Patterico's Pontifications

11/8/2018

Here We Go Again in Arizona

Filed under: General — JVW @ 9:17 pm



[guest post by JVW]

Like in Florida, they’re still counting ’em in Arizona, but as of this evening Kyrsten Sinema has pulled into a 9,600 vote lead over Martha McSally. Here is what is apparently left to be counted, before we jump into the inevitable recount:

Maricopa County has 345,000 ballots to be counted. That includes 150,000 early ballots received before Election Day and 195,000 ballots that were either early ballots dropped off on Election Day, provisional ballots, or out-of-precinct ballots cast on Election Day.

Pima County has 54,000 votes to be counted. This includes about 36,000 early ballots and 18,000 provisional votes. Pima County Registrar of Voters Chris Roads said the Recorder’s Office will begin processing provisional ballots Friday morning.

Pinal County has an estimated 31,800 early ballots still to count, said Michele Forney, elections director. There are 6,800 provisionals left to count, she said, plus about 25,000 early ballots.

Coconino County has about 10,600 votes left to count, per the elections department there. Those votes won’t get counted until Friday.

Ballots remaining to be counted in the rest of the state total 4,600 in Apache County, 1,700 in Cochise County, 580 in La Paz, an estimated 8,000 in Mohave County, 4,000 in Navajo County, 2,200 in Santa Cruz County, 6,100 in Yavapai County and 3,100 in Yuma County, according to Garrett Archer of the Secretary of State’s office.

I don’t have the time or inclination to try to read the tea leaves regarding the remaining votes. Just before the election, NRO’s Jim Gerghaty had reported that registered Republicans in the state had exceeded registered Democrats in early voting by a margin of 100,000 which would seem to bode well for McSally, provided that these are the “early ballots” to which the article above refers. But all conventions seem to be out the window these days.

The first article I linked to above has an interesting bit on the two candidates’ history with razor-thin vote margins. In Sinema’s first Congressional run in 2012 she led slightly at the end of election day, but the race wasn’t finalized until that Friday when her opponent conceded. For her part, McSally won her Congressional seat in 2014 by beating the incumbent Democrat by 167 votes out of 220,000 cast, a margin that necessitated some legal fights. Could we be in store for more of the same?

It’s now quite possible that the GOP goes into the Mississippi run-off election next month holding only 51 Senate seats, instead of the 53 (even 54) that we once expected. Hang on to your hats.

– JVW

Here We Go Again in Florida [Updated]

Filed under: General — JVW @ 5:15 pm



[guest post by JVW]

On Tuesday night, a few hours after the polls were closed, Governor Rick Scott was projected as the winner in the United States Senate election for Florida, defeating incumbent Senator Bill Nelson by around 30,000 votes according to the election night coverage, but that lead is beginning to dwindle because Broward County can’t seem to complete its original count, which is now two days overdue. As of earlier this evening, Scott’s lead had been cut to 17,000 votes. This inability to complete the election count in a timely manner led Senator Marco Rubio to unleash a titanic Tweet storm:

In the interests of conserving space, I am going to just include the text of Rubio’s subsequent tweets.

———-
#Broward supervisor:
– says she doesn’t know how many ballots are left to be counted; &
– Isn’t reporting hourly or regularly,but rather releasing thousands of additional votes,often in the overnight hours,that are chipping away at GOP leads

2/6

#Sayfie
10:16 AM – 8 Nov 2018
———-
#Broward elections department has a history of violating the law:

A court found they improperly handled votes by mail:
[link to Politico piece]

Court found they destroyed ballots in 2016 in violation of state & federal law:
[link to different Politico piece]

#Sayfie

3/6
10:16 AM – 8 Nov 2018
———-
Now democrat lawyers are descending on #Florida. They have been very clear they aren’t here to make sure every vote is counted.

– They are here to change the results of election; &
– #Broward is where they plan to do it.

#Sayfie

4/6
10:16 AM – 8 Nov 2018
———-
A U.S. Senate seat & a statewide cabinet officer are now potentially in the hands of an elections supervisor with a history of incompetence & of blatant violations of state & federal laws.

Read Here: [link to Miami Herald piece]

5/6

#Sayfie
10:16 AM – 8 Nov 2018
———-
#Broward election supervisors ongoing violation of #Florida law requiring timely reporting isn’t just annoying incompetence. It has opened the door for lawyers to come here & try to steal a seat in the U.S. Senate & Florida Cabinet
#Sayfie

6/6
10:16 AM – 8 Nov 2018
———-

Senator Rubio lays out a pretty damming indictment of Brenda Snipes, the election supervisor for Broward County (annual salary: $169,149), who ironically enough was appointed to the position by Governor Jeb Bush when the previous election supervisor was fired for incompetence. She has subsequently been reelected to the position four times, most recently in 2016.

It would seem that there are a lot of curious aspects to this delayed count in Broward. The county employs 6,000 poll workers to process approximately 700,000 voters, so with a ratio of voters to workers standing at a reasonable 116:1 it is kind of hard to imagine that the polls are understaffed. Yet Dr. Snipes (and no, she’s not a physician) claims that she cannot know just how many uncounted ballots remain, even though by law that account was due two days ago (per Rubio). And in a move that is equally parts unbelievable and infuriating, officials are still as of today “finding” boxes of uncounted ballots allegedly left over from Tuesday that were somehow “overlooked.”

