The game clock stopped on Nov. 5. Now we’re in overtime.
Don’t know about your states, but we’ve got a recount scheduled to start on Tuesday.
As counties tabulated remaining absentee and provisional ballots, Democrat Allison Riggs took the lead late Friday by 106 votes in the NC Supreme Court race. At the end of election day, she was down by over 7,000. As of this writing, there are still several counties yet to upload their final tallies that don’t plan to complete their work until Monday. So more to come.
Upside? Blue counties left to report voted 455k of their citizens. Red counties voted only 172k. The vast majority are already counted. What’s left are the handful that need approving by the county boards.
Remember the fierce 2023 battle in Wisconsin for the state supreme court seat won by Janet Protasiewicz? These local and state races matter. But like Rodney Dangerfield, they largely get no repsect. It’s why we station poll greeters outside polling stations urging voters to vote their ballots all the way to the bottom. Many don’t. Downlballot races suffer. We are still reeling from N.C. Chief Justice Cheri Beasley’s 2022 loss by 401 votes. Holding Riggs’s seat (she was appointed by Goc. Roy Cooper in September 2023) means maintaining the current 5-2 (R-to-D) balance from which Democrats hope to build. People’s rights hang on it.
Photo courtesy of Allison Riggs.
Then there are the voting changes year after year (WRAL):
Some ballot officials won’t count this year, in a change from years past, are any mail-in ballots that arrived after polls closed.
For years the state allowed mail-in ballots to be counted as long as they were postmarked on or before Election Day and arrived within three days of the election, a grace period that acknowledged the slow and sometimes irregular pace of mail delivery. But Republican state lawmakers eliminated that grace period ahead of the 2024 elections, saying it was necessary to improve voters’ confidence in election results. It was also likely politically helpful to the GOP; recent shifts in voting habits have led to Democrats being more likely to vote by mail than Republicans.
Around the state, it’s possible that thousands of voters had their ballots invalidated due to the new rules.
Wake County officials, for instance, say they received 616 mail-in ballots that would’ve been counted in the past but couldn’t be counted this year.
I’ve always been frustrated by the inability of anyone to address the rank corruption of Trump’s administration. Some of his early cabinet officials were chased out of office for their greed and grift but nobody ever seemed to care much that Trump and his family were making vast sums of money from his presidency. (The utter gall of going after the Biden family for that was overwhelming.)
There were some belated senate investigtions which never held a public hearing as far as I can tell. But they’re over. And it’s going to be so much worse. Greg Sargent writes:
It’s often said that Trump campaigned expressly on a platform of authoritarian rule, but this also applies to corruption: He didn’t disguise his promises to govern in the direct interests of some of the wealthiest executives and investors in the country—and he won anyway. Trump and his allies will likely interpret this as a green light to engage in an extraordinary spree of unrestrained malfeasance.
There are several reasons to fear this could amount to a level of oligarchic corruption that outdoes anything Trump did in his first term. In short, conditions are ripe for right-wing elites to try to loot the place from top to bottom.
First, Senate Democrats, who just lost majority control, are now bracing to hit a wall in their inquiries into Trump’s apparent quid pro quo dealings. The Senate Budget Committee has been investigating the aforementioned $1 billion solicitation from Big Oil executives, aiming to establish precisely what Trump promised them—he reportedly offered to systematically roll back President Biden’s green energy policies and other regulations—seemingly in direct exchange for campaign money.
With little fanfare, this investigation has been making progress: At least one major energy company confirmed that the gathering happened, and most of the other companies haven’t refuted the central allegation, according to a committee aide. Democrats have followed up with demands for company documents that might illuminate exactly what took place.
But there is zero chance the incoming GOP majority will continue down this road, which means it will be much harder for Democrats to compel these companies to illuminate the true nature of their transaction with Trump.
“Republican control of the Senate will unfortunately undermine congressional efforts to hold Trump and executives accountable for wreaking havoc on our planet and selling out American families and U.S. energy policy to the highest bidder,” Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, chair of the Budget Committee, told me in a statement. He added that this will hamper getting to the bottom of this “apparent quid pro quo.” Once these policy changes start in earnest, we’ll have no way to trace them back to it, let alone to shed congressional light on influence peddling in real time.
Yeah, that’s over. So is the Jared Kushner investigation. Why the Senate didn’t make a serious attempt to take this on is a real indictment of the Democrats. I guess they had their own sugar daddies to protect. And here we are.
