Election Day 2018

Willie Nelson at a September rally for Beto O'Rourke:

New York Times: "New York Times journalists are reporting from around the country as candidates make their final pitches to the voters who will help reshape the United States for the next two years.... Storms are expected to hit much of the Eastern United States on Tuesday, which could depress turnout in some places. According to AccuWeather, severe thunderstorms will pass through parts of New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia. Some wind gusts could exceed 50 miles per hour." Mrs. McC: Get out your brelly, your old Mac & your grammy's galoshes, and go to the polls. Your vote matters. These are entries from Monday. ...

     ... Here are the NYT updates for today.

... Here are the Washington Post's live updates.

Michelle Goldberg: "The last two years have been a stress test for American democracy, and they've revealed this country and its worst and at its best. We've seen how quickly an entire political party ... has capitulated to authoritarianism, white-nationalist demagogy and naked cruelty. Trump's Republican Party has shattered whatever was left of the civic compact binding this country together, abandoning American ideals that transcend blood and soil, and American values that transcend brute power. It's fitting that the president is closing this political season with an ad so racist that even Fox News has pulled it off the air. Yet if the past two years have given lie to the myth of American exceptionalism -- a system that elevates a person like Trump is by definition not the best in the world -- they have also revealed an enduring strain of actual American greatness.... Millions of Americans who oppose Trump have responded to him with an enormous civic revival. They have marched, organized Resistance groups, and reinvigorated American politics at every level. In the face of an existential threat to democracy, they've rededicated themselves to its practice."

** Democracy on Life Support. Ian Millhiser of ThinkProgress: "[In] the 2010 election..., Republican House candidates won the national popular vote by 6.8 percentage points and took a commanding majority as a result. Now imagine ... Democrats win the popular vote by the exact same 6.8 point margin. In this scenario, 2018 may be no less of a disaster for the Democratic Party than 2010. Thanks to gerrymandering and other factors related to redistricting, Democrats probably have to win the House popular vote by seven points in order to gain a bare majority. Republicans could suffer a crippling loss at the polls, and still walk away with a majority.... Democrats could absolutely trounce Republicans in the national popular vote -- potentially by ten points or more -- and still lose a seat or two in the Senate.... But if Republicans hold onto the House and pick up just one seat in the Senate -- a plausible outcome if the GOP loses the popular vote by 'only' 6.8 points -- they will have the votes they need to sentence thousands of Americans with treatable conditions to death. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that one version of the Republican health plan would cause 24 million people to lose health insurance by 2026. The Trump White House estimated ... 26 million." --s ...

... Paul Krugman: "It's a near-certainty that Democrats will receive more votes than Republicans, with polling suggesting a margin in votes cast for the House of Representatives of seven or more percentage points -- which would make it the biggest landslide of modern times. However, gerrymandering and other factors have severely tilted the playing field, so that even this might not be enough to bring control of the chamber.... Ugly as the scene will be if Democrats win, it will be far worse if they lose. In fact, it's not hyperbole to say that if the G.O.P. holds the line on Tuesday, it may be the last even halfway fair elections we'll ever have.... Everything we've seen says that Republicans will do anything they can to take and hold power, and Tuesday's elections may be the last chance to stop them from locking in permanent rule."

Jessica Guynn of USA Today: "Acting on a tip from law enforcement, Facebook has removed more than 100 accounts -- 30 on Facebook, 85 on Instagram -- engaging in coordinated activity in French, English and Russian, raising the possibility that foreign actors are attempting to meddle on the eve of the U.S. midterm elections. Facebook said it was alerted Sunday night to the suspicious activity that law enforcement believe may be linked to foreign entities and blocked the accounts in question. Almost all the Facebook pages appear to be in French or Russian while the Instagram accounts were mostly in English. Some were focused on celebrities, others on political debate, Facebook said."

After delivering donuts to Democratic campaign workers in Northern Virginia, President Obama speaks (in a very hoarse voice) about what's on the ballot:

Peter Baker, et al., of the New York Times: "President Trump on Monday closed out an us-against-them midterm election campaign that was built on dark themes of fear, nationalism and racial animosity in an effort to salvage Republican control of Congress for the remaining two years of his term.... Mr. Trump spent Monday barnstorming the Midwest on behalf of allies in close races, drawing loud and enthusiastic crowds of thousands. At rallies in Cleveland; Fort Wayne, Ind.; and finally ... in Cape Girardeau, [Mo.,] his remarks were laced with his usual acerbic attacks on his adversaries -- 'radical,' 'left-wing socialists,' 'corrupt,' 'the Democrat mob' -- and accusations that Democrats would raise taxes, destroy Medicare and take over the American health care system. But he again reserved his most vitriolic language for immigration, repeatedly prompting loud boos as he warned that if Democrats win, they would invite murderers to come into the United States to kill men, women and children." ...

... Annals of "Journalism," Ha Ha Ha. David Bauder of the AP: "Sean Hannity spoke from the stage of ... Donald Trump's last midterm election rally on Monday, after Fox News Channel and its most popular personality had insisted all day that he wouldn't. Hannity appeared on the podium in a Missouri arena after being called to the stage by Trump. Another Fox News host, Jeanine Pirro, also appeared onstage with the president. 'By the way, all those people in the back are fake news,' Hannity told the audience. It was an extraordinary scene after the news network had worked Monday to establish distance between Hannity and the campaign. Trump's campaign had billed Hannity as a 'special guest' at the rally, but Fox had said that wasn't so. Hannity himself had tweeted: 'To be clear, I will not be on stage campaigning with the president. I am covering final rally for the show.''... In 2016, [Hannity] was part of a Trump political video, which Fox said it had not known about in advance and told Hannity not to do so again.... Hannity's prime-time show aired from the rally site. He played the role of cheerleader from the side as the crowd waited for Trump's appearance. He pleaded with viewers to vote Republican on Tuesday to support Trump, and his opening monologue echoed a campaign slogan seen on signs at the arena: 'Promises made, promises kept.'" ...

... The Faux News Presidency. Brett Samuels & Jordan Fabian of The Hill: "As Trump took the stage, Hannity high-fived White House communications director and former Fox News executive Bill Shine, who was observing the event from the wings of the arena.... Another Fox News host, 'Fox & Friends' host Brian Kilmeade, last month acknowledged that he mistakenly donated roughly $600 to the Trump campaign." --s ...

... Eric Wemple of the Washington Post: "One pro-Trump cheer after another has solidified 'Hannity' as the No. 1 program on cable news. And that consideration appears to outweigh any ethical concerns at Fox News that 'Hannity' has become a wholly owned subsidiary of WhiteHouse.gov. All signposts are arrayed in one direction: Hannity owns Fox News."

Voter Intimidation, Trump Edition. Ed Kilgore: "Aficionados of last-minute ElectionDay dirty tricks are familiar with a ploy Republicans have mastered over the years of intimidating voters with threats that law-enforcement officers will be giving them some extra scrutiny in the vicinity of polling places.... Sometimes this intimidation technique comes from organized and publicly identified groups like True the Vote, though more often it's deployed by anonymous schmos operating black-bag operations on the margins of politics.... It says a lot about how far this country has devolved in respecting voting rights that this year the old 'police are watching' gambit is coming from the Oval Office: 'Law Enforcement has been strongly notified to watch closely for any ILLEGAL VOTING which may take place in Tuesday's Election (or Early Voting). Anyone caught will be subject to the Maximum Criminal Penalties allowed by law. Thank you!' [-- Donald Trump, in a tweet Monday]" ...

     ... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: WTF does "has been strongly notified" mean? Who did the "strong notifying," & how does "strong notifying" differ from "notifying"? Who got the "strong notifications"? Local cops? The FBI? The white militia? This is Threat by Word Salad. Then again, as Ron Klain points out, word salad matters: "Hey, you know what else is illegal? Any effort to 'intimidate, threaten, or coerce any other person for the purpose of interfering with the right of such other person to vote.' (18 U.S.C. 594). Don't you think you've gotten yourself in enough trouble, already?" ...

... Update. Okay, Amy Gardner of the Washington Post just posted the answer: "President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Monday issued strong warnings about the threat of voter fraud in Tuesday's elections, echoing the president's baseless claims that massive voter fraud marred his 2016 election and prompting accusations that his administration is trying to intimidate voters.... Sessions, in a statement laying out the Justice Department's plans to monitor ballot access on Election Day, said 'fraud in the voting process will not be tolerated. Fraud also corrupts the integrity of the ballot.'... In his statement, Sessions said the Justice Department will follow its usual protocol of sending monitors across the country to protect against voter suppression, intimidation and discrimination; this year, staff will travel to 35 jurisdictions in 19 states to monitor compliance with voting laws. In past years, Justice Department officials have not listed voter fraud as a top concern when announcing the deployment of election monitors, as Sessions did Monday.... In remarks to reporters on his way to a campaign rally in Cleveland, Trump also falsely claimed that voter fraud is commonplace.... Voting rights advocates denounced Trump's remarks as a blatant attempt to intimidate voters on the eve of Election Day -- and part of a pattern among Republicans, they said, to curtail voting access with strict rules that disproportionately affect voters of color who tend to vote Democratic."

Trump's Closing Argument. Andy Borowitz of the New Yorker (satire): "Employing the fear tactics that have typified his midterm campaigning, Donald J. Trump told a rally audience on Sunday that electing Democrats would drag the nation back to the dark days of tolerance and decorum. Trump made his closing argument to the Chattanooga, Tennessee, audience by raising the spectre of a return to the dignified and restrained discourse that plagued the nation during the regime of his predecessor, Barack Obama." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Budapest, U.S.A. David Leonhardt of the New York Times: "I was in Hungary for several days last week and was alarmed at how much the autocratic ruling party there reminded me of the Republican Party here in the United States. And the most alarming thing was how normal Hungary feels to a Westerner.... Like Viktor Orbán's Fidesz party in Hungary, today's Republican Party has repeatedly been willing to subvert democracy for the sake of power. It's the single biggest reason that Republicans need to be held accountable in tomorrow's elections.... What Orbán has done is to squash political competition. He has gerrymandered and changed election rules, so that he doesn't need a majority of votes to control the government. He has rushed bills through Parliament with little debate. He has relied on friendly media to echo his message and smear opponents. He has stocked the courts with allies. He has overseen rampant corruption. He has cozied up to Putin. To justify his rule, Orbán has cited external threats -- especially Muslim immigrants and George Soros, the Jewish Hungarian-born investor -- and said that his party is the only one that represents the real people. Does any of this sound familiar?" Mrs. McC: Leonhardt has two pieces likening Hungary to the GOP, & I borrowed from both of them in this summary. The columns are here and here.

** Jonathan Chait: "Trump Isn't Inciting Violence by Mistake, But on Purpose. He Just Told Us." Chait analyzes remarks Trump made at a rally over the weekend & to Jim Vandehei of Axios. Trump says pretty plainly that his goal in inciting violence against journalists is to frighten them into writing favorable reports about him. Mrs. McC: Think about that: a POTUS* threatening reporters' lives if they don't write pro-Trump reports. You thought it could happen only in Russia & China? It's true Trump probably won't direct a hitman to kill an American reporter; he'll keep his hands "clean" by encouraging someone else to shoot a reporter in the middle of Fifth Avenue.

Georgia. Jack Gillum, et al., of ProPublica: "Georgia Officials [Are] Quietly Patched Security Holes They Said Didn't Exist. A ProPublica analysis found that the state was busily fixing problems in its voter registration hours after the office of Secretary of State Brian Kemp, the Republican candidate for governor, had insisted the system was secure.... Kemp's campaign showed no signs of relenting Monday. 'In an act of desperation, the Democrats tried to expose vulnerabilities in Georgia's voter registration system,' spokesman Ryan Mahoney said in a statement. 'This was a 4th-quarter, Hail Mary pass that was intercepted in the end zone. Thanks to the systems and protocols established by Secretary of State Brian Kemp, no personal information was breached.' 'These power-hungry radicals should be held accountable for their criminal behavior,' he said."

... Mrs. McC: As the article makes clear, every part of Mahoney's statement is a lie. Democrats merely alerted state officials to security breaches a cybersecurity expert had discovered & which Kemp claimed didn't exist. ...

... Oh, and this from Amy Gardner's WashPo story, linked above: "Kemp also tweeted an article Monday from Breitbart, a conservative news outlet that regularly publishes right-wing conspiracy theories, claiming that 'armed Blank Panthers' support [his Democratic opponent Stacey] Abrams. The racially charged article featured photographs of black men carrying guns and holding Abrams signs." Mrs. McC: "Racially charged"? Make that "racist." See John Bowden's story, linked below.

... Zak Cheney-Rice of New York points out that Brian Kemp isn't working alone to suppress the votes of black Georgians. Ordinary white citizens, with the aid of police, are helping out Kemp.

Iowa. Steve King Not Satisfied Limiting Himself to Racist Remarks. Felicia Sonmez of the Washington Post: "Hours before he was set to appear with Iowa's governor in an election-eve rally, Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, said Monday that he hopes Supreme Court Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor 'will elope to Cuba.' King has a long history of making inflammatory comments on race and immigration." ...

... Oh, Wait. There's More. Aidan McLaughlin of Mediaite: "Rep. Steve King (R-IA) blasted the National Republican Congressional Committee on Monday for supporting a gay candidate. 'They sent money over to support a candidate in a primary in California who had a same-sex partner that they put all over glossy mailers,' King said on Monday night, in a video posted to Twitter. 'I don't know if they were holding hands or what was the deal....'" ...

... The New York Times Got Real about King. John Bowden of the Hill (Nov. 3): "The New York Times on Saturday issued an update to a news story about Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) which changed a description of his past controversial remarks to label them 'racist.' In a tweet, the Times wrote that the change was done to 'more accurately' describe King's history of remarks about immigrants and diversity, which the newspaper previously referred to as 'racially tinged.'"

Minnesota. Matt Shuham of TPM: "An incumbent Republican congressman mocked his Democratic opponent as 'manufactured' in a campaign video released Monday. But the video, which shows the congressman acting like he's canvassing voters in a suburban Minnesota neighborhood, doesn't appear to have been filmed in the congressman’s actual district. Instead, Rep. Jason Lewis (R-MN) apparently filmed it in the suburb he calls home, one district north of the area he represents in Congress.... Greg Hansen, an electrician who has volunteered for the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party in Minnesota for years, told TPM ... that when he saw the video, 'I just thought to myself, the irony of an attack on authenticity when you're door-knocking in your own neighborhood, which is in Rep. [Betty] McCollum's district, is kind of funny to me.'" --s

Wisconsin: Uh, Mark Sommerhauser of the Wisconsin State Journal reports that Gov. Scott Walker (R-Suppression) has called out the National Guard to protect voters against a Canadian invasion cybersecurity breach of voter machines. Fix bayonets, boys.

