@kenvogel (nyt)
SCOOP: Representatives of PUTIN ally OLEG DERIPASKA expect that sanctions against his companies will be lifted by the TRUMP administration after the midterms. Then they plan to launch an effort to get personal sanctions against Deripaska lifted as well. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/04/world/europe/oleg-deripaska-russia-oligarch-sanctions.html
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A must read article:
“To be honest,” he wrote, “I didn’t see evil when I looked into Robert Bowers’ eyes. All I saw was a clear lack of depth, intelligence, and palpable amounts of confusion.”He added, however, that he thought Bowers “probably had no friends, was easily influenced by propaganda, and wanted attention on a sociopathic level. He’s the kind of person that is easily manipulated by people with a microphone, a platform, and use fear for motivation.”
“This was the same Robert Bowers that just committed mass homicide. The Robert Bowers who instilled panic in my heart worrying my parents were two of his 11 victims less than an hour before his arrival.“I’m sure he had no idea I was Jewish. Why thank a Jewish nurse, when 15 minutes beforehand, you’d shoot me in the head with no remorse?
“I didn’t say a word to him about my religion. I chose not to say anything to him the entire time. I wanted him to feel compassion. I chose to show him empathy. I felt that the best way to honour his victims was for a Jew to prove him wrong. Besides, if he finds out I’m Jewish, does it really matter? The better question is, what does it mean to you?”
In conclusion, Mahler wrote: “If my actions mean anything, love means everything.”
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Too many questions remain about what happened in Broward County over the number of uncounted ballots, calling for recounts and run offs. Other ballot issues are creating real questions as to who was pulling the levers. And a long history of party politics when recounts happen (GWB’s infiltration of 'Brooks Brothers protestors there to rabble rouse and create mayhem for the process in 2000 presidential recount with Al Gore.)
State Governor
R - Ron DeSantis v Dem Mayor Andrew Gillum (recount to be issued)
Senator
R Gov Rick Scott v D Sen Bill Nelson (potential recount)
As the Republican margin in Florida’s U.S. Senate race narrowed and the contest headed toward a manual recount, everyone from elected Republicans to online conspiracy-mongers began screaming foul on Thursday night.
Florida Gov. Rick Scott, who is clinging to a roughly 34,000-vote lead over Sen. Bill Nelson (D), held a press conference at the Florida governor’s mansion in which he called on law enforcement to launch an investigation and announced that he and the National Republican Senate Committee were bringing a lawsuit against officials in Broward County, where many votes are still being counted.
…
Florida’s gubernatorial race is also tightening. The race between Andrew Gillum and Ron DeSantis had appeared to be over on Tuesday night, when Gillum, the Democrat, conceded. But as the counts continued, particularly in Broward County,the gap between the candidates narrowed so much that it passed the 0.5 percent automatic recount threshold on Thursday afternoon, Politico reported.
The late swing toward the Democrats—powered by South Florida—is so pronounced in the election for Florida’s agriculture commissioner that Democrat Nikki Fried has now moved into the lead after she trailed her Republican rival on Election Night.
And here’s what’s happening in Miami-Dade County
Once again, Broward County is haunting the nation’s dreams and, once again, we find ourselves in the preposterous position of having one of the candidates controlling the process of settling an election in which he is involved. The count in the Senate race has closed to within the state’s requirement for a statewide hand recount, and Scott went into a frenzy trying to stop it.
From the Tampa Bay Times:
Rick Scott filed suit against Broward County Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes over the county’s delay in completing its count of the votes from the midterm election. Scott sued as a candidate for the U.S. Senate, not in his capacity as governor of Florida. Scott followed up by lashing out at Snipes in an extraordinary press conference at the Governor’s Mansion on Thursday night. Broward County lags the rest of the state in completing the first, crucial phases of counting ballots from Tuesday’s midterm election. As of 8 p.m. Thursday, the same time the governor summoned reporters to the mansion, Broward County was the only one of the state’s 67 counties that had not reported to the state that it had completed its tabulation of early votes. Early voting ended Sunday in Broward.
And
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Yes, I think so too. #wishfulThingBasedOnPastBehavior
Speaking on Brian Williams’s 11th Hour, Figliuzzi said he had “a theory” about what Mueller would do: “I think he’s ready to indict some folks and…those indictments will tell the story of what he’s found against the president.
