Boots and Booting

King of Crazy:  While President-elect Biden was busy doing presidential things like thanking first responders, delivering  “fireside” speeches, announcing appointments, adopting a kitten and playing with and apparently tripping over his German shepherd Major, Trump pardoned an unregistered Turkey, continued screaming election fraud, bemoaned the judicial process, attacked “his” FBI and Justice Department, and appears to have greenlighted what was probably an Israeli assassination of Iran’s leading nuclear scientist because why not make world repair more challenging for Biden?  While most of us were preparing for downsized, muted Turkey festivities a bloviated Trump held a bizarre news conference squished into a teeny tiny kindergartener’s desk, screamed at the main stream media for not treating him respectfully after one of them asked him if he’d ever leave or have to be booted,  played multiple rounds of golf, and flew with his adult children to Camp David. According to the Washington Post, he has also spent a good part of the time since the election doing a way too convincing crazy King George imitation, raging at unseen enemies and expressing disbelief that he lost to basement denizen, sleepy Joe Biden.  Loser Trump who hates that sobriquet more than anything, is astonished that his attempts to disrupt the postal service, dissuade and then discount mail-in voting and suppress and then throw out minority vote combined with his efforts to stack the Supreme Court failed to result in him winning or at the very losing by a margin small enough to overturn in the courts.  Despite the “best” efforts of Rudy’s crack legal strike team, state and federal judges aren’t buying it, they continue to dismiss his cases, an insult magnified by the fact that some of those dissing Federal judges are Trump appointees, because as one of those judges said of his attempt to throw out Pennsylvania votes “free, fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy. Charges of unfairness are serious.  But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof.  We have neither here.” Trump is only now coming to the realization that it’s hard to get crackpot cases to SCOTUS. Also, the recount of the votes in Wisconsin’s two largely Black cities, the results are in and not only is Biden still the winner, he actually picked up 87 votes at a cost of $3 million for Trump’s donors.  Though Trump’s lawyers are still suing, Wisconsin’s election results are due to be formally certified later today. Adding insult to injury, not long after Trump screamed election fraud again during an interview with one time Money Honey now crazy Fox pundit Maria Bartiromo, 60 Minutes aired its interview with his former head of cyber security, the widely respected and totally sane and convincing Chris Krebs.  Krebs detailed the steps that he and his team successfully undertook to insure that this year’s election was fraud free and totally legitimate.  Continuing with his King George lunacy, Trump rage tweeted that the 60 Minutes segment was a “ridiculous, one sided story on election security…..an international joke. Our 2020 Election, from poorly rated Dominion to a Country FLOODED with unaccounted for Mail-In ballots, was probably our least secure EVER!"  Is now a good time to point out that the Crazy King still has custody of the nuclear football and that a lot of bad things can happen during the 51 Days between now and January 20?       

Pardons, Pardons, Pardons:  Trump’s been signaling his intention to pardon “lock her up” screecher Michael Flynn ever since the national security advisor for a minute got caught lying in the early days of the Trump nightmare to the FBI about his conversation with former Russian Ambassador Kislyak so his holiday weekend pardon wasn’t all that surprising, nor was it precedent setting.  Presidents grant inappropriate pardons all the time.  Ford did it for Nixon, Clinton did it for financier/donor Marc Rich and George HW Bush did a slew of them for people involved in Reagan’s Iran-Contra affair.  What makes Trump’s pardon of Flynn standout isn’t that Flynn, who was also acting as an unregistered agent for Turkey, lied, it’s that he lied to cover up something that he believed that Trump had done, something that could explain Trump’s affinity for all things Putin.  Just about everyone expects that Trump will grant a lot more pardons before he exits on January 20 and that though some of those pardons will go to people selected by Kim Kardashian a lot of them will go to people like Paul Manafort, another one who kept his mouth shut, and Steve Bannon because bilking donors is something that Trump finds very relatable.  Far more relatable and excusable Biden appears to have forgiven Major, for the puppy play that resulted in two hairline fractures of one of his feet.  Hopefully, Biden, who really should be bubble wrapped until January 20, will lose his new boot in time for the inauguration.  

Electioneering: Few if any expect Trump to attend Biden’s inauguration. He has other plans like announcing the 2024 run that will allow him to raise lots of money for his legal bills and possibly even a competing January 20 “rally.”  He is also promising to hold one of his viral rallies in Georgia next week, to help Republican candidates/insider traders Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue in their runoff races against Democrats Jon Ossoff and Reverend Raphael Warnock.  Under ordinary circumstances, Loeffler and Perdue would be shoe-ins to win their races, despite Biden’s Georgia win, the state still tilts red and historically more Republicans show up for run-off elections,  however a number of those ruby red voters are so convinced that the November election was fraudulent that they are talking about staying home, or even worse, submitting write-ins for Trump so who knows what’s going to happen. By the way, Loeffler’s strategy involves portraying her opponent Warnock as an anti-Semite while Perdue’s involves pointing out to voters that his opponent Ossoff is one of those “untrustworthy” Semites. For their part Ossoff and Warnock are engaging in mutual hug fests, in order to disabuse concerned voters that either accusation holds water.

And More:  The virus situation is beyond sad and virus guru Fauci warns of surges on surges.  Who, but everyone, would have guessed that leaders playing down risk, combined with mayors and governors heading out of town for vacation sojourns while telling their constituent to stay home mixed in with millions of virus deniers could result in such an unrelenting disaster?  Those vaccines can’t come soon enough, and it looks like both Pfizer’s and Moderna’s are likely to start going into the arms of health care professionals and other first responder’s by the end of December  but something is up with the Astra Zeneca one, apparently they screwed up their dosing and though their vaccine is probably effective, they will have to “fix” their studies before getting US approval.  And a correction, last week I confused Mike Shirkey, one of the Michigan Republicans who went to the White House to discuss “virus resources” with Trump with Norman Shinkle the Michigan Republican who ultimately abstained from voting for the certification of the state’s election results. Though that meeting ultimately bore no fruit for Trump, he tried again last week, hosting some local Pennsylvania officials. No luck there either, at least so far, but Trump did manage to advance the virus as one of those officials, State Senator Doug Mastriano tested COVID positive; and because the virus team in the White House is totally inept, the results of his test came in while the mask free Mastriano was meeting with Trump and company.  Mastriano was quickly yanked out of the West Wing but his aerosol particles remained.  

 

What About Cob?

Transition, Transition! Given my news obsession it shouldn’t surprise anyone to learn that I am not into any of the popular TV and streaming shows that most people watch.  I’ve never seen an episode of The Crown or This Is Us, have made it through only one episode each of Fauda and the Amazing Mrs. Maisel and don’t know a Shtisel from a Mandalorian.  That said, I am addicted to Mark Harmon and NCIS, but I prefer the one-off episodes with happy moralistic endings over those that unfold over multiple weeks. Yesterday’s Biden news conference was a lot like one of one of those happy ending NCIS episodes.  Watching the President-elect’s first set of picks, standing appropriately distanced and wearing masks, talk about their family backgrounds and professional experiences was remarkably refreshing and comforting. No Biden relatives, wedding planners, generals or government deconstructionists in the bunch just Secretary of State nominee Blinken stealing the show and eliciting more than a few tears with the story about how his step-father was rescued from a Holocaust death march by an African American tank soldier. Unfortunately, there will be lots of bumps in the road going forward, a few of the Republican presidential wannabees have already made it clear that they don’t like Biden’s picks, mostly because they’re already jockeying for 2024 and going after Biden’s picks is a way to garner attention and Trump base support assuming Trump doesn’t run too.  Florida’s Marco Rubio who usually fills his tweet stream with Bible verses, diverged from his holier than thou messaging to diss them saying “Biden’s cabinet picks went to Ivy League schools, have strong resumes, attend all the right conferences & will be polite & orderly caretakers of America’s decline…I have no interest in the ‘normal’ that left us reliant on China.”  And Secretary of State Pompeo, one of many of those many Ivy league graduates that the academic credential obsessed Trump appointed and that Rubio finds so offensive, also knocked the Biden nominees saying they “lived in a fantasy world” and “led from behind.”  Pompeo’s views won’t matter, he’ll be gone come January 20,  but Rubio’s are an indication that if Georgia’s two Senate seats remain in Republican hands, the confirmation process for many of Biden’s picks won’t be smooth sailing.  Though a few of the usual Republicans, like Senators Romney, Collins, Murkowski and Sasse have indicated that Biden is entitled to the cabinet of his choice, Senate Leader McConnell is deviously obstructive and others have already expressed concerns about Homeland Security nominee Alejandro Mayorkas because he was involved with the implementation of Obama’s DACA program and the fluent French speaking, guitar playing Secretary of State nominee Blinken, citing that he once met with Hunter Biden and or one of his laptops.  By the way, the blind buy who owned the computer store where all those laptops were “conveniently” discovered, he’s closed up shop and disappeared.  Of course, Democrats being Democrats, their team is also getting into the action. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib is concerned that Blinken won’t tolerate her criticism of Israel and AOC and her progressive forces are circulating petitions against some of Biden’s as yet unannounced picks, including his former chief of staff Bruce Reed, who Biden is rumored to be considering for OMB chief, painting him as a “deficit hawk.”  Well, maybe this episode really isn’t a standalone with a satisfying and immediate happy ending.