AND Leave Us Not Forget the Confederate Supremes. Matt Ford of the New Republic on "How the Roberts Court Caused Georgia's Election Mess." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: I happen to agree with the Court's opinion that the Voting Rights Act is discriminatory in that it limits pre-clearance to certain states & districts. Confederate voter suppression has crept north & (especially) west, and I think a new voting rights act should apply to all states for all forms of voter discrimination, including that effected by gerrymandering.

Niraj Chokshi & Daniel Victor of the New York Times: "An ad created by President Trump's campaign committee tying together Democrats, a notorious murderer and a caravan of asylum-seeking migrants in Mexico embroiled NBC in controversy overnight, prompting the network to backpedal and pull it from the air. Critics had denounced the ad as false and inflammatory, and CNN had refused to broadcast a longer version, calling it racist. But NBC put it up during the ratings giant 'Sunday Night Football.'... Even Fox News, which has made the caravan a staple of its midterm elections coverage, announced that it had decided on Sunday to stop running it and Facebook removed the ad, which had been targeted at users in key electoral battlegrounds, like Florida and Arizona. Mr. Trump, speaking to reporters on Monday before boarding Air Force One, said he was unaware of the controversy. 'You're telling me something I don't know about,' he said. 'We have a lot of ads and they certainly are effective, based on the numbers that we're seeing.' Mr. Trump also dismissed the complaints over the ad. 'A lot of things are offensive,' he said. 'Your questions are offensive a lot of time, so, you know.'" This is an update to a story linked yesterday. ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Nice timing, NBC. According to the story, the ad passed NBC's standards & practices tests. The network should fire the head of S&P. Meanwhile, as usual, Trump is lying. He posted a 53-second version of the ad on his Twitter account. And comparing a racist ad to journalists' questions is, of course, inappropriate, inflammatory and, well, offensive.

Benjamin Goggin of Business Insider: "Ivanka Trump ... won initial approval for 16 Chinese trademarks despite the company shutting its doors in July, according to records released by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. The trademarks are the largest grouping approved in a single month for the brand since Trump's election, and raise questions surrounding continued conflicts of interest for one of Trump's senior advisers. The applications for the trademarks, which were pertain to everything from bags to umbrellas to sausages, were filed in May 2016, but were notably not withdrawn when Ivanka's business was shuttered. But according to an unnamed source from a July report in The Washington Post, the president's daughter planned to continue to seek trademarks, even after her company shut down." --s ...

... WTF? Rebekah Entrelago of ThinkProgress: "The new trademarks will remain in her name regardless of her decision to shutter the business. Several of them will remain active until 2028 at the latest -- leaving open the possibility that the first daughter can return to the business after she leaves the White House and continue to profit off of the connections she's made there.... [T]his recent slate of Chinese trademarks, which Trump's business applied for in 2016, include some rather random and questionable items like sausage casing, nursing homes, and -- most surprisingly -- voting machines." --s

Ted Hesson of Politico: "The Justice Department on Monday petitioned the Supreme Court to intervene in several cases over the termination of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. The move comes on the eve of Tuesday's midterm elections -- and after weeks of fiery anti-immigration rhetoric from ... Donald Trump. Republican voters consider immigration a top issue and Trump has plied them with a range of hard-line policy proposals." ...

... Ian Millhiser: "Since Donald Trump took office, the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division has not filed a single lawsuit enforcing a crucial law intended to prevent racial voter discrimination. By contrast, according to a Justice Department website disclosing the Civil Rights Division's case filings, the Obama administration filed 5 lawsuits under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act -- the primary provision permitting lawsuits alleging voter discrimination on the basis of race. The second Bush administration filed 15, and the Clinton administration filed 16." --s

Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post: "Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke continued to engage in discussions involving his family foundation's property in summer 2017 despite the fact that he had pledged to recuse himself from such matters for a year, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post. At issue is an August 2017 email exchange with David Taylor, the city planner for Whitefish, Mont. Zinke authorized him to access the property and explained that he was engaged in negotiations with a real estate developer over building a parking lot on his foundation's land. But under an ethics pledge he signed Jan. 10, 2017, Zinke vowed to step down from his position as president of the Great Northern Veterans Peace Park Foundation after winning confirmation and refrain from participating in any matters concerning the group for one year. Zinke won confirmation on March 1, 2017, but state records and the foundation's 2018 annual report listed him as continuing to serve as a foundation officer months after that. Zinke later said the foundation's report was in error.... Zinke's involvement in a land development deal involving the park, backed by David J. Lesar, chairman of the oil services firm Halliburton, is under scrutiny from the Justice Department and the Interior Department's Office of Inspector General."

Miranda Green of The Hill: "Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Chief of Staff Ryan Jackson on Monday told employees that the EPA 'has no tolerance for racism' and will investigate recent incidents of offensive words scrawled on whiteboards at the agency's headquarters in Washington.... Jackson also asked the inspector general's office to investigate the racist messages, which include the N-word and were first reported by Politico last week.... The all-staff email comes after reports that EPA headquarters has been battling a number of anonymously written racist messages on the whiteboard of the agency's Office of Public Affairs since the summer. Politico reported that last week's message was one of at least six since August.... In a separate instance this fall, EPA acting administrator Andrew Wheeler was criticized for liking a racist meme on Facebook.... Wheeler said in a statement provided to The Hill that he didn't remember liking the post." --s

Lydia Wheeler & Harper Neidig of the Hill: "The Supreme Court on Monday put an end to a legal battle over the Obama administration's net neutrality rules, refusing to hear an appeal of a lower court ruling that upheld the 2015 regulations. The court declined to hear the appeal from the trade group USTelecom, which represents internet service providers, and Century Link Inc. without explanation. The internet service providers, along with the Trump administration, had asked the justices to toss out the ruling from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals." Mrs. McC: The decision is unsigned, but one can extrapolate from the report who made it: Thomas, Alito & Gorsuch opposed it; Roberts & Kavanaugh recused themselves. That leaves Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor & Kagan as the "deciders." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Mrs. McCrabbie: I recommend your reading this story in Slate by Judi Hershman, a life-long, activist Republican who travelled to North Dakota to work for Sen. Heidi Heitkamp's (D) re-election. Hershman writes about a brief encounter she had with Brett Kavanaugh when they were both working on the Starr investigation. Unless you assume women are inherently hysterical, there is no way you can believe Hershman made up the encounter. But you won't be surprised to learn Ken Starr forgot all about it. Because the old boys can't face the fact that Brett's behavior is erratic & he really likes to intimidate & frighten women.

Beyond the Beltway

Innocence Project Press Release: "After more than 14 years behind bars -- including a decade on Florida's death row -- Clemente Javier Aguirre was exonerated of all charges [Monday] in the 2004 stabbing deaths of his former neighbors Cheryl Williams and Carole Bareis. In a Seminole County courtroom, Circuit Judge John D. Galluzzo dismissed all charges against Aguirre after prosecutors announced today, in the middle of jury selection, that they will not proceed with the retrial. Aguirre, who is now 38 years old, maintained his innocence from the time of his arrest at age 24 in June 2004. He was originally convicted of the murders and sentenced to death in 2006. In 2016, the Florida Supreme Court unanimously overturned Aguirre's conviction and death sentence based on new evidence of innocence that his original jury never heard. The new evidence included DNA testing of multiple pieces of crime scene evidence that exculpated Aguirre and implicated another suspect -- the victims' daughter and granddaughter, Samantha Williams. The state Supreme Court also learned of evidence that, in the years after Aguirre's trial, Samantha Williams confessed that she committed the murders to numerous friends and acquaintances who had no connection to Aguirre. Despite the new evidence, however, State Attorney Phil Archer had announced that the state would not only retry Aguirre, but also seek the death penalty a second time. Today's decision by prosecutors not to proceed came after additional evidence undermining Williams' alibi and further implicating her emerged in recent pretrial proceedings."

