Elector Defector Detector Director, Con't

Apparently there's just no appetite for GOP state legislatures in four of the five late-called states to simply declare Trump the winner through new elector slates, and it's not as if they could anyway. (Georgia apparently is going to go through that hand recount anyway, facts be damned.)

Republican leaders in four critical states won by President-elect Joe Biden say they won’t participate in a legally dubious scheme to flip their state’s electors to vote for President Donald Trump. Their comments effectively shut down a half-baked plot some Republicans floated as a last chance to keep Trump in the White House.

State GOP lawmakers in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin have all said they would not intervene in the selection of electors, who ultimately cast the votes that secure a candidate’s victory. Such a move would violate state law and a vote of the people, several noted.

“I do not see, short of finding some type of fraud — which I haven’t heard of anything — I don’t see us in any serious way addressing a change in electors,” said Rusty Bowers, Arizona’s Republican House speaker, who says he’s been inundated with emails pleading for the legislature to intervene. “They are mandated by statute to choose according to the vote of the people.”

The idea loosely involves GOP-controlled legislatures dismissing Biden’s popular vote wins in their states and opting to select Trump electors. While the endgame was unclear, it appeared to hinge on the expectation that a conservative-leaning Supreme Court would settle any dispute over the move.

Still, it has been promoted by Trump allies, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and is an example of misleading information and false claims fueling skepticism among Trump supporters about the integrity of the vote.

The theory is rooted in the fact that the U.S. Constitution grants state legislatures the power to decide how electors are chosen. Each state already has passed laws that delegate this power to voters and appoint electors for whichever candidate wins the state on Election Day. The only opportunity for a state legislature to then get involved with electors is a provision in federal law allowing it if the actual election “fails.”

If the result of the election was unclear in mid-December, at the deadline for naming electors, Republican-controlled legislatures in those states could declare that Trump won and appoint electors supporting him. Or so the theory goes.

The problem, legal experts note, is that the result of the election is not in any way unclear. Biden won all the states at issue. It’s hard to argue the election “failed” when Trump’s own Department of Homeland Security reported it was not tampered with and was “the most secure in American history.” There has been no finding of widespread fraud or problems in the vote count, which shows Biden leading Trump by more than 5 million votes nationally.

AP makes it very clear here that the magical bullshit that is Chief Justice William Rehnquist's opinion in Bush v. Gore that state legislatures, not the voters, are final arbiters of the Electoral College slates of electors, is complete hogwash, because it is. It deserves to be mocked as Federalist Society fish wrapping.

And again, Trump would need more than just Georgia to win, he'd need Arizona and Wisconsin as well at a minimum. It's not happening because Biden won those states. Even setting aside Georgia's hand recount, Biden has 290 electoral votes, a clear victory.

This isn't up for debate.

Does that mean we're safe from Supreme Court making arguably the worst decision since Dred Scott? Not 100%. But that would be the Supreme Court destroying the country, not Biden losing the election. There's a difference. Biden won the election, that's not in doubt.

Now we'll find out if that means he will be president.

Last Call For Mitch Finally Gets Infrastructure Week

A semi-truck hazmat accident on the lower decks of the Brent Spence Bridge has closed one of America's busiest bridges and wrecked traffic in Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky, with the bridge now closed for weeks. 

The Brent Spence Bridge closure isn't going away anytime soon so it might be time to find a permanent detour.

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear told Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky residents to prepare for its primary river crossing to be closed into December.

"We are looking at weeks, perhaps more than a month," Beshear said Thursday. "We have repairs that will take weeks to execute."

Beshear offered some relief for local travelers in Northern Kentucky Friday afternoon.

One lane of I-75/I-71 north between I-275 and the Brent Spence Bridge will be opened sometime Friday night, Beshear said in a Facebook video.

“This lift in traffic restrictions will help local traffic get closer to Downtown Covington on I-75,” Beshear said.

Beshear also announced the Roebling Suspension Bridge would be reopened to traffic at 8 p.m. Trucks will not be allowed.

Governors in both states said the bridge won't reopen until it's safe enough for them to transverse the river.

Beshear said he believes the bridge can be repaired, but he is not sure how long that will take.

 

Mitch McConnell has failed to get funding to replace the Brent Spence Bridge for his entire Senate career. He's used it as a stalking horse to repeal government reform, or as a ploy to attack Democratic political opponents, and he's always blocked any real effort to replace the bridge. 

 

FOX News famously accused President Obama as using the bridge as a prop when he introduced his 2011 JOBS act and McConnell couldn't wait to sneer at him over it...and the JOBS Act never got a vote.

 

Amy McGrath made replacing the bridge one of her major policy issues and she was destroyed in the election anyway. She lost Campbell and Kenton counties by double digits and Boone County by almost 30 points and McConnell frankly admitted that he would never help get funds from Washington, and that Kentucky taxpayers are going to have to pay every penny themselves.

Politicians have spent more than a decade campaigning on the promise of a replacement for the Brent Spence Bridge connecting Cincinnati to Northern Kentucky. Speaking Wednesday in Florence, Sen. Mitch McConnell said Kentuckians should look for a solution from Frankfort — not from offices like his in Washington.

“There’s never been an earmark big enough in the history of America to build that bridge,” he told the small crowd of mayors, business leaders and journalists who gathered at Kona Ice headquarters Wednesday afternoon.

McConnell, who hopes to win a seventh Senate term on Election Day, said the federal government will not set aside the funds necessary to replace the ailing span. If commuters want a replacement, he said, the money will have to come from inside their state. Gas taxes, maybe. The current plan involves tolls.

His opponent, retired Marine Corps pilot Amy McGrath, disagreed in an interview the week before.

“Brent Spence Bridge is America’s number one infrastructure emergency,” she said on Oct. 25. “We have to fix this, and we can do it without tolls, and that is what I am saying I will do.”

She said she sees the Brent Spence as a national issue that should be remedied with national funds — potentially by a cut of the Moving Forward Act, a $1.5 trillion infrastructure bill passed by the House of Representatives on July 1.

