Notably, in addition to highlighting Trump’s hostility and how annoyed he was when Stahl said she planned to ask tough questions, the tape included him saying that he was looking forward to the Supreme Court ruling against the entirety of the Affordable Care Act, because that would be a good thing.  Hardly a selling point in a pandemic or ever.  The tape wasn’t the only thing released before the debate, the Rupert Murdoch owned Wall Street Journal posted a piece in its opinion section detailing the Rudy laptop/Hunter Biden affair.  Notably it was not included in the news section probably because none of the reporters on that side of the paper wanted to have anything to do with it. By the way the WSJ thought that Trump performed swimmingly last night, had little nice to say about Biden and seemed awfully concerned that a Biden victory could hurt the long term viability of the fossil fuel industry.  And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that, in a variation of their 2016 playbook, the Trump team brought Tony Bobulinski, Hunter Biden’s former associate, to the debate last night in an attempt to validate the Rudy laptop while muddying and unnerving Joe.  It didn’t work and at least so far does not appear to be moving the election needle.  Emphasis on the “so far.” 

Et Cetera:  There’s still no agreement on virus relief legislation but Amy Coney Barrett has moved one step closer to confirmation because that’s how Mitch McConnell rolls. Despite DNI Ratcliffe’s assertions that Iran is the problem, the NY Times reports that US election officials are far more concerned about Russia as Vlad and his cronies have hacked further into the election infrastructure than has been reported and are likely to sow discord after the election, especially if the results are uncertain. Amy for life, Vlad on the attack, the virus still raging. What’s there to worry about?   And one more thing, despite Trump’s best efforts to write us off, New York City is not a ghost town, though most of us would be happy to ghost him on Election Day.   

Eleven Days.

  

Men Behaving Badly

What Me Worry?  Last night Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, the Trump fanboy who isn’t qualified for his position, and FBI Director Chris Wray, who is qualified but remains under assault by Trump, took to the cameras to announce that Iran and Russia are doing that “meddling” thing in our elections.  Though the two didn’t provide much in the way of details, it appears that one of those things involves the threatening emails sent to thousands of voters mostly, but not exclusively,  in Florida.  Those emails told Democratic voters that they’d better switch to the Republican Party and vote for Trump or else.  The emails looked like they came from Trump’s preferred White supremacist group the Proud Boys but apparently really came from Iranian operatives who though they haven’t gotten into actual voting systems have hacked into voter data bases. According to Ratcliffe, who grudgingly admitted that the Russians are doing some nasty stuff too, the Iranian effort was being done to hurt Trump. Wray did not appear to concur with that assessment. The bottom line, is that foreign players are up to no good, our DNI is a political hack and were it not for the FBI and Chris Wray we’d be in even biglier trouble right now which isn’t to say that we aren’t in trouble.  To state the obvious, Ratcliffe’s comment about the Iranians trying to hurt Trump is the kind of thing that Trump will point to in order to justify refusing to recognize election results if he loses by anything less than a landslide.  Getting back to FBI guy Wray,  the Washington Post reports that Trump wants to kick him to the curb and is seriously considering doing so after the election.  Moreover Trump is also increasingly frustrated with his former bestie Attorney General Barr.  A lot of that frustration has to do with both of their refusals to announce an investigation into that “criminal” Joe Biden and his wayward son Hunter. Trump who at one time asserted that he fired former FBI Director James Comey not for his investigation into things Russian but for violating the FBI/Justice Department prohibition against making election influencing announcements in the run up to an election really wants his current FBI Director and AG to assert that they have the goods on the Bidens just days before this election.  On that front, it’s also been reported that the Giuliani discovered “Hunter” laptop has finally made its way to the FBI but that this time, adhering to the practice that Comey violated, the FBI has no plans to say anything on the subject now or maybe ever. Barr may be out of favor but he’s still doing some of Trump’s dirty work;  yesterday one of his minions showed up in NYC to tell the judge overseeing the E Jean Carroll case that Trump should not be sued personally for having denied her rape allegation because he made the statement while acting in his official capacity as president. Imagine being the US attorney who gets to assert that denying rape is kosher when you’re the president.  On that sexual misdeed front, Laptop Rudy is also in a bit of trouble right now, he is featured in a scene in the new Sacha Baron Cohen Borat movie that is due out shortly.  That scene involves an actress playing the role of an underage young lady and Rudy with his hands in inappropriate places.  Just when you think that Rudy can’t go any lower, he does, and no, he wasn’t just tucking in his shirt. 

Politics Unusual:  Trump was on the road again yesterday, hosting another super spreader rally and delivering his usual roid rage spiel.  He’s even back to insisting that Mexico is paying for the wall and that’s the least of his lies.  He also participated in a townhall style interview with the generally friendly Eric Bolling of Sinclair News.  When asked if given hindsight, might he have done anything differently about the coronavirus, Trump said not much adding “Look, it’s all over the world. You have a lot of great leaders, a lot of smart people — it’s all over the world. It came out of China. China should’ve stopped it … No, not much." Still seething over his 60 minutes interview with Lesley Stahl, Trump showed up late for his Sinclair sit down but at least it doesn’t appear that he handed Bolling a huge bound book of all his health care accomplishments, maybe because he wasn’t happy with the reports that the one he handed Lesley Stahl was full of blank pages. Trump was probably also relatively unhappy, as in steaming mad, about Barack Obama’s day in Philadelphia.  The former president delivered a forceful  speech chock full of trash talk and knock out punches, pointing out among other things that Trump inherited “the longest streak of job growth in history but just like everything else he inherited, he messed it up.” Referencing the non-existent Republican/Trump health care plan, Obama said “it’s been coming for two weeks for ten years. Where is it? Where’s the great plan to replace Obamacare?”  Tonight Biden and Trump are due to debate again.  While it would be a stretch to assume that Biden will be anywhere near as eloquent as Obama, it’s not a stretch to assume that Trump, despite advice from his handlers to rein it in, will be bombastic and nasty.  Word is he’ll press Biden about his family’s criminal behavior with the intention of forcing some defensive stutters and misstatements and because irony is still not dead. 

