Orange Meltdown, Con't

The Trump regime has indicated that it expects weeks, if not months, of recounts and court battles ahead over the election results showing Joe Biden as the winner, and recounts and court battles don't come cheap, unless you thought Trump the "billionaire" was going to pay for it out of his own pocket.

The Republican National Committee has reached out to donors as it seeks to raise at least $60 million to fund legal challenges brought by President Donald Trump over the results of the U.S. presidential election, two sources familiar with the matter said.

The Trump campaign has filed lawsuits in several states following the Nov. 3 election pitting the president against Democrat Joe Biden.

“They want $60 million,” said a Republican donor who received solicitations from the RNC.

One last grift before they hit the road, and undoubtedly some of this will find its way into the pockets of lawyers, media moguls, and Trump himself.  Of course, Trump using his office to run his campaign is finally starting to get noticed for its clearly criminal aspect, too.

The U.S. Office of Special Counsel has opened an investigation into allegations that the Trump campaign’s use of the White House as an Election Day command center violated federal law, Democratic Representative Bill Pascrell said on Thursday.

In a statement, Pascrell said the federal watchdog responded on Thursday to his call for a probe, telling him a special unit “has opened an investigation into these allegations to determine if the Hatch Act was violated.”

President Donald Trump monitored election returns in the living room of the White House residence on Tuesday, later addressing some 200 supporters gathered in the East Room.

Pascrell had asked the special counsel, Henry Kerner, to investigate reports suggesting that Trump used space in the adjacent Eisenhower Executive Office Building - on the grounds of the White House - as a campaign “war room.”

The New Jersey lawmaker said Trump was also expected to be briefed in the White House residence and the Oval Office throughout the day by campaign officials, which he said put executive branch officials at risk of violating federal law.

The Hatch Act of 1939 limits the political activities of federal employees, except the president and vice president.

The White House denied any violation of the federal law. “Both the official activity of Administration officials, as well as any political activity undertaken by members of the Administration, are conducted in compliance with the Hatch Act,” said spokesman Judd Deere.

 

The lame duck period is going to be another 75 days of hell for America, but this time Trump may actually feel the heat too. But Trump isn't going anywhere, for now.

Facing a disappearing pathway to victory, President Donald Trump offered little indication on Friday he was prepared to concede defeat, leading those around him to wonder who might be able to reckon with a leader who has given virtually no thought to leaving the White House. 

Even as vote totals now show him trailing former Vice President Joe Biden in key battlegrounds, Trump has not prepared a concession speech and in conversations with allies in recent days has said he has no intention of conceding the election, people familiar with the matter said. 

So far he has been bolstered in his stance by those closest to him, including his senior advisers and his adult sons, who have mounted an aggressive effort in the courts to challenge the results and have pressured other Republicans into defending him.  

Top aides, including his chief of staff Mark Meadows, have not attempted to come to terms with the President about the reality of what is happening. Instead, they have fed his baseless claim that the election is being stolen from underneath him. That has led to some annoyance among staff, who believe Meadows is feeding the President's baseless claim that the election is illegitimate. 

Vice President Mike Pence -- who has not been seen since the early hours of Wednesday morning -- is doing his part to appease Trump by soliciting funds for his legal defense fund. 

Trump is not scheduled to appear in public on Friday, though an appearance at some point has not been ruled out. He spent the morning angry and frustrated, watching television while griping more people weren't defending him on the airwaves.

Not only will Trump never concede, he doesn't have to. But he won't be President anymore in 75 days, either.

As to where the country is 75 days from now, that's anybody's guess. There's a lot of room for catastrophic damage in these next couple of months that could take a lifetime to fix, and everyone knows it.

And fears it.

It Was Still Always About Suppression

Here is the lesson of the 2020 election for Dems:

 

And high turnout only makes GOP voter suppression of specific groups that much more of a force multiplier.

It was *always* about suppression, and Dems must deal with the suppression itself, and not just by trying to increase turnout. https://t.co/vNa5iz7brA

— The Zandarlorian, Season 2 (@ZandarVTS) November 6, 2020

 

Here endeth the lesson. 