I’m with Joan Walsh on this. Watching Joe Biden welcome Trump to the White House almost made me sick especially since Melania apparently refused to go because Jill Biden “disgusts” her:
Within just a few hours of President Joe Biden’s welcoming President-elect Donald Trump to a cozy two-hour Oval Office meeting (which honestly made me queasy), Trump made any right-thinking American queasy, too. He quickly nominated former Democrat-turned-quisling Tulsi Gabbard his director of national intelligence, accused pedophile Matt Gaetz as attorney general, and womanizing, serial liar, dead-baby-bear-defiling, whale-head-removing, worm-in-his-head anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as head of Health and Human Services.
That was just after he nominated Christian nationalist Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel.
What to do? Well, if Republicans decide to hold on to their power to confirm the president’s nominees—new Senate majority leader John Thune said he was open to Trump’s demand to make recess appointments—I hope they will not confirm any of them. Obviously, if you’re a Democrat, you make sure every Democrat votes against confirming them.
But before the confirmation dramas begin: Vice President Kamala Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff, former president Barack Obama and Michelle Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton—and honestly, every Democratic member of Congress–must follow the lead of the late Representative John Lewis, who skipped Trump’s first inauguration, and decline their invitation to the inauguration on January 20.
“It will be the first one that I miss since I’ve been in Congress,” Lewis said in January 2017. “You cannot be at home with something that you feel that is wrong, is not right.” Lewis died in July 2020, before he could attend Joe Biden’s inauguration. But I know he’s fine with that. And if he were here now, I know what he would do. This is an ultimately inauthentic government, hateful of knowledge and science. And people. All but the people they see in their boardrooms.
Please don’t legitimize this, Madame Vice President.
Absolutely. No one could blame any of the Democrats for refusing.
Tht’s the rumor. It does appear that his name has been floated as a trial balloon which hasn’t happened for any of the rest of the freak show so maybe it won’t happen. If it does:
Kash Patel, who is poised to serve as a top official in a second Trump administration:
“We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We’re going to come after you.” pic.twitter.com/C0tvXXrNah
— Republican Voters Against Trump (@AccountableGOP) July 9, 2024
“We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We’re going to come after you.”
This certainly does confirm that Trump plans to fire Christopher Wray. And after his experience with Comey and the Wray I can’t imagine that he won’t put in the most trusted henchman he can find in the job. Patel is exactly what he’s looking for.
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are asking Americans who are “high-IQ small-government revolutionaries” and willing to work over 80 hours a week to join their new Department of Government Efficiency – at zero pay.
In a new X post on Thursday that doubled as a job announcement and another one of Musk’s trolling attempts, the account for the newly formed Doge wrote: “We don’t need more part-time idea generators. We need super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting.”
The name of the department, which is not part of the federal government, harkens back to a meme of an expressive shiba inu dog.
“If that’s you, DM this account with your CV. Elon & Vivek will review the top 1% of applicants,” the statement added.
In a separate post, Musk chimed in on the callout, saying: “Indeed, this will be tedious work, make lots of enemies & compensation is zero.”
“What a great deal!” Musk, the richest man in the world, wrote with a laughing emoji. He has promised to reduce federal bureaucracy by a third and cut $2tn from US government spending, an endeavor he said “necessarily involves some temporary hardship”.
It appears to me that this may be the one Trump initiative that’s going to crash and burn sooner rather than later. Obviously, they can’t just cut one third of the federal budget. Thagt would send the country into a rapid tailspin and might just initiate civil war. (Of course, tht might be the idea….)
Elon and Vivek will have their little hobby horse and then it will hit a brick wall, similar to Trump’s first term’s “voter fraud commission” which ended with a whimper not a bang.
This whole thing has the feel of a lark for Musk which he may very well lose interest in nbefore too long. And it’s already clear that Trump is getting sick of him:
I don’t know that he’s jealous of Musk exactly. He likes having the richest man in the world following him around like a dog. But he doesn’t like the fact Musk is getting any credit or that people think he’s stronger than him and taking over as “shadow president.” This bromance won’t last too much longer.
Well, President-elect Donald Trump certainly is off to a roaring start, isn’t he? Ensconced at his Mar-a-lago beach club with the richest man in the world glued to his side every moment, he’s getting a whole new band together for his second term. Aside from his choice of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio for Secretary of State, this time there’s nary an establishment figure anywhere to be seen as he chooses his new cabinet and White House staff. He’s going directly to the life-blood of MAGA and picking the most controversial, lib-triggering extremists he can find.
I mentioned his first group of nominees earlier this week none of whom have anything to particularly recommend them for these jobs but they at least have some government experience behind them. The choice of FOX News celebrity Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense was the first inkling that this was about to go seriously off the rails.