Et Cetera:  Speaker Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Mnuchin are still working up a stimulus plan, one that Mitch McConnell won’t want to pass because he doesn’t really want to provide aid, especially to any blue states and because he’s way too busy pushing Judge Amy’s confirmation through the Senate.  That’s the Judge Amy who served on the board of three affiliated private Christian schools that barred admission for children of same-sex parents and, “made it plain that openly gay and lesbian teachers weren’t welcome in the classroom.”  Wonder how Amy feels about Pope Francis voicing support for same-sex unions or if that’s another thing that she’d have to consult with her clerks and fellow conservative judges about before weighing in against.  Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer announced yesterday that no Democrats will participate in today’s Judiciary committee meeting, depriving Republicans of the quorum they need to vote Judge Amy’s nomination on to the Senate floor, a probably futile attempt to stall her confirmation for much more than an hour or two.       

Twelve Days (or longer)

 

Five Hundred Forty Five

Zero Tolerance:  Of all the many horrible things that the Trump administration has done over the past four years the separation of children from their parents has got to be the worst so, this being the Trump era, the situation with the children continues to fester.  Yesterday, NBC reported that lawyers assigned to reunite families that were separated at the Mexico border have been unable to locate the parents of 545 migrant children.  Those children are largely the ones who were taken from their families during the test pilot program that preceded the formal implementation of the larger “zero tolerance” separation policy.  That’s the separation policy that was gifted to us by Trump’s squirmy immigrant haters aide Stephen Miller and first Attorney General Jeff Sessions,  that officials like one time Homeland Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen denied was ever implemented and that former Assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said needed to be enforced no matter how young the children being torn from their mothers’ arms were. As to tolerance, Trump appears to be running out of any for his current Attorney General, the far more intelligent and therefore far more dangerous, William Barr. Having failed, or at least failed so far, in getting Barr to indict Joe Biden and Hunter Biden for imaginary crimes and in Hunter’s case, bad judgement, Trump used some quality time with his cronies on Fox & Friends to re-up his request, telling Barr to “take action” against Joe Biden before Election Day because “this,” whatever this is, is “major corruption and it has to be known before the election.” And of course, Trump’s Congressional fave, Jim “Gym” Jordan is totally onboard.  He and a crew of similarly minded House fanboys, want Barr to appoint a special counsel to investigate all those Biden crimes.  So far silence from Barr, who though he has surfaced from his quarantine has not taken any public action maybe because he wants to retain his membership in the bar or maybe because we just don’t know what he’s doing.

China, China, China: Though we haven’t heard much from Barr, those financial writers at the NY Times have been busy.  Last night they reported that Trump has a Chinese bank account and has collected a substantial amount of earnings from China while in office.  The referenced bank account belongs to Trump’s subsidiary firm, Trump International Hotels Management. In previous years that entity reported small amounts of revenue but during Trump’s first year in office it reported $17.5 million in revenue, a large unexplained “spike.” Of course, since Trump is all about projection he’s spent months telling us that Joe Biden who unlike Trump has shared years upon years of his tax filings, is in cahoots with China. Moreover,  he has accused China of being “on a massive disinformation campaign because they are desperate to have Sleepy Joe Biden win the presidential race,” has said that “Beijing Biden is so weak on China that the intelligence community recently assessed that the Chinese Communist Party favors Biden,” and is now insisting that those “hacked emails” that he wants Barr to investigate “prove” financial links between the Bidens and China.  If we’ve learned anything about Trump over the past few years it’s that he’s done whatever crimes he accuses others of doing.  One more point, the NY Times reports that between 2013 and 2015, Trump’s account paid $188,561 in taxes to China in connection to potential licensing deals a lot more than the $750 that Trump paid the IRS in 2016 and 2017.  Enough said.

Tick, Tick, Tick: As of now tomorrow’s debate between Biden and Trump is still on so, of course, Trump continues to hammer away at NBC moderator Kristen Welker but since attacking one media woman isn’t enough he’s now also going after 60 Minutes host Leslie Stahl. He, Mike Pence, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have all been sitting for interviews that are scheduled to appear on 60 Minutes’ pre-election segment.  Trump and Pence’s interviews were conducted by Stahl while Biden and Harris’s interviews were with Norah O’Donnell.  Apparently Stahl asked some tough questions and/or failed to appropriately bow to the orange god.  Whatever the reason, Trump is reported to have cut the interview short and stormed out.  He then followed up by tweeting out a picture of himself with an unmasked “irresponsible” Stahl, threatening to release the WH “tape” of the entirety of the interview before the CBS broadcast to prove how unfairly he was treated.  CBS, grateful for the free advertising, reports that Stahl, who had COVID early in the pandemic, wore a mask to the White House but removed it during the interview and had not yet put it back on at the time the picture was taken.  While Trump, whose cash strapped campaign appears to be running on tax payer funded fumes while Biden has money to spare, continues to insist that all is well with him and that he’s on the way to a bigly victory, he does seems a bit on edge.  And because I am all against jinxing election results, maybe he really is on his way to victory. Who knows, that Post Office tampering, those mail in ballot scare tactics, canoodling with Putin and all those voter suppression lawsuits could pay off bigly.   