On to the Georgia runoffs.

Last Call For Biden, His Time

Claiming a "mandate for action" tonight but not victory, Joe Biden asked America to remain patient as the votes are counted and to come together to heal, and promised to start to work on the immediate problems in America, starting with the COVID-19 pandemic reaching yet another new daily case high of over 130,000.

 

Former Vice President Joe Biden urged the nation to remain patient as votes are tallied, saying he is confident of victory as he is pulling even further away from President Donald Trump in Pennsylvania, the state that may make him the 46th US president.

 In the latest batch of results from the Keystone State, Biden expanded his lead over Trump, which is now up to 28,833, meaning the President's already thin hopes of catching up are fast dwindling. Trump cannot win a second term without Pennsylvania, and if Biden captures its 20 electoral votes he cannot be stopped. 

Biden would not declare victory when he spoke to the nation late Friday night, but said he was confident in an impending victory. "The numbers tell us a clear and convincing story. We are going to win this race," Biden said. 

He added, "We are going to win this race with a clear majority of the nation behind us." 

Biden put on a show of confidence about the state of the race and also sought to present a picture of a new administration that is ready to get to work. He said that from his first day in the Oval Office he would launch a plan to control the pandemic, and he vowed to quickly enact an economic plan to speed the recovery. 

And noting political tensions stirred by the election, Biden said, "We have to remain calm, patient, let the process work out as we count all the votes."

 

Imagine that.  A normal, sane response to COVID-19, climate change, and a country in dire need of leadership during one of its darkest hours. This was a marked change from Trump's blithering idiocy earlier this week. 

And I'm glad for it.

Trump Voters Go Viral, Con't

In the counties hardest hit by COVID-19 in the days and weeks leading up to the election, most of them in rural parts of the country, they voted for Trump overwhelmingly, and not even a deadly pandemic was going to stop his cultists.

U.S. voters went to the polls starkly divided on how they see President Donald Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. But in places where the virus is most rampant now, Trump enjoyed enormous support.

An Associated Press analysis reveals that in 376 counties with the highest number of new cases per capita, the overwhelming majority — 93% of those counties — went for Trump, a rate above other less severely hit areas.

Most were rural counties in Montana, the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa and Wisconsin — the kinds of areas that often have lower rates of adherence to social distancing, mask-wearing and other public health measures, and have been a focal point for much of the latest surge in cases.

Taking note of the contrast, state health officials are pausing for a moment of introspection. Even as they worry about rising numbers of hospitalizations and deaths, they hope to reframe their messages and aim for a reset on public sentiment now that the election is over.

“Public health officials need to step back, listen to and understand the people who aren’t taking the same stance” on mask-wearing and other control measures, said Dr. Marcus Plescia of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.

“I think there’s the potential for things to get less charged and divisive,” he said, adding that there’s a chance a retooled public health message might unify Americans around lowering case counts so hospitals won’t get swamped during the winter months.

The AP’s analysis was limited to counties in which at least 95% of precincts had reported results, and grouped counties into six categories based on the rates of COVID-19 cases they’d experienced per 100,000 residents.

Polling, too, shows voters who split on Republican Trump vs. Democrat Joe Biden differed on whether the pandemic is under control.

Thirty-six percent of Trump voters described the pandemic as completely or mostly under control, and another 47% said it was somewhat under control, according to AP VoteCast, a nationwide survey of more than 110,000 voters conducted for the AP by NORC at the University of Chicago. Meanwhile, 82% of Biden voters said the pandemic is not at all under control.

The pandemic was considered at least somewhat under control by slim majorities of voters in many red states, including Alabama (60%), Missouri ( 54%), Mississippi (58%), Kentucky (55%), Texas (55%), Tennessee (56%) and South Carolina (56%).