The Senate, under McConnell’s leadership, has not held a vote on the act. On the day it was passed by the House, he criticized its broad scope, which includes funding for roads, water projects, and affordable housing while pushing for “deep reductions in pollution.”

 

Matt Bevin lost Boone, Kenton, and Campbell counties last year to now Governor Andy Beshear over this, promising Kentuckians would do just that, in particular Northern Kentucky, and Beshear's margin of victory came from winning here on this issue. 

And a year later, the same voters happily voted for McConnell saying the same thing.

 

The bridge is getting emergency repair relief funds now, but it took a devastating accident that may have damaged the bridge beyond its safety capacity and is going to hurt businesses all around the region when we're already in the middle of the worst pandemic in decades.

But that's how it goes here in the NKY. We line up around to block to vote for the guy abusing us, promising to tax and toll us to the tune of $3 billion in one of the poorest states in the nation.

Waiting In The Wings

As usual, Donald Trump just couldn't help himself yesterday afternoon.

 

President Donald Trump said Friday that the U.S. government would not deliver a coronavirus vaccine to New York if and when one is available.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo “will have to let us know when he’s ready for it because otherwise, we can’t be delivering it to a state that won’t be giving it to its people immediately,” Trump said during a press conference from the White House Rose Garden.

“He doesn’t trust where the vaccine is coming from,” Trump added. “These are coming from the greatest companies anywhere in the world, greatest labs in the world, but he doesn’t trust the fact that it’s this White House, this administration, so we won’t be delivering it to New York until we have authorization to do so, and that pains me to say that.”

On MSNBC shortly after Trump’s comments, Cuomo said, “None of what [Trump] said is true. Surprise, surprise.”

“I have been an outspoken opponent to many of Trump’s policies over the last four years,” he said, adding that Trump lost in New York in the presidential election by “huge margin” and state prosecutors are also investigating the president for tax fraud.

“So, he has issues with New York and he likes to point to New York,” Cuomo said. “But this is his issue. It’s his credibility issue. It’s the fear that he politicized the health process of this nation, which is a well-founded fear.” 

 

Knowing full well why New York state was singled out (as opposed to say, California or Illinois), NY AG Letitia James made it very clear she will not be blackmailed into dropping her ongoing investigation into the Trump crime family. 

Attorney General Letitia James released a response Friday evening, saying:

“This is nothing more than vindictive behavior by a lame-duck president trying to extract vengeance on those who oppose his politics. Once there is a fully-developed COVID-19 vaccine, we are confident that a Biden-Harris Administration will provide New York with the proper number of doses so that our state’s residents can achieve immunity. If dissemination of the vaccine takes place in the twilight of a Trump Administration and the president wants to play games with people’s lives, we will sue and we will win.”

 

Steve M. does bring up a good point though. Where could Trump be tried in New York that won't immediately devolve into chaos or deadly violence by his terrorist cultists? New York City hasn't exactly shined when it comes to the "Trials of the Century".

It all has me thinking back to a moment in early 2010: 

The Obama administration on Friday gave up on its plan to try the Sept. 11 plotters in Lower Manhattan, bowing to almost unanimous pressure from New York officials and business leaders to move the terrorism trial elsewhere....

... resistance had been gathering steam.

After a dinner in New York on Dec. 14, Steven Spinola, president of the Real Estate Board of New York, pulled aside David Axelrod, President Obama’s closest adviser, to convey an urgent plea: move the 9/11 trial out of Manhattan.

More recently, in a series of presentations to business leaders, local elected officials and community representatives of Chinatown, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly laid out his plan for securing the trial: blanketing a swath of Lower Manhattan with police checkpoints, vehicle searches, rooftop snipers and canine patrols.

“They were not received well,” said one city official.

And on Tuesday, in a meeting [Mayor Mike] Bloomberg had with at least two dozen federal judges on the eighth floor of their Manhattan courthouse, one judge raised the question of security. The mayor, according to several people present, said he was sure the courthouse could be made safe, but that it would be costly and difficult.

I thought this was outrageous at the time -- we should have been able to show that we could try these people in U.S. courts, as a demonstration that the Bush's administration's approach to them was preposterous -- but I acknowledge that securing the area would have been difficult.

I think a trial of Donald Trump in Manhattan -- or anywhere in America -- could pose similar security risks. I'm not sure there's as much reason to fear MAGA Nation if Trump is put on trial as there was to fear Al Qaeda sympathizers a decade ago, but I couldn't really guess at the relative risk.

I think opponents of stateside 9/11 trials overestimated the possibility of violence. But I think we underestimate the risk of a Trump trial. There'll certainly be Trumpers in the streets. And there might be worse trouble than that.

So try him -- and convict him -- but be vigilant.

 

Sure hope Biden's willing to provide US Marshals for security, because the NYPD hates Mayor DeBlasio, hates Cuomo, hates James, and loooooooves them some Donald Trump.  If anything, they'll be working with the Trump cultists when Tisha James's hammer falls.

The Mask Of The Lone Governor

Republican governors are already signalling to the incoming Biden-Harris administration that they will not support, much less enforce, any sort of federal mandates involving COVID-19 and masks.

President-elect Joe Biden says he'll personally call red state governors and persuade them to impose mask mandates to slow down the coronavirus pandemic. Their early response: Don’t waste your time.

Almost all of the 16 Republican governors who oppose statewide mask mandates are ready to reject Biden’s plea, they told POLITICO or declared in public statements — even as they impose new restrictions on businesses and limit the size of public gatherings to keep their health systems from getting swamped.

South Dakota’s Kristi Noem, Oklahoma’s Kevin Stitt and Nebraska’s Pete Ricketts, whose states are engulfed by new cases, say mask wearing should remain a personal choice, not a legal obligation — despite recommendations from health officials and updated guidance from the Centers for Disease Control stressing that masks protect the wearer, not just people nearby, from infection.

“Governor Noem has provided her people with the full scope of the science, facts, and data regarding the virus, and then she has trusted them to exercise their personal responsibility to make the best decisions for themselves and their loved-ones,” Noem spokesperson Ian Fury wrote in an email. “She will not be changing that approach.”