Over, Not Over:  The election’s over, Biden now has more than 80 million votes and a 4 percentage point lead over Trump which is the second-largest popular vote margin out of the 21st century’s six presidential elections, with only Obama’s 7 point win in 2008 being greater.  More states including Pennsylvania, Minnesota , Nevada and North Carolina have certified their votes but Trump and his crack team of legal wizards are still suing.  One of those lawsuits seeks to stop the certification of Wisconsin’s votes where a grand total of 400 uncounted ballots were found during the state’s recent recount; Biden’s statewide lead remains above 20,000.   For his part, Trump who continues to ignore the raging coronavirus, found time yesterday to hold a super brief impromptu press conference to brag about the Dow Industrial average hitting 30,000, before pardoning Corn, this year’s lucky Turkey who beat out Cob.  Today Trump is off to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania with Rudy Giuliani to attend a faux “hearing” on election fraud being held by real Republican state lawmakers largely because some of them hope to get his support in the event that they decide to run for the Senate seat that will be opening up in 2022 as a result of the planned retirement of the state’s Republican Senator Pat Toomey.  Two things to note, that stock market index that Trump bragged about, it’s up because the markets are relieved that Trump finally authorized the formal transition to Biden. Somehow or other despite Trump’s pre-election warning, the markets haven’t crashed as a result of Biden’s victory.   Second, the US virus death count is at 259,364, 2100 of those people died yesterday, more than 85,000 are hospitalized and the number of US confirmed cases is above 12.4 million, but sure a jaunt to Gettysburg to learn about phony election fraud, that’s a good use of Trump’s time during a PANDEMIC.  One piece of good news, Biden’s transition squads have landed and are at work and though Biden hasn’t chatted with virus guru Fauci yet, his virus team has.

Wishing you a safe and happy Thanksgiving.

56 Days

 

The Fiddler's Exit

Transition, Transition! If this had been an ordinary election cycle no one outside of Michigan, and even most Michiganders, would have ever heard Aaron Van Langevelde’s name;  however this is 2020 so Langevelde goes down on that very short list of Republican officials who despite the pressure and threats thrown his way did his job.  Yesterday, while saying that he really had no choice but to follow the law, a clearly stressed out Langevelde joined the two Democrats on the Michigan Board of Canvassers, and voted to certify the state’s election results.  The other Republican on the board, Norm Shinkle, who was one of two local Republicans who visited Trump last Friday, ultimately abstained, but not before making it clear that he had heard zillions of accounts of election fraud especially in that minority dominated Wayne County. He’ll probably get a bill for all that gratis Dom Perignon he imbibed during his DC visit, assuming it was really the expensive stuff and maybe even if it was just Trump branded ersatz bubbly.  Shortly after the Michigan certification vote, @GSAEmily, another person whose name we wouldn’t have gotten to know during normal times, issued the much awaited ascertainment letter authorizing the transition to the Joe Biden and Kamala Harris administration.  Though she a bit too conveniently or more likely snidely left Kamala’s name out of her letter, she did manage to whine about how unfair it was that she had been subjected to so much pressure and so many threats, asserting that her failure to issue the letter earlier was just her doing her job the way she thought she was supposed to do it, that it had nothing to do with any pressure from anyone of her superiors or anyone named Trump, that going forward the responsibility for initiating transitions should be taken out of the hands of the GSA and that her decision to finally issue the letter was all her own.  Full disclosure, I was one of the many people who sent her an email, an excruciatingly polite benign one with no threats or at least that’s how I saw it.  Of course, Trump followed up immediately, contradicting her by tweeting that he had “instructed” her to issue it “in the best interests of the country,” even though he plans to fight on because “our case STRONGLY continues we will keep up the good fight and I believe we’ll prevail.”  Trump whisperer/NY Times writer Maggie Haberman says that tweet is probably the closest Trump will ever get to delivering a concession letter.  Though Trump will not be heading to Mar a Lago for Thanksgiving and is still pursuing legal challenges, he has added a wacky conspiracy mongering OAN correspondent/lawyer to his legal team to replace the fully deranged Sidney Powell, he’s also making plans for his move south. Yesterday it was reported that he’s updating and expanding his Mar a Lago living quarters, that the Secret Service has started asking agents if they have any interest in moving to Palm Beach and that plans are being made to reopen the streets around New York’s Trump Tower. By the way, Pennsylvania still hasn’t certified but their delay appears to be due to the ordinary incompetence that we usually don’t even hear about.         

Master of the House: Even before the Michigan certification, the number of Republican politicians acknowledging Biden’s “likely” victory and calling for @GSA Emily to do her job had grown to include Republican Senators Lamar Alexander, Shelly Moore Capito and Rob Portman.  It wasn’t just the political types, early in the day loyal Trump supporter Steve Schwarzman of Blackrock who had previously said that he didn’t get why all those “blue” absentee ballots should be counted, acknowledged Trump’s loss and Biden’s victory as did more than 150 business leaders who called for Trump to concede and initiate a smooth transition.  Additionally GM management abandoned a Trump lawsuit against the State of California and its emission control standards, saying it was now all in on electric vehicles. For his part, as frustrated as he was by Trump’s obstruction, Biden continued to do what President-elects are supposed to do, he spent the day announcing more of his cabinet appointments, a diverse list that includes Alejandro Mayorkas, a son of Jewish Cuban refugees to head the Department of Homeland Security, Avril Haines who will be the first woman to become the Director or National Intelligence, and Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who he described as a “barrier breaking African American.” Significantly, he also announced the appointment of former Secretary of State John Kerry/Paris Climate agreement negotiator as climate czar, a new cabinet level position that will get a seat at the National Security Council. How refreshing and crucial, a President who believes in science.  And though it hasn’t been formally announced yet, expectations are that former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen will be the first female Treasury Secretary. With the transition letter in hand, the FBI can now start the process of vetting those nominees as well as a raft of other future Biden team members.  Most importantly, the ascertainment letter should also facilitate the sharing of information about the upcoming vaccination plan. I fully expect that there will be bumps and potholes in the vaccination road but I do feel a whole lot more comfortable knowing that the Biden team, rather than Jared Kushner or some other family member will be getting a seat at the table and by January will be running the massive undertaking.   

57 Days:  Even though the ascertainment letter has been issued, the transition has begun and construction of the inauguration platform is underway, Trump is still the showrunner.  The super spreader in chief plans to hold a few indoor holiday parties while he still can.  Of more concern, he also remains in charge of international and domestic policy, so hold on, undoubtably there will be more fiddling and, to borrow a phrase from Molly Jong Fast, f-ckery before we get to January 20.        

         

Monster Mash

Frankenstein and Dracula:  Joe Biden won the election.  He has 306 electoral college votes to Trump’s 232 and received 6 million more popular votes but Trump is still waging war and, though he continues to lose in the court, he’s succeeding in other more nefarious ways.  Remember those two Republican members of the Michigan Board of Canvassers who traveled to Washington to meet with Trump on Friday, though they claim that all they discussed during their tete-a tete was Michigan’s PPE needs and the like, we all know that’s a bunch of bunk.  After their meeting, the two overnighted at Trump International where they were photographed downing Dom Perignon champagne in the hotel’s bar. It’s fair to assume that they didn’t pay for either, well didn’t pay in cash. Expectations are that they will compensate Trump later today by voting against certifying Michigan’s vote count.  One of them, Norman Shinkle, whose wife was one of the Republican Detroit poll watchers who claimed to have seen election irregularities, things like Black people actually being allowed to vote, told a Republican Congressman that he plans to vote against certification and though the other one, Aaron Van Langevelde, hasn’t yet revealed how he’ll vote he’s being pressured by Michigan’s Republican House Chair and RNC Chair/Michigander Ronna Romney McDaniel to vote no as well.  They are expected to instead insist on a precertification audit which is just a Trumpian delay tactic, more of his effort to get election results thrown out the window in order to replace Democratic electors with Republican ones.  Audits take place after certification not before because the ballots can’t be released to outsiders until after they are certified. Michigan’s Democratic lawmakers, including Governor Whitmer and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, insist that there are ways for them to legally dispense with this mess, but it won’t be pretty.  It’s not just Michigan, though US District Judge Michael Brann, an Obama appointee who is also a member of the conservative Federalist Society, tossed Trump’s latest suit against Pennsylvania with prejudice, likening his legal team’s claims to a Frankenstein’s monster haphazardly stitched together and the case full of  "strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations," the Trump legal team filed an appeal last night in an effort to stall Pennsylvania’s certification.  That legal team no longer includes Michael Flynn lawyer Sidney Powell. Although she appeared with Rudy Giuliani at his head oozing press conference and Trump previously tweet touted her as a member of his elite legal strike force, yesterday, during a moment when he wasn’t golfing or participating in that G 20  virtual coronavirus meeting with other world leaders, Trump kicked her off his team.  To be clear he was okay with her claiming that the very dead Venezuela strongman Hugo Chavez conspired with George Soros and the forces of antifa to manipulate election counting machines to make it look like he lost when he really won resoundingly, he just had a problem with her discussing her plans to “biblically” blow up Georgia, or more likely the blood sucking Mitch McConnell, who thus far has tolerated Trump’s legal machinations, made it clear that going postal on Georgia in the run up to those two pivotal January Senator elections is a step too far.  As to Georgia, on Friday with the support of Republican Governor Brian Kemp, Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger, another Republican. made it clear that though he voted for Trump and loves his policies, “numbers don’t lie.”  He certified Georgia’s votes awarding the state’s 16 electoral college votes to Biden.  Trump responded by tweet attacking both of them while his campaign immediately called for a recount, in case you’re counting that will be recount number two.  By the way that two county recount in Wisconsin is going very slowly, Republicans there are doing their very best to toss minority votes and/or miss the certification deadline.    