In Wisconsin, where the virus surged just before the election, 57% said the pandemic was not under control. In Washington state, where the virus is more in control now compared to earlier in the year, 55% said the same. Voters in New York and New Hampshire, where the virus is more controlled now after early surges, were roughly divided in their assessments, similar to voters nationwide.

Trump voters interviewed by AP reporters said they value individual freedom and believed the president was doing as well as anyone could in response to the coronavirus.

 

They believed his lies. They voted for him.

 

Now thousands of them will die for him. 

It was always a cult, and the cultists will be with us for a long, long time.

Well...most of them.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

So how does Trump spend his remaining 75 days before he's booted from the White House? Nobody really seems to know, and that's the problem when a malignant narcissist's entire paradigm collapses in on itself. The potential for catastrophic action designed to harm those who "wronged' him is ludicrously high right now.

Trump and his aides have settled on a plan for him to take full advantage of his existing perch at the White House to look as presidential as possible, according to three people briefed on the strategy. He may fire a few Cabinet members and top aides, including FBI Director Chris Wray and Defense Secretary Mark Esper. He could sign a slew of base-pleasing executive orders. He might even resume his travel schedule. Meanwhile, Trump’s team is planning to mount even more legal challenges and cast evidence-deficient aspersions on the integrity of ballots.

The president is frustrated by what he views as unfair election results in states like Arizona, and is steaming at the possibility of losing to a candidate he considers “weak,” Democratic nominee Joe Biden. The irritation is compounded by Biden’s moves to launch his presidential transition operation and signal confidence about ultimate victory in key states such as Arizona and Nevada, which have him close to clinching the presidential race.

Trump’s team “will flatly say they are wrong if the AP calls the race for Biden,” said former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a longtime Trump ally.

“We were at the White House until 3 a.m. on election night,” he added. “I was punchy physically, but I also could not get my head around what is going on until today. The president is going through something similar.”

Yet after two days of staying out of the public’s view, stewing over media coverage and feeling irritated with a handful of top advisers, Trump and his team have settled on the approach of barreling toward a second term — even if, during the final months of his campaign, Trump repeatedly failed to lay out any agenda for another four years.

Thursday night, Trump made his first public appearance since election night, expanding on the baseless claims of election fraud he has been spouting on Twitter. He made no mention of any governing moves, but did vow to fight the election results in court all the way to the Supreme Court — a proposition seen by most legal experts as unlikely and detached from the realities of a state-by-state electoral system.

"It’s going to end up perhaps at the highest court in the land, we’ll see," Trump said, before leaving without taking questions.

In the coming days, Trump's post-election governing agenda may kick off with firings of key aides who have long rankled the president, especially those within the intelligence and national security community. Those firings could happen within the next week, even if the results of the election favor Biden or remain unclear.

"The first thing is going to be: Who's left, who's been loyal and who's been competent?” said one Republican close to the White House. “That's going to be the first criteria. Who's been loyal and who's competent.”

Along with potential firings, Trump is also expected to spend the next week signing a flurry of executive orders on everything from trade to manufacturing to China as a way to show he is staying busy. He may also tackle a few executive orders on his favored cultural and social issues, according to two Republicans close to the White House.

“Just as he promised the American people, President Trump is fighting hard for a free and fair election while at the same time running the country and carrying out his duties to put America First,” White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere said in a statement.

The Trump campaign is separately dispatching surrogates like David Bossie, Corey Lewandowski, Pam Bondi and Ric Grenell to battleground states like Arizona, Pennsylvania and Nevada to raise doubts about state election results and elicit local media coverage for the campaign’s spate of ongoing legal challenges, which Trump aides and advisers anticipate will last for the next several weeks.

“We are in this fight. We are going to stay in,” Trump deputy campaign manager, Justin Clark, told reporters on a call on Thursday.

 

So Happy Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and Happy Kwanzaa, and a Happy New Year!

Along with, you know, COVID-19 now topping 100,000+ cases a day.

There will be no help from the White House for anyone but Trump helping himself stay out of prison.