The politicization of mask-wearing shows how difficult it will be for Biden to build consensus around even basic public health strategies after he’s sworn in.

Though President Donald Trump is on his way out, he’s poised to hold strong influence over GOP officials and voters who’ve largely backed his efforts to downplay the pandemic.

While some of the same governors expressed frustration earlier in the pandemic about the Trump administration’s lack of support on testing and protective gear, most side with Trump on his aversion to mask mandates. They’ve argued that neither Washington nor state capitals should dictate policies like face coverings, saying they are both onerous and unenforceable. And they’re digging in, even with the virus putting 65,000 people in hospitals and infecting more than 1.2 million people since Nov. 1.

“If President-elect Biden is indeed confirmed to be the next president, and he approaches me about a mask mandate, I would not be going along with a mask mandate,” Ricketts said during a press briefing on Tuesday.

“As far as a mandate, I’ve been very clear I don’t think this it’s the right thing to do,” Stitt, who was infected with the coronavirus earlier this year, said at a briefing on Tuesday. “This is a personal responsibility."

Several of the Republican holdouts, including Ricketts, have required face coverings for employees and patrons of certain businesses while others, like Stitt, have instead allowed their largest cities to decide on mask orders.

Other Republican governors, like Eric Holcomb in Indiana and Kay Ivey in Alabama have had mandates for months, while Utah Gov. Gary Herbert imposed a statewide order on Sunday night when it became clear this month that his state's hospitals were overwhelmed.

Asked about the possibility of a mask mandate, a spokesperson for Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee told POLITICO that “nothing’s off the table.” Counties can implement their own orders and so far nearly two dozen, representing two-thirds of the state population have opted to do so. The state reported a record number of new hospitalizations and deaths this week.

“We need to be nimble in our decision-making, but for the time-being, he’s confident the local-based approach is the most effective,” Gillum Ferguson, Lee’s spokesperson, wrote in an email.

 

The problem is that a local-based approach doesn't work. It has to not only be statewide, it has to be national, and it has to be simultaneous and enforced.

 

Not only that, there has to be federal support for businesses and people to survive a 4-6 week lockdown like this, rent relief, stimulus checks, job support, the whole nine yards. If we had done it right in the first place, we'd be in much better shape now.

 

Democrats had a plan for this.  Not just the HEROES act in May and again in October, but the FEED Act as well.

Chef José Andrés, along with Senators Kamala Harris and Tim Scott, and Representatives Mike Thompson, Jim McGovern and Rodney Davis announced the creation of the FEED Act, a piece of legislation that “allows the Federal government to pay 100 percent of the cost to states and localities so that they can partner with restaurants and nonprofits to prepare nutritious meals for vulnerable populations, such as seniors and underprivileged children.” In a video on Twitter, Andrés, whose World Central Kitchen is one such nonprofit that has been providing these meals, says the act will ensure no part of the country “is without the ability to offer a meal to those who need it the most.”

The act, the full text of which is available here, allows the Federal government to “cover 100 percent of the cost of disaster-related expenses, instead of the typical 75 percent.” Some states have already considered similar aid, as food banks and grocery stores struggle to stay in stock, and as shuttered meat processing plants threaten a meat shortage. Governor Newsom of California recently announced the High Roads Kitchen program, in which independent restaurants will be given funding to provide meals to health care workers and others in need.

With many independent restaurants struggling, the FEED Act could provide another lifeline. “This bill helps utilize our restaurant industry, which has been hit hard during this pandemic, in a way that’s never been done before,” said Representative Rodney Davis. “By creating these partnerships between local governments and local restaurants, we can help get meals to people in need more quickly and help the food industry, which is a major employer and a critical part of our economy, during this difficult time.” 

 

But we didn't, because Trump was in charge. 

 

But we didn't, because Mitch McConnell refused to allow a vote on any of it.

But we didn't, because these Republican governors refused every step of the way.  Not every Republican did. Mike DeWine in Ohio did the right thing, as did Eric Holcomb in neighboring Indiana. But the states having the skyrocketing numbers now are the states that refused before.

Here in Kentucky, there's hope, at least.  The state Supreme Court has finally issued a unanimous decision on Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear's COVID-19 executive orders, siding with Beshear.

In a major victory for Gov. Andy Beshear, the Kentucky Supreme Court unanimously ruled Thursday that the Democratic governor’s emergency regulations to slow the spread of COVID-19 are legal.

The state’s highest court ruled in a 103-page decision that Beshear properly declared a state of emergency in March and validly invoked powers granted to him under the state constitution.

“The governor’s orders were, and continue to be, necessary to slow the spread of COVID-19 and protect the health and safety of all Kentucky citizens,” the court said in a decision written by Justice Lisabeth T. Hughes. “This type of highly contagious etiological hazard is precisely the type of emergency that requires a statewide response and properly serves as a basis for the governor’s actions ...”

The decision means dozens of emergency orders from the governor, ranging from a requirement for most Kentuckians to wear a mask in public to class sizes in child care centers, will remain in effect.

Fighting the regulations were several businesses represented by Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron and Northern Kentucky attorney Chris Wiest. State Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Quarles, a Republican, supported their efforts. They questioned how Beshear’s restrictions were implemented.

Read more here: https://www.kentucky.com/news/coronavirus/article246788612.html#storylink=cpy

Of course, the battle is far from over. Voters handed Kentucky Republicans a massive margin in the state House and Senate last week, and the first order of business in January is to strip as much power from the Governor's office as possible. Kentucky, as I've said time and time again, is one of the few states where only a 50%+1 margin is needed to override a governor's veto. Republicans will have more than three-quarters of the total seats in both the state Senate and House come January.

They can do whatever they want to Beshear and unless the state Supreme Court intervenes, Kentucky will have no COVID-19 restrictions at all by the time Biden takes office.  Hell, Beshear will be lucky if he has an office by Easter Sunday.