The Invisible Man:  Over twelve million American have or have had COVID, more than 255,000 Americans have died and the daily infection count is now running above 200,000.  Included in that count and now in quarantine are Florida’s Republican Senator Rick Scott, Donald Trump Jr, Andrew Giuliani and, depending on which of her many tests “count,” Georgia Senator Kelly Loeffler. On Friday, before she received her positive test result, Loeffler, who Trump’s crazed former lawyer Sidney Powell insists only made it to the Senate runoff over soon to be former Congressman Doug Collins because of that Chavez, Soros, antifa conspiracy, was on the campaign trail with VP Pence and Georgia’s other Republican Senator David Perdue. None of them were wearing masks during their time together, no indication if either of them or Pence’s fly have been tested or plan to quarantine. Though more Republican politicians than Democrats seem to be engaged in risky behavior, hypocrisy is alive and well across the aisle too.  California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom has been hit with well-deserved criticism for attending an unmasked fancy dining extravaganza in his home state which makes his newest state virus restrictions more difficult to implement.  He is now in quarantine, not because of that dining shindig but because one of the state troopers providing protection to his children has turned up positive.  On the vaccination front preliminary results are in from Astra Zeneca, it looks like one dose of their vaccine is 70% effective while two doses are somewhere around 90% effective.  That’s good news but unfortunately @GSAEmily still hasn’t provided that ascertainment letter needed to trigger the transition and as a result no one is coordinating  vaccination plans, or anything else, with the Biden team.  That isn’t to say that Biden’s team hasn’t been busy.  In addition to meeting with both red and blue state governors to discuss their virus needs, Biden has been working on firming up his cabinet.  He is expected to announce that he will be appointing Antony Blinken, a defender of global alliances, as Secretary of State, Jake Sullivan as national security advisor and Linda Thomas Greenfield as UN Ambassador.  Biden also indicated that he has picked a Treasury Secretary.  We should hear more tomorrow.  It appears that Susan Rice lost out on the Secretary of State position over concerns that some of those Republican Senators who have had no problem confirming Trump’s cast of misfit malevolents “President Trump has had the opportunity to litigate his claims, and the courts have thus far found them without merit. A pressure campaign on state legislators to influence the electoral outcome is not only unprecedented but inconsistent with our democratic process. It is time to begin the full and formal transition process.” still hold her responsible for Benghazi.   

The Mummies:  Watergate journalist/CNN Contributor Carl Bernstein has reached his limit.  Saying that with few exceptions, their “craven public silence has helped enable Trump’s most grievous conduct, including undermining and discrediting the US the electoral system," he outed the twenty-one Republican Senators who have privately expressed their disdain for Trump to him.  That list includes Ohio's Rob Portman, Tennessee's Lamar Alexander, Nebraska's Ben Sasse, Missouri's Roy Blunt, Maine's Susan Collins, Alaska's Lisa Murkowski, Texas's John Cornyn, South Dakota's John Thune, Utah's Mitt Romney, Indiana's Mike Braun, Indiana's Todd Young, South Carolina's Tim Scott, Florida's Rick Scott, Florida's Marco Rubio, Iowa's Chuck Grassley, North Carolina's Richard Burr, Pennsylvania's Pat Toomey, Arizona's Martha McSally, Kansas's Jerry Moran, Kansas's Pat Roberts, and Alabama's Richard Shelby.  A few of these Senators including Romney, Toomey, Collins and Murkowski have called for the transition to begin. To that end, Murkowski “bravely” issued a statement last night where she indicated that she’s had it with Trump’s machinations.  Her statement:  “Trump has had the opportunity to litigate his claims, and the courts have thus far found them without merit. A pressure campaign on state legislators to influence the electoral outcome is not only unprecedented but inconsistent with our democratic process. It is time to begin the full and formal transition process.” Unfortunately, unless the rest of these jokers come forward forcefully, something they are unlikely to do without the support of their manipulative, power hungry leader Mitch McConnell, Trump will continue his evil games. 

58 Days

 

Five Alarms

Clusterf-ck:  First the good news, the Trump legal team continues to rack up loss after loss in the courts and the Georgia recount results are in, Trump gained a few more votes but Joe Biden is still the winner. Since the margin of Biden’s factory remains below the .5% threshold, Trump is entitled to request another recount, but that recount would be done by machines and no one expects it to change the results. Georgia is one step closer to certification, ready to move on to focus on those contentious Senate runoffs.  Now the bad news, Trump and his nefarious cronies are working to disrupt the certification of both Michigan and Pennsylvania’s election results.  While that sounds and is both anti-democratic and insane, they are making progress.  My suggestion yesterday that someone should check the phone records of the Wayne County, Michigan Republican board members who tried to rescind their votes to certify their county’s election results to see if they had spoken with Lindsey Graham or Trump was meant as a joke. Well it turns out that the joke is on us, Trump has spoken with them and with the Republican leaders of the Michigan House and Senate, Speaker Lee Chatfield and  Majority Leader Mike Shirkey, and both have accepted an invitation to meet with Trump today in Washington. Last week Leader Shirkey reassured everyone that there was nothing to worry about, that the Michigan legislature would certify the state’s election results, and that Joe Biden who won the state’s popular vote by 154,000 would be awarded the state’s 16 electoral college votes. Don’t be surprised if he backtracks on that comment because Trump didn’t invite him to the White House to exchange green bean casserole recipes.  Its not just Michigan that’s at risk, last night the Republican led Pennsylvania House voted to move forward with an audit of their state’s election results, presidential race only naturally.  To be clear they don’t really expect that the audit will change the outcome of the election, their intent is to permanently delay the awarding of  Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral college votes to Biden.  Without Pennsylvania and Michigan in his column, Biden would still have the 270 votes he needs but barely, which explains why the Trump team is questioning the legitimacy of the Nevada electors as they only need to eliminate  one more Biden elector to throw the whole election to Congress where the rules would favor Trump despite the Democratic majority since Republicans control more state delegations than Speaker Pelosi’s Democrats.  Yeah, I get it, this is farfetched and nutzoid but it’s 2020 and anyway, what about Trump isn’t?  A few, just a few Republicans have spoken out. Senator Mitt Romney who no one who matters listens to tweeted “Having failed to make even a plausible case of widespread fraud or conspiracy before any court of law” Trump “has now resorted to overt pressure on state and local officials to subvert the will of the people, and overturn the election. It is difficult to imagine a worse, more undemocratic action by a sitting American President.”  Ben Sasse also weighed in as did Maryland’s Governor Hogan, but largely crickets from Republican leadership. Senate Leader McConnell who sent the Senate home early for Thanksgiving remains silent and the snarky House Minority Leader McCarthy appears to find the whole subversion thing entertaining.      

Rudy, Rudy, Rudy: As to the legal shenanigans, Rudy Giuliani hasn’t shown any of the courts any examples of that wide spread fraud that he keeps asserting happened so judges in Arizona, Pennsylvania and almost everywhere else keep throwing his cases out but that hasn’t stopped him from ranting at press conferences. Yesterday, with either hair dye or his pickled insides oozing down his face, no one is sure which though the NY Times published a whole article on the hair dye conspiracy, he quoted a scene from My Cousin Vinny, alleged that Venezuela’s long dead former president Hugo Chavez and a group consisting of antifa, Communists and George Soros had teamed together to cheat Trump out of his election victory. Though Giuliani’s performance was crazy, don’t assume that he is, also don’t discount the impact of his remarks, he knows that he has no viable legal arguments but his show is for the public, those 70 million plus who voted for Trump. Neither CNN nor MSNBC covered his charade in its entirety but everyone showed parts of it because who could resist those clips of his melting head. The remarks from his co-counsel, Flynn attorney Sidney Powell also got air time.  Last night she told Fox Business host/conspiracy theorist Lou Dobbs that “the entire election, frankly, in all the swing states, should be overturned and the legislatures should make sure that the electors are selected for Trump.” She’s horrific, but let’s give her credit for admitting what she and her Orange idol are trying to do:  get rid of Democratic votes, particularly those from people of color, and then declare Trump king. To amplify her message the GOP’s official twitter account tweeted out her assertion that Trump won by a “landslide” and that it’s “time to reclaim the USA for the people who voted for freedom.” And by people, she means MAGAs.       