Trump's Supreme Evil Keystone Plan

The Trump regime is finally making its move to disenfranchise millions of voters and steal the election, through the Supreme Court, starting with Pennsylvania. SCOTUSblog's Amy Howe:

Telling the court that “the vote in Pennsylvania may well determine the next President of the United States,” the campaign of President Donald Trump went to the Supreme Court on Wednesday afternoon. In a 10-page filing in Republican Party of Pennsylvania v. Boockvar, the president’s campaign asked to join the Pennsylvania Republican Party’s appeal of a ruling by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that requires election officials to count mail-in ballots received by Nov. 6. The justices rejected a plea from the party to fast-track their challenge to that ruling last week, but an opinion from Justice Samuel Alito left open the possibility that the court could take up the dispute again.

Under the state supreme court’s ruling, which relied on a provision in the state constitution, all ballots received by Nov. 6 will be counted if they are postmarked by Election Day, Nov. 3, lack a postmark or have a postmark that is unclear. On Oct. 19, the justices turned down a request from the Pennsylvania Republicans to put that ruling on hold while the party appealed. Four of the court’s conservative justices – Alito and Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh – indicated that they would have blocked the state supreme court’s decision. Justice Amy Coney Barrett was not yet on the court at the time.

In an opinion that accompanied the court’s order denying the party’s motion to expedite consideration of its petition, Alito argued that it “would be highly desirable” for the justices to weigh in on the constitutionality of the state supreme court’s decision before the election, but he acknowledged that there was not enough time to do so. He added, however, that the Republican Party’s petition could still be decided “under a shortened schedule” later. Alito also stressed that ballots received after the polls closed on Election Day would be segregated, so that they could be excluded from the results if the state court’s decision were later overturned.

In its motion to intervene, the Trump campaign contended that the Supreme Court, rather than the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, “should have the final say” on the questions that could determine the outcome of the presidential election. In anticipation of that possibility, the campaign explained, it wants to join the Supreme Court proceedings. The Trump campaign, it reasoned, “has a direct, concrete stake in the outcome” of the proceedings “and, ultimately, the lawfulness of Pennsylvania’s vote tally.”

The Supreme Court instructed Pennsylvania election officials and the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, which are defending the state court’s ruling, to respond to the Trump campaign’s motion to enter the case by Thursday at 5 p.m.

Alito's opinion, of course, is that SCOTUS should take up the question of whether ballots that arrived after Election Day in the mail can be counted at all, and we know there's at least two votes on the Court (Kavanaugh and Gorsuch) for the Bush v. Gore Rehnquist opinion that only state legislatures should be allowed to make voting rules for a state, which would necessitate that possibly tens of thousands of votes be tossed, enough to give Trump Pennsylvania, and possibly the presidency if such a sweeping ruling was applied to all states retroactively for this election.

And of course since other states haven't set aside ballots received when Secretaries of State, election officials and Governors made changes to voting allowances this year for COVID-19, SCOTUS could rule that the entire presidential election should be sent to the US House for President (and Senate for Vice-President) giving Trump and Pence four more years.

Worse, they could nullify all kinds of election results for federal and state races under Rehnquist's opinion. It would be absolute chaos.

As I've been warning people for months now, unless Biden won overwhelmingly, this was always going to go to Trump's 6-3 SCOTUS.

It's far from over.

The Road To Gilead, Con't

The first major case in the new Roberts Court era with Justice Amy Coney Barrett is a case that could redefine the entire history of American civil rights as we know it by making the primary test of a person's rights being infringed upon wholly dependent not on whether a person is caused physical or economic harm by another, but whether a person's spiritual, religious beliefs are violated as being the main criteria.

 

 

When the Supreme Court on Wednesday hears Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, much attention will be on the new justice — it’s Amy Coney Barrett’s third day hearing oral arguments — and on a hot-button case about whether the city may cancel the contract of a Catholic foster care agency because it won’t work with same-gender couples. But a potentially broader issue will arise during the hearing that could potentially reshape the status of religion in U.S. law — further strengthening religious freedom rights in ways that some say has already gone too far.