It was always pretty clear that the Scott-Nelson matchup would go to a recount, but the new numbers added by Broward now puts the gubernatorial race between Ron DeSantis and Andrew Gillum inside the margin that triggers a recount, as DeSantis’s lead has gone from 0.52% on election night down to 0.37% as of today. Expect Democrats to repeat the “count every vote” mantra while Republicans focus on the blatant inability of Democrat-controlled counties to follow proper voting procedures.

And if that’s not enough, there’s even the prospect that a poorly-designed ballot may have caused voters in Broward to overlook the senate race, and the undervote totals might be as high as 25,000 compared to the governor’s race. (Keep in mind that the county designs the ballot, so bearing the fault here for the poor design would be the Democrat election officials.)

Yes friends, it’s 2000 all over again.

UPDATE: A reporter in Miami disputes Rubio’s characterization and says that the tabulation is not due until four nights after the election, which would be Saturday. In a subsequent Tweet, however, he also acknowledges that every other county in Florida somehow has finished their counting well before the deadline.

– JVW

Tucker Carlson And Family Targeted By A Mob Of Moral Cowards

Filed under: General — Dana @ 11:14 am



[guest post by Dana]

Last night, Tucker Carlson’s wife was at home alone when a mob of approximately 20 individuals congregated in front of the Carlson’s Northwest D.C. home and pounded on the front door, terrifying Mrs. Carlson:

“I called my wife,” Carlson told The Washington Post in a phone interview. “She had been in the kitchen alone getting ready to go to dinner and she heard pounding on the front door and screaming. … Someone started throwing himself against the front door and actually cracked the front door.”

His wife, thinking it was a home invasion, locked herself in the pantry and called 911, Carlson said. The couple have four children, but none were home at the time.

But it wasn’t a home invasion. It was a **protest.

According to reports, those claiming responsibility are part of an already familiar group of agitators called Smash Racism D.C.:

According to now-deleted social media posts shared by Smash Racism D.C., a local anti-fascist organization whose members have been tied to other demonstrations against prominent Republican figures, activists showed up outside Carlson’s home Wednesday and they had a message for him.

“Tucker Carlson, we are outside your home,” one person could be heard saying in the since-deleted video. The person, using a bullhorn, accused Carlson of “promoting hate” and “an ideology that has led to thousands of people dying.”

“We want you to know, we know where you sleep at night,” the person concluded, before leading the group to chant, “Tucker Carlson, we will fight! We know where you sleep at night!”

Clearly hypocrisy and irony is lost on these imbeciles.

Carlson described the events:

Carlson said the protesters had blocked off both ends of his street and carried signs that listed his home address. The group called Carlson a “racist scumbag” and demanded that he “leave town,” according to posts on Twitter. A woman was also overheard in one of the deleted videos saying she wanted to “bring a pipe bomb” to his house, he said.

“It wasn’t a protest. It was a threat,” said Carlson, who is often denounced by critics, particularly liberal ones, for his rhetoric about immigrants and minorities on his Fox News show. “They weren’t protesting anything specific that I had said. They weren’t asking me to change anything. They weren’t protesting a policy or advocating for legislation. … They were threatening me and my family and telling me to leave my own neighborhood in the city that I grew up in.”

On social media accounts, the activists made their point clear:

On Twitter, Smash Racism D.C. accused Carlson of spreading “fear into our homes” every night, taking particular issue with his comments about the migrant caravan.

“Tonight you’re reminded that we have a voice,” a now-deleted tweet read. “Tonight, we remind you that you are not safe either.”

“Fascists are vulnerable. Confront them at their homes!”

“Protecting ourselves and our communities means interfering with those who make a platform for hate,” the statement said. “So we will go to their homes and their workplaces, and find them in restaurants.”

According to Brian Stelter, who viewed the police report:

The police report describes the incident as a “suspected hate crime” and says the motivation was “anti-political.”

One would think that a reasonable people would universally, and unhesitatingly condemn the illegal actions of moral cowards intent on terrorizing a family because they hold views different than their own. Because that’s what good and decent people of all stripes do. Or did, once upon a time. So while it may have once been the norm, it no longer is:

Untitled

Untitled2

How hard is it to put yourself and your family in the Carlson’s shoes? If your loved ones were being threatened and frightened in a similar manner, would you not be enraged and upset and determined to see those guilty brought to justice? Would you not, with absolute clarity, allowing nothing as mundane and temporal as politics to obstruct your view, know, unequivocally, that this behavior is wrong and should be condemned? You would see it clearly if it happened to you. You would feel the rising nausea as you envisioned your own spouse crouched in abject terror. If it happened to you. The wrong of it would be a brutal slap of reality to your smug, closely held views of politics, race and the state of America. But reasonable people, who still know right from wrong and whose inner-selves are not polluted with political deceit and deception, would know this without it having to happen to them. That there are many who are not condemning what happened, is disturbing. That others believe what happened is a justified form of “rough justice” because they don’t like Carlson and his ideas, is even more disturbing. Something is terribly broken inside any individual who believes this is little more than a political strategy, or an effort to shed light on bad ideas. But not even these individuals deserve to ever have this happen to them. How has this become so hard for people to understand?

