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.