Viral Musings:  The virus remains totally out of control.  Thanksgiving is likely to involve you, a drumstick and a chocolate turkey  Radiologist Scott Atlas, Trump’s favorite virus non-expert expert who is all in on achieving herd immunity by cutting back on all that “useless” testing and killing the herd appears to be running the virus task force.  The Washington Post reports that Dr Debbie Birx who we don’t see anymore, is so upset about Atlas that she’s asked VP Pence to have him removed.  Pence, concerned that he’ll be replaced by Trump with the reincarnation of JFK Jr, hasn’t acted upon that request but has asked Atlas and Birx to present their “cases” to him so that he can evaluate the merits of crazy science against the views of the real experts.  For his part, virus guru Fauci who appears to be trying to hold on until the Biden calvary arrives, assuming it does arrive, is doing his best to ignore attacks against him by quoting lines from The Godfather, saying he’s taking “Nothing personal” because he knows it’s “Strictly business,” or insanity but out of his control.

Et Cetera:  Melania has cancelled plans to join Trump on the stump either because she’s still dealing with a persistent COVID cough, because she’s renegotiating her post-nup or because she’s busy packing.  Retired Admiral McRaven who was in charge of the mission that nailed Osama bin Laden endorsed Joe Biden saying “Truth be told, I am a pro-life, pro-Second Amendment, small-government, strong-defense and a national-anthem-standing conservative…But, I also believe that black lives matter, that the Dreamers deserve a path to citizenship, that diversity and inclusion are essential to our national success, that education is the great equalizer, that climate change is real and that the First Amendment is the cornerstone of our democracy. Most important, I believe that America must lead in the world with courage, conviction and a sense of honor and humility."  USA Today agrees, though they’ve never endorsed before they are this time, saying Elect Joe Biden, Reject Donald Trump.

Thirteen Days.

Two Weeks

Talking Points: Biden is a career criminal who should be happy that Attorney General Barr is such a nice guy because otherwise he’d be in the slammer by now.  Those guys at CNN, particularly “Guido” Cuomo are dumb bastards for spending so much time on the coronavirus story because who cares if daily COVID infection counts are peaking in eight states and that the death toll is now north of 220,000 and climbing.  Virus guru Fauci is a disaster who people are tired of hearing from, probably a reaction to Fauci’s appearance on 60 Minutes and that segment showing the fit guru walking with the two burly bodyguards he now needs to protect him from Trump’s fans.  Things will get even worse if Joe Biden wins the election because he would actually listen to Fauci.  Those are some of the points that Trump made yesterday on his super spreader tour and on a not so secret call to campaign workers.  He also insisted that he’s going to win, that he wouldn’t have said that a week ago but now he’s confident again, and let’s be honest don’t we all fear that despite the polls he could be right?  As to that Biden criminality thing, Trump keeps pushing the more than questionable laptop story, now claiming that its Joe’s laptop rather than Hunter’s but other than his hand selected, underqualified  Director of National Intelligence/toady John Ratcliffe, no one else in the know seems to be buying it.  In fact, yesterday’s Mediaite.com report that Fox News passed on the story over credibility concerns, could explain why Sean Hannity went with former Cheers actress Kirstie Alley, an ardent and vocal Trump supporter on his show last night. As to the laptop story, more than 50 former intelligence officials including some who served in the Trump administration signed on to a letter outlining their belief that it “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” A depressing tangent, though Trump asserts that coronavirus is so not an issue anymore, several US officials including the Undersecretary for Political Affairs is in quarantine right now, the result of a secret prisoner exchange meeting with Lebanon’s chief spymaster who has tested positive for the virus.  It’s not clear if CIA head Gina Haspel has put herself into quarantine, but she was one of the people who attended the meeting as was national security advisor Robert O’Brien who’s good to go because he already had COVID.  

One More Debate:  Getting back to the campaign, as of now the final debate, which will be moderated by NBC’s Kristin Welker, is scheduled to take place on Thursday. Trump who previously approved Welker’s selection is now asserting that she won’t be fair because she’s obviously a Democrat or so he says.  His current campaign chairman Bill Stepian, who is now out of his own COVID quarantine, sent a long letter to the Debate Commission complaining about the subjects that Welker plans to focus on, mostly upset that she will be asking questions about his coronavirus response and race relations rather than celebrating his innumerable international “accomplishments.” The ones that got him nominated for the Nobel/Noble prize he didn’t but should have won?  Contrary to reality, Stepian claims that the deal was that they wouldn’t bring up that virus thing again. The Trump team is also upset with the Debate Commission’s plan to mute the candidates’ mics so that each gets at least two minutes to answer questions before the one named Trump jumps in with a series of interruptions.  Keep in mind that the mic mute won’t stop the candidates from shouting during that two minutes so interruptions could and will still happen.  As of now Trump insists that he still plans to participate despite all the “last minute rule changes from the biased commission in their attempt to provide advantage to their favored candidate.”  That so-called favored candidate, Joe Biden, is off the trail until Thursday preparing for the debate or as Trump likes to put it, hiding in his cellar.  Trump, whose advisors have told him that he needs to hit the reset button and tone down his act in the upcoming debate, asserts that as proven by the first debate and his very successful town hall that was viewed by everyone on earth, he needs no preparation. That reset button, forget about it.  On the VP front, Mike Pence is on the road somewhere as is Kamala Harris who is out of her weekend isolation.  Yesterday, the ebullient Harris was seen dancing to the music during a rain storm in Jacksonville, Florida wearing her signature chucks and carrying a big umbrella.  If dance skills count, she wins. 