And now we're seeing numbers grow in all 50 states.  We've got to go back to a national lockdown, or we're going to have a national month of mourning instead.

But Republicans will make sure that never happens.

And millions will die.

Retribution Execution, Con't

With Donald Trump believing he's won and will have a second term (in whatever fantasy universe he's residing in, anyway) you'd figure he'd be in Georgia right now campaigning for David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler in the state's January 5 runoff Senate elections so that he would continue to have a GOP Senate covering for him. You would of course be completely wrong, because Trump is instead infuriated at Georgia Republicans for not doing enough to help along his little coup.

 

Georgia is at the center of a battle for Senate control. Yet President Donald Trump, America’s omnipresent political commentator, has remained mum.

Two runoff Senate races in Georgia, set for Jan. 5, will determine which party controls Congress’s upper chamber. Marquee political names like Vice President Mike Pence and former President Barack Obama are willing to make Georgia trips to rally supporters. Big donors from both parties are funneling money into the races. The state is even embarking on a hand recount of its presidential ballots as the Trump campaign challenges Georgia’s election results in court.

But back in Washington, Trump has been all but silent on the subject. Outside of a few scattered tweets and retweets about specious claims of voter fraud in Georgia, Trump has made no public remarks about the state or the Senate runoffs there. And there are no plans for him to visit Georgia until at least after the state’s recount is complete. In fact, apart from a silent appearance at Arlington National Cemetery on Veterans Day, Trump hasn’t appeared in public since two days after the election, and it’s unclear when he’ll resurface.

His avoidance of the Georgia runoffs has left some Republicans around Trump frustrated that the GOP’s preeminent figure is leaving his party in the lurch at a critical moment. Trump’s rallies and appearances, they argue, are a guaranteed way to drive interest in the state’s two GOP Senate candidates: Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue. And, they noted, the Trump campaign’s focus on legally challenging the presidential election has spread out GOP resources and money that some wish would be funneled into Georgia.

“Several people have told him it’s important Loeffler and Perdue win because they will help keep his legacy intact. We’ve made the point to him that Republicans slowly dismantled parts of Obama’s legacy when we had control of the Senate in 2016 and a Democratic Senate would do the same to Trump,” said a Republican close to Trump.

“I’ve told the campaign his only priority should be holding onto the Senate,” the person added. “Frankly, he is losing credibility the more and more we have this fraudulent ballot fight.”

 

Indeed, the White House is all but giving the game away: unless the Georgia GOP can deliver the state to him and help him stay in the White House somehow, Trump won't lift a finger to help Perdue or Loeffler.

 

But Jason Miller, a Trump campaign senior adviser, said for now, there are no plans for the president to get involved in the Senate races.

“I would not expect anything prior to his race being decided, but he’ll be supportive to ensure Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue win those races,” Miller said. “If the reported irregularities and concerns with illegally harvested ballots aren’t dealt with ahead of Jan. 5, that could impact Republican chances as well.”

On Thursday morning, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany confirmed Trump had no plans to head to the state.

“He hasn't made any determinations on that thus far,” she said, adding that the country would “be hearing from him at the right moment.”

You'll be hearing from Trump at the "right moment" alright, when he openly blames Georgia Republicans for failing him, and tells his cultists to stay home because the state's Republicans are corrupt and fixing elections.

Which they are through massive voter suppression of Black and Native voters, but that's another story.

Won't this be fun?

Last Call For Trump's Race To The Bottom, Con't

The Trump regime legal circus attempting to overturn and steal the election from Joe Biden and Kamala Harris is generally a cavalcade of frivolous lawsuits, legal frippery, and outright fabrication. But the lawsuit in Wisconsin attempting to throw out all the votes in the state's three most Democratic counties, is just pure racism at its worst.

Three voters in northeast Wisconsin have filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking to throw out votes in three of the counties that delivered Wisconsin to President-elect Joe Biden: Milwaukee, Dane and Menominee.

The lawsuit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Green Bay seeks to change the outcome of Wisconsin's election to President Donald Trump's favor by excluding the presidential votes from the counties in the state's final election certification, alleging without evidence that absentee voting is fraught with widespread fraud.

The plaintiffs allege voters in these counties may have bypassed state law requiring voters to provide photo identification by dubbing themselves "indefinitely confined" due to the coronavirus pandemic. The suit also takes issue with clerks' ability to take corrective actions to remedy errors related to witness’s addresses on absentee ballots.

The suit cites allegations from people who are not named but identified by initials.

"Election workers, overwhelmed by the sudden flood of mailed ballots, have less ability to carefully review them to screen out fraudulent ones, creating a substantial risk that fraudulent votes will be counted and vote-dilution disenfranchisement will occur," the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit is one of several being brought on behalf of Trump in an effort to change the outcome of the Nov. 3 presidential election, which resulted in the election of Biden.

A Wisconsin election attorney who has worked for the Democratic Party said the lawsuit was without merit.

"Trump continues to file frivolous lawsuits throughout the country to disenfranchise millions of American citizens," attorney Michael Maistelman said. "Trump's lawsuits are not based upon law, facts or reality, which is why courts throughout the country have summarily and at times angrily dismissed his cases."

Wisconsin's result is one of several states Trump is focused on changing, through this lawsuit and also by a potential recount. Biden won in Wisconsin by a margin of about 20,000 votes.

The suit seeks to exclude all the presidential vote totals from the two most populous and heavily Democratic counties in the state when certifying the state's results. Those two counties delivered 577,408 votes for Biden and 213,133 for Trump, a gap of 364,264 votes, according to unofficial results. Other counties also had high levels of absentee voting but were not targeted in the lawsuit.

"Certifying Presidential Electors without excluding certain counties would violate voters’ fundamental right to vote by vote-dilution disenfranchisement," the suit alleges, citing protections provided by the First and 14th amendments.

 

There's racism, GOP racism, Trump GOP racism, and then whatever this is. Milwaukee is home to most of the state's Black population, Dane county is home to Madison and the University of Wisconsin, and Menomonee County is small, fewer than 5,000, but also happens to be the residence of the Menominee Indian tribe, and a county that has voted for Democrats since it was created in 1959.