In Fulton, the court will consider whether the city violated the First Amendment by disallowing Catholic Social Services from being part of its foster care system.

The justices are also being asked to overturn a ruling that has been controversial for religious conservatives since it was made 30 years ago: Employment Division v. Smith. The decision, which says a person’s religious motivations don’t exempt them from neutral, generally applicable laws, was written by Justice Antonin Scalia and said that without limits “every citizen [would] become a law unto himself.”

The Trump administration is supporting Catholic Social Services. It says the court does not need to overturn Smith to rule for the agency and alleges there’s evidence of religious bias in the way the city went about enforcing the law.

The court this week said it would entertain taking up Smith, but it is not obliged to make any ruling or detailed comment about it. However, multiple justices have made comments reflecting their willingness to reconsider that ruling, and lawyers are prepared to present arguments about Smith broadly — and how it pertains to Fulton.

The possibility that the newly 6-3 conservative-majority court could overturn Smith and set a new precedent about the legal status of religion comes as the country is deeply unsettled about how to balance LGBTQ and other rights with the rights of religious traditionalists. There are increasingly diverse views about what constitutes religiosity in general and how it should be weighed against other rights and when and how much religion can be burdened.

A 2016 Pew poll showed Americans split down the middle on whether religious business owners who work in the wedding industry should be required to provide services to same-sex couples or be allowed to refuse. A much higher percentage — 67 percent — said employers with religious objections to providing contraception as part of their health-care plan should still be required to do so.

Demographics also show a country steadily becoming more religiously diverse, pluralistic and secular.

“On the one hand, you look at the [Supreme] Court, and especially with Barrett, religious freedom will be locked up for a while, even as the culture is moving in this other direction unabated,” said Daniel Bennett, a political scientist at John Brown University who focuses on religion.

But this feels like a moment of huge potential for some religious groups and their advocates — religious conservatives in particular — who in recent decades have come to see themselves as endangered. Forty-six percent of evangelicals in an AP-NORC poll earlier this year said their religious freedom was under threat, as did 36 percent of Catholics.

Philadelphia Archbishop Nelson Pérez wrote in a Monday op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer that the Catholic church in the Fulton case is being told to “leave its faith at the door if it wants to serve those in need.”

That sense of threat prevails even though many religious liberty experts across the ideological spectrum agree that the legal place of religion has been getting stronger and more secure in the last decade or so. There have been multiple high-profile recent wins at the Supreme Court on cases including those favoring religious business owners (Burwell v. Hobby Lobby), religious employers (Our Lady of Guadalupe v. Morrissey-Berru), religious displays (American Legion v. American Humanist Association) and religious schools (Espinoza v. Montana).

Those cases touch on the two big arenas of religion in constitutional law — the establishment clause and the free exercise clause. Establishment cases deal with the Constitution’s ban on Congress endorsing, promoting or becoming too involved with religion. Free exercise cases deal with Americans’ rights to practice their faith.

 

If the Supreme Court strikes down E.D. vs. Smith, we become a theocracy, full stop. 

That's what's at stake.

That's what was always at stake.

But America decided four years ago and again two years ago that Trump and Mitch McConnell should make those choices.

StupidiNews!

• More than 2,200 inmates in New Jersey already awaiting release due to sentencing credits will be released this week as the state battles this fall's national COVID-19 resurgence.
• As the US approaches 10 million COVID-19 cases, the European Union has already surpassed 11 million as major outbreaks in Germany, Italy, France and the UK continue.
• At least 5 are dead in Honduras as Tropical Storm Eta heads back out over warmer water and towards Florida, the storm slammed into Central America this week as a Category 4 storm.
• Marijuana ballot measures passed in five states this week as the number of states now allowing at least some usage of marijuana is now up to 38.
• The Trump regime has officially left the Paris Climate Agreement, but Joe Biden has indicated that one of his first acts after inauguration would be rejoining the global climate compact.

