Election Day: More Chaos?

News surrounding Dictator Donald Trump (DDT), who says, “I love chaos!”

Not everyone loves DDT’s instability. Almost two-thirds of respondents to a survey prefer Joe Biden’s lower-key campaigning approach, and nearly 60 percent disapprove of DDT’s superspreader rallies during the pandemic. DDT’s rallies haven’t helped his low standing in the polls with Biden: DDT’s down in national polls by 8.4 percent. A Stanford study has linked 30,000 infections and 700 deaths directly to his rallies like this one in rural Goodyear (AZ) where thousands of people, mostly without masks, clustered closely together.   

A federal judge upheld Texas Supreme Court’s refusal to eliminate almost 127,000 ballots from Harris County, home to Houston, cast in drive-thru voting sites, about ten percent of ballots thus far. In answer to the GOP request, the George W. Bush-appointed judge said, “Why am I just getting this case?” and pointed out the tents for people safely voting during the pandemic “has been going on all summer,” referring to the primary. Texas Republicans maintained the tents used for voting were not “buildings,” as indicated in the law, but some of the drive-through locations were in parking garages. DDT nominated six of the 16 members of the 5^th Circuit Court, the next stop after this ruling. He must expect to lose the election because he said, “We’re going in with our lawyers.”

A Nevada judge also refused to stop early vote counting in Clark County, including Las Vegas.

Younger voters support Joe Biden by 63 percent and DDT by 25 percent.  In three key swing states—Florida, Michigan, and North Carolina—voters under 29 have cast a combined 607,907 early votes, compared to 76,829 ballots from the same age group at the same time in 2016, the year DDT won Michigan by only 10,704 votes.  

To support the Supreme Court decision disenfranchising Wisconsin voters, Justice Brett Kavanaugh used a quote—out of context—from an article by Richard Pildes. Kavanaugh said election results must be “announced” by the end of Election Day. Pildes wrote about the error of Kavanaugh’s statement:

“States are not required to certify their results by Dec. 8th, the safe-harbor date. It is wrong to report that States ‘must’ certify their results by this date. The Dec. 8th date in federal law is an offer, not a requirement: If a State certifies by then, federal law says Congress will then ‘conclusive[ly]’ presume that slate to be valid. But States are free to certify their results after Dec. 8th. The Electoral College does not vote until Dec. 14th. If a State submits a single slate, even after the safe harbor date, Congress is to accept that slate unless both chambers — in the newly elected Congress — vote to reject it.”

With the end of casting ballots tomorrow, DDT’s “October surprise” seems to have been the fake laptops allegedly left by Joe Biden’s son Hunter for a blind computer shop owner to repair. Vladimir Putin may think he has to deal with Joe Biden: the Russian president said he didn’t see “anything criminal” about Hunter Biden’s dealings with Ukraine. Putin said:

“[Hunter Biden] had at least one company, which he practically headed up, and judging from everything he made good money. I don’t see anything criminal about this, at least we don’t know anything about this.”

A Fox News investigation also “found no role for Joe Biden” in the business dealing of his son, Hunter.

In an act of integrity, DDT’s appointee to chair the Federal Salary Council overseeing federal pay resigned in protest over DDT’s order allowing him to fire federal workers without justification to demand loyalty. Ron Sanders wrote:

“As a matter of conscience, I can no longer serve him or his administration.”

White House chief of staff Mark Meadows may be in trouble: FEC reported he illegally spent over $74,000 from his campaign and leadership PAC for personal expenses—groceries, cell phone bill, a Washington jeweler, lodging at DDT’s hotels, etc.—after he announced he wouldn’t rerun for his congressional seat. Details are here. Former Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) has been convicted for this type of illegal expenditures.  

The FEC, dominated by Republicans, has flagged four GOP senatorial candidates, three of them incumbents, for excessive donations with incomplete information. Lindsey Graham (SC) Lindsey Graham (SC) tops the list with $6 million in donations, followed by Martha McSally (AZ), John James running against Michigan’s Gary Peters, and Mitch McConnell (KY). In 2019, McSally was fined $23,000, a small amount, for the same problem during her 2014 congressional run.  