 

Here's a lawsuit that alleges too many Black people voted by mail.

 

That's it.  More Wisconsin counties had as high or higher rate of voting-by-mail, but it's only the "certain counties" that are the problem.

 

The ones with Democrats, particularly Black, college, and Native ones.

The Tale Of Harrison's Ford

The good news is that current DNC chair Tom Perez isn't going to bother to run for a second term after the complete disaster Dems had in the House and Senate in 2020. The bad news is that the obvious replacement, Stacey Abrams, is running for Georgia Governor in 2022. I'd much rather see Abrams running the DNC, but that's not my choice to make. The worse news is that means the odds-on favorite to run the DNC after Perez is a guy who set fundraising records and all that money meant that he still lost to Lindsey Graham by ten points.

First, Joe Biden has to pick his Cabinet and his White House staff. But after that, there’s only one name on leading Democrats’ list for Democratic National Committee chair: Jaime Harrison, who lost a race for U.S. Senate in South Carolina last week.

If he’s named as chair, Harrison will inherit an organization in significantly better shape than it was when Tom Perez took over in 2017. Under Perez, the DNC has paid off its debt, rebuilt its infrastructure, and boosted employee morale. No one, though, expects that keeping Democrats organized will be easy, especially without a common political enemy in Donald Trump. The next chair will help decide the party’s messaging ahead of the 2022 midterms and play a big role in the fight over which states will hold the first presidential primaries in 2024.

Harrison became nationally known this year during his run against Senator Lindsey Graham, as he set fundraising records and became a cause for Democrats far beyond his state. Graham ultimately won by a much-wider-than-expected 10-point margin, boosted by South Carolina’s partisan lean and his role in confirming Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. But the goodwill that Harrison built up and the coming vacancy at the top of the DNC—Perez confirmed to me yesterday that he won’t be running for another term—has many Democrats thinking that Harrison is a perfect fit for the role. “The timing just seems right, frankly,” said Trav Robertson, a friend of Harrison’s who is now in Harrison’s old role as South Carolina Democratic Party chair.

More than just timing is involved. Harrison has the support of James Clyburn, his mentor and former boss, who is the House Democratic whip and whose endorsement during the primary campaign helped power Biden to the nomination. Yesterday, Clyburn pointed out to me that he had supported Harrison when he ran for DNC chair in 2017, and said, “I think he’s better prepared than he was when I supported him the first time.”

Clyburn told me he hasn’t mentioned the DNC-chair race to Biden, but “all of Biden’s friends know what I feel about it.” A Biden spokesperson declined to comment.

Clyburn’s support, Nebraska Democratic Party Chair Jane Kleeb said, “means the train has left the station.” Kleeb, who’s from a very different part of the party—she’s the political-committee chair of the Bernie Sanders–aligned group Our Revolution—told me she’s happy to see that support go to Harrison. Like several others I spoke with, she pointed to Harrison’s record as a state-party chair as giving her confidence in the kind of leader he would be. She’s just hoping that as the party elects other officers, members will promote regional and ideological diversity. Kleeb, for example, told me she’s planning to run for vice chair of the DNC herself.

Via text message, Harrison declined to comment, though earlier this week he told The Washington Post that he’d take a “good look” at running if asked.

 

This is one of those things that I'd feel a lot better about if Harrison being in charge of Dem messaging didn't already directly result in a double-digit loss to one of the biggest enablers Trump had in his regime.

But Abrams is doing what Abrams needs to do, and that's go after Brian Kemp. And frankly, Harrison can't do much worse than Tom Perez or -- God help us -- Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

At this point, Trump's army of armed cultists are publicly declaring their intentions of terrorist attack in order to somehow stop Joe Biden from becoming President in two months, and it looks like nobody is lifting a finger to stop them.

 

Oath Keepers militia leader Stewart Rhodes said that he has armed men on standby outside of Washington, D.C., to supposedly prevent the 2020 presidential election from being stolen from President Donald Trump. Echoing elements of the QAnon conspiracy theory during an appearance on far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ program, Rhodes said the only way to prevent his men from engaging in a “bloody fight” would be Trump declassifying information to supposedly expose pedophiles in the “deep state” and allow the president to stay in power.

Rhodes also indicated his militia will be involved in a rally to support Trump planned for this weekend in the nation's capital.

Rhodes’ Oath Keepers militia, which comprises “former law enforcement officials and military veterans,” is described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “one of the largest radical antigovernment groups in the U.S. today.” But, as Rhodes recent public comments have made clear, the organization’s purpose has shifted from opposing the government to instead act as a pro-Trump vigilante group that is willing to violently support Trump’s unjust attempts to stay in power after losing the 2020 election.

Rhodes joined Jones and Infowars host Owen Shroyer during the November 10 broadcast of The Alex Jones Show. Rhodes claimed that, in order to stop the election from being stolen from him, Trump needs to declassify information exposing members of the “deep state” so that Americans will “all know exactly who the pedophiles are.” According to Rhodes, judges -- including Supreme Court Justice John Roberts -- politicians, and members of the legal community, academia, and media are all part of the “deep state.” These comments echoed a central tenet of the QAnon conspiracy theory, which claims that Trump is engaged in a battle with a cabal of pedophile elites.

Rhodes said Trump should task special forces leaders in the military to gather and process the information because “he cannot trust the normal military intelligence services.” Noting that he has previously been opposed to U.S. military intervention in domestic matters, Rhodes said that in this case Trump should invoke The Insurrection Act to accomplish this goal.

Rhodes then said that, in support of Trump, “we have men already stationed outside D.C. as a nuclear option in case they attempt to remove the president illegally, we will step in and stop it” and emphasized that these men are “armed” and “prepared to go in, if the president calls us up.” In addition to activity outside of the capital, Rhodes said he will have Oath Keepers inside the city this coming weekend to support a caravan of Infowars supporters being led by Shroyer who say they will hold an event on November 14. The Infowars contingent is one of several far-right groups that say that they will rally in the city to support Trump. Stewart added that his group has been doing “recon” for the past week in the Washington, D.C., area.