Last Call For House Definitely Afire

Dave Wasserman, Cook Political Report's House guru, is the first to admit his calls were catastrophically wrong, and that the likely voter models did not account for the 70% turnout in this week's election favoring the Republicans so much, nor the massive ticket-splitting as Never Trump Republicans and independents racked up huge voting totals for GOP House candidates.

 

Republicans appear to have swept at least 18 of the 27 races in our Toss Up column, with Democrats leading precariously in only three of those races and another six up in the air. Republicans also appear to have won at least four of the races in our Lean Democratic column (FL-26, SC-01, TX-23 and TX-24) and even one race in our Likely Democratic column, where Miami Democratic Rep. Donna Shalala (FL-27) went down to defeat.

Meanwhile, beyond two North Carolina seats that Democrats were guaranteed to pick up because of redrawn district lines, Democrats appear to have only picked up one other GOP seat with Carolyn Bourdeaux in GA-07. This Gwinnett County seat also performed strongly for Biden. There's also a chance Democrat Hiral Tipirneni will defeat GOP Rep. David Schweikert in AZ-06, but there are plenty of Arizona votes left to count.

There will be a lot for everyone to unpack in the days, weeks, and months ahead about what much of the survey data got wrong at multiple levels. But credit should be given to the NRCC, led by chair Tom Emmer and executive director Parker Hamilton Poling, as well as the Congressional Leadership Fund led by executive director Dan Conston, for continuing to invest on offense when other consultants wrote races off.

The day after the election is always a fog of war, but there are three lessons from the early House results:

1. Democrats suffered a catastrophic erosion in Hispanic support.

The races where Republicans most vastly outperformed everyone's priors were heavily Hispanic districts that swung enormously to Trump. These include both GOP pickups in Miami (Carlos Gimenez in FL-26 and Maria Elvira Salazar in FL-27) as well as Republican Tony Gonzales's hold of Rep. Will Hurd's open TX-23. Amazingly, Republicans didn't lose a single seat in Texas.

2. It was a stellar night for Republican women.

We already knew before the election five more GOP women were coming to the House from safe red seats: Kat Cammack (FL-03), Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA-14), Mary Miller (IL-15), Lisa McClain (MI-10) and Diana Harshbarger (TN-01). But after last night, Republicans are on track to more than double their current count of 13 women.

Among last night's GOP winners were Maria Elvira Salazar (FL-27), Victoria Spartz (IN-05), Ashley Hinson (IA-01), Michelle Fischbach (MN-07), Yvette Herrell (NM-02), Kendra Horn (IN-05), Nancy Mace (SC-01) and Beth Van Duyne (TX-24). It's also possible they will be joined by Young Kim (CA-39), Michelle Park Steel (CA-48), Mariannette Miller-Meeks (MN-02), Nicole Malliotakis (NY-11) and Claudia Tenney (NY-22).

3. Democrats' "national security freshmen" found ways to survive an otherwise poor night for their party in the House.

Although Democrats' challengers mostly fizzled, the four Democratic women from Trump districts who signed a letter last September launching an impeachment inquiry built bipartisan brands that paid off: Reps. Elissa Slotkin (MI-08), Mikie Sherrill (NJ-11), Elaine Luria (VA-02) and Abigail Spanberger (VA-07).

We'll have much more to say soon, but for now it's clear that House Republicans' centerpiece of female recruitment was a success, while House Democrats' centerpiece of Texas was a bust. And, Speaker Nancy Pelosi will need to navigate a much narrower majority in January.

 

The Dems got destroyed in Texas, and things went pear-shaped in Florida too. Latino outreach in Arizona was successful however. There are lessons there if the Dems choose to learn them.

 

Republicans already have.

The Fight For $15 Flies Far For Florida

Florida voters handily approved a hike in the state's minimum wage to $15 an hour, and Republicans are seething.

Voters in Florida have decided to amend the state’s constitution to increase the minimum wage to $15 per hour by Sept. 30, 2026.

With more than 60-percent of voters approving of Amendment 2, the state’s minimum wage will gradually go up.