Way Beyond

David Cay Johnston of D.C.Report: "A human rights organization has asked Dutch prosecutors to open a criminal investigation into multi-billion dollar money laundering schemes that they say were aided by Donald Trump's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and his old law firm. The complaint is clearly aimed at examining how much money stolen from a former Soviet satellite ended up benefitting Trump. He is named 16 times in the complaint's footnotes. The complaint describes 'one of the biggest fraud cases ever' in which 'some of these money flows ultimately ended up in the Netherlands' because 'Dutch service providers helped to cover up the money laundering acts.'... The complaint asserts that a small slice of the missing billions was run through Dutch shell corporations with help from Rudy Giuliani's old law firm, Bracewell & Giuliani. Until 2016, Giuliani was a partner in the 470-lawyer firm." --s

The Commentariat -- November 5, 2018

Late Morning Update:

Trump's Closing Argument. Andy Borowitz of the New Yorker (satire): "Employing the fear tactics that have typified his midterm campaigning, Donald J. Trump told a rally audience on Sunday that electing Democrats would drag the nation back to the dark days of tolerance and decorum. Trump made his closing argument to the Chattanooga, Tennessee, audience by raising the spectre of a return to the dignified and restrained discourse that plagued the nation during the regime of his predecessor, Barack Obama."

Willie Nelson at a September rally for Beto O'Rourke (see today's Comments):

Budapest, U.S.A. David Leonhardt of the New York Times: "I was in Hungary for several days last week and was alarmed at how much the autocratic ruling party there reminded me of the Republican Party here in the United States. And the most alarming thing was how normal Hungary feels to a Westerner.... Like Viktor Orbán's Fidesz party in Hungary, today's Republican Party has repeatedly been willing to subvert democracy for the sake of power. It's the single biggest reason that Republicans need to be held accountable in tomorrow's elections.... What Orbán has done is to squash political competition. He has gerrymandered and changed election rules, so that he doesn't need a majority of votes to control the government. He has rushed bills through Parliament with little debate. He has relied on friendly media to echo his message and smear opponents. He has stocked the courts with allies. He has overseen rampant corruption. He has cozied up to Putin. To justify his rule, Orbán has cited external threats -- especially Muslim immigrants and George Soros, the Jewish Hungarian-born investor -- and said that his party is the only one that represents the real people. Does any of this sound familiar?" Mrs. McC: Leonhardt has two pieces likening Hungary to the GOP, & I borrowed from both of them in this summary. The columns are here and here. ...

... AND Leave Us Not Forget the Confederate Supremes. Matt Ford of the New Republic on "How the Roberts Court Caused Georgia's Election Mess." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: I happen to agree with the Court's opinion that the Voting Rights Act is discriminatory in that it limits pre-clearance to certain states & districts. Confederate voter suppression has crept north & (especially) west, and I think a new voting rights act should apply to all states for all forms of voter discrimination, including that effected by gerrymandering.

Lydia Wheeler & Harper Neidig of the Hill: "The Supreme Court on Monday put an end to a legal battle over the Obama administration's net neutrality rules, refusing to hear an appeal of a lower court ruling that upheld the 2015 regulations. The court declined to hear the appeal from the trade group USTelecom, which represents internet service providers, and Century Link Inc. without explanation. The internet service providers, along with the Trump administration, had asked the justices to toss out the ruling from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals." Mrs. McC: The decision is unsigned, but one can extrapolate from the report who made it: Thomas, Alito & Gorsuch opposed it; Roberts & Kavanaugh recused themselves. That leaves Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor & Kagan as the "deciders."

*****

How Republicans Have Made It Harder to Vote. Danny Hakim & Michael Wines of the New York Times: "Limiting access to voting is rooted deep in American history, beginning with the founding fathers and peaking during the Jim Crow era in the South. But in the wake of the civil rights movement and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the idea that disenfranchising legitimate voters was unethical, and even un-American, gained traction. No more. Almost two decades after the Bush v. Gore stalemate led to voting rules being viewed as key elements of election strategy, the issue is playing an extraordinary role in the midterm elections. Restrictions on voting, virtually all imposed by Republicans, reflect rising partisanship, societal shifts producing a more diverse America, and the weakening of the Voting Rights Act by the Supreme Court in 2013."

Kevin Roose & Ali Winston of the New York Times: "On Wednesday, minutes after President Trump posted an incendiary campaign ad falsely accusing Democrats of flooding the country with murderous illegal immigrants, virulent racists on an online message board erupted in celebration.... In recent weeks, as Mr. Trump and his allies have waged a fear-based campaign to drive Republican voters to the polls for the midterm elections on Tuesday, far-right internet communities have been buoyed as their once-fringe views have been given oxygen by prominent Republicans. These activists cheered when Mr. Trump suggested that the Jewish billionaire George Soros could be secretly funding a caravan of Latin American migrants -- a dog-whistle reference to an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.... They roared their approval when Mr. Trump began stirring up fears of angry, violent left-wing mobs, another far-right boogeyman.... Since the 2016 election, these far-right communities have entered into a sort of imagined dialogue with the president. They create and disseminate slogans and graphics, and celebrate when they show up in Mr. Trump's Twitter feed days or weeks later.... [Trump has given them] a feeling of empowerment -- a sense that the boundaries of acceptable speech are widening in the Trump era...." ...

     ... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Good for the Times for linking Trump's racist remarks to the same right-wing extremists a story in Sunday's NYT Magazine (linked here yesterday) demonstrated were more dangerous within the U.S. that foreign-bred extremism. It would seem the Times news division is finally having its Pogo moment. ...

... Keith Collins & Kevin Roose of the New York Times: "Since President Trump's election, his loyalists online have provided him with a steady stream of provocative posts and shareable memes, often filtered up from platforms like Reddit through media channels like Fox News. In return, Mr. Trump has championed many of their messages as his own, amplifying them back to his larger base. This feedback loop is how #JobsNotMobs came to be. In less than two weeks, the three-word phrase expanded from corners of the right-wing internet onto some of the most prominent political stages in the country, days before the midterm elections." The reporters provide a timeline of how the meme Jobs Not Mobs from yer average right-wing nutjob to more prominent right-win nutjobs to Fox "News" & then to the right-wing nutjob in the White House. Mrs. McC Note: the reporters do not use the technical term "nutjob." ...

... ** Mike Levine of ABC News: "... Donald Trump has repeatedly refused to accept any responsibility for inciting violence in American communities.... Little more than a week ago, he insisted he deserves 'no blame' for what he called the 'hatred' seemingly coursing through parts of the country, and outside of the White House on Friday, Trump accused news outlets of fomenting the very violence they have been asking him about. But a nationwide review conducted by ABC News has identified at least 17 criminal cases where Trump's name was invoked in direct connection with violent acts, threats of violence, or allegations of assault. Nearly all -- 16 of 17 -- cases identified by ABC News are striking in that court documents and direct evidence reflect someone echoing presidential rhetoric, not protesting it. ABC News was unable to find any such case echoing presidential rhetoric when Barack Obama or George W. Bush were in the White House. The perpetrators and suspects identified in the 17 cases are mostly white men..., while the victims represent an array of minority groups -- African-Americans, Latinos, Muslims and gay men." Levine lists the cases.