Some Senator Races:  Despite the congratulatory hug he got from California’s 87 year old Senator Diane Feinstein for holding what she called a wonderfully fair set of committee meetings on the Judge Amy nomination, Senator Lindsey Graham continues to struggle in his Senate race.  South Carolina being South Carolina, it would be crazy to count him out, but the latest poll shows his opponent Jaime Harrison up two points, well within a statistical error but who knows?  As to Senator Feinstein, a lot of Democrats were aghast at her hug and compliments, NARAL pulled their support for her and like several progressive Democrats have called for her to be removed from her Judiciary committee post and don’t even get me started on the COVID risk of an octogenarian hugging unmasked colleagues in the virus infected Senate right now.  Anyway, she is not up for reelection this cycle but it is probably time for her to be given some kind of emeritus status if such a thing exists.   Republican Joni Ernst who is up for reelection against Democrat Theresa Greenfield screwed up bigly during her debate.  She couldn’t answer a question about soybean prices, particularly notable because her opponent aced a similar question about corn.  That might seem esoteric to most of us but knowing your commodity pricing is an important credential in Iowa where Ernst is already in a bit of trouble for too closely sticking to the Trump line.  In North Carolina, despite his sexting, extramarital affairs scandal Cal Cunningham still appears to be have a slight lead over incumbent Thom Tillis. That said, the Trump campaign is very focused on North Carolina, is in a dead heat with Biden, and Tillis could ride the Trump coattails if he manages to eke out a win in the state.      

Et Cetera:  Chief Justice Roberts joined in with SCOTUS’s three liberals agreeing with a lower court ruling that Pennsylvania could count ballots received up to three days after election day.  That’s notable on a few fronts, first it’s a win for Democrats who want to see every vote count, second it’s a surprising decision by Roberts, who authored the Shelby v Holder case that has resulted in a lot of voter suppression laws getting passed in red states and third, because it demonstrates why Trump and his conservative enablers really need Judge Amy seated ASAP.  It’s fair to assume that she would have sided with the Court’s Conservative block, turning the four-four vote into a five-four decision that would have overturned the lower court’s decision.  After Trump said that if he wanted to raise more campaign cash he’d just call the CEO of Exxon and tell them they needed to fork over some big bucks to get a permit or two, Exxon’s freaked out CEO issued a statement saying that such a “hypothetical call” never happened.  Lastly, if you are into some more freaky things, try googling Jeffrey Toobin’s name.  The up until yesterday respected CNN and New Yorker legal analyst has been suspended by The New Yorker and has put himself on hiatus from CNN.  It’s that kind of year.  Enough said.         

 

 

Fifteen Days

Politics Unusual: The coronavirus is raging out of control but empowered by his newly acquired immunity Trump spent the weekend frantically hosting super spreader catch-up rallies across the country. He stuck with his usual spiel, a mash-up of 2016 oldies with a few new targets, bizarrely throwing in some Elaine Benes dance moves for good measure.  He went to Michigan and Wisconsin, states he won in 2016 but where he’s currently polling behind Biden; Nevada, a state he lost in 2016 but hopes to pick up; Georgia a state that should be a slam dunk but where polls are tightening and where two Senatorial seats are unexpectedly up for grabs; and California, a state he’ll never win but one with pools of much needed donor money.  In Michigan he slammed Governor Whitmer, basically justifying the plot against her life while egging on “lock her up” chants from his audience. On Sunday, daughter-in-law Lara, explained that away by saying that Trump was just “having fun;” Whitmer, not amused, said he was “inciting domestic terrorism.”  In Georgia, he was introduced by Republican Senator David Perdue who made his own reelection a little more challenging by intentionally mangling that “socialist” Kamala Harris’ “foreign” name calling her Kah-ma-la, or Kah-mah-la, or Kamala-mala-mala.”   That’s the same Perdue who was previously called out for photoshopping a picture of his Democratic opponent Jon Ossoff, making his nose look more stereotypically Jewish. Threatened with a boycott, a Perdue Chicken spokesperson made it clear that the Senator has no connection to their company while Ossoff raked in an extra $2 million in campaign contributions.  Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, back from her bout with COVID, bragged about the thousands of adoring fans who greeted Trump in California, neglecting to mention the majority of California voters who can’t even utter his name without retching. Over the weekend Trump reversed his decision to turn down Governor Newsom’s request for fire disaster relief, not because of any new found love for the largely blue anarchist jurisdiction but because he was reminded that the state has seven Republican Representatives up for reelection, some with burnt out constituents and one, Kevin McCarthy, who is the House Minority leader. As to Nevada, Trump is so desperate to win the state that he actually attended an evangelical service on Sunday. Maybe he got some pointers on how not to hold a Bible? 