And this works both ways, on both sides of the political aisle. It should all be equally condemned:

An Arkansas man was arrested Tuesday for allegedly making death threats against CNN anchor Don Lemon. According to a press release from the Baxter County Sheriff’s Office, 39-year-old Benjamin Craig Matthews has been charged with “terroristic threatening” (five counts in the first degree, four in the second) and harassing communications (nine counts).

In one of his calls to CNN, Matthews allegedly threatened to beat up Lemon. It didn’t end there, the Baxter Bulletin reports:

The next day, Matthews is accused of calling the network six times in the span of 23 minutes. During one of the calls Matthews reportedly asked to be directed to Lemon’s “dead body hanging from a tree.”

During another call in that short span, Matthews reportedly asked the operator to help kill Lemon.

One Nov. 2, the next, Matthews is accused of placing another six calls to the network during another 23-minute time span. In three of those calls, Matthews is accused of asking his calls be directed to “pipe bombs for Don Lemon.

Helpful hint: If you despise the politics and ideas of Tucker Carlson (or Don Lemon), then do the hard work of persuading them of the rightness of your views, do the hard work of demonstrating why they are wrong, challenge and compel them to re-think beliefs and ideals. Of course, it really goes without saying that cowardly pussies are just that, and incapable of doing the real hard work.

Preemptive strike: It is equally condemnable that Christine Blasey-Ford and her family have had to move four times because of threats and harassment from horrible people. I shouldn’t have to note this, but this is where we’re at…

(**Clearly it all depends on what your definition of protest is.)

(Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.)

–Dana

Mueller Better Not Go After Trump’s Finances with His Lynch Mob, Says…This Fella

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 7:09 am



The fella, whose opinion piece was published at CNN in August 2017, sure thought Mueller needs to stay in line:

Last month, when President Donald Trump was asked by The New York Times if special counsel Robert Mueller would be crossing a line if he started investigating the finances of Trump and his family, the President said, “I think that’s a violation. Look, this is about Russia.”

The President is absolutely correct. Mueller has come up to a red line in the Russia 2016 election-meddling investigation that he is dangerously close to crossing.

According to a CNN article, Mueller’s investigators could be looking into financial records relating to the Trump Organization that are unrelated to the 2016 election. According to these reports, “sources described an investigation that has widened to focus on possible financial crimes, some unconnected to the 2016 election.” The piece goes on to cite law enforcement sources who say non-Russia-related leads that “involve Trump associates” are being referred to the special counsel “to encourage subjects of the investigation to cooperate.”

This information is deeply concerning to me. It does not take a lawyer or even a former federal prosecutor like myself to conclude that investigating Donald Trump’s finances or his family’s finances falls completely outside of the realm of his 2016 campaign and allegations that the campaign coordinated with the Russian government or anyone else. That goes beyond the scope of the appointment of the special counsel.

. . . .

If he were to continue to investigate the financial relationships without a broadened scope in his appointment, then this would raise serious concerns that the special counsel’s investigation was a mere witch hunt.

The author: one Matthew Whitaker. Here’s more Whitaker, touting a piece that recommends that Trump not cooperate with Mueller’s “lynch mob”:

From the piece:

For its part, the Trump people have hired a phalanx of high-priced lawyers. One of them, special counsel to the president Ty Cobb, has announced that “The White House is committed to fully cooperating with Mr. Mueller.”

I sure hope Ty was kidding. Cooperation with Mueller’s lynch mob is the last thing Trump or any of his people should do.

If the name Matthew Whitaker sounds familiar, it should. That’s who Donald Trump just named as acting Attorney General. He’s now in charge of the Mueller investigation.

Here he is saying there is no evidence of obstruction of justice or collusion — although he does praise Mueller in general, and state that perhaps Mueller has evidence he is not revealing — and admonishes Trump for seeming to find the secret Cohen tapes amusing:

Will Whitaker recuse himself from supervision of the investigation, having made these very public and very derisive comments about it? My firm prediction is: hell no. That’s why Trump put him there. He thought he had a loyalist in charge with Sessions, and felt betrayed when Sessions recused himself. He fired Comey for not being a loyalist. (Whitaker says Trump was right to fire Comey, by the way.) All that matters to Trump is having a loyalist in charge of this investigation.

Now he appears to have one.

[Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.]

Ruth Bader Ginsburg in Hospital

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 6:26 am



For broken ribs after a fall:

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is in the hospital after falling in her office Wednesday night, the Court announced in a statement on Thursday.

Ginsburg, 85, went home after the fall but continued to experience “discomfort overnight” and went to George Washington Hospital early Thursday. Tests revealed she fractured three ribs and she “was admitted for observation and treatment,” according to the statement.

Best wishes to her for a speedy recovery.

[Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back, where I am allowing comments and will ban anyone who violates the rules there.]


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