Hegseth has no experience running anything and has no government experience beyond serving as a National Guard officer in Iraq and Afghanistan and a prison guard at Guantanamo prison. From his perch as a talking head on Fox News he was able to convince former president Trump to pardon war criminals against the wishes of the Pentagon so he does have that going for him. And aside from the fact that Trump chose him because he “has the look” as Salon’s Amanda Marcotte reported, he is a fierce critic of the military brass, suggesting that at least a third of the 800 general and flag officers are “complicit” in the “politicization” of the military. He says he will clean house and that’s what Trump has hired him for.
Hegseth’s startling choice was quickly overshadowed by the absolutely shocking announcement the next day that he was naming former Hawaii representative Tulsi Gabbard as the Director of National Intelligence and (now former) Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz as Attorney General. I would guess that most of America either gasped or laughed when they heard. I suspect that only picking Georgia firebrand Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene for Surgeon General would have been more stupefying.
Gabbard never served on any of the intelligence committees during her eight years in congress and has no relevant outside experience. Her claim to fame is as a Democratic apostate with very bizarre foreign policy ideas, including a soft spot for Syrian strongman (and Russian ally) Bashar al-Assad with whom she personally met and Russian president Vladimir Putin. She claims that America wants to destroy Russia and provoked it into invading Ukraine so that it could impose draconian sanctions on the country. She has put forward Russian propaganda so often that the country’s state media even calls her “our girlfriend.” She also grew up in and remains a member of a cult called the Science of Identity Foundation whose leader is heralded by members as a deity in his own right.
Gabbard and Trump share a weird affection for Vladimir Putin but they also share a belief that they are being persecuted by the US Intelligence community which Gabbard claims has put her on a secret domestic terrorist watch list which no one can confirm.
Kamala says she believes in freedom, but I was put on a secret terror watch list after I publicly criticized her. No one will be safe from political retaliation under a Harris administration. I put my life on the line for this country. Now the government calls me a terror threat. pic.twitter.com/3xjgjmrLhD
And then there’s Matt Gaetz. Apparently, he wasn’t on anyone’s short list but was on Trump’s plane and they had a chat after which Trump said he wanted him for Attorney General. He is totally unqualified for the job. He barely ever practiced law and spent his entire time in the congress as a political gadfly. He did defend Donald Trump on television and he and Trump share an antipathy for the Justice Department having both been criminally investigated. Both men remain bitter and vengeful about that which is undoubtedly the main reason Trump believes that Gaetz will be a perfect Attorney General.
“None of the attorneys had what Trump wants, and they didn’t talk like Gaetz,” the adviser said. “Everyone else looked at AG as if they were applying for a judicial appointment. They talked about their vaunted legal theories and constitutional bullshit. Gaetz was the only one who said, ‘yeah, I’ll go over there and start cuttin’ fuckin’ heads.’
This nomination isn’t some 4 dimensional chess as some are suggesting. Trump wants Gaetz confirmed and there’s no reason to think he won’t get that done.
Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, on Thursday Trump announced that he had chosen Robert F. Kennedy Jr for Secretary of Health and Human Services. He is a batshit conspiracy theorist who says he had a worm in his brain and admits to picking up a dead bear on the side of the road and dumping it in Central Park for a laugh.
David Corn at Mother Jones did a deep dive into RFK Jr’s twisted reality and reported that he once told Trumpy podcasters Joe Rogan and Theo Von that “a global elite led by the CIA had been planning for years to use a pandemic to end democracy and impose totalitarian control on the entire world.” He also said “Covid-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese” which is such utter nonsense it makes my head hurt to read it. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Kennedy has done some real harm already. He’s personally responsible for the deaths of more than 80 people in Samoa, most of them children, with his lies about measles vaccines:
Vaccine specialist Dr. Paul Offit says RFK Jr. is directly responsible for the deaths of 83 people in Samoa, most of whom were young children, due to his role in depressing vaccination rates on the island. @DecodingFoxNewspic.twitter.com/QICzTnBYIS
— The Intellectualist (@highbrow_nobrow) June 16, 2024
It is mind-boggling that such a person could be put in charge of the vast US government health care agencies. But all signs say that’s exactly what’s going to happen because the Republican Senate is composed of MAGA cultists and/or invertebrate cowards who are going to try to blame the Democrats for making the confirmations difficult so they can say they have no choice but to allow Trump to give them all recess appointments.