"> I’m not saying he’s indicting the president. I’m saying there’s a middle ground where he tells us the story, locks it into the court system by indicting others, then files a report with Whitaker,” he said.
“Perhaps what we’ll see is Bob Mueller telling us the story of a corrupt president through indictments,” Figliuzzi said, adding that Mueller knew his days were numbered, and so would act soon.
“I think the Whitaker appointment steps up the timeline, and I think perhaps if Mueller sticks to the strategy of telling us the story through indictments—the indictments speak to us—that he’ll speak to us soon, very soon, with additional indictments, perhaps that tell the story of a corrupt president,” he said.
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More good news from California! 
Republican Rep. Jeff Denham lost his lead over Democrat Josh Harder on Friday in one of California’s four unresolved congressional races as updated ballot counts showed the GOP in growing danger of losing as many as six House seats in the state.
GOP Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of Costa Mesa fell further behind Democrat Harley Rouda, who is now more than 7,300 votes ahead of the 15-term congressman.
Another Republican Orange County incumbent, Rep. Mimi Walters, has seen her election-night lead of 6,233 votes drop to 2,020 in her race against Democrat Katie Porter.
The tabulation Friday was also alarming for Republican candidate Young Kim of Fullerton, whose election-night lead over Democrat Gil Cisneros has shrunk to 2,672 votes.
If historical voting patterns hold, Republicans will lose all four of those seats. More than 50,000 votes have yet to be counted in each contest, analysts in both parties estimate, and the votes tallied latest in California nearly always skew Democratic.
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It’s looking more and more like Trump has just committed another flagrant act of obstruction of justice.
The President claims he doesn’t know Matthew Whitaker, but if these sources can be believed, it appears as if he’s been scheming with him for sometime – and it’s hard to believe that if they were plotting to investigate Hillary Clinton, they wouldn’t have also discussed the Mueller investigation (which Trump adamantly denies they ever did). It’s becoming increasingly clear that Trump has just appointed his mole in the DOJ as head of the DOJ – and he has done so with every intention of directing him to put the brakes on the Mueller investigation and at the same time launch investigations into his political enemies.
Matthew Whitaker, whom President Donald Trump named as his acting attorney general on Wednesday, privately provided advice to the president last year on how the White House might be able to pressure the Justice Department to investigate the president’s political adversaries, Vox has learned.
In May 2018, President Donald Trump demanded that the Justice Department open a criminal investigation into whether the FBI “infiltrated or surveilled” his presidential campaign and whether Obama administration officials were involved in this purported effort.
During this period of time, Whitaker was the chief of staff to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and in that role was advising Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on how to counter the president’s demands. But according to one former and one current administration official, Whitaker was simultaneously counseling the White House on how the president and his aides might successfully pressure Sessions and Rosenstein to give in to Trump’s demands.
Sources say that Whitaker presented himself as a sympathetic ear to both Sessions and Rosenstein — telling them he supported their efforts to prevent the president from politicizing the Justice Department…
But two . . . people with firsthand information about the matter told me that Whitaker, in his conversations with the president, presented himself as a vigorous supporter of Trump’s position and “committed to extract as much as he could from the Justice Department on the president’s behalf.”
One administration official with knowledge of the matter told me: “Whitaker let it be known [in the White House] that he was on a team, and that was the president’s team.”
Whitaker’s open sympathizing with Trump’s frequent complaints about the Mueller investigation resulted in an unusually close relationship between a president and a staffer of his level. The president met with Whitaker in the White House, often in the Oval Office, at least 10 times, a former senior administration official told me. On most of those occasions, Sessions was also present, but it’s unclear if that was always the case.
During this period, Whitaker frequently spoke by phone with both Trump and Chief of Staff John Kelly, this same official told me. On many of those phone calls, nobody else was on the phone except for the president and Whitaker, or only Kelly and Whitaker. As one senior law enforcement official told me, “Nobody else knew what was said on those calls except what Whitaker decided to tell others, and if he did, whether he was telling the truth. Who ever heard of a president barely speaking to his attorney general but on the phone constantly with a staff-level person?”
This chummy relationship, which included private phone conversations and perhaps even private face-to-face meetings, stands in stark contrast to Trump’s claims that he doesn’t even know Whitaker.
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I’m sorry to have to post this - but as a retired Naval Officer and as the son of a soldier who was wounded in WW1, I find the disrespect paid by Trump to the US servicemen who gave their lives in France incredibly insensitive.