Concerns have been raised about the impartiality of FEC’s top commissioner, Debbie Chacona, because of her political support for DDT and her close ties to his 2016 campaign attorney Don McGahn. Her job is leading the defense against illegal cash donations for political campaigns, but she signed off on shady donations for DDT’s inaugural committee after her Facebook photo of her family surrounding a “Make America Great Again” sign at DDT’s January 2017 inauguration. She also posted a faked photo of a large crowd at DDT’s inauguration labeled the “real picture.” The inaugural committee listed names of donors whose addresses don’t exist in public records, spent large amounts on DDT’s properties, and had illegal contributions from foreign nationals. Chacona emailed McGahn for advice about campaign finance law and regulation as well as making derogatory exchanges about Democratic FEC commissioner Ellen Weintraub and leading advocate for campaign finance reform Fred Wertheimer.

A large number of respected bipartisan professional and government groups have endorsed Biden for president including 20 U.S. attorneys, appointed and working in GOP administrations back to Dwight Eisenhower. Mayors of 76 U.S. cities in 28 states endorsed Biden because of the negative effect on small businesses from DDT’s poor handling of COVID-19. Wikipedia has a list of Biden’s endorsements, including endorsements by publications rarely or never endorsing a presidential candidate or typically siding with the GOP.

For the first time in over 100 years, the New Hampshire Union Leader came out for the Democratic instead of a Republican. The editorial board did waffle and ask people to vote for GOP senators and representatives. Incumbent Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) is ahead by an average of 18 points; the two representatives are projected to win by 90 percent and 100 percent.

Joe Biden is the fourth Atlantic endorsement in 163 years following Abraham Lincoln, Lyndon Johnson, and Hillary Clinton. Four years ago, the periodical wrote:

“[Trump] traffics in conspiracy theories and racist invective; he is appallingly sexist; he is erratic, secretive, and xenophobic; he expresses admiration for authoritarian rulers, and evinces authoritarian tendencies himself … He is an enemy of fact-based discourse; he is ignorant of, and indifferent to, the Constitution; he appears not to read.”

DDT hasn’t changed in four years, but the Atlantic found much more to say about him.

The 35 editors of prestigious New England Journal of Medicine broke its almost two-century tradition avoiding politics and called for people to vote against leaders who failed to address the pandemic, describing them as “dangerously incompetent.” The editorial, “Dying in a Leadership Vacuum,” used no names but obviously condemned DDT’s administration and accused governmental agencies, such as the CDC, the FDA, and the National Institutes of Health, for being undermined by DDT’s administration. When the Scientific American endorsed Joe Biden last month, the respected journal broke its 175-year history to back a presidential candidate.

At his campaign rallies, DDT suggested he will fire Dr. Anthony Fauci, his former infectious disease expert after the election, but he can’t do it. Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Fauci is not a political appointee and cannot be fired without just cause in a lengthy process initiated by the NIH director of the HHS Secretary. Such action could also be appealed in court.

DDT has replaced Fauci’s expertise with Scott Atlas’ lies and idiocies, the most recent one an interview on Russian-state funded and controlled media RT. As ignorant about the Russian propaganda source RT as about the virus, Atlas apologized by saying he didn’t know that it was a registered foreign agent meddling in both 2016 and 2020 elections. He didn’t apologize for his lies. DHS had issued an internal bulletin about Russia’s propaganda “to undermine public trust in the electoral process.” The White House stated Atlas didn’t have clearance for his interview done from White House property. His lies included the standard false and nonscientific claims about masks not having value, lockdowns killing people, and uselessness of testing asymptomatic people. A radiologist, Atlas has no background in infectious diseases or epidemiology.

The voting has begun. The hamlet of Dixville Notch (NH) gathers at midnight to kick off Election Day (right). In the primary, three votes were for Mike Bloomberg, one of the voters a lifelong Republican, and the other two were split between Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg. Joe Biden received all five votes in the first announced votes for November 3. DDT took nearby Millsfield 16-5, and the 48 voters of Hart’s Location changed to daylight voting this year. And so it begins.

 

2016: Cruz Moves Forward, Borowitz Shows Christie’s Problem

Much as we hate to think about the next presidential race, it seems that the presidential competition for the 2016 election has begun in earnest. The most recent sign is Sen. Ted Cruz’s declaration that he’s renouncing his Canadian citizenship. He announced his decision after The Dallas Morning News wrote that Cruz may have dual citizenship with Canada and the United States after being born in Canada to a woman with U.S. citizenship. From his remarks, Cruz seemed astonished about his dual citizenship status:

“Assuming that is true, then sure, I will renounce any Canadian citizenship. Nothing against Canada, but I’m an American by birth and as a U.S. senator; I believe I should be only an American.”