Rhodes called on supporters of Trump to converge on the capital in the same manner as far-right militia members gathered at a Nevada ranch in 2014 to threaten federal law enforcement officers who were attempting to enforce a court order against rancher Cliven Bundy. He also made it clear during his appearance that the only alternative to Trump staying in power would be violence, saying, “It’s either President Trump is encouraged, and bolstered, [and] strengthened to do what he must do or we wind up in a bloody fight. We all know that. The fight’s coming.”

 

I mean I don't know what else to do here, guys.  Here's a guy openly and publicly declaring sedition and terrorism, and that he and his goons will be at a rally in DC this weekend which will be a gathering of like-minded violent assholes.

FBI, you know where he;s gonna be on Saturday.

Do you have to wait until after he's killed hundreds, maybe thousands?

StupidiNews!

• Daily US COVID-19 cases are approaching 150,000 per day as America continues to set new records for daily cases and number of hospitalizations. 
• Reports find at least eight GOP staffers have contracted COVID-19 nationwide after election events, including White House legal pointman Corey Lewandowski.
• GOP Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell says House Democrats' latest COVID-19 relief proposal is "not a place I think we're willing to go".
• Senate Republicans are moving forward on the nomination of Judy Shelton for the Federal Reserve Board, Shelton is currently a Trump economic adviser.
• The first cruise ship to set sail from the US since the Trump regime let a no-sail order expire at the beginning of the month is in lockdown as five passengers have tested positive for COVID-19.
  

Last Call For The Most Taxing Explanation, Con't

If you had thought that NY AG Letitia James was somehow out of the picture in the pursuit of tossing various Trumps in state prison, you thought wrong, as Caleb Melby Bloomberg News reports.

 

New York’s attorney general continues to gather information about President Donald Trump’s business, obtaining financial records this month from the family of the Trump Organization’s CFO that could provide further insights into the company’s operations and tax strategies.

The office of Attorney General Letitia James is reviewing tax records associated with a son and ex-daughter-in-law of Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg, according to a person familiar with the matter. James’s office is conducting a civil investigation into whether the Trump Organization falsely reported property values to secure loans or tax benefits, she has said.

Bloomberg News reported on Nov. 2 that members of the Weisselberg family, including Trump Organization manager Barry Weisselberg and his now ex-wife, Jennifer, had received perks including years of free rent in a company-owned building adjacent to Central Park and use of the company’s accountant for personal tax filings. The Bloomberg report was based, in part, on documents provided by Jennifer Weisselberg.

Mary Mulligan, a lawyer for Allen Weisselberg, said that her client had done nothing wrong.

The attorney general’s office and Alan Garten, general counsel of the Trump Organization, declined to comment. Barry Weisselberg didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Many of the benefits could create tax liabilities for the Weisselbergs, the Trump Organization or both, according to legal experts.

For example, employers normally can’t take a gift exemption for things of value provided to employees, according to tax and compensation lawyers who reviewed the transactions for Bloomberg but didn’t want to comment publicly about Trump’s business. Also free rent would constitute taxable income for employees unless an exemption applies, they said. Barry and Jennifer Weisselberg’s tax returns for four of the years they lived on Central Park South don’t appear to account for the perk.

Allen Weisselberg, who managed finances for Trump as well as his father, Fred, is the company’s highest-ranking non-family employee and was appointed to help oversee the trust set up by the president while he’s in the White House.

 

Flip Wesselberg, get Trump(s).  That was always the plan, and Tisha James is following it to a T. I'm telling you, don't be surprised if she has indictments ready to go on January 20 or January 21. And don't be surprised if Donald Trump isn't in the US at that point, having already skipped town.

 

The Boys Club, Con't

The entire Epstein saga over the last two years began in earnest when the Miami Herald broke the news in December of 2018 that the US Attorney that originally gave Epstein his odious plea deal in 2008 was at the time, Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, who was US Attorney under Dubya for the district of Miami. Acosta was forced to resign in July of 2019 after a disastrously bad press conference in the wake of Epstein being arrested and charged for the crimes that Acosta let him skate on.

But now, it seems Acosta gets the last laugh, as the Barr "Justice Department" is letting Acosta and his team at the time avoid any real responsibility for their devil's bargain.

In a 13-page executive summary of the investigation’s findings reviewed by NBC News, the Office of Professional Responsibility said it was Acosta who “made the pivotal decision to resolve the federal investigation of Epstein through a state-based plea and either developed or approved the terms of the initial offer to the defense that set the beginning point for the subsequent negotiations that led to the” non-prosecution agreement.

“The NPA was a flawed mechanism for satisfying the federal interest that caused the government to open its investigation of Epstein,” the report says.

In the course of the review, the office said members of the U.S. Attorney’s Office had concerns about “legal issues, witness credibility, and the impact of a trial on the victims” that led them to ultimately go for the non-prosecution agreement and avoid trial.

As a result, “OPR does not find that Acosta engaged in professional misconduct by resolving the federal investigation of Epstein in the way he did or that the other subjects committed professional misconduct through their implementation of Acosta’s decisions.”

The report also says that Acosta’s decision to bring charges against Epstein through the state led to a lack of transparency and left victims “feeling confused and ill-treated by the government.”

“In sum, OPR concludes that the victims were not treated with the forthrightness and sensitivity expected by the department.”

Acosta could not immediately be reached for comment.

 

Acosta was naughty but he didn't break the law, even though it was perfectly clear that a quid pro quo was in play. Acosta's defense was that he was waiting for a better deal, following Justice Department policy under Dubya AG Michael Mukasey, where Epstein would pay restitution to his victims. Of course, that never materialized, because Acosta never pursued it.

And Epstein got what he wanted, a 13-month sentence where he spent the majority of time on "work release".

Of course, Epstein is gone now, and his protege and victim wrangler, Ghislaine Maxwell, is facing decades of prison time. Another round of documents in that case could be publicly released as soon as Friday.