Despite the cancellation of the visit to Belleau, where nearly 2,000 US Marines died in a ferocious battle in June 1918, Trump was scheduled to visit a different cemetery on Sunday, exactly 100 years since the end of the first world war.A White House statement said the Belleau visit was “canceled due to scheduling and logistical difficulties caused by the weather”, and said a delegation “led by Chief of Staff Gen John Kelly and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen Joe Dunford” would attend on behalf of the Trumps.
Nonetheless, Burns, the former ambassador, committed his thoughts to Twitter.
“Did the President really not visit the American military cemetery today in France?” he asked. “It is his duty to honor our soldiers who fought in 1917-18.”
Among veterans groups, one progressive organisation responded angrily.
“Donald Trump complained about having to stand in the rain, to speak about the massacre in Pittsburgh, because it messed his hair up (more),” said VoteVets in a tweet, referring to Trump’s remarks after a mass shooting two weeks ago in which 11 people were killed. “Today, he will skip honoring fallen American heroes of WWI, and stay in his hotel room, because of some rain.”
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Thank you for your service, my family are warriors as well, both my grandfathers served and I currently have three close cousins currently serving, one who is Marine who frequently visits the DMZ in Korea.
I feel so ashamed by this President especially yesterday. Everyone should know, yes Americans can fly in the rain.
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Thanks for bringing up @macro and @anon95374541.
…both my father and grandfather served in The Navy and in WW II.
This act of omission on T’s part is so loathesome.
All military service for this country represents the honor and patriotism we hold for being American.
What an embarrassment for us all.
I do keep a candle (via @matt ) for a real American hero, Robert Mueller. - who voluntarily served in Viet Nam as a Marine, and honors this country with his continued service.
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A long history of voter suppression from Florida GOP. Ari Berman (Mother Jones, author “Give Us the Ballot.”)
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@macro, @anon95374541, @dragonfly9 – I’m experiencing the same feelings – I’ve never in my life been ashamed of our President, but, yes, I’ve been ashamed of this one since day one. I knew my worst fears had been fulfilled when, shortly after taking office, he insulted the Prime Minister of Australia – one of our staunchest allies who has always stood with us through war and peace. And, of course, it just went downhill from there.
My father served in the Navy in WWII and was fortunate to come away unscathed, but my Mom’s Dad was not so lucky. He made it through the worst and then, just after the Armistice, he was carrying an unexeploded mustard gas bomb when it leaked, horribly scarring his lungs. Despite his disability, he managed to raise a family, but died from complications when my Mom was a teenager. He was a remarkable man – I wish I’d had a chance to know him. I’m angry at our President for disrespecting him – and I’m sad for our country that so many people supported him into office and continue to enable him every day. 
P.S. @macro – Deepest apologies for our leader’s boorish behavior, while at the same time, so glad that New Zealand has continued to be a friend of the U.S. Thank you for your patience – we promise to get back on course as soon as we can. 
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This shows how much power is in the hands of the people who design the layout of ballots. Look at this glaring anomaly in Broward country: A far lower percentage of voters in that county voted in the Senate race when compared to the Governor’s race.
There seems to be only two possible explanations for this – it may reveal machine counting errors or it may demonstrate that the layout of the ballot caused many voters to overlook the Senate race. It’s tucked down in the lower-left corner under a long column of instructions – which, of course, nobody ever reads (including me 
).
(There’s a clearer picture of the ballot in the article.)
This is one of the many reasons that we need national election reform and nationally established election standards. I feel it’s OK to let states and localities regulate their own elections, but any election that includes candidates or measures at the national level should be expected to meet national standards. This includes standards for election security as well.
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We often talk about “voter suppression,” but this could be even more outrageous: vote recount suppression!
If these recounts are not allowed to be completed, it will mean the outright theft of crucial Florida elections. According to this article, if the deadline is not met, the original counts will stand. This in not democracy.
In my previous post (regarding Broward county), I talked about the need for national election standards – and here’s another reason for them that hadn’t even occurred to me before. Why should the fact that Palm Beach county won’t spend the money it takes to buy decent vote counting machines impact the entire country? All municipalities that are counting votes in a national election should be required to maintain the proper equipment to conduct efficient recounts. Also, states and counties must allow sufficient time for the recounts. And there are surely many other crucial standards that must be established at the national level to ensure the integrity, accuracy, and fairness of our elections. We must make this Congress’s highest priority. Why didn’t we learn our lesson after the “hanging chad” debacle in 2000? 