When he completed the form to renounce his Canadian citizenship, the Harvard Law School graduate and Supreme Court attorney issued a press release explaining that he just followed his mother’s directions:

“When I was a kid, my mom told me that I could choose to claim Canadian citizenship if I wanted. I got my U.S. passport in high school. Because I was a U.S. citizen at birth, because I left Calgary when I was 4 and have lived my entire life since then in the U.S., and because I have never taken affirmative steps to claim Canadian citizenship, I assumed that was the end of the matter.”

If Cruz gets rid of Obamacare and loses his job, he might want Canadian citizenship: they have health care up north.

The president is the only elected office in the U.S. mandating that a person be a “natural-born citizen” of the United States. The term “birthers” came from the adamant statements about President Obama not being eligible for the presidency because of the falsehood that he was born in Kenya to a woman with a U.S. citizenship. The question is whether U.S. citizenship is the same as “natural born.”

At least two men not born on U.S. soil have run for president: George Romney (1967) in Mexico and John McCain (2008) in the Panama Canal Zone. The Senate declared that McCain is a natural-born citizen. Presidential eligibility problems go back over 130 years when people argued that President Chester A. Arthur was born in Canada and not Vermont, thereby not meeting the eligibility requirement for President of the United States. In 2011, the Congressional Research Service wrote that people born to U.S. citizens in foreign countries “most likely” qualify as natural-born citizens. The argument, however, is probably not over.

Another apparent interest in being interested in the presidential candidacy came from Rep. Steve King (R-IA), who tweeted a photo of himself at Dixville Notch (NH), the first town in the state scheduled to vote in the 2016 primaries. “Just poking around the back roads. Beautiful place 4 first in nation primaries & general election results.” King’s next destination is the Charleston Meeting in South Carolina, also a destination of Republican presidential wannabes. He plans a sit-down on August 26 with 20 local GOP activists, a meeting that Lin Bennett, vice-chair of the South Carolina Republican Party, indicates an interest in become a candidate.

Iowa’s Republican leaders are pleased that King decided not to run for the Senate seat left by Democratic Tom Harkin’s resignation next year. Immigration reform has made King famous across the country, particularly with rejection of giving citizenship to children brought into the U.S. illegally. “For every one who’s a valedictorian, there’s another 100 out there who weigh 130 pounds and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert,” according to King.

The plethora of far-right potential candidates such as Cruz, King, and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is driving the less than far far right interested parties farther in the conservative direction. For example, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) has gone from considering immigration reform to being very quiet about his postion.

Andy Borowitz satirizes the frantic move to the right by GOP presidential candidates:

“New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie withdrew from consideration as a Presidential candidate today after becoming embroiled in what a leading Republican strategist called “a career-ending empathy scandal.”

“After signing a law barring licensed therapists from engaging in so-called gay conversion therapy, Mr. Christie stunned his fellow Republicans by seemingly expressing compassion for gay children, thus disqualifying himself from any further role in the G.O.P.

“In a brief statement to reporters, Mr. Christie expressed remorse for what he called ‘my unfortunate and ill-considered display of understanding for people different from myself,’ and urged the people of New Jersey to remember ‘my strong record of cutting funds for schools and the elderly.’

“While Mr. Christie might try to regain his fellow Republicans’ trust by vetoing more assault-rifle bans, G.O.P. strategist Tracy Klugian says that the governor does not deserve another chance, citing his “dangerous flirtations with compassion” in the past.

“‘After Hurricane Sandy, Chris Christie worried a lot of us with his recklessly sensitive behavior,’ says Mr. Klugian. ‘But we really thought he had put this problem behind him…. But maybe this will force him to get the help he needs.’”

For progressives, however, Christie more than passes the conservative criteria. He admires the regressive Koch brothers, having attended their summer seminar in Colorado, and said he wants to reduce Medicaid and Medicare while raising the Social Security age and cutting many other government programs. His first four budgets cut women’s health funding while spending $260 million on a now-bankrupt Atlantic City casino. Christie canceled the ARC rail tunnel to Manhattan which would have provided thousands of jobs, cleared up congestion, and reduced pollution. In addition, he weakened over 100 essential environmental protections to help big corporations and land developers.

Late last Friday, hoping to hide from the media, Christie worked to get his conservative cred back when he refused to sign three gun control measures, one which he had requested. He had called for a ban on sales of the Barrett .50 caliber rifle (A3659), the most powerful weapon commonly available to civilians. The weapon fires ammunition the size of carrots and can pierce steel plate armor from several hundred yards away. It can even shoot down airplanes.

Most people would rather avoid hearing about presidential candidate fantasies. But if you hear about politicians straying from their constituents into Iowa, New Hampshire, or South Carolina, you might think about the reason.