Et Cetera: Last night the NY Times reported that NY investigations are focusing in on those questionable tax deductions that Trump’s businesses took for consulting fees paid to family members including first daughter Ivanka.  The Princess appears distressed, she responded by tweeting “This ‘inquiry’ by NYC democrats is 100% motivated by politics, publicity and rage. They know very well that there’s nothing here and that there was no tax benefit whatsoever. These politicians are simply ruthless.”  Of course, she is not at all concerned about her father’s autocratic antics.  Her apparent soulmate @GSAEmily still hasn’t budged though the pressure on her to release that all important ascertainment letter continues to mount as it should. Yesterday, Mike Pence and his virus task force held a press conference to “update” us on the virus during which Pence actually said “We approach this moment with the confidence of experience. We know the American people know what to do.” Really, he said that.  Separately, the CDC warned against holiday travel while HHS Secretary Alex Azar warned his staff that they’d better not cooperate with anyone on Biden’s staff.  And before heading off on vacation the Ron Johnson chaired Senate Homeland Security Committee held a hearing on hydroxychloroquine where Republican committee members attacked the scientists and medical experts for questioning the drug’s effectiveness as a COVID treatment.  We are screwed.  

61 Days, maybe.  

62 Days

Turkeys: The US COVID death toll has passed 250,000 and more than 1900 people died from COVID yesterday, nevertheless according to Fox and Trump Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany the real problem isn’t the virus but those calls from alarmed Governors and health experts, at least those other than herd advocates South Dakota Governor Noem and radiologist Scott Atlas, that we downsize or eliminate our Thanksgiving plans.  KayLIE, who has long since given up abiding by those “nuisance” laws about government compensated officials, especially press secretaries, staying out of campaign matters, calls warnings about the dangers of indoor turkey and stuffing gorge-a-thons with large groups of relatives and friends dangerously Orwellian, supremely ironic given that the Trump White House has spent four years using Orwell’s 1984 as its operating blueprint. On the dystopian front, while Biden’s vote count is likely to exceed 80 million and his margin over Trump will exceed 6 million once all the remaining absentee ballots are counted, Trump, who now plans to cling to his golden White House throne and by throne think toilet rather than travel to Mar a Lago for Turkey day, continues to press forward with his spurious lawsuits.  Experts insist he will not succeed in overturning the results of the election and so far the judiciary system has been hostile to his efforts but still it is alarming to watch him try and, in any case he is doing a remarkably good job of delegitimizing the results in the eyes of a lot of his dedicated fans, and sadly there are a lot of them.

Bannon and Rudy, Esq: If all the legal maneuvering seems Bannonesque, that’s because it is. Steve Bannon who should really be focusing on his own pending fraud case, has been advising Trump and his now $20,000 per day lawyer Rudy Giuliani. That’s the same Bannon who recently called for the beheading of virus guru Fauci.  Giuliani admits that he doesn’t expect to win any of his cases, and his legal performance which veers between comically incompetent and insane is proof of that, but winning in court isn’t really his goal.  What he’s trying to do is run the clock, making it difficult if not impossible for a few of those electoral college rich states that went for Biden to certify their election results before the December 8 deadline.  Trump, Bannon and Rudy hope to blow up the process, sending state certifications back to Republican state legislators, who, at least in their collective fantasy world, would then select Trump’s slate of electors rather than Biden’s leaving us to choose between four more years of Trump autocracy or total anarchy, not that there is much of a difference.  To that end, at Trump’s request and on his campaign contributors’ dime, Wisconsin is moving forward with a partial recount only of votes in “liberal,” i.e. minority dense Dane and Milwaukee counties, because obviously all those votes in Republican/white sections of the state need no recount, besides a partial recount costs only $3 million rather than more than the $7 plus million that a statewide recount would cost.  Additionally, yesterday in an effort to overturn Nevada’s election results the Trump campaign initiated a suit against the state’s Democratic electors, targeting Gabrielle d'Ayr, a military veteran and former chair of the Clark County Democratic Party who is currently homeless. The lawsuit seeks to award the state's six electoral college votes to Trump or alternatively to annul the election state’s election results because why not?  And though, after facing intense voter backlash, they already signed off on their county’s election results, the two Republican Wayne County, Michigan officials who first refused to certify election results but then did, now want a do over and are trying to rescind their sign off. State officials say too late, that ship has already sailed, we will have to wait and see if they’re right about that. By the way, would it surprise anyone if we learn that those two repugnant Republicans got a phone call or two from people named Lindsey Graham and/or Trump.  Georgia election officials expect to release the results of their statewide audit by noon today, Biden is still in the lead despite all the pressure that was put on Secretary of State Brad Raffenberger, the conservative life-long Republican who is tied with fired cyber security chief Chris Krebs for hero of the week.

No Heroes Here: Though the competition is stiff, this month’s villain continues to be GSA administrator Emily Murphy A/K/A @GSAEmily who wants us to think that she’s really conflicted about her decision to hold up the ascertainment letter that would allow President-elect Biden to get the resources and information that he needs to move forward with his transition.  It seems that she’s borrowed Ivanka and Jared’s publicist because there is no other way to explain those articles that paint her as a victim of circumstances.  To be clear @GSAEmily has blood on her hands, at a time when even a small hiccup in the transition process could result in a delay in implementing a vaccination plan, her failure to issue that letter is likely to lead to more deaths, and we aren’t even talking about national security issues.  As to villains, the whole Republican party, even those who say that they think the transition should be facilitated are right alongside her because if they really cared they’d do something, that is something besides confirming more judges, the one thing that they do continue to do. On the publicist front, Ivanka and Jared’s seem to be failing at their tasks.  Yesterday’s NY Times op-ed by Frank Bruni was brutal, having migrant children in cages as part of your “gilded tableaux” probably wasn’t what Ivanka had in mind the night she donned that expensive crinkly silver dress while migrant kids were being stuffed into dog crates. She and Jared are probably not all that pleased with this week’s Vanity Fair tell all by Ivanka’s one time BFF journalist Lysandra Ohrstrom either, though that one rings a bit hollow as, unlike frequent critic Bruni, Lysandra waited until the election results were in to pen her tell all.  Just a bit too late and hardly brave.                 

Whiplash Wayne

Democracy on the Brink:  Republicans only like democracy when their candidates win. Those Senate and House races that confounded pollsters by going red, those elections were as fair as can be; the presidential race that, with NY and California absentee ballots still being counted, so far resulting in 5.7 million more votes for Biden than for Trump, not so much. Having failed with all those efforts to turn voters off of Biden, things like the Ukraine smear campaign, the Hunter “laptop” discoveries and the dismantling of blue area postal sorters, and with those cyber security guys and the FBI actually doing too good a job of preventing foreign interference and rebutting Trump initiated conspiracy theories, the Trump team and their Republican enablers are relying on baseless litigation, interfering with vote counting and, refusing to certify votes.  On the litigation front, the Republican legal machinery, taken over by Rudy Giuliani, is still losing bigly. Yesterday a Pennsylvania state court ruled that Republican poll watchers did not have to be allowed to stand within six feet of poll workers, a reversal of an earlier decision. Around the same time that the state court was handing down that ruling, Rudy began arguing another case, this one in a Pennsylvania Federal Court.  Claiming that there had been “widespread national voter fraud,” he called for 700,000 mail in ballots from places with lots of Democrats, of course, to be thrown out and demanded that the state be blocked from certifying the results of the presidential election where Biden currently leads by  more than 81,000 votes, an attempt to allow the Republican led state legislature to pick Trump’s slate of electors. Rudy’s assertions were conspiracy laden and undocumented and his demand absurd but that’s how Rudy and Trump roll so no surprise there.  The Judge who seemed unpersuaded by Rudy’s histrionics called for him to show up with evidence later this week, an order to put up or shut up. No one rational expects Rudy to prevail but its 2020 so? 

As to intimidating state officials to interfere with vote counting, that responsibility seems to have fallen to Senator Lindsey Graham, Trump’s golf buddy extraordinaire.  Though he still insists that his conversation with Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger was innocent, it turns out that Raffensberger has witnesses as he wasn’t alone during Graham’s questionable call.  Oddly enough, Graham cites the fact that he had similar calls with officials in Arizona and Nevada, other states that went for Biden by small margins, as proof that what he was doing was legitimate.  Curiously, no one in either of those states has any memory of those calls, which doesn’t meant that they didn’t take place,  but might mean that they were so inappropriate that the participants don’t want to admit that they spoke with Rudy.  Lindsey should be in bigly trouble for his actions but probably won’t be because election interference pales in comparison to those “terrible” things that lost Al Franken his position, right? Then there is Wayne County, Michigan, the home of Detroit, the city with the highest percentage of Black residents in the US.  Last night two very white Republican members of the county’s board of canvassers refused to certify the county’s election results, an obvious effort to disenfranchise those Detroit voters who’d gone all in on Biden. Those two votes left the equally split board unable to certify the county’s votes, throwing that task to the Michigan State Board scheduled to meet next week.  Though a representative of the State Board issued a statement saying that they expected to certify the votes anyway, the reassurance wasn’t all that comforting given that Michigan is where some “nice” folks tried to kidnap and kill a governor. Trump celebrated by immediately tweeting out “Wow! Michigan just refused to certify the election results! Having courage is a beautify thing.  The USA stands proud.” His victory dance was premature, within minutes of his tweet, facing pressure from an outraged electorate and a threatening State Attorney General, the two Republican board members of the Wayne county board, caved, changing their votes, certifying the results in exchange for what appears to be a “face saving” but inconsequential promise to have some ballots audited. 