But Her Emails:  This cycle’s “but her emails diversion” involves a laptop “discovered” by Rudy Giuliani in a computer repair shop owned by a blind man, the laptop which was supposedly abandoned by Joe’s son Hunter Biden, who if the date on the computer receipt is to be believed, would have traveled from his current home in California to get his computer repaired in Delaware because there are no repair shops out west. Among the “implicating” emails are a few where Biden sends love to his son during the depths of his fight with addiction, that fatherly love thing being totally foreign to Trump or Giuliani.  Yesterday, the NY Times reported that the story is so sketchy that only the NY Post would touch it and that even there staff writers were so put off by its odious unproven accusations about Joe having meetings with random Ukrainians that the reporter assigned to the story refused to allow his name to be included in the byline. Ultimately the story went out, on the front cover, under the byline of a reporter who previously worked for Fox pundit Sean Hannity, who has never before had a byline and another who had little to do with the story and didn’t give permission for her name to be included.  By the way, the other source for the “hit piece” article was the indicted one time Trump strategist Steve Bannon. Giuliani said he brought the information to the NY Post because he knew other papers would have tried to independently verify its contents and he couldn’t risk that. The FBI is now investigating the source material as Russian placed disinformation as well as the possibility that Rudy is either a useful fool or a willing foreign agent.  Voters, at least those not already voting for Trump don’t seem to care about the “leaked” emails so over the weekend Fox Business News’ Maria Bartiromo and Wisconsin Republican Senator Ron Johnson whose previous attempts at implicating Biden for crimes that never happened have failed,  implied that there was also child porn on the laptop, a nod no doubt to those QAnon crazies who believe that the Democrats are the party of pedophilia despite Trump’s stated admiration for Jeffrey Epstein’s affinity for young girls, his concerns over Ghislaine Maxwell’s health, those old accusations about his own behavior and his former associate/financier George Nader who was recently sentenced to a ten year prison term for sex trafficking a minor.

Et Cetera:  The number of Republicans trying to distance themselves from Trump ticked up this weekend to include Texas Senator John Cornyn.  Cornyn who is facing a “shouldn’t be close but is” reelection battle against  Democratic challenger/Air Force veteran MJ Hegar,  wants everyone to believe that at times he has disagreed with Trump on issues such as budget deficits and debt, tariffs and trade agreements and border security but that he chose to work out those disagreements in private discussions, rather than by publicly voicing his opposition. Trump hasn’t slammed Cornyn yet, but he did spend part of his rally and twitter time trashing Nebraska’s Ben Sasse, last weeks “distance dancing” Senator calling him “the least effective of our 53 Republican Senators, and a person who truly doesn’t have what it takes to be great…. Little Ben Sasse of Nebraska….. a "liability" to the party.”  He’s also been going after Maine’s damned if she does, damned if she doesn’t pearl clutcher Senator Susan Collins because she is expected to vote against Amy Coney Barret’s nomination, saying that she isn’t worth the work, a sentiment that Senate Leader McConnell who in all likelihood has told Collins to do what she needs to do to hold on to her seat doesn’t agree with.  That’s the same McConnell who refuses to go anywhere near Trump or the White House because of its virus infestation and who is doing a dance of his own over another virus aid package, teasing the electorate into believing he’s all in on providing more aid, even though he’d rather not.  As we inch closer to election day, Republican lawyers continue to challenge anything that facilitates voting, or at least likely Democratic voting.  Amy Coney Barrett’s SCOTUS nomination is expected to be voted out of the Judiciary Committee by the end of the week for a floor vote before election day putting her on the court in time to upend a close election and failing that to weigh in on whether undocumented immigrants have to be included in the census count and whether Obamacare should remain in place.  

 

It's only Monday.  

 Split Screens

Extreme Distancing: After Trump rejected the Commission on Presidential Debate’s virtual debate plan, pulling out of the townhall style debate that was scheduled to take place last night, Joe Biden accepted an invitation to appear on his own in a townhall moderated by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos.  Not to be outdone, the miraculously healed Trump accepted an invitation from NBC to appear solo in one moderated by Savannah Guthrie.  NBC took a lot of heat for agreeing to schedule their townhall in the same time slot as the ABC/Biden one.  That may partially explain why Savannah Guthrie came out armed for bear, although to be fair to Guthrie it doesn’t explain why Trump took her bait.  He was antagonistic and deceptive, in other words he stuck to his usual behavior and it wasn’t pretty. On the coronavirus front, Trump hemmed and hawed when asked if he had taken the mandated COVID test before the first debate, pretty much confirming that he’d skipped it proving that the Debate Commission’s decision to rely on the honor system was dangerously foolish.  As to his health, he insists he didn’t start to feel unwell until after the debate and admitted that the doctors told him he had gunk in lungs, also known as COVID pneumonia. Likewise he confessed that despite earlier assertions by his press secretary he doesn’t get tested every day.  When asked about herd immunity, he hemmed and hawed but refused to disavow the approach that would likely lead to millions more of us kicking the bucket. He insisted that he was pro-facemask but then claimed that 85% of people who wear masks get COVID, a  perverted misinterpretation of a recent CDC study that did not reach that conclusion.  Sadly that assertion appears to be a new entry in his repertoire, he tried it out at the super spreader rally full of gullible fans he’d held earlier in the day in North Carolina. He also insisted once again that US COVID mortality rates were the best; spoiler alert, they’re not. He admitted to having more than $400 million of personal debt, saying that was mere peanuts for a billionaire like him and he admitted that some, if not all of that debt, was probably held by foreigners.  He didn’t name them instead saying he’d get back to Savannah, probably in two weeks when he provides her with details of his new health and  DACA plans because no one cares about Dreamers more than him.  Trump finally condemned white supremacism though you got the distinct feeling that he had his fingers crossed behind his back while he did so. However, he couldn’t do the same when Savannah asked him about QAnon, the dangerous hatemongers who believe that Democrats are running a pedophile ring out of pizza parlors or something like that.  First he said that he didn’t know who they were, then when pressed he said that all he knew was that they were against pedophilia and isn’t that a good thing?  That the FBI labels QAnon as domestic terrorists didn’t seem to concern him one iota.  And because being pro-QAnon wasn’t enough, he also defended his retweeting of a tweet claiming that Osama bin Laden was still alive, that Obama and presumably Biden had conspired with him to fake his death by killing Seal Team Six.  Our commander in chief everyone. 