Matt Shuham of TPM: "President Donald Trump on Sunday invented a Fox News poll that he said showed 40 percent support among African Americans. TPM found no evidence of poll results saying that.... [T]he President may have been referring to a daily tracking poll performed by Rasmussen that, according to an Oct. 29 report from the company, showed 40 percent approval for Trump among black voters." --s

Amy Harder & Andrew Freedman of Axios: "When 'Axios on HBO' interviewed President Trump last week, one goal was to get him to reckon with his own government's scientific findings, which unequivocally state that global warming is nearly entirely caused by humans. We thought it might be harder to dismiss the science if we showed him his own administration's most comprehensive report.... We were wrong. Trump disputed that report, said he hadn't seen it and indicated -- while doing a wave motion with his hand -- that the climate goes up and down. These comments ... are among the most extreme he's made dismissing a scientific issue nearly all other world leaders take seriously.... The report is the most comprehensive and up-to-date assessment published by the entire federal government, from NASA to the Environmental Protection Agency. It concludes that 'there is no convincing alternative explanation' for the global warming we've observed, other than human causes." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Obviously, the Axios reporters failed to account for Trump's "natural instinct for science," which is the basis of his refusal to accept all peer-reviewed analyses of climate change causation.

Andrew Higgins & Ken Vogel of the New York Times: Putin- and (allegedly) mob-connected Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska may be successful in his attempt to avoid U.S. sanctions against his business empire. "... the current lobbying effort on behalf of Mr. Deripaska's companies still appears to have made substantial headway. In recent months, Mr. Deripaska's firms have notched initial victories by winning multiple postponements from the Treasury Department of the sanctions on the oligarch's holding company, EN+, and the giant aluminum company it controls, Rusal. Now, with the administration closing in on its latest self-imposed deadline to make a final decision by Dec. 12, there are signs that Mr. Deripaska's companies could escape the sanctions entirely. Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, has signaled that he is open to a plan under which Mr. Deripaska would reduce his stake in his companies in return for the sanctions being lifted. But sidestepping the business sanctions is not Mr. Deripaska's only goal. His team is preparing an audacious and previously unreported campaign to remove the personal sanctions on him, too."

Election 2018

... Robert Costa of the Washington Post: "Michael R. Bloomberg, the billionaire former mayor of New York City who is considering a 2020 presidential campaign, took another step closer to that possibility Sunday with a $5 million national advertising effort that encourages voters to support Democrats in Tuesday's midterm elections -- and offers Bloomberg's centrist politics as a counter to President Trump. Bloomberg's two-minute television ad, which features him speaking directly to the camera and standing before an American flag, will first air Sunday during CBS's '60 Minutes.' It will air again Monday during the evening news programs on broadcast networks and on MSNBC and CNN."

Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: "President Trump is painting an astonishingly apocalyptic vision of America under Democratic control in the campaign's final days, unleashing a torrent of falsehoods and portraying his political opponents as desiring crime, squalor and poverty.... Trump is claiming that Democrats want to erase the nation's borders and provide sanctuary to drug dealers, human traffickers and MS-13 killers. He is warning that they would destroy the economy, obliterate Medicare and unleash a wave of violent crime that endangers families everywhere. And he is alleging that they would transform the United States into Venezuela with socialism run amok. Trump has never been hemmed in by fact, fairness or even logic. The 45th president proudly refuses to apologize and routinely violates the norms of decorum that guided his predecessors. But at one mega-rally after another in the run-up to Tuesday's midterm elections, Trump has taken his no-boundaries political ethos to a whole new level -- demagoguing the Democrats in a whirl of distortion and using the power of the federal government to amplify his fantastical arguments. In Columbia, Mo., the president suggested that Democrats 'run around like Antifa' demonstrators in black uniforms and black helmets, but underneath they have 'this weak little face' and 'go back home into Mommy's basement.'"

CNN Thumps Racist Trumps. Amy Wang of the Washington Post: "CNN ... refused to run an election ad released by ... President Trump earlier this week, a video that featured Luis Bracamontes -- an undocumented immigrant who was convicted in the murder of two California sheriff's deputies -- in an apparent attempt to drum up fears about immigration. 'I guess they only run fake news and won't talk about real threats that don't suit their agenda,' Donald Trump Jr. tweeted, linking to a shorter, 30-second version of the ad. 'Enjoy. Remember this on Tuesday. #vote #voterepublican' CNN's public relations department promptly fired back..., repeating a statement that the network's reporters had made last week: The ad was racist. 'CNN has made it abundantly clear in its editorial coverage that this ad is racist,' CNN PR tweeted. 'When presented with an opportunity to be paid to take a version of this ad, we declined. Those are the facts.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

     ... Update. BUT NBC Is Good with Stoking Racism in Football Fans. Daniel Victor of the New York Times: "In the middle of a highly anticipated 'Sunday Night Football' broadcast, NBC aired an immigration-themed advertisement, approved by President Trump, that CNN publicly declared to be too racist to accept as a paid ad.... It was a shorter version of an ad that the president shared on Twitter last week, which falsely claimed about Mr. Bracamontes that Democrats 'let him into our country' and 'let him stay.' The network dedicated substantial editorial coverage to the longer ad, sometimes showing clips as anchors and chyrons declared it 'racist.' The 30-second version run by NBC did not include the false claim about Democrats, but it still drew a direct connection from immigrants to crime, a tactic the president has repeatedly used. (Many studies have shown immigrants do not drive an increase in crime.)" ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: I do have to compliment Trump's campaign for finding the perfect venue for its racist ad. There are few national shows that attract as many violence-loving idiots than do professional football broadcasts. I put pro football right up there with automatic rifles, kiddie porn & Donald Trump. ...

... Margaret Sullivan of the Washington Post: "On election night 2016, I described the news media's campaign performance as 'an epic fail.'... So now, with the midterm elections upon us, it's fair to ask how much improvement has there been. The short answer: not enough.... There's still one overarching problem: Too many journalists allow Trump to lead them around by the nose, which is why you've heard so very much about that migrant caravan in recent weeks.... And as Trumpian falsehoods have wildly escalated in recent weeks, the media have not figured out how to deal with them, other than to point them out after the fact."

Georgia. In Desperate Measure, Kemp Abuses His Office. Mark Niesse of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: "Just two days before the election, Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp's office launched an investigation Sunday into the Democratic Party after an alleged attempt to hack the state's voter registration system. Kemp, who is the Republican candidate for governor on Tuesday's ballot, didn't provide any evidence of hacking when his office announced the probe. He faces Democrat Stacey Abrams in the election. The Democratic Party of Georgia called the allegation '100 percent false' and 'an abuse of power by Kemp's office." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... The New York Times story, by Alan Blinder & Richard Fausset, is here. "Ms. Abrams, in a round of television interviews on Sunday morning, said Democrats had done nothing wrong and accused Mr. Kemp of 'trying to rile up his base by misleading voters yet again,' as she put it to an Atlanta TV station. In a CNN interview, Ms. Abrams added, 'He is desperate to turn the conversation away from his failures, from his refusal to honor his commitments, and from the fact that he's part of a nationwide system of voter suppression that will not work in this election.'" ...

... AND this from the New York Times' "Tip Sheet," which doesn't mince words: "Although Mr. Kemp's office raised the specter of wrongdoing by Democrats, word of the inquiry was certain to heighten fears that Mr. Kemp was seeking to tamper with the integrity of the election. Democrats have spent weeks calling on Mr. Kemp to resign his post, arguing that he could not independently oversee an election in which he is running." ...