You’re Fired: Trump who hasn’t had much to say about the raging coronavirus, the virus that is so out of control that that mask shy governors in Republican led states like Iowa and North Dakota are now mandating face coverings, did accomplish a few notable things yesterday. His Pentagon went ahead with the announcement that the troop count in Afghanistan will be reduced down to 2500, an action that was applauded by some who believe we need to get out ASAP but was criticized by many more fearful that the withdrawal puts the remaining troops and the peace negotiations with the Taliban at risk.  And because, Trump really is vengeful and spiteful, he fired Chris Krebs, the top US cyber security official. Krebs, a life-long Republican who previously served in the Bush administration, was responsible for leading the effort that kept the elections free from foreign interference.  He had also set up a Rumor Alert website that debunked all of those right wing assertions intended to foster distrust about the election process and results.  Moreover, he had also co-signed the statement saying that the election had been the most secure ever. Citing that statement,  Trump fired Krebs, not in person or over the phone but by tweeting ”The recent statement by Chris Krebs on the security of the 2020 Election was highly inaccurate, in that there were massive improprieties and fraud - including dead people voting, Poll Watchers not allowed into polling locations, ‘glitches’ in the voting machines which changed votes from Trump to Biden, late voting, and many more….Therefore, effective immediately, Chris Krebs has been terminated as Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.” Twitter marked Trump’s tweet with one of its not true warnings because the assertions about the election are groundless.  Krebs had said last week that he’d expected to be fired for doing his job well. Now that he’s no longer a government employee he’s free to talk publicly about his experience and to testify in front of Congress so we may hear more from him shortly.   

Viruses and Bugs:  More than 1600 Americans died of COVID yesterday, a number that is expected to rise above 2000 in the not so distant future; in addition, more than 250,000 were diagnosed as COVID positive.  Among the newly diagnosed is Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, who at 87 is the second oldest member of the Senate.  He is now in quarantine as is Florida Republican Senator Rick Scott. In case you are wondering California’s Diane Feinstein who bizarrely enough frequently goes mask-less on the Senate floor is the oldest member.  Senate rules require that votes be cast in person. With Grassley and Scott out of pocket, the Senate was unable, at least for now, to go forward with a procedural vote to advance the nomination of Judy Shelton to the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors.  Shelton, a so-called “gold bug” who wants to return the US to the gold standard, is Trump’s latest controversial and unqualified nominee. Republican Senators Mitt Romney, Lamar Alexander and Susan Collins all opposed her nomination as did all of the Democrats including VP-elect Kamala Harris who flew in from Delaware to cast her “no” vote.              

Sixty-three days until Biden is inaugurated and @GSAEmily still hasn’t signed that all important ascertainment letter needed to trigger transition cooperation.   

 

 A Quarter of a Million

Sixty Four Days: It’s been eleven days since Joe Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 presidential election, he has as many electoral college votes as Trump received in his “landslide” 2016 election, his lead in the popular vote is in excess of 5.6 million votes and growing, his lead in Pennsylvania is now above 72 thousand and all indications are that his lead in Georgia will remain close to 14 thousand, more than sufficient, even after adding in some uncounted ballots from red leaning Floyd County, but none of that matters to Trump, he’s still not conceding and continues to insist that the election was rigged.  A few Republican Governors including Arkansas’ Asa Hutchinson and Ohio’s Mike DeWine, who went out of his way to confirm that he voted for Trump, have acknowledged that Biden is the President-elect, a few more Republican Senators admit that Biden probably won and Trump’s own national security advisor Robert O’Brien actually promised a smooth transition to Biden, who “looks” to him to be the winner but that transition isn’t happening yet as @GSAEmily, still hasn’t issued her all-important letter.  Apparently she’s been too busy calling her contacts to let them know that she’ll need a new job come January 20 because transition facilitation or not, she knows who won and that her days at GSA are numbered.  As to Ohio’s DeWine, who has solid approval ratings, Trump is now calling for someone, anyone, to primary him from the right when he comes up for reelection in 2022.because saying that it’s clear that Biden is the victor, even while also saying that Trump has every right to challenge fictitious election fraud is all it takes to trigger an onslaught of Trump tweets which, together with the upcoming Georgia runoffs, explains the reluctance of most of those other lily livered Republicans to go on the record. The Georgia Senate races and or some other deep dirt may explain why South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham who just won his reelection is still so firmly attached to Trump. Graham continues to put the few remaining shreds of his tattered reputation in jeopardy.  Last night the Washington Post reported that he’s been pressuring Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger to find ways to toss out Biden ballots for imagined signature irregularities, part of a concerted effort by Trump loyalists to overturn the results of Georgia’s election.  Among other things the Trump team is pushing a conspiracy theory that the Dominion Voting System used by Georgia and a number of other states including Michigan, where Biden’s victory margin stands above 140 thousand, is owned by a leftist company with ties to Venezuela and that it intentionally engineered a way to ignore zillions of Trump votes.  That’s totally false as is Graham’s assertion about the signatures. Remember when Attorney General Barr said that he would be investigating and prosecuting  election fraud?  Well, if he meant it he’d be calling little old Lindsey to learn more about what he’s been up to but who are we kidding, Barr is only interested in accusations of left wing fraud, Republicans asking other Republicans to throw out qualifying ballots not a problem.  That said, Graham, the Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, did some backtracking and shuffling last night saying that Raffensberger, whose family has also received threatening calls from Trump fans upset with him for doing his job legally and ethically, must have misunderstood him; Lindsey doesn’t deny the conversation but says that he was only “asking” Raffensberger to “explain” how the Georgia signature verification system worked.  To paraphrase former Director James Comey, Lordy I wish there were tapes. Also, the Trump legal squad continues to strike out in court, losing lawyers, pulling cases in key places like Pennsylvania, otherwise embarrassing themselves and providing fodder for up and coming performer Sarah Cooper’s newest tik toks.  As of last night Marc Elias who’s been running the Democrat’s election legal squad, has a record is 24 wins, 1 loss and that one loss only resulted in the tossing of a few votes; the odds of Trump making it to “his” Supreme Court for a miracle election save are somewhere between zero and zip, yet his fight goes on even as his lawyers keep resigning.    

State of the Union: Despite all that time that he’s spending golfing, grievance tweeting and ignoring the virus, Trump is still playing president. He’s expected to announce plans to withdraw half of the 4500 remaining troops left in Afghanistan, downsize the forces in Iraq to below 3000 and withdraw all of the 700 training and counter-terrorism soldiers from Somalia.  In principle bringing troops coming home from endless wars is a good thing, however, given the pushback from current and former military officials, many in Congress including Republican Leader McConnell, it’s hard to tell if Trump’s plan makes sense or whether it actually puts the remaining troops in more danger, jeopardizes that  much “hailed” peace plan with the Taliban and will lead to further terrorist activities.  Of even more concern, last night the NY Times reported that Trump recently asked the military to give him a plan for a strike against Iran to punish the country’s leaders for building up their stockpile of nuclear material.  That’s the stockpile that Iran started building up again after Trump pulled the US from the Iran nuclear deal that, like it or not, had resulted in a huge stockpile reduction. The good news is that Secretary of State Pompeo,  VP Pence, Acting Defense Secretary Miller and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Milley all advised against an attack, warning that it could escalate bigly, the bad news is that Trump remains unpredictable and vindictive enough to think that leaving a military mess for Biden to deal with would be worth the risk.  So to recap, Trump is pulling troops out of old wars, considering starting new wars, refusing to authorize the transition and for good measure rushing to auction off and signing of drilling agreements in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge all while ignoring that whole virus thing.  Remember when Oklahoma’s Senator Lankford said that he’d press for Trump to start providing security briefings to Biden by Friday of last week, well forget about it, he’s back in line with Trump saying he didn’t really mean it so Biden instead is set to get a national security briefing today, not from current Defense and Security analysts but from a group of former government officials. As to the virus, Biden, who to date has been going with the no drama Obama approach appears to be coming close to losing his cool.  Yesterday he repeated that Trump’s refusal to concede is embarrassing while warning that Trump’s failure to cooperate is much worse as it will result in more death but that’s not something that Trump seems all that concerned about.

252,000 deaths and rising.

Moderna Too!

State of the Union: With the coronavirus raging out of control to unimaginably horrific levels, Trump’s herd immunity advocating medical advisor Scott Atlas urged Michiganders to “rise up” against Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s new public health measures because what’s the point of restricting activities and limiting the size of gatherings when a vaccine is right around the corner and by corner think maybe, if we’re lucky, we’ll be vaccinated by the end of the second quarter of 2021 except for New York State of course because taking a page from the Seinfeld soup Nazi, on Friday while taking full credit for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine Trump said that no one in that insignificant to the economy state will get a vaccine until Governor Cuomo crawls over hot coals and begs and maybe not even then, unless someone else is controlling the government come January 20.  That last part was Trump’s first “slip of the tongue” admission that he’s lost and knows it. He slipped again, tweeting that he lost the election before “clarifying” his comment making it clear that it only looks that way because of all of that election “rigging” fraud that doesn’t exist.  One more thing on the vaccine front, really good news out of Moderna this morning, its vaccine which like Pfizer’s is based on new m-RNA technology, appears to be 94.5% effective! 