The Other Guy: By contrast Biden’s townhall was exceedingly normal, that’s not to say that Biden was perfect, he did his meandering thing and sometimes wrestled with words, but his answers were chock full of substance and at least so far, the media fact checkers haven’t come up with a list of prevarications.  Once again he was asked about court packing, an issue that may rile up the right who are all in on getting their uber conservative court in place for the next few decades but one that doesn’t seem to generate much vote swaying interest from the rest of us.  Biden responded by saying he’ll get back with an answer after Judge Amy’s confirmation process is over.  Whether he means that or whether it’s a rolling Trumpy two weeks deferral is debatable but it’s hard to miss that the press is only hammering him on that point because there’s so little else to hit him with.  And though one can quibble as to whether Senate Leader McConnell’s relentless push to get conservatives on all the courts of the land is technically packing, it certainly is ominous and worthy of a counter offensive. With plenty of his trademark compassion left to share,  Biden stuck around to answer more questions off camera after the townhall clock ran down, in the past that would probably have involved a few hugs but it’s 2020 so he couldn’t even pat any backs, a good thing because we learned yesterday that Kamala Harris’ communications director, a member of her flight crew and a representative of the flight company used by the Biden team tested COVID positive.  Harris, who didn’t have much exposure to any of them, is now off the campaign trail through the weekend, awaiting a few more days of hopefully negative test results.  Though the flight company representative flew on Biden’s plane, he never got within 50 feet of the former VP so Joe, who like Kamala always wears a super protective N 95 mask while flying, has tested negative and is and will be tested daily, has been advised that he doesn’t need to change any of his plans.  Great transparency from the Biden team but oy, double oy, that virus is scarily persistent.    

Politics Unusual:  We’re at the point in the election process where some of the pundits and most of the news stations warn us that the election is really much closer than the polls indicate.  That may or may not be an accurate assessment of the current situation, only time will tell, but one thing is certain, some Republicans are doing distancing jigs.  Yesterday, a tape of Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse throwing volumes of shade at Trump during a call with thousands of constituents was released and, notably Sasse, who is up for reelection but held back his open criticism until after the primary season, didn’t deny saying that Trump flirts with white supremacists, kisses dictators’ butts and sells out our allies and that someday Republicans will have to explain why they supported that awful reality TV show host.  Less scathing, but also unhappy, former NJ Governor/Trump debate coach Chris Christie is back from his stay in intensive care.  He too was a beneficiary of the anti-viral Remdesivir and some monoclonal antibodies, the Eli Lily ones that are now subject to a study hold over another patient’s bad reaction.  He expressed regret for not taking virus protection protocols more seriously while also making it clear that he thinks Trump has been and continues to deliver the wrong coronavirus message, saying he has not “treated Americans as adults, who understand truth, sacrifice and responsibility,” essentially confirming that we’ve been lied to and are still being lied to by Trump.  Christie is now fully on #TeamMask.  Not all that surprising given her long term estrangement from her father, Caroline Giuliani endorsed the Biden/Harris team yesterday, slamming her father Rudy as a “sycophant” who feeds Trump’s “mob mentality.”  As to Rudy, Trump was warned by his intelligence chief earlier this year that his “bulldog” lawyer was being manipulated by the Russians who were using him to funnel disinformation.  That’s the same Rudy who wants us to believe that the Hunter Biden implicating emails that he uncovered on a laptop from Delaware are legitimate.  Getting back to Trump, yesterday during his North Carolina rally, he appears to have admitted to authorizing an extra judicial killing by boasting about federal agents killing an antifa activist suspected of murdering one of his supporters in Portland, Oregon this summer, calling the suspect’s death without trial an example of his leadership.  

Eighteen days.

 