... Raphael Warnock, chair of the New Georgia Project & pastor of Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church, in a Washington Post op-ed (Nov. 1), cites some of the ways Brian Kemp & GOP-writ state laws are purging eligible voters from the voting rolls. "The system is functioning exactly as it was designed. They're the consequence of the policies pursued by Secretary of State and gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp (who, like a boxer refereeing his own bout, oversees the election in which he's running).... Georgia has followed seemingly every strategy in the voter-suppression playbook, like partisan gerrymandering and closing polling locations. It even charged a poll worker with a felony for helping someone use a voting machine." ...

... Remember This? Curt Devine & Drew Griffin of CNN [Aug. 14]: "... Republican candidate for governor Brian Kemp has sought to assure voters that his state's election system is secure and that any allegations to the contrary are 'fake news.' But Kemp, who is also the secretary of state in charge of Georgia's elections, is now being accused in a federal lawsuit of failing to secure his state's voting system and allowing a massive breach that exposed voter records and other sensitive election information.... The suit describes how a private researcher discovered the records of more than 6 million registered Georgia voters, password files and encryption keys could be accessed online by anyone looking. Days after the lawsuit was filed, technicians erased the hard drives of the server in question.... Because the data was destroyed, an independent review cannot be conducted.... Kemp has criticized news reports that raise questions about the integrity of state election systems." --s ...

... Mrs. McCrabbie: It occurs to me that Kemp's failure to address the breach was a feature, not a bug. Kemp could not have known who his Democratic opponent would be in 2018, but that's beside the point; he knew s/he would be a Democrat, and he knew he would run for governor. Even had he lost the primary, his control (or lack thereof) of the voting system would leave him with the opportunity to manipulate it for Republican candidates in the public ways he has done & in secret ways we don't know. His purpose was always to destabilize the system, and what better way than to leave it vulnerable to hacking, then -- without evidence, as the new idiom goes -- to finger Democrats? ...

... Josh Marshall of TPM: "It turns out the backstory to Brian Kemp's accusation against the Georgia Democratic party is about as stupid as you could imagine.... But the gist is this. There was a security vulnerability in the system Kemp's is responsible for securing. His office was alerted the vulnerability. Then instead of focusing on fixing it he put out a press release accusing the state Democratic party of trying to 'hack' the state system. Shocking and awful and about as bad as you can imagine." --s ...

... ** Richard Hasen in Slate ties it all together: "... the latest appalling move by Kemp to publicly accuse the Democrats of hacking without evidence is even worse than that: Kemp has been one of the few state election officials to refuse help from the federal Department of Homeland Security to deter foreign and domestic hacking of voter registration databases. After computer scientists demonstrated the insecurity of the state's voting system, he was sued for having perhaps the most vulnerable election system in the country. His office has been plausibly accused of destroying evidence, which would have helped to prove the vulnerabilities of the state election system.... What Kemp has done now goes beyond the pale. He's accused his opponents of election tampering without evidence on the eve of the election, and plastered the incendiary charge on an official state website in the days before his office will administer that election. This is some banana republic stuff."

Kansas. Speaking of Our Formerly-Favorite Voter Suppressor Guy ... Stephanie Kirchgaessner of the Guardian: "The Republican candidate for governor of Kansas, Kris Kobach, who has close ties to the Trump administration, has accepted financial donations from white nationalist sympathizers and has for more than a decade been affiliated with groups espousing white supremacist views. Recent financial disclosures show that Kobach, a driving force behind dozens of proposals across the US designed to suppress minority voting and immigrant rights, has accepted thousands of dollars from white nationalists. Donors include a former official in the Trump administration who was forced to resign from the Department of Homeland Security this year after emails showed he had close ties to white supremacists.... Now Kansas secretary of state, Kobach is running in a tight race against the Democrat Laura Kelly. The election has drawn the concern of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), after the single polling place located in Dodge City was moved outside the town, in what some claimed to be an attempt to suppress the Hispanic vote."

Ian Millhiser of ThinkProgress: "In what will almost certainly be a victory for the religious right, the Supreme Court announced on Friday that it will decide whether the Constitution permits a local government to display 'on public property a 40-foot tall Latin cross, established in memory of soldiers who died in World War I.'... In the long term..., such a blow to the separation of church and state could embolden Christian nationalists and distort American politics..., and this decision in unlikely to be the last gift the Court's Republican majority gives to the Christian right."--s

** Rebecca Solnit in the Guardian: "In the 158th year of the American civil war, also known as 2018, the Confederacy continues its recent resurgence. Its victims include black people, of course, but also immigrants, Jews, Muslims, Latinos, trans people, gay people and women who want to exercise jurisdiction over their bodies. The Confederacy battles in favour of uncontrolled guns and poisons, including toxins in streams, mercury from coal plants, carbon emissions into the upper atmosphere, and oil exploitation in previously protected lands and waters. Its premise appears to be that protection of others limits the rights of white men, and those rights should be unlimited.... As Michelle Alexander reminded us recently: 'The whole of American history can be described as a struggle between those who truly embraced the revolutionary idea of freedom, equality and justice for all, and those who resisted.' She argues that we are not the resistance; we are the river that they are trying to dam; they are the resistance, the minority, the people trying to stop the flow of history." --s ...

... Mrs. McCrabbie: This is a concept we settled on way back BTE (Before the Trump Era), when we decided to more accurately name most self-described "conservatives" as "confederates," a descriptor contributor Monoloco suggested.

Peter Maass of The Intercept: "The latest terror attacks in America have provoked a new wave of indignation against [Fox News], culminating in a widely noted call by the U.S. editor of the Financial Times, Edward Luce, for an advertiser boycott.... It's a worthwhile idea, but its impact will be limited.... The network's main source of revenue is from cable subscribers, not advertisers.... Rupert Murdoch and his heirs are welcomed into the halls of power and money even though their network has done irreparably more damage to America than Breitbart News, the media platform [Steve] Bannon once controlled.... What would ostracism of the Murdochs look like? To begin with, it would probably involve the rescinding of invitations to all the conferences and galas they regularly attend [and refuse their donations]. They would become as toxic to business-as-usual as Bannon has become.... The question now is whether America's great and good, having deplored the rising tide of far-right violence, are willing to confront the family that controls the largest platform of intolerance." --s

** Damian Carrington of the Guardian: "Toxic air is now the biggest environmental risk of early death, responsible for one in nine of all fatalities. It kills 7 million people a year, far more than HIV, tuberculosis and malaria combined, for example.... The lost lives and ill health caused are also a colossal economic burden: $225bn in lost labour income in 2013, or $5.11tn per year (about $1m a minute), if welfare losses are added in, according to a 2016 World Bank report, which called the figure 'a sobering wake-up call'. Air pollution is getting worse in the developing world and, while it is getting better in some developed nations, our knowledge of how comprehensively it damages our bodies and minds is growing even faster." --s

Way Beyond the Beltway

Anthony Boadle & Gram Slattery of Reuters: "For Brazil's right-wing President-elect Jair Bolsonaro, attacking critical press outlets almost daily on social media is not enough. Once in office, he vows to hit their bottom line. With half a billion dollars in public-sector marketing budgets coming under his discretion, the fiery former Army captain is threatening to slash ad buys with adversarial media groups, striking at the financial foundations of Brazil's free press.... [T]he prospect of a president out to punish unfriendly coverage has put many reporters on edge.... [Many] have started to throttle back their criticism, fearing backlash from a Bolsonaro government -- and violence from his supporters.... Bolsonaro's supporters said the Brazilian media has a leftist bias and they have turned to social media for news about him." --s