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

Whoever had November 7 on their online politics pool for "When do Republicans officially call for seceding from the United States rather than recognize Biden's win" congratulations, it took literally less than hours after CNN and the networks called it for Biden that the New Confederacy was born.

 

As the dust settles from the 2020 presidential election, one disappointed Mississippi lawmaker has a proposition for the Magnolia State. Instead of being governed by President-elect Joe Biden, state Rep. Price Wallace (R) reportedly said on Twitter that Mississippi should “succeed” from the rest of the United States and form its own country.

Despite the misspelling, his since-deleted tweet on Saturday afternoon, posted hours after the election was called for Biden, appeared to be an overt throwback to the Confederacy — in a part of the Deep South that only voted to remove the Confederate battle flag symbol from its own state flag earlier this year.

Although a small but growing number of GOP lawmakers have congratulated Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala D. Harris on their victory, many others — including most of the state’s top Republicans — have backed President Trump’s efforts to challenge the results, according to the Mississippi Free Press.

On Monday, the state’s attorney general became one of 10 across the country who pledged to join Trump’s attempt to stop Pennsylvania from counting mail-in ballots that arrived after Election Day. Even before the race was called, Mississippi’s five Republicans in Congress released a joint statement that warned, without evidence, about the existence of “voting irregularities” across the country.

But Wallace, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Washington Post, made a far more extreme claim: The Magnolia State should simply leave the United States.

It started with a Twitter thread from Robert Foster, a former Mississippi state representative and 2019 gubernatorial candidate who, in response to Biden’s victory, said that more votes needed to be counted before settling the race.

“The majority does not rule, the law derived from a Constitution has the final say,” Foster wrote, claiming the United States is a constitutional republic and not a democracy. “Democrats and their Fake News Cheerleaders are about to get a hard lesson in civics.”

 

The seething hatred and racism apparent in this entire narrative is just disheartening, but it's also good to remember that these asssholes are losing the war.

 

But anyone who doesn't think it's a war, I remind you that one side definitely believes it to be one, and they are now openly operating as such.

Infighting has broken out between two leading members of the Proud Boys group, with one announcing he will be taking control of the far-right organisation to address "White Genocide" and the "failures of multiculturalism."

White nationalist Kyle Chapman—who set up the "tactical defense arm" of the Proud Boys, the Fraternal Order of Alt-Knights (FOAK)—has criticized the group's chairman Enrique Tarrio while announcing a so-called rebranding of the organization.

Writing on encrypted messaging app Telegram, Chapman used racial slurs against Tarrio and other neo-Nazi rhetoric while announcing that the "grifting leaders" had been deposed and the group would be renamed the Proud Goys. The term "goy"—a Hebrew word for a non-Jewish person—is sometimes used by white supremacists to signal their anti-Semitic beliefs, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

"Due to the recent failure of Proud Boy Chairman Enrique Tarrio to conduct himself with honor and courage on the battlefield, it has been decided that I Kyle Chapman reassume my post as President of Proud Boys effective immediately," Chapman wrote. "Our logo will forthwith be changed to reflect the core beliefs of Proud Boy members.

"We will no longer cuck to the left by appointing token negroes as our leaders. We will no longer allow homosexuals or other 'undesirables' into our ranks. We will confront the Zionist criminals who wish to destroy our civilization.

"We recognize that the West was built by the White Race alone and we owe nothing to any other race."

Chapman, who goes by the nickname "Based Stickman" after he was photographed beating a protester with a stick at a Trump rally in Berkeley, California, in March 2017, went on to say the Proud Goys would fight for white people to "have their own countries where White interests are written into law."

The message was posted one day after Chapman criticized Tarrio's "inaction and fear" over a video that appeared to show the moment Tarrio and two other people were injured during a knife attack in Washington, DC in the early hours of November 4.

So yeah, at this point Trump has his splinter faction of Neo-Nazi brownshirts ready to go.

 

Unfortunately, as they lose, they will destroy as much of the government as they can to make sure that nobody wins, and that will be America for the next several decades.

StupidiNews!

• President-elect Joe Biden is expected to start naming his White House and Cabinet picks soon, starting with Biden's former VP Chief of Staff Ronald Klain as White House Chief of Staff.
• California seismological researchers believe oil field fracking operations may have triggered several small earthquakes along the San Andreas Fault over the last decade.
• UN human rights officials are warning Yemen is facing another famine in 2021 as 80% of the population are unable to feed themselves and require food aid.
• UK PM Boris Johnson is facing the resignation of communications director Lee Cain, Johnson faces a growing revolt from Tory lawmakers over his response to the UK's growing COVID-19 crisis.
• Google says it will stop offering an unlimited storage plan for its Photos app, after May 2021 new high quality photos will now count against a user's Google Drive quota.
  

Last Call For Elector Defector Detector Director

Axios games out the "new slate of electors/faithless electors" scenario that seems to be Trump's best chance of actively engineering an illegal coup to nullify the presidential election, and while I'm seriously infuriated that this appears to be happening, you can't say I wasn't warning folks around here that this was going to be a distinct possibility.

What we're watching: In this long-shot scenario, Trump and his team could try to block secretaries of state in contested states from certifying results. That could allow legislatures in those states to try to appoint new electors who favor Trump over Biden.

"It's basically hijacking the democracy," one lawyer familiar with the process tells Axios. "They've got nothing else; you'd be trying to deny Joe Biden 270." If Trump were to pursue this course, it likely would become apparent the week leading up to Thanksgiving, as states face deadlines to finalize election results.

Between the lines: Trump has not directly said he would pursue this strategy. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo each noted on Tuesday that the election results don't become official until electors cast their votes next month. To date, Biden's status as president-elect is rooted in media projections based on raw vote totals reported by individual states. 

Those totals don't become official, though, until states certify them. The Constitution prescribes that those official results will be used to apportion electors who officially pick the president.  “At some point here, we’ll find out finally who was certified (the winner) in each of these states, and the Electoral College will determine the winner and that person will be sworn in on January 20," McConnell said. "No reason for alarm.”