Wash and Dry

Amy, Amy, Amy:  If you aren’t concerned about Judge Amy making it to the Supreme Court you should be.  She spent much of the second day of her question and answer hearing trying to convince the gullible that she has no pre-formed opinions on anything and that despite her background and history of attacking things like reproductive rights and Obamacare she’d be the fairest justice of them all.  But, and it’s a big but, if she’s so fair and overturning Roe v Wade and dismantling Obamacare aren’t part of her mission, why did all the Republican Senators, most notably chairman Lindsey Graham go out of their way yesterday to assure all of us that there is no way she would ever do any of those things (wink, wink)?  Reliably awful Lindsey began by getting the not so good Judge Amy to walk through an explanation of severability, that’s the legal doctrine that states that if some of the terms of a contested statue are held to be illegal or otherwise unenforceable, the remainder should still apply. In a nutshell, the argument is that since the California v Texas case that will be argued in front of SCOTUS on November 10 is about Obamacare’s individual mandate, the whole of Obamacare isn’t really in jeopardy.  While that’s a possible outcome, keep in mind that despite the severability doctrine the lower court has already ruled that the whole of Obamacare should be trashed, that Trump’s Justice Department joined the case to fight for Obamacare’s total and complete demise and despite the Republican tap dance, they’ve spent the better part of the past decade trying to rid us of Obamacare without coming up with a replacement that covers anything least of all pre-existing conditions. Of course, it’s not just Obamacare that’s in jeopardy, while Judge Amy did manage to say that she believes that Brown v Board of Education, the landmark ruling that said that separate is not equal, was well decided and a done deal, she refused to say that about Roe v Wade and wouldn’t even agree that Griswold v Connecticut, the landmark decision that said it was okay for married couples to use contraceptives and that read into the Constitution the right to privacy, a right that originalists like Judge Amy and her mentor Justice Antonin Scalia don’t see because it wasn’t explicitly stated by those Revolutionary era scribes, the same guys who thought that slaves were only 3/5ths of a person and didn’t grant women the right to vote.  The failure to endorse Griswold is particularly notable because Roe v Wade stands upon Griswold’s shoulders.  (note to all, please excuse my oversimplification, as you can tell I am not a lawyer, I just play one for this blog).  Moving on, when asked by Senator Cory Booker if it’s wrong to separate children from their parents, Judge Amy, who we are supposed to believe is the mother of the decade, responded “That’s a matter of hot political debate that I can’t express a view or be drawn into as a judge.” When asked by Senator Amy Klobuchar “if absentee ballots, better known as mail-in ballots, are an essential way to vote for millions of people right now in the middle of the current pandemic,” Judge Amy responded “That's a matter of policy on which I can't express a view.”  Klobuchar also pointed out that if, or sadly when, she is confirmed, SCOTUS would have three justices who worked on behalf of the Republican Party on the infamous Bush v. Gore case that resulted in George W Bush winning in 2000, the other two being Chief Justice Roberts and Justice  Kavanaugh, Judge Amy refused to acknowledge that as anything more than a lovely coincidence. That “coincidence” goes a long way towards explaining why Trump keeps saying he needs her on the court in time to hear the challenges he expects to file if (when?) he loses the election. And then there’s climate science,  Judge Amy who may not have gotten much past Intelligent Design, refused to acknowledge it as a thing because it’s outside of her field of expertise and maybe too because of the Koch Brothers and their ilk who’ve funded her rise.  Likewise, she wasn’t all sure about voting discrimination, and didn’t seem at all put back about that one voting box sitting all by itself in huge Harris County, Texas.  And she wouldn’t even tell Senator Diane Feinstein that Medicare was constitutional though she did discuss her laundry practices in response to a question from the charmer from Louisiana Senator Kennedy. The bottom line is that Judge Amy is likely to be Justice Amy very soon and we should all be very worried because even if the Democrats take over the Senate, win the presidency and keep the House, she together with the rest of the conservatives on the Court will be there to rule against a lot of the “liberal” legislation they plan to pass.

Conspiracy Politics:  On the same day that Attorney General Barr skulked away from his investigation into all that illegal unmasking that wasn’t illegal and just a week or so after he quietly told Republican members of Congress and Trump that the much teased Durham report into Russia investigation improprieties will not be released before the election, the NY Post ran a front page “expose” about some likely doctored if not outright invented email from Hunter Biden to his father, candidate Joe, related to a meeting that Hunter allegedly tried to set up between the then VP and a questionable Ukrainian. The source of this newly discovered email for a meeting that never happened was an abandoned laptop found at a computer shop in Delaware and of course Rudy Giuliani was involved in getting the information to the attention of the NY Post.  Twitter and Facebook blocked the sharing of the article, an indication that both social media companies viewed it as false information intended to sway an election, that of course caused a lot of people on the Republican side to attack CEOs Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg.  Enough said.  As to Barr, who may or may not be in a basement somewhere in a COVID quarantine, he appears to be on thin ice with Trump right now which could explain why he has his Justice Department attorneys, the guys paid with our tax dollars, suing Melania’s former friend/event planner Stephanie Winston Wolkoff for all those things she revealed about Melania, like FLOTUS’s  f-ck Christmas statement and her who cares about migrant kids anyway thing.

Trump Front:  Trump was off to Iowa yesterday, one of those states he won by a mile in 2016 but where he is currently in a statistical tie.  He held another super spreader rally, bragged about his recovery, mentioned that his son Barron’s quick, asymptomatic recovery from COVID, something we learned about yesterday for the first time, was proof that kids getting COVID was nothing to worry about and then did a brief advertisement for Eli Lily’s monoclonal antibody drug, one that is similar to the Regeneron one that he received.  Worth noting, Eli Lily paused the study of their monoclonal treatment yesterday morning over safety concerns, well at least concerns to them, Trump, who is all in on herd immunity, doesn’t seem at all bothered.  As to that herd immunity push, in a Monday phone call, White House officials cited something called the Great Barrington Declaration, which argues that the government should push for herd immunity.  That declaration has a number of impressive signatories including: Dr. I.P. Freely, Dr. Person Fakename and Dr. Johnny Bananas.  Again, enough said.  Keep wearing your mask and washing your hands.  We get to herd immunity with a vaccine, not by running amok at bars and parties. One more thing, remember back when the Mueller investigation was ongoing, there were reports of a subpoena going out to a mystery foreign entity.  Yesterday, CNN reported that entity was an Egyptian bank and that the subpoena was part of an effort to identify the real source of the $10 million that Trump “self-funded” towards the end of his 2016 campaign. The issue was never resolved but Egypt was excluded from the list of foreign countries included in the Muslim ban.  Another coincidence?   