More Crazy Train: Of course, Trump is doing nothing to mitigate the virus’ onslaught now, as he’s far too busy golfing, grievance tweeting and giving drive-by thumbs ups to his supporters, especially the thousands (not millions) of racist ones with swastika and MAGA emblazoned flags who showed up in Washington DC this weekend to echo his message that the election, the one that his Homeland Security experts say was the most secure ever was riddled with fraud.  By the way, while Trump called this weekend’s counter-protesters “Antifa scum” somehow or other Attorney General Barr “forgot” to send out his militias to throw pepper balls at those nice swastika emblazoned people from the other side, maybe because he’s busy dealing with an insurrection at the Justice Department from attorneys refusing to pursue cases against those non-existent perpetrators of election fraud. As to that faux fraud, with David Bossie, the former coordinator of Trump’s election legal strategy in COVID quarantine, Trump has shifted the responsibility for directing election litigation to Borat foil Rudy Giuliani and a team made up of some of the lawyers from earlier episodes of the Trump saga including Michael Flynn’s attorney Sidney Powell,  QAnon tweeter Victoria Toensig, her conspiracy theorist, anti-Semitic husband Joseph DiGenova and gay bashing campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis; so basically a crowd straight out of Trump central casting.  So far the assorted Trump lawyers, short two of their outside law firms who have resigned due to the bad publicity of being associated with trying to overturn election results, have achieved nothing beyond getting a few hundred ballots thrown out, a problem for Trump because despite his hopes that Republican state legislatures will ignore the will of the voters, replacing Biden’s electoral slates with his, the leaders of those legislatures have indicated that they won’t, not because they haven’t eaten his Jell-O, but because Biden’s margins of victories in all those states, even Arizona and Georgia now firmly in Biden’s 306 electoral college total, are too large to credibly challenge.  The current hope is that later this week, after the Georgia hand recount is completed, Trump will give up his fight, not to concede, but maybe, just maybe to direct @GSAEmily to sign the ascertainment letter that will finally deliver resources and authorize government officials to start sharing information and working with the Biden team on the transition, because sharing and coordinating things like vaccination distribution plans and which country is about to launch a nuke are essential, well to everyone except Trump who is far too focused on figuring out how to best pardon himself, his family and his very best friends and how to continue grifting off contributors to worry about national security and virus death rates.    

Decapitation: Though no one knows for sure whether Trump decapitated the Pentagon to destroy evidence of his bad acts. to selectively leak doctored bad stuff about Biden and his family, to launch a war or to do all of the above, the current thought is that war is unlikely but that a rapid troop pull-out from Afghanistan and more pressure on Iran and China is in the cards.  To that end Secretary of State/2024 presidential hopeful Mike Pompeo is off meeting with a series of world leaders, including France’s Emmanuel Macron who has already made it clear that he’s beyond gleeful about Trump’s loss. Pompeo is also heading to the Middle East for chats, about moves against Iran?, with the heads of the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Israel.  As to Israel, Trump’s newest appointee retired army colonel Douglas Macgregor who is now an advisor to newbie Defense Secretary Chris Miller, is not a fan, on at least two occasions, including in an interview to Russian media outlet RT he said that “Israeli lobby” money is responsible for Washington’s support and accused current and high level officials, including Pompeo and former national security advisor John Bolton, of becoming “very, very rich” as a result of their support for Israel. When asked to comment, Bolton who slammed Trump for not cooperating on the transition, answered “I don’t respond to anti-Semites.” Remember when Congresswoman Ilhan Omar was eviscerated by Republicans for similarly invoking racist tropes, that was then and anyway she’s just a “radical,” ungrateful immigrant as opposed to Macgregor who is a Trump appointee, so now crickets. Maybe that inconsistency, and all those swastika carrying Proud Boy fanboys is one of the reasons that 77% of American Jews voted for Biden, an amount even higher than the overwhelming number that went for Hillary in 2016.  

Et Cetera:  It turns out that failing to legally appoint your Secretary of Homeland Security has consequences.  Over the weekend Judge Nicholas Garaufis of the US District Court of the Eastern District of New York ruled that Chad Wolf was not legally serving as the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security when he issued the memo that stopped new applicants to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.  Garaufis isn’t the first federal judge to point out that Wolf’s appointment is illegal. His ruling, combined with the Supreme Court’s June ruling that blocked the Trump administration's attempt to cancel DACA, because its reasoning was "arbitrary and capricious,” leaves DACA intact and open to accepting new applications. One less thing for Biden to have to worry about on January 20, a good thing because he’s going to have a lot to do.  Trump not so much, expectations are that he will have already vamoosed to Mar a Lago where he’ll be golfing, hanging with his far too many fans, and focused on his financial woes and those NY legal cases, the ones that probably account for his slam against NYS even more than his anger about Governor Cuomo and his testy remarks. On the Democratic side, the squabbles between the progressive and moderate wings of the party continue to bubble up, because why not fight in public rather than focusing all your attention on those key Georgia Senate races? One major issue is who gets asked into Biden’s cabinet.  Bernie Sanders appears to be angling for Secretary of Labor and Elizabeth Warren has her eyes on Treasury. I’ve been very wrong before but my guess is that neither of them will get their wishes but another name that’s been floated is interesting.  There have been suggestions that Maine’s Independent/Democrat caucusing Senator Angus King is under consideration for Director of National Intelligence.  Maine has a Democratic Governor so maybe Sara Gideon, who failed to win a Senate seat the old fashioned way, could end up seated after all.    

65 Days   

 

The Proud Crowd is Coming

Sixty-Eight Days:  So much for my fantasy that Trump would leave Washington, turning over the war against COVID to  Biden’s team of competent scientists and public health professionals as soon as it was obvious that he’d lost the election. Well Trump’s loss is obvious, but he still hasn’t and probably never will concede and most in his party are so fearful of incurring his twitter wrath, fearing that doing so will damage their future reelection campaigns and presidential ambitions, that they remain on his train.  Ironically, those presidential ambitions shared by an increasing cast of Republican characters, will be stymied, at least for a while, as Trump is now hinting that when and if he leaves office, he’ll immediately announce that he’s running in 2024, that will allow him to raise money, even more than he’s currently raising for his faux legal battles, and maintain relevancy as he pursues his media ambitions.  For now, Trump’s still waging a largely symbolic legal war against the election results, sending scores of lawyers to courts, only in states he lost of course. His legal claims are baseless and his legal team knows it, several times when asked by presiding judges if they had actual evidence of election fraud, those attorneys admitted no fraud, just a sloppy signature or two.  In one case, a particularly inept attorney actually filed his brief in the wrong court system. Even in the isolated cases where the Trump legal team has managed to get a few votes tossed, Biden’s margin of victory remains too large for their minor successes to have any impact.  Since grifters have to grift it’s worth noting that a careful read of the teeny, tiny print at the end of Trump’s legal fundraising emails alerts donors that Trump can spend their contributions on personal items. 

The Turning Tide:  Despite Trump’s efforts to remain in office the tide is turning against him, it turns out that Fox and the AP were right about Biden winning Arizona, last night the decision desks at CNN and MSNBC joined in, calling Arizona for Biden.  The editorial board of MAGA Mega donor Sheldon Adelson’s Las Vegas paper has called for Trump to face reality adding “An electoral system that involves the participation of 150 million Americans will have its share of issues, but it’s an insult to reason and logic to argue that isolated irregularities constitute proof of a grand national conspiracy.”  Despite Trump’s best efforts at intimidation, his own Department of Homeland Security issued a statement yesterday confirming that “the November 3 election was the most secure in American history ….There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes or was in any way compromised.”  Of course the people at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the division of Homeland Security responsible for keeping the voting systems safe and for signing on to those remarks, are now on the chopping block, both for making that statement and for effectively preventing Russian interference and rebutting Trump disinformation.  Yesterday CISA director Christopher Krebs told associates he expects to be fired because he’s angered the White House by doing his job so well and the White House has already asked Bryan Ware, the assistant director for cybersecurity at CISA, to hand in his resignation. As to the transition, so far few Republican Senators are willing to formally acknowledge Biden’s victory but more of them now say that the time has come for the GSA to facilitate Biden’s transition and most of the same crowd are also onboard with Biden getting read into the top secret presidential daily briefing. Even China gets it, early this morning their foreign minister somewhat belatedly congratulated Biden and Harris on their apparent victory.

Viral Musings:  The virus continues to do its horrifying thing,  California has joined Texas as the second state to have crossed through the 1 million case barrier; by comparison New York State, the early epicenter, has so far reached “only” 550,000 cases although that number is moving to a steeper climb. A record number of 140,000 people tested COVID positive yesterday, a number of states have reached or are about to reach their hospital capacities and daily death counts are now regularly exceeding 1000, odd because Trump asserts that people don’t die from COVID anymore.  A few more individuals who attended Trump’s super spreader election night victory rally have now tested COVID positive, including advisor Corey Lewandowski, particularly distressing because he’s been traveling all over and now we know that he’s been spreading a whole lot more than election disinformation. It’s not just careless, creep Corey, billionaire donors Liz and Dick Uihlein, who also attended the COVID House election festivities, have tested positive despite Liz’s belief that the virus is so not a thing to worry about, at least that’s what she’s been telling her call center employees when they’ve complained about their too close work conditions.  RNC’s chief of staff, Richard Walters is also in the positive column.  Though he was nowhere near the election night party, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is now in quarantine because his wife tested COVID positive. Several members of Raffensperger’s staff are also quarantining but no worry, he wants us all to know that nothing about that will inhibit the hand counting of Georgia’s votes, that’s the hand count that he’s doing to placate Trump and his abettors.   