One Senate leadership aide said McConnell was not signaling an elector strategy and was simply noting that it's not uncommon for there to be litigation before the Electoral College results are complete. 

Pompeo, who raised eyebrows with a line about how there would be a "smooth transition to a second Trump administration," independently raised the Electoral College during a State Department news conference. “When the process is complete, there’s going to be electors selected," he said. "There’s a process; the Constitution lays it out pretty clearly.”

The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

How it works: If a lawsuit successfully stops certification of results in a state, legislators there could step into the void and pick a pro-Trump slate of electors. The lawyer, who requested anonymity to speak about the scenario, said Trump's team now appears to be trying to throw enough dirt at the process for counting late ballots to argue that accurate results can't be ascertained.

The next step could be to try to get federal or state courts to enjoin secretaries of state from certifying results. Any move to provide an alternative slate of electors could force the first real test of the Electoral Count Act of 1887 and could land before the Supreme Court. Among the key swing states, Arizona and Georgia have GOP governors and legislatures. Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin have Democratic governors but GOP legislatures.

"This is a horrible idea, one that should be morally repugnant to every American," elections law expert Edward B. Foley wrote recently in The Washington Post. "For a state legislature to reclaim this power after voters have already cast their own ballots would be an even more egregious intrusion into the democratic process."

 

Now this definitely sounds like Axios is laying scaffolding here for making mountains out of molehills, it's what they do. But at the same time, this is how the coup would play out.

It's why this particular Supreme Court hearing a case on state legislatures and appointing slates of electors is so very dangerous. We already know there's at least three votes on the court to embrace former Chief Justice William Rehnquist's crackpot theory that state legislatures get the final say in electors and elections.

If there's two more, who knows? We shouldn't be anywhere near this point, but here we are.

Householder Of Cards, Con't

Despite former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder's arrest for bribery and corruption charges, despite evidence that the Ohio GOP received millions in slush fund money in order to vote for a corrupt energy bill that made Ohio's largest energy company billions of dollars at direct taxpayer expense, Ohio voters simply reelected everyone involved in the mess, and actually gave even larger margins to the state's GOP supermajority.

 

The scandal surrounding House Bill 6 took out the speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives. It has dominated the news pages and airwaves for months. It was the subject of countless campaign attack ads.

In the end, voters didn’t seem to care.

The scandal implicating former Speaker Larry Householder and his effort to get a nuclear bailout enacted into law emerged as a major theme in the 2020 Statehouse elections, but seemingly had little impact on the results.

In total, there were 46 lawmakers who voted for House Bill 6 and were on the ballot this November for a seat in the Ohio House or Ohio Senate. The unofficial results show that every single one of them won their election: 46-for-46. That includes Householder himself, who won reelection to his 72nd District over a slate of write-in opponents.

In contrast, there were 35 “no” votes who were up for election. Four of them have been voted out, and a fifth lawmaker’s race is too close to call.

That’s a striking result considering the extent to which the scandal has enveloped Ohio politics since the July arrests of Householder and four political operatives.

In recent months, news outlets have extensively covered an 81-page affidavit outlining the years of alleged corruption and bribery that went into HB 6 being enacted to benefit the former FirstEnergy Solutions of Akron. So too did news stories highlight the vote to remove Householder as the House leader; the ensuing trials; and the ongoing effort to get HB 6 repealed.

Voters got one last reminder last week, when two people charged in the alleged scheme pleaded guilty.

The yearslong plot, as alleged by federal investigators, involved FirstEnergy Solutions funneling “dark money” toward a group controlled by Householder. These resources were used to get Householder and a number of other Republican allies elected to the Ohio House of Representatives. These allies joined with more than two-dozen Democrats to elevate Householder as House speaker in 2019.

 

In fact, even more Ohio lawmakers have been arrested by the FBI over the FirstEnergy Solutions scam, including Cincinnati City Councilman Jeff Pastor, just this week, as the guilty pleas and evidence pile up.

Cincinnati Councilman Jeff Pastor has been arrested, according to sources. Pastor, a Republican, is expected to face federal charges including bribery, extortion and money laundering.

A press conference is scheduled at the FBI headquarters in Cincinnati at 2:30 p.m. featuring U.S. Attorney David M. DeVillers and Chris Hoffman, Special Agent in Charge for the FBI’s field office.

As previously reported by cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer, the FBI may have been running an operation in Cincinnati last year involving two mysterious men identifying themselves as real-estate developers. The two men made the rounds there, seeking help from local public officials with a planned hotel project.

They also ended up hiring Columbus lobbyist Neil Clark, ostensibly for his help changing state law to benefit the planned hotel by amending a pending sports-betting legalization. But the amendment ultimately did not make its way into the bill. Chinedum Ndukwe, a former Cincinnati Bengals player who now is a real-estate developer in Cincinnati, was involved with the hotel project and attended some of the meetings, which Clark said he felt appeared to give it legitimacy.

After his and others' arrest in July on corruption charges linked to the passage of a nuclear bailout bill, Clark said quotes of his that appeared in the indictment were recorded during meetings he held with the Cincinnati hotel developers. He said he suspects they were either undercover FBI agents, or at the least, informants working with the FBI. Clark has pleaded not guilty and denied wrongdoing.

Efforts by cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer to locate the men who hired Clark were unsuccessful. Officials in Cincinnati recalled interacting with the men, believing they were from Nashville and either North Carolina or Georgia, but said they haven’t heard from them since last summer. Federal officials declined to comment on any ongoing investigation.

 

But again, every Republican who voted for Householder's corrupt kickback bill, and every Republican who made Householder Speaker before he was forced to step down, was reelected by Ohio voters.

 

But that's also proof of how moribund and useless the Ohio Democrats are, they couldn't beat a single Republican, with several indicted. Outside Sherrod Brown, the state's Democrats are 100% worthless, useless, and pointless.

You know, kind of like the KY Democrats.

Corruption means nothing in this state. I guess we'll have to wait until the Biden Justice Department gets around to actually trying the cases in court.