It seems clear that the only way these people will not be appointed is if Trump changes his mind and withdraws the nomination. And he has no reason to do it. Trump will never have to run for president again and in his mind his legacy is secure as the greatest president, maybe the greatest human, who ever lived. If he feels like rewarding people who supported him, he can do that but it’s purely at his discretion and he is not a generous person. Unless someone has something on him that’s so devastating that it will destroy him, he is completely without restraint. He’s already a convicted felon, a fraudster, a sexual assaulter, a proven pathological liar who stole classified documents and refused to give them back so it’s hard to imagine what that might be. At this point, Donald Trump believes he is invincible.
And what that means is that he no longer has anything to lose and there are only two things he really cares about. It’s not taxes or tariffs and it’s not even mass deportation. Sure, he’ll do those things if he can but they were mostly arguments for getting elected so he’ll leave that in the hands of his henchmen and take credit for whatever they manage to do. What he really cares about is money and revenge, the same things he’s always cared about.
He’s worth billions and he’s got the richest man in the world opening up his checkbook. He can now concentrate on what really makes him happy — vengeance. That’s what he’s hiring these crackpots to do for him. He wants payback against the DOJ for all the investigations, the military brass for refusing to abandon their oaths when he wanted them to, the intelligence community for saying the Russians were helping him, and the scientists and health professionals who exposed his lies during the pandemic. They all made him look stupid and he won’t rest until they pay for it.
The following quote is making the rounds on social media in light of these absurd cabinet nominations:
“Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.” – Hannah Arendt in “The Origins of Totalitarianism”
I don’t think I expected totalitarianism to come in service of one very petty narcissist’s wounded ego but it appears that that’s what’s happening. And right now there doesn’t seem to be any will to stop it.
How many clowns can Donald Trump fit into that car?
Quite a few, it seems. Including a man who in court documents claimed brain damage.
“The reason we know about RFK Jr’s brain worm is that he mentioned it during a divorce deposition, to argue that he was cognitively impaired and therefore had limited earning potential,” posted Catherine Rampell of The Washington Post.
The reason we know about RFK Jr’s brain worm is that he mentioned it during a divorce deposition, to argue that he was cognitively impaired and therefore had limited earning potential. Now he’s up for a cabinet postwww.nytimes.com/2024/05/08/u…
Trump, himself in mental decline and famous for suggesting people inject bleach to cure COVID-19, chose Brain Worm Guy to head the Department of Health and Human Services. Like his prospective boss, RFK Jr. is a clear and present danger to public health (The Guardian):
Alastair McAlpine, a pediatric physician at British Columbia’s children’s hospital, wrote: “It is hard to overstate what a terrible decision this is. RFK Jr has no medical training. He is a hardcore anti-vaccine and misinformation peddler. The last time he meddled in a state’s medical affairs (Samoa), 83 children died of measles.”
According to FactCheck.org, in 2018, two infants in Samoa died when nurses accidentally prepared the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine with an expired muscle relaxant instead of water. Following the infants’ deaths, the Samoan government temporarily suspended the vaccination program.
The temporary suspension prompted Kennedy and his anti-vaccine nonprofit Children’s Health Defense to reportedly spread various falsehoods about vaccinations across the island, in turn resulting in a drastic decline in vaccination rates.
A year later, a measles outbreak on the island caused by a sick traveler ended up infecting more than 57,000 people and killing 83, including children.
#BREAKING RFK Jr to head the Department of Dying of a Preventable Disease
We might have done better. We did do better, Heather Cox Richardson reminds her Substack readers:
The Biden-Harris administration today released numbers revealing that over the past four years, their policies have kick-started a boom in the creation of small businesses across the country. Since the administration took office, entrepreneurs have filed more than 20 million applications for new businesses, the most of any presidential term in history. This averages to more than 440,000 applications a month, a rate more than 90% faster than averages before the pandemic. Black business ownership has doubled, and Hispanic business ownership is up by 40% since before the pandemic.
The administration encouraged that growth with targeted loans, tax credits, federal contracts, and support services. Small businesses are major job creators and employ about 47% of all private sector employees.
President Joe Biden rejected the “neoliberalism” of the previous 40 years that had moved about $50 trillion dollars from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%. Those embracing that theory maintain that the government should let markets operate without regulation, concentrating wealth among a few people who will invest it more efficiently than they can if the government intervenes with regulations or taxes that hamper the ability of investors to amass wealth.
Biden and Harris returned the U.S. to the model that both parties had embraced until 1981: the idea that the government should regulate business, provide a basic social safety net, promote infrastructure, and protect civil rights. That system had reduced extremes of wealth in the U.S. after the Great Depression and given most Americans a path to prosperity.
Biden’s policies worked, enabling the U.S. to recover from the pandemic more quickly than any other country with a modern economy, sending unemployment to historic lows, and raising wages faster than inflation for the bottom 80% of Americans.