The Daily Beast: "Some Saudi Arabian citizens, enraged by the criticism leveled at the country by The Washington Post over the slaughter of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, have started a movement to boycott Amazon, another company owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos. Bloomberg News reports that 'Boycott Amazon' was dominating Twitter in Saudi Arabia for 'several hours' Sunday.... Participants were reportedly especially upset about an op-ed written by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that appeared in the Post on Friday, which addressed the remaining mysteries surrounding Khashoggi's death." --s

The Commentariat -- November 4, 2018

Afternoon Update:

CNN Thumps Racist Trumps. Amy Wang of the Washington Post: "CNN ... refused to run an election ad released by ... President Trump earlier this week, a video that featured Luis Bracamontes -- an undocumented immigrant who was convicted in the murder of two California sheriff's deputies -- in an apparent attempt to drum up fears about immigration. 'I guess they only run fake news and won't talk about real threats that don't suit their agenda,' Donald Trump Jr. tweeted, linking to a ... 30-second version of the ad. 'Enjoy. Remember this on Tuesday. #vote #voterepublican' CNN's public relations department promptly fired back..., repeating a statement that the network's reporters had made last week: The ad was racist. 'CNN has made it abundantly clear in its editorial coverage that this ad is racist,' CNN PR tweeted. 'When presented with an opportunity to be paid to take a version of this ad, we declined. Those are the facts.'"

In Desperate Measure, Kemp Abuses His Office. Mark Niesse of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: "Just two days before the election, Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp's office launched an investigation Sunday into the Democratic Party after an alleged attempt to hack the state's voter registration system. Kemp, who is the Republican candidate for governor on Tuesday's ballot, didn't provide any evidence of hacking when his office announced the probe. He faces Democrat Stacey Abrams in the election. The Democratic Party of Georgia called the allegation '100 percent false' and 'an abuse of power by Kemp's office."

*****

Paul Sonne of the Washington Post: "The total price of President Trump's military deployment to the border, including the cost of National Guard forces that have been there since April, could climb well above $200 million by the end of 2018 and grow significantly if the deployments continue into next year, according to analyst estimates and Pentagon figures.... Although the costs of the border deployments will be a tiny slice of a $716& billion annual defense budget, they arrive as the Trump administration is calling on the Pentagon to cut unnecessary expenditures. The White House recently ordered the Pentagon to slash next year's budget for the military by about $33 billion in response to the largest increase in the federal deficit in six years. Veterans and Democratic lawmakers have complained that Trump is wasting military dollars in a politically motivated stunt ahead of Tuesday's midterm elections, at a time when the Pentagon budget is under pressure." ...

     ... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: This is, of course, spending millions of your tax dollars to lose millions for the U.S. economy. If we admitted those people seeking asylum, most would become productive members of society & contribute to the economy. One of the side effects of bigotry is economic waste. ...

... Luckily, Our Troops Have "Help." Mary Lee Grant & Nick Miroff of the Washington Post: "Gun-carrying civilian groups and border vigilantes have heard a call to arms in President Trump's warnings about threats to American security posed by caravans of Central American migrants moving through Mexico. They're packing coolers and tents, oiling rifles and tuning up aerial drones, with plans to form caravans of their own and trail American troops to the border.... According to military planning documents obtained by Newsweek, the military is concerned about the arrival of 'unregulated militia members self-deploying to the border in alleged support' of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The assessment estimates that 200 militia members could show up. 'They operate under the guise of citizen patrols,' the report said, while warning of 'incidents of unregulated militias stealing National Guard equipment during deployments.'" (The Newsweek story was linked here earlier this week.) Mrs. McC: What could possibly go wrong? ...

Ben Protess, et al., of the New York Times: "Across the corporate landscape, the Trump administration has presided over a sharp decline in financial penalties against banks and big companies accused of malfeasance, according to analyses of government data and interviews with more than 60 former and current federal officials. The approach mirrors the administration's aggressive deregulatory agenda throughout the federal government.... While career officials in the federal government have continued to investigate wrongdoing at companies large and small, some of the top political appointees under Mr. Trump have led a philosophical shift in governing that favors big business and prioritizes the interests of individual investors."

Fake Diplomacy. Bess Levin of Vanity Fair: "Earlier this week ... reports began to surface that Donald Trump -- who on Monday was ready to slap tariffs on every single Chinese import -- had suddenly reached some kind of breakthrough with Beijing.... Unsurprisingly, markets soared on the news, and all those Trump supporters who've been burned by his tariffs presumably got that warm, cuddly feeling back about the president just four days before the midterms. Except, according to National Economic Council director Larry Kudlow, the whole thing ... is FAKE NEWS! 'There's no massive movement to deal with China,' Kudlow told CNBC on Friday, noting ... little actual progress was made on trade.... He added...'We're not on the cusp of a deal.'" --s ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Kudlow's remark sounds like the definition of a gaffe. Obviously, old Larry is out of the loop. ...

     ... So Then. Fred Imbert of CNBC: "Equities fell to their lows of the day following Kudlow's comments, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropping more than 200 points. Kudlow's comments come a day after Trump tweeted he had a 'long and very good conversation' with Chinese President Xi Jinping on trade."

There are relatively few Americans voicing their support for ISIS online. But there are millions of racists, anti-Semites, Islamophobes, homophobes and xenophobes who engage in eliminationist rhetoric about the communities of people they fear and hate every day on social media and radio talk shows. -- Michael German of the Brennan Center for Justice ...

... Janet Reitman in the New York Times Magazine: "For two decades, domestic counterterrorism strategy has ignored the rising danger of far-right extremism. In the atmosphere of willful indifference, a virulent movement has grown and metastasized.... White supremacists and other far-right extremists have killed far more people since Sept. 11, 2001, than any other category of domestic extremist. The Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism has reported that 71 percent of the extremist-related fatalities in the United States between 2008 and 2017 were committed by members of the far right or white-supremacist movements. Islamic extremists were responsible for just 26 percent.... These statistics belie the strident rhetoric around 'foreign-born' terrorists that the Trump administration has used to drive its anti-immigration agenda.... Law enforcement seems uninterested in policing the violent far right."...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: As you read Reitman's report, you'll see that the rise of white nationalist radicals didn't start with Trump, but he & his administration have made the problem much worse. For a decade, the real reason white domestic terrorists have not been identified, monitored & prosecuted is ... Republicans. Republicans think "white nationalist terrorists" equal "conservatives." Yeah, check the stories linked under Beyond the Beltway.

E. A. Crunden of ThinkProgress: "Information about climate change on the website for the Environmental Protection Agency ... has been missing for over a year, with no indication that plans are in the works to reverse the situation.... A section of the site relating to climate change that has been under an update notice since April 2017 now lacks even that, the Guardian reported this week.... For a lengthy period of time following the inauguration of ... Donald Trump, the page indicated that the section was being updated to reflect the current administration's priorities.... But ... this week that changed, and the page is now completely defunct." --s ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: As someone who has a natural instinct for science, I can assure you that climate change & its Death to Earth effects will go away if you delete it from your Website.

AP & Stella Kim of NBC News: "North Korea has warned it could revive a state policy aimed at strengthening its nuclear arsenal if the United States does not lift economic sanctions against the country.... The North came short of threatening to abandon the ongoing nuclear negotiations with the United States. But it accused Washington of derailing commitments made by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and ... Donald Trump at their June summit in Singapore to work toward a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula, without describing how and when it would occur." ... OR, as New York's Daily Intelligencer put it, "North Korea upset that Trump hasn't kept up his undefined end of fake peace deal."