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@Keaton_James 
Thank you for your comments - I am sure that these travails you all are bearing will pass as sense and sensibility once again prevail - in the meantime it does us good to smile.
http://eveningharold.com/2018/11/11/light-rain-plays-havoc-with-my-bone-spur-insists-trump/
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Kellyanne Conway openly admits Trump lied when he said he didn’t know Matt Whitaker.
They think we’re so numbed by the constant deluge of Trump’s lies that we’ll just start accepting them. No. We. Won’t.
After reading this you might want to check out Rachel Maddow’s montage of the lie – he repeated it adamantly four times.
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This article makes an excellent point. Why haven’t we seen Matthew Whitaker’s financial disclosure forms? They are of particular interest since, up until February, 2017, he was on the advisory board of World Patent Marketing, a company that was shut down and fined by the FTC for scamming its customers out of millions – and the company is now under criminal investigation by the FBI.
Did Whitaker disclose these payments? If so, that proves the White House knew Whitaker was on the payroll of a company shut down for fraud. If not, then the Attorney General is authorized to pursue a fine against Whitaker for up to $50,000 and cause him to be imprisoned for up to five years. Oh wait, Whitaker is the Attorney General (or at least acting as one) so does he fine and imprison himself?
Failure To File or Filing False Disclosure Statements
The financial disclosure provisions of the Ethics in Government Act have been incorporated by reference as a rule of the House of Representatives, over which the Standards Committee has jurisdiction. In addition to any Committee action, EIGA authorizes the Attorney General of the United States to seek a civil penalty of up to $50,000 against an individual who knowingly and willfully falsifies or fails to file or to report any required information. Moreover, under federal criminal law, anyone who knowingly and willfully falsifies or conceals any material fact in a statement to the government may be fined up to $50,000, imprisoned for up to five years, or both.
Source for WPM payments to Whitaker: Courthouse News.
Source for penalties for failing to file or falsifying financial disclosure forms: House Ethics Committee.
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After posting the article above which points out that we have not seen Matthew Whitaker’s financial disclosure forms, it occurred to me that we also don’t know the status of Whitaker’s security clearance – a search has turned up nothing.
In August, for strictly political reasons, Trump threatened to revoke the security clearance of his former Acting Attorney General, Sally Yates. Now I’m wondering if there may be genuine grounds for revoking the security clearance of his current Acting Attorney General.
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No surprise here, but now it’s officially part of the public record. Trump fired an Attorney General who would not/could not quash the Mueller investigation and replaced him with someone he’d seen on TV criticizing the investigation and now he’s going to go ahead and let that person shut it down. Obstruction of justice in plain site. The Republican controlled Senate and House could halt this maneuver in a heart beat, yet they sit on their hands. It will be up to the newly Democratic controlled house to move swiftly on Jan. 3 to protect Mueller.
In the mean time, I’m hoping that DOJ staffers close to Whitaker are reminding him that Attorney General John Mitchell went to prison for 19 months for conspiring to obstruct justice with President Nixon.
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Listen to #876: Patent Deception from Planet Money in Podcasts. https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/planet-money/id290783428?mt=2&i=1000423880346
For more information on our Acting AG, listen to this podcast about a company offering patent research and registration services. He’s mentioned in the latter portion of the audio through his association with World Patent Marketing including a recorded advertisement he did for one of their clients. Jezzz and he’s our acting AG.
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Yes, I watched the 13 minute interview with Chris Wallace this morning on Fox News. See below in Rolling Stone article.
T keeps blurting out how there is no collusion, and there’s no need for this investigation, witch-hunt etc. And as you saw too, T allows that Whitaker could well do what he wanted to do, it’s his call, and none of T’s business. (perfect out…nominate your guy, then stay out of the way of what’s going to happen)
And yes, he’s doing the obstruction right there.
Note that he’s refused to answer any of Mueller’s questions on Obstruction, using instead executive privilege I suppose.
The content of Mueller’s questions was not immediately clear, but the administration has previously said Trump would not answer any questions relating to obstruction of justice. Trump also told reporters Saturday that a sit-down interview with investigators hadn’t been discussed.
All of it is infuriating.
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