  

The Herd is Back

Not Loving Amy: Yesterday was all about Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation hearing.  Recognizing that there’s little they can do to disrupt her ascension to the court, the Democrats instead turned the hearing into a political informercial.  They stayed on message, hammering home their position that Judge Amy is likely to provide the pivotal votes leading to the end of Obamacare and the end of Roe v Wade. Despite the assists she received from the Republican contingent, including an odd introduction from Chairman Lindsey Graham who inappropriately went on about all those contributions going to his South Carolina competitor, Judge Amy didn’t do much to help her case, not that it matters. Though she robotically argued that it would be inappropriate for her to reveal her views on those hot button issues that might make it to the Court and promised that she would approach every case with an open mind, her words and her refusal to answer some basic questions made her assertions hard to believe.  Though anyone who’s ever watched a news program, read a paper or seen a tweet knows that Trump has been railing against Obamacare, chipping away at its components and repeatedly attacks the deceased John McCain and his errant thumb, Judge Amy made the unbelievable claim that she was not aware of Trump’s campaign promise to appoint justices who would dismantle Obamacare.  Moreover she said that the article she wrote laying into Chief Justice Roberts for writing the opinion that saved Obamacare the last time the Court was asked to rule the law unconstitutional was just a scholarly essay rather than an Attorney General Barr like “oh, oh, pick me” effort to get herself onto the very top of Trump’s list of potential SCOTUS appointees. Similarly she asserted that her membership in so-called Right to Life groups as well as her signature on various letters and petitions attacking abortion, Roe and even in vitro fertilization shouldn’t be misinterpreted as an indication that she would vote to take away reproductive rights.  That’s another curious assertion given that in addition to promising to take down Obamacare, Trump has been very vocal about his commitment to picking a Justice who would eradicate the right to abortion, not because of any recent religious epiphany  but to satisfy “his” evangelists.  As to the IVF issue, the  Journal of Fertility and Sterility must be concerned, they took the unusual step of publishing a warning from fertility experts who believe that "seating Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court threatens those who seek to build a family through in-vitro fertilization."  It wasn’t just her answers to questions about Obamacare, reproductive rights and the Obergefell gay marriage decision that were concerning.  Judge Amy also wouldn’t say that Trump couldn’t postpone the election or that voter intimidation was a crime even after Senator Amy Klobuchar read her the citation that prohibits showing up with things like loaded AK 47s at voting places.  Instead of saying that Trump should peacefully transfer power were he to lose at the polls, she stuck to her go to phrase that she’d have to evaluate all the legal issues, have her clerks do the research and talk with the other Justices before she could form an opinion.  When pressed she did admit that one of the good things about Democracy was that until now election losers exited on schedule.  Although all the Democratic Senators held their own, Amy Klobuchar, Cory Booker, Sheldon Whitehouse and Kamala Harris, whose time provided her with an  extra campaign moment were particularly excellent.  Whitehouse distinguished himself by using his time to provide a masterclass on how dark money has perverted the whole judicial appointment process.  Displaying a series of poster boards, he tracked the hundreds of millions of dollars from those dark, unnamed interests  that have “gifted” us with far too many very conservative lower court judges, as well as the growing conservative majority on the Supreme Court, one that isn’t just going after health care, reproductive rights, gay marriage and advocating for expanded gun privileges but is also leaning in on behalf of big business at the expense of the little guy and going after the regulations needed to protect the environment.  As the day wore on, prim and proper Amy looked increasingly stressed despite all the support heaped upon her by the Republican contingent.  As to her efforts to obfuscate her true views, it didn’t help that one of her most ardent supporters is first term Missouri Senator Josh Hawley who is on record saying that he will only support a Justice who promises to overturn Roe.  Nor did it help that 88 faculty members from the University of Notre Dame posted a letter calling on her to halt her confirmation process until after the presidential election citing that voting is already ongoing, the rushed nature of the process and the dying wishes of RBG. That release of that letter was revealed by Cory Booker during his Q & A, and for a moment, just a brief moment it appeared to hit a nerve. 

Et Cetera:  US Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia’s wife has tested COVID positive, another victim of the ACB Rose Garden super spreader gala. And yes Scalia is the son of Judge Amy’s one time mentor, former Justice Antonin Scalia. The Supreme Court said it would be okay for the administration to halt the Census early while the case protesting the early halt is under review at a lower court, pretty much giving the Trump administration what it wants, the end of the Census.  To no one’s surprise Trump is again asking SCOTUS to stop the release of his tax records to Manhattan NY DA Cy Vance.  Senator Romney issued a message attacking Trump for being such a horrendous pill, but notably he also went after Speaker Pelosi because it’s all about both siderism and he appears to want to keep his future political options open.  Those white extremists who were planning to kidnap and kill Michigan Governor Whitmer, they also wanted to take out Virginia Governor Northam.  And lastly, and probably of most concern, the NY Times reports that Trump and his contingent have given up on tackling the coronavirus, instead they are rooting for herd immunity which means they are rooting for the virus.  Apparently now that Trump appears to have recovered, he’s all in on putting our lives at risk, and by our lives, think millions of us.