The stolen election poison spreads to Brazil
More than three weeks after losing a reelection bid, President Jair Bolsonaro on Tuesday blamed a software bug and demanded the electoral authority annul votes cast on most of Brazil’s nation’s electronic voting machines, though independent experts say the bug doesn't affect the reliability of results.
Such an action would leave Bolsonaro with 51% of the remaining valid votes — and a reelection victory, ....Liberal Party leader Valdemar Costa and an auditor hired by the party told reporters in Brasilia that their evaluation found all machines dating from before 2020 — nearly 280,000 of them, or about 59% of the total used in the Oct. 30 runoff — lacked individual identification numbers in internal logs.
Neither explained how that might have affected election results, but said they were asking the electoral authority to invalidate all votes cast on those machines.
Any glitch in a storm will do in the never-ending war of tyranny and kleptocracy against democracy.
A defeat is an actual victory?
In Blow to Trump, Supreme Court Permits House to Obtain His Tax ReturnsThe Supreme Court cleared the way on Tuesday for a House committee to obtain former President Donald J. Trump’s tax returns, refusing his request to block their release after a yearslong fight.
Representative Richard E. Neal, Democrat of Massachusetts, who requested the files as the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, said in a statement that his panel would “now conduct the oversight that we’ve sought for the last three and a half years.”Mr. Trump has used the slow pace of litigation to run out the clock on various oversight and investigative efforts. His stonewalling and legal challenges have succeeded in keeping the House from obtaining his tax returns for nearly four years, but that strategy appears to have fallen just short. The House would almost certainly have dropped the request for Mr. Trump’s tax returns in January, when Republicans take control of the chamber.
It was unclear when the Treasury Department will turn over the documents — a spokesman said only that the department would comply — but time is not on the side of Democrats who run the committee, who will cede control to Republicans in January as a result of the recent midterm elections.
The radical right Republican Supreme Court did it's best to protect Trump. The open question is who well did it do it’s job. There isn’t much time for the House to do much investigating. The pace of House investigations has been slower than glacial. Once McCarthy takes over in January as House speaker, that will likely (~90% chance?) be the end of House investigations of Trump, his corrupt cronies and assorted fellow traitors. The next ~6-8 weeks will reveal just how much or little the Democratic House can do with this new information, assuming they get it before McCarthy takes control.
It’s raining impeachments!
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) called on Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to resign over his handling of the U.S.-Mexico border, saying that GOP lawmakers will consider impeachment next year if he does not step down.
“If Secretary Mayorkas does not resign, House Republicans will investigate, every order, every action and every failure will determine whether we can begin impeachment inquiry,” McCarthy said at a press conference in El Paso, Texas, on Tuesday.
Over the last few weeks, multiple commentators from multiple sources have noted the Republican explicit lust for revenge and witch hunts. They generally also comment that the Republican Party no longer governs or has any detailed policy agenda. In stead of governing, the GOP is going to exercise power and generally continue is anti-government, anti-democracy agenda to accumulate more wealth and power for elites at the expense of everyone and everything else, including the environment.
Since they do not control the White House or Senate, House Republicans will just have to be content with vilifying and slandering Democrats, looking for Hunter Biden’s laptop and tax returns and investigating and impeaching any Democrat they target for impeachment. In other words, two more precious years are going to be wasted.
Why the Georgia Senate race is fairly important
Two years into his presidency, Joe Biden has already broken records with the number of federal judges he’s gotten confirmed and with the diversity of his court picks. And as Democrats prepare to control the Senate for another two years, Biden is on track to make his impact on the courts a defining piece of his legacy.
It’s only going to get easier for him if Democrats win in Georgia’s Senate runoff on Dec. 6.
The Senate has been tied at 50-50, along party lines, for the entire time that Biden has been president. That’s meant that Democrats and Republicans have had equal representation on the Judiciary Committee, where GOP members have been intentionally delaying the confirmation process for a number of Biden’s court picks.
All those GOP members have to do is unanimously vote no on a nominee, causing a tie within the committee, and it keeps that nominee stuck there. Whenever they do this, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has to file a so-called discharge petition to force that nominee out of the committee and onto the Senate floor for a confirmation vote.
Every discharge petition adds four hours of wait time on the Senate floor. That’s on top of the delays that come with filing a petition at all. To date, Republicans have forced Schumer to use a discharge petition for five of Biden’s court picks who went on to be confirmed. Among them: Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
There are currently four other judicial nominees — two appeals court picks and two district court picks — who are still stuck in the Judiciary Committee and need discharge petitions to get out.
Democrats are already set to have 50 seats in the new Senate. If Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) defeats his GOP challenger, Herschel Walker, in the coming weeks, Democrats will have 51 seats. That would mean no more power sharing on committees, no more votes tied along party lines in the Judiciary Committee and no more discharge petitions.
The Republican Party: It’s a waste of oxygen.
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