Election 2018

Trump Stumps Where Chumps Clump. Josh Boak of the AP: "... Donald Trump is in the final stretch of a 44-city blitz for the midterm elections, but the America he's glimpsed from the airport arrivals and his armored limousine is hardly a reflection of the nation as a whole. The president has mostly traveled to counties that are whiter, less educated and have lower incomes than the rest of the United States, according to Census Bureau data. It's a sign that he is seeking to galvanize the same group of voters that helped carry him to victory in 2016."

Florida. Matt Dixon of Politico: "During a Saturday rally for Florida Republican gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis..., Donald Trump's top agriculture official [Sonny Perdue, the former governor of Georgia,] used the term 'cotton-pickin' to describe the importance of Florida's gubernatorial race, which also features Democrat Andrew Gillum, who is running to be Florida's first black governor. 'Public policy matters. Leadership matters,' said ... Sonny Perdue said at a Lakeland rally, according to audio provided by American Bridge. 'And that is why this election is so cotton-pickin' important to the state of Florida. I hope you all don't mess it up.'" Mrs. McC: Perdue meant to say "monkey it up," as DeSantis did the day after his nomination. BTW, these old white boys make racist remarks to their base, because they know their base is racist.

Georgia. Veronica Stracqualursi of CNN: "A white supremacist group that targeted Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum with racist robocalls is now targeting Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams. The prerecorded phone message features a voice impersonating Oprah Winfrey, who was in Georgia on Thursday stumping for Abrams, and contains racist and anti-Semitic rhetoric. The robocall went out to Georgia voters, but it is unclear how many received it.... The group behind the robocall is The Road to Power, a white supremacist and anti-Semitic video podcast hosted by Scott Rhodes of Idaho."

Maine. Like Father, Like Son. Tim Murphy of Mother Jones: "Often when conservative politicians talk about their opposition to large groups of non-white immigrants, they couch it in the rhetoric of 'bad apples.' Saying you're worried about MS-13, for instance, is a more socially acceptable argument than simply saying you don't like Central Americans.... In the tweet ['Angus King is a Fake Independent who votes with Schumer 88% of the time. Angus wants to repopulate Maine with Syrian and Somalian refugees. Support @SenatorBrakey who fights for secure borders and Better Jobs for Maine.' [Donald] Trump [Jr.]isn't offering misplaced fears about, I don't know, Al-Shabaab or something. He's not couching it in anything, there are no dots to connect; he just doesn't want Somalis, full-stop. Having Somalis in your community is bad, on its surface, simply because they're Somalis -- that's it, that's the argument." --s

Montana. "FU45." Kristen Inbody of the Great Falls (Montana) Tribune: "Kevin Crawford of Bozeman and Curtis Roe of Belgrade decided to protest ... Donald Trump's visit Saturday to the Bozeman Yellowstone International Airport in grass. The pair mowed 'FU45' on Roe's land under the landing approach Air Force One would make. The result was lettering 60 feet tall and 150 feet across. Crawford said that seemed like a better approach than protesting at the campaign rally because 'his wingnut base loves nothing more than to think they are pissing off a bunch of liberals who are protesting.'"

E. A. Crunden: "A landmark case brought by a group of young people attempting to force the federal government to take action on climate change will proceed despite efforts from the Trump administration to stop the lawsuit in its tracks. On Friday night, the Supreme Court declined to halt the lawsuit, Juliana vs. United States, after briefly delaying it last month to consider an emergency request from the government." --safari: The fact that this lawsuit even exists is a damning condemnation of the "leave a better future for our children" modern-day fairytale. ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Related story linked yesterday.

Amoral Markets. Matthew Martin & Dinesh Nair of Bloomberg: "For a moment, Wall Street seemed to be inching away from Saudi Arabia. Now, it's already inching back. A month after the murder of government critic Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, bankers say the rewards of doing business with the oil-rich kingdom far outweigh the risks." --safari: As long as no Wall Streeters get the bone saw, everything's cool. And even if one did, hey, less competition, right? Capitalism is awesome.

Virginia Heffernan in a Los Angeles Times op-ed: "... before [Julian] Assange was known for his romance with the Kremlin, and his shady contacts with scurvy Trumpites like Roger Stone and Donald Trump Jr., he was a punk idol, a hacker god. For years, he seemed like an opener of governments who could disinfect the Earth with the sunlight of his tech virtuosity and his eccentric radiance. But, like many online high-fliers of the aughts, Assange lacked a moral imagination equal to his skills as a technologist.... To hook up with Russian oligarchs and military intelligence to embarrass one American political candidate on behalf of another -- that's... deputizing yourself to an actual authoritarian regime, the kind that a hacker like Assange used to be committed to exposing."

Beyond the Beltway

David Mack, et al., of BuzzFeed News: "The man who shot dead two women at a yoga studio in Tallahassee, Florida, on Friday before killing himself was a far-right extremist and self-proclaimed misogynist who railed against women, black people, and immigrants in a series of online videos and songs. Scott Beierle, 40, was named by Tallahassee Police as the shooter who opened fire inside the Hot Yoga Tallahassee studio, killing two and injuring four other women and a man. Those killed were named as Dr. Nancy Van Vessem, 61, who worked at Florida State University's College of Medicine, and FSU student Maura Binkley, 21.... Police ... noted Beierle had previously been investigated for harassing women.... On a YouTube channel in 2014, Beierle filmed several videos of himself offering extremely racist and misogynistic opinions, in which he called women 'sluts' and 'whores,' and lamented 'the collective treachery' of girls he went to high school with.... He was highly critical of the Obama administration in his 2014 videos. In one video, he said that he resented having to subsidize as a taxpayer 'the casual sex lives of slutty girls through the Affordable Care Act's contraception provisions. In the same video he also criticized 'the invasion of Central American children' in the US that year and said the migrants seeking asylum should be deported on barges."

ABC 7 New York: "Police have made an arrest after disturbing messages of hate were found inside a Brooklyn synagogue Thursday evening, the latest in a string of anti-Semitic incidents across the nation. 26-year-old James Polite is charged with four counts of criminal mischief as a hate crime and making graffiti. Polite has been sent to Woodhull Hospital for psychiatric observation, authorities say."

Steve Sadin of the Chicago Tribune: "A 39-year-old Winthrop Harbor man was arrested Thursday by Highland Park police for allegedly making threatening statements in an Oct. 29 phone call to the Central Avenue Synagogue in Highland Park[, Illinois]. Police say the phone call was placed just two days after 11 people were fatally shot and six others injured during services at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. Dean R. West, of ... Winthrop Harbor, has been charged with a hate crime against a church or synagogue, according to Cynthia Vargas, spokeswoman for the Lake County State's Attorney's office." Mrs. McC: The article is accompanied by a photo (mug shot?) of West, who looks just like what you thought a hate-filled bigot looks like. Obviously, lack of originality is hardly West's worst trait, but it is a trait.

Paighten Harkins of the Salt Lake Tribune: North Ogden, Utah, Mayor Brent "Taylor was killed during an apparent insider attack early Saturday in Kabul[, Afghanistan]. The attacker was immediately killed by Afghan Forces, according to NATO. The Utah National Guard hasn't confirmed Taylor was killed in the attack, but Maj. Gen. Jefferson S. Burton, the adjutant general, in a news release, said: 'My heart breaks for the loss and sacrifice of our soldier, particularly for the family. I wish them all the comfort and courage to face the difficult days ahead.'" Taylor served as a major in the National Guard.