The Florida Constitution, Article X, Section 24, will be modified to increase the existing state minimum wage from $8.56 an hour to $10 an hour starting Sept. 30, 2021. It then will increase by $1 each year until reaching $15 an hour in September 2026. Afterward, increases in minimum wage will be adjusted for inflation.

Lawyer John Morgan and his campaign, Florida For a Fair Wage, spearheaded this amendment.

“I’m confident because Floridians are compassionate and know that giving every worker a fair wage means not just lifting up those who would directly benefit but lifting up our broader economy when hardworking folks have more money to spend,” Morgan previously said.

In a letter to the Miami Herald, the president and CEO of the Florida Restaurant & Lodging Association wrote that an increase in the minimum wage would result in business owners finding ways to control costs.

“Solutions include reducing the number of employees and the hours that remaining employees work and seeking labor alternatives like automation,” Carol B. Dover stated ahead of the amendment’s passage.

 

The thing is though the "crushing job-killing minimum wage hike" hasn't killed the other seven states where $15 minimum wage is now law.

 

You know what has hurt low-paying jobs?

 

COVID-19 and the Republican response to it.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

As he all but promised to do on Twitter last week, Donald Trump held a 2 AM press conference and declared victory with millions of ballots still uncounted, and says his campaign will go to the Supreme Court to stop counting.

President Donald Trump early Wednesday morning kept up his tactic of characterizing counting all ballots as cheating.

“Millions and millions of people voted for us tonight,” he told gathered supporters at the White House. “And a very sad group of people is trying to disenfranchise that group of people and we won’t stand for it.”

It’s the same old story: Trump has argued for weeks that vote-counting should be stopped after Election Day — meaning, just throw out any ballots that take more than a few hours to count.

“We were getting ready for a big celebration,” he added. “We were winning everything, and all of the sudden it was just called off.”

“Frankly we did win this election,” he lied later.

 

It gets worse. Much much worse.

Shortly after Trump said “we’ll be going to the Supreme Court, we want all voting to stop,” MSNBC anchor Brian Williams abruptly cut in to call Trump out on his misleading claim that “frankly, we did win the election.”

“We are reluctant to step in, but duty bound to point out when he says we did win this election, we’ve already won, that’s not based in the facts at all,” Williams said.

 

We're now in a full-blown capital C Constitutional Crisis. 

 

We have been for a while now, frankly, but this is one where we don't come back from as a country without tremendous bloodshed if Trump is not stopped here. He is openly stating he will steal this election through the Supreme Court.

I've been warning about this scenario for months now.

 

It's finally here.

 

Only historically catastrophic things happen from this point on.

StupidiNews!

• A new Harvard Business School study finds that the number of Americans unable to pay bills has doubled since Republicans allowed CARES Act unemployment benefits to expire.
• Hurricane Eta has reached Nicaragua as a Category 4 storm, Eta is expected to move over inland Nicaragua and Honduras over the next 24-48 hours.
• Current US hospitalizations for COVID-19 have topped 50,000, the highest level in three months, as the number of daily new COVID-19 US cases continues to top the 100,000 mark.
• New Jersey voters have legalized recreational marijuana use, while Oregon voters have decriminalized a number of federally illegal drugs in small doses.
• A new study on haunted houses being "scary fun" finds that there's a hormonal mind/body balance point between being terrified and being thrilled by fear.
  

Last Call For A Long Week Ahead

 We still don't know a winner here at 11:30 PM EST, and we won't know for several days, most likely.

• Pennsylvania
• Michigan
• Wisconsin
• Georgia
• Florida
• North Carolina

All have yet to really be called, although Florida is probably going to be a Trump win. 

Arizona and Minnesota got called for Biden late in the evening however.

We'll see you in the morning.

California Goes Viral, Con't

Even if Joe Biden is eventually declared President after all the Trump legal tomfoolery, even after another two-and-a-half months of Trump doing scorched earth damage in the wake of a loss, if California is any example, Trump's federal judges (and Supreme Court!) will be blocking Democratic state and national executive orders for years, making getting anything done to fix the mess we're in almost impossible.