Et Cetera:  Bloomberg News reports that NY State Attorney General Letitia James’ office is investigation the tax returns of the family of Trump Organization CFO Alan Weisselberg.  Tish and crowd are focusing on their failure to declare the value of their rent free Trump Tower apartment as well as certain other benefits such as free albeit not so legit accounting services as taxable income.  It’s fair to assume that the point of those investigations is to pressure Weisselberg to cooperate in the investigation into Trump and his kids, just another reason that Trump is freaking out.  On the Trump front a number of his cronies believe that when he’s finally ready to leave, the crybaby and Melania will slink off to Mar a Lago, never to return to Washington.  That won’t happen right away because Trump wouldn’t want to miss the Million Maga March, the one with lots of white supremacists, Proud Boys, and neo-Nazis, scheduled for this weekend, but it could happen as soon as Thanksgiving or, if those who claim to know are correct, by Christmas.  It’s not clear whether Ivanka and Jared will join them.  Right before Election Day, the two pulled their kids from the Washington DC private day school they had been attending, transferring them to one in Maryland, after the parents at the DC school complained that Ivanka and Jared’s attendance at those large unmasked viral COVID House events heightened the risk of all their families contracting COVID.  Moving the kids again might be too off brand for model mom Ivanka who hopes to climb her way back into what passes for polite society.   

Have a safe weekend.          

Dikdats

Opinions:  According to a Reuters/Ipsos national opinion survey 79% of US adults believe Joe Biden won the White House.  Another 13% said the election has not yet been decided, 3% said Trump won and 5% said they do not know.  That 3% includes Trump, all the members of his extended family, with the exception of niece Mary and possibly Aunt Maryanne Trump Barry, many Republican members of the House and Senate, Trump’s cabinet and most, but not all of the pundits who regularly appear on Fox A/K/A Trump news.  Most in Trump’s immediate orbit confirm what the rest of us have figured out, that Trump will never concede, and why would he, he still hasn’t admitted that he lost the 2016 popular vote.  Trump also doesn’t intend to fade away, he’s currently telling close associates that he’ll be running for president again in 2024, assuming his cholesterol addled brain hasn’t eaten away at what he passes off as sanity or he isn’t mired in legal troubles and/or incarcerated.  As to the Fox contributor set last night Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by Karl Rove, one of the Republican Party’s most hard-nosed and manipulative political operatives.  In it Rove confirmed what the NY Times said with its banner headline yesterday, that the election wasn’t riddled with fraud.  He added that Biden has insurmountable leads in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada and Georgia, enough to give him more than the 270 electoral college votes he needs.  Rove went on to say that once Trump’s “days in court” and by that he doesn’t mean his days facing off against prosecutors in New York but rather his absurdly nonsensical election lawsuits alleging things like super tall guys were out intimidating voters and too many members of “his” military, those guys he called losers, voted for Biden to be believable, he “should do his part to unite the country by leading a peaceful transition and letting grievances go.” Republican Oklahoma Senator Lankford has also weighed in, he’s not conceding that Biden won, but he says that he intends to push Trump to start sharing those top secret presidential security briefings with him if he hasn’t done so by Friday.  Those are the briefings Trump stopped reading in October.  The bottom line is that Trump may eventually go, but that part about letting grievances go or uniting the country, forget about it.     

Charades: Last night President-to-be Joe Biden announced that he has selected Ron Klain to be his White House Chief of Staff.  No surprise there, Klain is a long term Democratic veteran and Biden advisor, he  was responsible for dealing with the Ebola crisis during the Obama presidency.  As to the transition, Biden, Klain and the rest of the their team remain without official government support as team Trump continues to impede the process, blocking communication, cooperation and Congressionally authorized funding.  Even the State Department phone operators are in on the charade, contrary to past practice they are sitting on messages for Biden from foreign leaders and dignitaries.  That’s particularly petty, given that it’s routine for the State Department to receive and forward messages to former VPs and Presidents and up until the election they had been doing so for Biden but now that he’s the presumptive President they’ve stopped, bowing to Trump’s autocratic aspirations.  About those aspirations, Trump placed another one of his toadies at the Defense Department yesterday, adding Douglas Macgregor, a retired army colonel who was nominated, but not confirmed, as ambassador to Germany because of his practice of referring to immigrants to Europe as “Muslim invaders,“ his call for the shooting of migrants on the US border, and his promotion of a range of white nationalists conspiracy theories. He has also advocated a fast, as in haphazard, withdrawal from Afghanistan and has said the US should not “rush hundreds of thousands of troops to the Polish border” in the event that the Poles need help dealing with Vlad’s crowd.  Former Four Star Army General Barry McCaffrey is very concerned.  He tweeted yesterday that “the crisis at the Pentagon is just beginning (DANGER) – we are watching a slow moving Trump coup to defy the election and refuse to leave office by dikdat. Believe your eyes this will be a test of our institutions.”  Others are less certain of Trump’s intentions or his ability to achieve them, whatever they are.  However, whether those intentions represent an attempt to overturn the election, carry out last minute foreign interventions, destroy documents, or release information that can be weaponized against Biden, they’re not good.  

Viral Musings: About those so-called Muslim “invaders,” two of them are scientists Ugur Sahin and Ozlem Tureci, the Turkish-German scientists who developed the Pfizer/BioNTech messenger RNA coronavirus vaccine.  In addition to giving us hope that there is a light at the end of our very long and dark tunnel and that we will eventually get out of the viral mess we’re in, the two, who founded BioNTech, are now among the richest people in Germany.  Not bad for children of Muslim “invaders.”  As to the state of the pandemic, the virus is winning, the situation in the US is so bad right now that it’s hard to write about.  A record 145,835 cases were diagnosed yesterday, the number of hospitalized is over 65,000, an additional 1431 died yesterday and total fatalities are over 241,000.  Nothing to worry about there, which explains why head of the virus task force/VP Pence cancelled his trip to drenched Sanibel Island, Florida, not to focus on the virus but to hold Trump’s hand and head to Georgia to help with the upcoming Senatorial campaign. And because the White House truly is a viral hotspot, three more White House aides including White House Political Director Brian Jack have tested COVID positive.  Jack is another one who attended Trump’s mask free election night “victory” celebration.  That victory most certainly doesn’t pertain to Trump but his presence on the ballot did help a few more Republican Senators hold their seats;  the various decision desks have now called the race in North Carolina for incumbent Republican Thom Tillis and the race in Alaska for incumbent Republican Dan Sullivan.  Ivanka weighed in by tweeting out her congratulations because apparently it’s okay for media outlets to project victories for Republicans, just not for Democrats running against her father.  To that end, responding to pressure, Georgia’s Secretary of State announced that he’s starting the process of recounting all of those Georgia ballots, by hand rather than by machine, a time consuming process.  But no worries, he thinks he can finish the count in time to certify the results for the electoral college.   

 69 Days                         

Oh So Embarrassing

Viral Musings: A few weeks ago Kristi Noem, the Governor of South Dakota who eschews masks and believes that COVID is so not a problem appeared in an advertisement encouraging tourists to come visit all those beautiful places in her state.  And who doesn’t thing that it would be a good idea to see Mt Rushmore before she carves her hero Trump’s face into that historic site. To the extent that you were considering taking her up on her offer, you might want to reconsider your plans.  One out of every fifty-four people in the state is considered an active COVID case now and one out of 1500 are in the hospital, a 51% increase since the day before the election.  It’s not just South Dakota, across the US COVID hospitalizations are at peak levels and rising, Texas is now the first state to surpass one million cases, the US Death count has hit 240,000 and there were 1400 COVID deaths yesterday.  Nevertheless Republican leadership remains focused on casting doubt on the outcome of the presidential election, not the House and Senate elections that they won, just the Biden-Trump race and anything and everything related to Georgia because of the state’s two upcoming run-offs. Senate Leader McConnell says its fine for Trump to request investigations into all that non-existent election fraud and, with his trademark smirk firmly planted on his face, Secretary of State Pompeo said that he was looking forward to Trump’s second term, Trump’s bureaucrats are working on next year’s federal budget as if they’ll be around in February to deliver it, and Trump is continuing to reinvent the Pentagon.  Including Defense Secretary Esper, four senior civilian officials responsible for overseeing policy and intelligence have been shown the door,  replaced by Trump loyalists including retired Brig General Anthony Tata, a controversial figure whose earlier nomination for a position requiring Senate confirmation was pulled due part to his belief in fringe conspiracy theories and his assertion that Obama is a terrorist.  In addition, Kash Patel, a former aide to Trump toady Congressman Devin Nunes has been named as new acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller’s Chief of Staff.  Depending on who you ask, Trump is either preparing for a coup d’état or needs these nefarious characters in place so that they can erase evidence detailing his conversations with Putin and his other autocratic besties.  Those are these transcripts that are hidden deep within that super-secret server that houses things like his Ukraine cover-up call. 

