Bordeaux Wine Enthusiasts

yeah but wtf, so the Michigan electoral college vote is determined by the whim of a couple of political election hacks in Detroit?
lol this country is such a joke.

We are two weeks tonight since the election.
And the incumbent president says "I won big."
And the top elected Republican officials in Congress are not disputing him.
When are people going to get their heads out of the sand and start screaming that there is a coup afoot?
This guy has zero intention of leaving.
This is Kafkaesque.

So is Giuliani the best of Trump's remaining legal team on the election? If so, that looks like good news for the opposition!

Breaking: no, it wasn’t just people voting early — the U.S. just surpassed a record-shattering 156 million votes counted. Could be as many as 3 million votes left to count, mostly in NY and CA.

Biden 79,535,824 (51.0%)
Trump 73,616,203 (47.2%)

Biden's popular vote lead is up to 5.9 million (3.8%).

The Republican members of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers have announced they want to rescind their votes to certify, claiming they were "bullied" into changing their minds.

What a circus.

JCNorthway wrote:The Republican members of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers have announced they want to rescind their votes to certify, claiming they were "bullied" into changing their minds.

Trump actually got in the phone to them.

From the Washington Post:

"President Trump called a GOP canvassing board member in Wayne County who announced Wednesday she wanted to rescind her decision to certify the results of the presidential election, the member said in a message to The Washington Post Thursday."

When all Latin America (except Bolsonaro) starts asking who is the Banana Republic... Something must have gone wrong. Putin and Xi must be wetting their bed....

And now he has invited Michigan's Republican legislative leaders to meet with him on Friday. At least the House leader is on record as saying that changing electors will not happen. We shall see.

For my own sanity, I’m going with it’s a done deal, Trump is a stale fart in an elevator, and we’re just holding our breath until it fades.

Michael Steele:

The only way Donald Trump gets to 270 is if he loses 50 pounds.

This is devolving into the impact of a severe peronality disorder and his enablers (whether on purpose or naively). I fear much of it is on purpose, which says a lot about many of our current politicians and their understanding of and commitment to the constitutional roles of government.

I wish I shared your optimism, David.
I think you are going to see Republican electoral college shenanigans in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Georgia for sure, and possibly Pennsylvania as well.

You guys should see the stuff that is going on at the federal judge appointment level. It is mind-boggling.

Giuliani’s press conference today took crazy and bizarre to another level, even for him. His hair-dye malfunction was especially creepy and pathetic.

One of the predictions I made in this thread of which I am most proud was that we would see things in this campaign that we never dreamed possible.
Incredibly, two weeks after the election, I predict that, between now and Jan 20th, we will see even more things we are not even imagining possible at this late date.
We will be in awe at the things we are about to see.

Do you think we could see a Trump "2nd mandate"

Interesting Opinion piece by Michael Gerson in today's Washington Post. He makes some good points.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... story.html

One thing I know for sure is that we are at the mercy of Republicans, never a good thing.
Republicans have the power to disrupt the electoral college and the banana republic process of "certification" <rolls eyes> in WI, MI, PA, and GA, and elsewhere.
And if that happens, it will go to the House, where we will lose.
A great irony here is that it is not even going to matter what SCOTUS thinks about it.
Herr Orange is brilliantly using a losing legal strategy to bolster his political strategy, which has a chance of success.
I think he has a 50-50 chance of pulling off a coup.

I agree with this article in The New Yorker:

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-colu ... =TNY_Daily

Time for a poll:

Who will be president on late afternoon of January 20, 2021:

A. Herr Trump
B. Joe Biden

B

A

A is an impossibility. The United States of America ceases to exist if Joseph Biden is not inaugurated on Jan 20, 2021.

I agree.
And I still pick A.

Here's one for you, C. Nancy Pelosi. If Joe isn't certified it doesn't necessarily mean Trump wins. It'll end up in court and we'll be in a tail spin.

Ha I was actually going to add that, Gerry, I think there is a better than 10% chance that Nancy Pelosi is the next president.
You are absolutely right. Disqualification of Joe's electoral votes doesn't mean that Herr Orange gets them.

By the way...
I hope when this is all over, if we avoid disaster...
You can thank your favorite lawyers for saving democracy.
If democracy is saved, it will be because of lawyers and judges. Certainly not politicians, certainly not the citizenry, or the press.
It will be because of lawyers, and judges, and courts. It will be because of the rule of law.
You are welcome. No problem, it is just the job we do every day, which like nobody knows about.

You mean lawyers like Rudy Giuliani, Sydney Powell, Joe DiGenova and Victoria Toensing? The MAGA Elite Strike Force.

*edited for spelling*

Wow, the Wall Street Journal editorial board slams Herr Trump hard upside his big fat orange head:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/georgia-ce ... opin_pos_1

To Jim's point about lawyers and judges, a federal judge issued preliminary injunctions against Robert Pack, they guy Trump appointed to oversee the Voice of America organization, and who immediately started firing senior officials at the organization. Fortunately he will soon be gone as Biden has suggested he will fire Pack.

“One out of every 1,000 residents of North Dakota has now died from COVID-19. Over 9% of the state has tested positive. South Dakota is not far behind with 8% of the state having tested positive, and 1 out of 1,200 dead.”

Simply staggering, especially given that these states essentially were bypassed by the pandemic in the first and second waves.

But 99.9% are still alive...

Delayed Sturgis effect?

I would also like to see Covid numbers where Trump held recent rallies. Several in Nevada in the home stretch and our numbers are getting worse by the week.

Blanquito wrote:“One out of every 1,000 residents of North Dakota has now died from COVID-19. Over 9% of the state has tested positive. South Dakota is not far behind with 8% of the state having tested positive, and 1 out of 1,200 dead.”

Simply staggering, especially given that these states essentially were bypassed by the pandemic in the first and second waves.

Normal death rates across the US, for all ages/areas are roughly 1 of 1000 every year. At my employer, and the workforce where we focus on this issue, our 'hazard rate' is 1 of 250 - 400 per year. (our workers are older generally, and in some cases like law enforcement/corrections have more in service duty deaths)

I don't have a great sense of what baseline rates should be for this. However I've always remembered my high school: 6 kids (all males) died over my 4 years (1200 enrollment) which always felt high to me, but I guess for that era, was not wildly out of tolerances.

Jim - yes thank goodness for the honest lawyers and judges still remaining. Another 4 years of Trump and there might not be any more honest judges.

Arv - Those who have looked at overall death rates have said the excess deaths in 2020 in the US point to more COVID deaths than have been reported.

Are you guys ready for a full blown constitutional crisis this week?

Why should this week be any different?

well, we are going to have delayed in certification in Michigan and Pennsylvania, which will give Herr Orange another couple weeks to muck things up.
And there is trouble ahead in Wisconsin.
I'm having trouble seeing how we are not at the complete mercy of the Republicans here.

Michigan Board of Canvassers just voted 3 to 1 to certify election results.

That’s a good one for the good guys.

JCNorthway wrote:Michigan Board of Canvassers just voted 3 to 1 to certify election results.

The guy that voted against was drinking Dom Perignon at Trump Hotel in DC over the weekend.