A Northern California county judge on Monday preliminarily ordered Gov. Gavin Newsom to stop issuing directives related to the coronavirus that might interfere with state law.

Sutter County Superior Court Judge Sarah Heckman tentatively ruled that one of the dozens of executive orders Newsom has issued overstepped his authority and impinged on the state Legislature.

She more broadly barred him “from exercising any power under the California Emergency Services Act which amends, alters, or changes existing statutory law or makes new statutory law or legislative policy.”

It’s the second time a judge in the same county has reached the same conclusion, which runs counter to other state and federal court decisions backing the governor’s emergency powers. An appeals court quickly stayed the earlier order in June.

Heckman’s decision will become final in 10 days unless Newsom’s attorneys can raise new challenges. Newsom did not immediately comment or say if he will appeal.

The case centers on a single Newsom executive order in June requiring election officials to establish hundreds of locations statewide where voters can cast ballots in the November election. But lawmakers subsequently approved the same requirement, and the judge’s decision will have no effect on Tuesday’s election.

She acted in a lawsuit brought by Republican Assemblymen James Gallagher and Kevin Kiley, who said Newsom, a Democrat, was single-handedly overriding state laws in the name of keeping Californians safe.

“This is a victory for separation of powers,” the lawmakers said in a joint statement. Newsom “has continued to create and change state law without public input and without the deliberative process provided by the Legislature.”

Heckman wrote in a nine-page decision that the California Emergency Services Act “does not permit the Governor to amend statutes or make new statutes. The Governor does not have the power or authority to assume the Legislature’s role of creating legislative policy and enactments.”

Newsom used his emergency powers to virtually shut down the state and its economy in the early weeks of the pandemic.

“Nobody disputes that there are actions that should be taken to keep people safe during an emergency,” the lawmakers said. “But that doesn’t mean that we put our Constitution and free society on hold by centralizing all power in the hands of one man.”

 

After decades of the "unitary executive" legal principle, Republicans are now arguing that Governors have no powers, and that everything rests with state legislatures...which happened to be controlled by Republicans in many cases.  California's is not, but blocking Newsom's orders, as was the attempted case here in Kentucky a few months ago, is the point. 

Even if they are temporary, it disrupts the process and undermines authority. If Republicans cannot rule, Trump's judges will make sure the country remains ungovernable, even in deep blue California.

 

Europe's Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

Multiple gunmen opened fire Tuesday in Vienna, attacking in several locations around the center of the city, as authorities continue to hunt the attackers in what Chancellor Sebastian Kurz is calling "a repulsive terror attack".

Gunmen armed with rifles have opened fire in six different locations in central Vienna, killing three people and wounding several more, police say.

Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz called it a "repulsive terror attack" and said one gunman was also killed.

Police were searching for at least one attacker who was still at large, the interior minister said.

The shootings took place near Vienna's central synagogue but it is not yet clear if that was the target.

The city's police chief said two men and a woman were killed. At least a dozen other people were wounded, officials said.

The attack happened just hours before Austria imposed new national restrictions to try to stem rising cases of coronavirus. Many people were out enjoying bars and restaurants which are now closed until the end of November.

European leaders strongly condemned the shooting. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he was "deeply shocked by the terrible attacks".

Police said the incident began at about 20:00 (19:00 GMT) on Monday, near the Seitenstettengasse synagogue, when a heavily armed man opened fire on people outside cafes and restaurants.

Members of the special forces quickly arrived at the scene. One policeman suffered a gunshot wound before other officers shot the perpetrator, who was armed with an automatic rifle, a pistol and a machete.

Jewish community leader Oskar Deutsch tweeted that the synagogue was closed at the time the attack began.

 

Just remember that as bad as things are here in the US, Europe has seen multiple terrorist attacks like this in the last several years, and there's no indication that the EU is dealing with their right-wing white supremacist fascism problem any better than the United States is, especially during a resurgent pandemic.