What Me Transition: Following Trump’s orders, no one in government is cooperating with President-elect Biden’s transition team. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence isn’t even providing Biden with the PDB, the top secret daily presidential briefing that is routinely provided to incoming presidents during transition periods. The 9-11 report cites maintaining continuity about security matters as key to avoiding future terrorist attacks but none of that is of concern to Trump who the Republicans insist must be coddled to help him get over his bruised ego and besides they need his help with the Georgia runoffs which explains why Georgia’s embattled incumbents Senators Loeffler and Perdue are sticking to him like glue.  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that their call for Georgia’s Secretary of State to resign over his “mishandling” of the election  originated in the White House. The myth of rampant voter fraud continues to dominate the Trump twitterverse.  The most egregious example that Trump has cited, an accusation by an Erie Pennsylvania postal worker that he’d witnessed ballots, presumably only “Biden blue” ones, backdated has now been retracted by that postal worker who admitted to Postal investigators that he’d made the whole thing up, but you’re unlikely to see that mentioned in Trump’s twitter feed or by any of his nearest and dearest fans. That said, GoFundMe is now returning the $129,000 that Trump’s fans raised in the postal worker’s support.  To date the list of Republican Senators acknowledging Biden’s victory hasn’t grown but a few more, including Pennsylvania’s Toomey,  are now saying that Trump should follow precedent and cooperate with the Biden transition while all that faux fraud is being investigated.  That’s the fraud that Trump and his most dedicated fans and abettors still hope will allow them to delay state verifications so as to overturn the election results.   For his part, Biden, who has got to be inwardly fuming, is maintaining a calm outward appearance, something that before the days of Trump was called presidential.  Yesterday, during his press conference, he called Trump’s failure to concede and cooperate an “embarrassment” that  “would not help his legacy” but said not to worry, his team is working away and will be ready to hit the ground running on January 20 with or without Trump’s help.  Biden also slammed the Republican lawsuit against Obamacare while saying that he plans to improve and expand the health care program as soon as he moves into the White House, assuming that he can convince any of those not so cooperative Republican senators, the same set that refuses to acknowledge his victory, to play ball while also convincing those Democrats who want Medicare for all that it’s a nonstarter given the make-up of the Senate and their shrunken House majority.  As to the Obamacare lawsuit, yesterday the Supreme Court heard oral arguments from both sides and, assuming that they weren’t faking us out, it appears that Justices Roberts and Brett “Beer” Kavanaugh do not believe that it’s their role to invalidate the whole of Obamacare.  Roberts essentially said that if Trump and the Republicans wanted to kill the whole plan, they would have done so on their own, that they can’t get SCOTUS to do their dirty work.  Regardless of how the other Justices rule, If Kavanaugh joins Roberts and the Court’s three liberals. Obamacare will survive. For his part Justice Thomas went off on a tangent, questioning whether a law mandating face coverings would be valid if it didn’t have a penalty attached. Of course he did. 

Off Ramp: Trump may have found his off ramp.  Reports are that he’s now in the process of setting up a PAC to raise money for his preferred candidates.  People with the last names of Trump and Kushner?  If true that means that Trump has found his newest grift, one that will allow him to line his and his kids pockets, at least until he gets investigated for violating any and all relevant campaign finance laws.  Hey, if it gets him out of the White House, it works for me.   

70 Days

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

The Good:  The day opened with some good news from Pfizer.  The pharmaceutical company announced that the vaccine that it’s developing with its German partner BioNTech appears to be 90% effective.  Shortly after that announcement President-elect Biden, who much to Trump’s dismay had been given a heads-up from Pfizer the night before, revealed the panel of experts who will be guiding his coronavirus policy and vaccine rollout. Biden’s team doesn’t include relatives, herd advocates or inexperienced junior McKinsey consultants but will be headed up by former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, one time FDA head David Kessler and Yale doctor Marcella Nunez-Smith.  Other participants include Rick Bright, the BARDA vaccine expert who testified against Trump after being ceremoniously dumped for speaking truth about how badly the Trump team was handling things and the hydroxychloroquine fiasco, Dr. Michael Osterholm who is familiar to news junkies largely because of how distressingly accurate his dire predictions about the virus’ trajectory have been and Dr. Zeke Emanuel, the health care policy expert who makes up one third of the agent Ari and former mayor Rahm brother trio.  VP Pence countered by holding a White House virus Task Force meeting, the first one he’s attended in one time. He gave Trump credit for the Pfizer vaccine, even though the company did not benefit from Project Warp Speed funding for its research and development and then announced that he was heading to Sanibel Island Florida, not to help with hurricane relief, but to take some much needed vacation, who knew that obsequiousness was so exhausting? He did not mention if his fly will be joining him.

The Bad: As noted Trump still hasn’t conceded and despite reports that some in his camp have advised him to do so, his efforts to delegitimize election outcomes in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Wisconsin and Georgia continue. After testing positive for COVID, David Bossie, the non-lawyer who had been heading up Trump’s legal effort has stepped aside but the lawsuits contesting the validity of the vote counts continue. Bossie probably caught his case of the ‘rona at Trump’s election night covidfest, as did HUD Secretary Ben Carson who revealed he is also COVID positive.  Carson has nothing to do with the recount so there’s no point in spending too much time addressing his covidiocy, but really, shouldn’t a 69 year old brain surgeon, part of a vulnerable ethnic group, have known to stay away from a Trump covidpalooza?  On the recount front, while its easy to dismiss the Trump team’s efforts as a waste of time, they’re keeping me up at night, not because they are going to uncover massive fraud, or any fraud for that matter but because, the efforts which are intended to give Trump time to “cope” with his loss and delay the certification of state vote counts, have the support of most Senate and House Republicans, including leaders Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy.  Thus far only the usual cast of Republican Senators, Romney, Collins, Murkowski and Sasse, have congratulated Biden and Harris on their victory as have former President George Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Late yesterday Attorney General Barr emerged from where ever he’s been hiding to announce that he’s changed Department of Justice policy, authorizing federal prosecutors to begin investigating “substantial allegations” of “voting and vote tabulation irregularities” across the country. As Barr himself admits in his letter, the change represents a stark break from longstanding practice. Barr’s statement may just have been his way of placating crybaby Trump, but given the way Barr handled the Mueller Report “reveal” we know and he knows his statements have power in the public sphere so a large percentage of the public has just had their beliefs in election fraud validated and a few of the more partisan US Attorneys, including the ones from key state Pennsylvania, have just been given the green light to cause bigly trouble. It certainly doesn’t help that Barr’s statement was released right after Senate leader Mitch McConnell said that that Trump was 100% within his rights to question election results. Concerned by Barr’s statement, Richard Pilger, the Justice Department figure responsible for overseeing voter fraud allegations stepped down, telling colleagues that “having familiarized myself with the new policy and its ramifications… I must regretfully resign from my role as director of the Election Crimes Branch,” in other words Barr is out of line and I’ll have none of it.  Picking up on Trump and Barr’s theme, Georgia embattled Senators Loeffler and Perdue, the two who face January run offs against Democratic contenders Ossoff and Warnock, are now demanding the resignation of Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger citing his “mismanagement and lack of transparency” as the reason for their demand.  Raffensperger who called their complaints “laughable” does not plan to resign. He knows what we know, that the Georgia Senate duo want a compliant hack put in place to tip the scales in their direction in time to help them win their rematches.  And who knows, maybe Georgia’s Republican Governor Brian Kemp will comply.

As to the election results, Biden’s lead remains solid.  He’s up by 11,413 votes in Georgia;  by 45,336 in Pennsylvania; 20,540 in Wisconsin; 14,746 in Arizona;  36,185 in Nevada; and a whopping 146,123 in Michigan.  Though the Trump team keeps citing the infamous Bush v Gore case to justify their calls for recounts, it worth noting that Bush v Gore involved only one state, Florida, and that Bush’s lead over Gore was only 537 votes at the time that the Supreme Court weighed in. As to Trump’s claims of rampant fraud, CNN randomly selected 50 of the 14,000 Michigan votes that the MAGA crowd asserts were cast by dead people: 37 were dead people who did not cast votes, 5 were alive and did vote and the remaining 8 on the list were also alive but didn’t vote.  Massive fraud, not!

The Ugly: Trump tweet “terminated” Secretary of Defense Esper yesterday, replacing him with Christopher Miller, the director of the National  Counterterrorism Center. Esper’s firing was not a surprise, he’d angered Trump for refusing to send troops to control civilians in all those cities that Trump calls “anarchist jurisdictions” but we should probably be concerned that Trump leapfrogged over the next in line in the Defense Department picking Miller instead because though it’s not clear how he made his decision, there likely is a nefarious motivation behind it. Trump also removed Michael Kuperberg, the scientist responsible for the National Climate Assessment, another sign that he plans to use his remaining days in office to continue impeding climate science and policy.  His push back to Biden’s announcement that he’ll be rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement on day one of his administration assuming we ever get there.  Next up, CIA Director Haspel and/or FBI Director Wray?  One more thing, Michael Ellis, a WH attorney/political operative who previously worked for Trump co-conspirator Congressman Devon Nunes was appointed as the NSA’s chief counsel yesterday leading many to surmise that he’s being put there to delete implicating documents from the super-secret server that houses things like transcripts of calls with Vlad.  

71 Days