It has also had social effects, most notably today with the announcement from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that the U.S. is seeing a historic drop in deaths from the street drug fentanyl. From June 2023 to June 2024, deaths dropped by roughly 14.5%, translating into more than 16,000 lives saved. Experts say the drop is due to better addiction healthcare, the widespread availability of the opioid reversal drug naloxone, and lower potency of street fentanyl.
Out of spite as much as ignorance, Trumps troop of clowns means to reverse everything the Biden administration accomplished.
Irony, we’ve repeatedly heard, is dead. So may be many who need not die in the near future. The nail in irony’s coffin is that Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, will have leading the drive for more efficient government twobillionaires, “Tesla CEO Elon Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.”
RALEIGH, N.C. (WTVD) — A viral email from a North Carolina lawmaker’s office is raising eyebrows, after allegedly telling a North Carolina woman to leave the country for raising concerns about our state’s abortion laws.
Video of the email has been circulating all over social media, seen over 200 thousand times on TikTok. It all started from a North Carolina TikTok user Lindsay Talley, who shared an email from her friend who she says has a genetic condition creating life-threatening abnormalities. Her friend wrote to her Republican State Senator Danny Britt concerned about the state’s abortion laws and her ability to expand her family.
And in response, his official email back told her to leave the country. The email says “Thank you so much for the email, I am not quite certain how we are preventing you from expanding your family. I suggest you move to China immediately and see how that works for you. If for some reason that fails Russia is nice in the winter and Venezuela in the summer.”
The email is signed by Senator Britt but appears to be sent from Senator Britt’s legislative assistant, Camille McDougald. In a follow-up email to Talley, McDougald replied “I responded how Senator Britt wanted to me to. No further comment.”
NC Senate District 24
CBS17 received a note explaining her predicament from the woman who contacted Britt. She requested to remain anonymous:
“We appreciate the support and understand the outrage from Senator Britt’s response. We want to expand our family, but do not feel the laws in North Carolina are inclusive for those who experience rare and uncommon genetic disorders that cause ‘life-altering’ and ‘life-threatening’ abnormalities. These abnormalities that are not compatible with life without extensive medical intervention.
“Many people will think of the common genetic disorders that are tested for early in pregnancy such as T18, Down Syndrome, etc. However, the rare disorders that are uncommon cannot be tested for until 16-weeks and beyond. The doctors are unclear if these types of genetic disorders are considered ‘life-threatening’.
“We are not the only family who is experiencing this type of scenario and want to bring awareness and changes for other families across North Carolina. We respect that some may not agree or fully understand this situation, however we want to emphasize the importance of relying on your doctors, your personal values, and your faith to determine what is best for your family and to do so without government interference.
“We hope that with the collaboration of our governor and local and state representatives, that we can adjust the verbiage of these laws to include genetic abnormalities so families like us can expand their family without fear of retaliation or prevention of medical care. Our intent is to bring awareness and change to better the families of North Carolina.”
Tech billionaire Elon Musk was handed a major win Tuesday evening when President-elect Donald Trump announced that the Tesla and SpaceX CEO would co-lead a new “Department of Government Efficiency” with Vivek Ramaswamy.
The announcement reinforces the closeness Musk has managed to achieve with Trump, even after the election. But for some people in Trump’s orbit, Musk’s presence has felt overbearing.
Musk has been so aggressive in pushing his views about Trump’s second term that he’s stepping on the toes of Trump’s transition team and may be overstaying his welcome at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s home in Palm Beach, Florida, according to two people familiar with the transition who have spent time at the resort over the past week.
The sources said Musk’s near-constant presence at Mar-a-Lago in the week since Election Day had begun to wear on people who’ve been in Trump’s inner circle longer than he has and who see him as overstepping his role in the transition. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because they’re not authorized to speak publicly.
“He’s behaving as if he’s a co-president and making sure everyone knows it,” one of the people said.
“And he’s sure taking lots of credit for the president’s victory. Bragging about America PAC and X to anyone who will listen. He’s trying to make President Trump feel indebted to him. And the president is indebted to no one,” this person added.
Heh. Trump is so weak and feeble that he’s letting Musk take over. Does he have the energy to fight back? I sure hope the media asks him about this the next time they get the chance…
It’s only a matter of time before Trump gets sick of him. He’s an annoying presence anyway and once Trump gets wind of him stealing his thunder it’s going to get unpleasant. There’s a lot of talk about Musk merging Xitter with Truth Social so there might be some money on the line in which case Trump will hold back until that’s settled. But in the end he’s going to have to ease Musk out. Two malignant narcissists can’t be in the same space for long without killing each other.
