Andrew Gillum concedes in FL (again), and Stacey Abrams in GA joins Roy Moore in AL in not conceding at all

What matters in these affairs is election certification by the respective Secretaries of State, not whether the losing candidates concede or the winning candidates claim victory.

Still, it is considered un-American not to concede when you've lost, simply because that means you don't accept the rules Americans agree to live by in these matters. Without that glue, the whole thing is in danger of descending into chaos, conflict and perhaps civil war.

One such un-American person stoking these flames is Democrat Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio who said "if Stacey Abrams doesn't win in Georgia, they stole it, it's clear. It's clear. I say that publicly."

Obviously not clear to the final authority in this matter, Senator.

In rejecting the non-conceders, one might say the voters got it right in electing their opponents, including in Alabama, except that in Ohio Sherrod Brown just won six more years in the US Senate by 275,000 votes.

The mills of the gods grind slowly . . .. 

Democrat Andrew Gillum concedes to Republican Ron DeSantis in Florida governor's race:

Gillum had conceded to DeSantis on election night, but retracted it after the margin between the two candidates narrowed.

Democrat Stacey Abrams says she can't win governor's race, but will sue Georgia for election 'mismanagement':

Her speech Friday effectively puts a stop to the contest. The final result had been in doubt for 10 days after the election.

Abrams stressed as she spoke: "This is not a speech of concession."

Trump's losses in the US House are more than double the average Republican president's first midterm losses

The average loss of seats in the US House for the first midterm after a Republican's initial election to presidential office has been 17 up to Trump, who is set to lose 36.

A loss of 36 is more like what a Democrat president would lose in the first midterm, which averages 31.

Trump, of course, used to be a Democrat.

One term president waves surrender flag on drug war, signs on to criminal justice reform, no one will be executed

Criminal justice reform finally has a chance in Congress. Here's what the First Step Act would do.:

President Donald Trump’s support has put Congress within reach of passing the most sweeping set of changes to the federal criminal justice system since the 1990s, when fear of crime drove the enactment of draconian sentencing practices that shipped hundreds of thousands of drug offenders to prison.

Dear Jeff Flake: PISS OFF!

Sen. Jeff Flake draws the line: Protect Mueller probe or no new federal judges

We don't need any more immigrants: Population increases have outpaced labor force increases for a decade

Before the Great Recession the growth rate of the labor force easily exceeded the growth rate of population for decade after decade, but since then the situation has reversed dramatically.

Population has been increasing at a rate 75% higher than the labor force over the last decade. The increased population is not assimilating to work.

THERE IS NO LABOR SHORTAGE.

Increasing the population of the non-working has been the number one drag on the economy, causing GDP to fall and debt to rise, negatively impacting every standard measure.

Trump's alt-right supporters don't get it that he's already finished: The time to accomplish something MAJOR was wasted in year one on Obamacare, in year two on taxes and defense spending

Liberal math: In ME-2 the Democrat came in second but wins the seat anyway

This is how the National Popular Vote will work in the case of president if states adopt the kind of legerdemain citizens of Maine adopted in 2016.

I say legerdemain advisedly, because it is not reasoning but simple trickery. In the case of the National Popular Vote, you will think X won your state but because Y got more votes nationally your state agrees to switch its electoral college votes to Y. In Maine because of an equally arbitrary decision to deprive the top vote getter from winning (the winner must get 50% even though Bill Clinton never did), the winner ends up losing because of "ranking". The last place finisher's votes, person D's, get reallocated to A, B, and C using math reflecting the voters' rankings of all the candidates until someone reaches 50%.

The voters collectively decide how your vote will go, not you, based on their ranking of the candidates, not yours.

In other words, if you happened to vote for D, and probably also for C in this case, your vote was changed to B, not the original winner A.

They say every vote must count, and call it democracy.

I seem to recall the Germans voted for Hitler, too. They gave up their freedom willingly, you see, so it must have been OK.

GOP Rep. Bruce Poliquin loses in first race decided by Maine's 'ranked-choice' system:

Poliquin narrowly got the most votes on Election Day – with 46.1 percent to Golden's 45.9 – but because he didn't get more than 50 percent of the vote, Maine's new law kicked in. Independent candidates Tiffany Bond and William Hoar combined received about another 8 percent of the vote. 

In the new system, approved by Maine voters in 2016, a person votes for their favorite candidate and ranks the other candidates by their order of preference. If no candidate gets more than 50 percent of the vote, the last-place candidate gets knocked out and the ballots cast for them are reallocated based on an algorithm that factors the voters' preferences. That process continues until one candidate has a majority. 

Good God you people are stupid: Trump's been hiring the wrong people from day 1 and you're only just now noticing?

At 4:40pm today with 100% of the vote reported, CA-39 was won by the Republican, at 8:53pm by the Democrat, in between which 8,185 extra votes suddenly materialize to push the Democrat over the top

screen shot 4.40.38pm 11/15/18

screen shot 8.53.09pm 11/15/18

It's not the votes that count, but who counts the votes.

DeSantis elected Florida governor a 2nd time in machine recount, US Senator and agriculture commissioner races forced into hand recount

Florida orders first ever statewide hand-recounts as legal fights continue:

DeSantis' lead held Thursday as the counties reported their tallies, keeping him above the quarter-point threshold and making him Florida's governor-elect barring a legal challenge from Andrew Gillum. But, as expected, the margins in the U.S. Senate and agriculture commissioner races remained under the threshold, requiring hand recounts of overvotes and undervotes.

Florida, laughstock of the world

Federal judge blasts Florida for bungled election: 'Laughingstock of the world':

“We have been the laughing stock of the world, election after election, and we chose not to fix this,” U.S. District Judge Mark Walker said in court, where he is at the center of the legal battle over the election recount.

One term president: Trump's m/o is to dupe, trick and snooker, whether it's Saudi Arabia over oil or Americans over immigration

'Duped,' 'tricked' and 'snookered': Oil analysts say Trump fooled Saudis into tanking crude prices:

"They're pretty much snookered by Trump," Ross said. "I mean, Trump led them to believe that the Iranian exports would be zero. It turned out they're going to be 1.2 to 1.5 million barrels a day, way higher than people thought."

13 million young adults 18-29 use marijuana but the FDA's Scott Gottlieb is shocked, shocked I tell you, by 3.6 million young vapers

This administration, like the rest of this country, is completely effed up.

US orders restriction on e-cigarette sales; youth use surges:

Tampa (AFP) - US regulators Thursday ordered sharp restrictions on sales of e-cigarettes, as national data showed a 78 percent single-year surge in vaping among young people, with two-thirds using fruit and candy-flavored products. ...

"These data shock my conscience," said FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, referring to the latest data from the National Youth Tobacco Survey. ...

A total of 3.6 million US youths reported vaping at least once in the past month, the data showed.

"These increases must stop. And the bottom line is this: I will not allow a generation of children to become addicted to nicotine through e-cigarettes," said Gottlieb.

Meanwhile Gallup reported in August that 24% of the 54 million Americans aged 18-29 regularly or occasionally use marijuana, over three and half times as many as vape, but the FDA's Gottlieb isn't in the headlines over that.

How to lose in 2020: Trump reportedly trying to please Turkey by pushing Fethullah Gulen out of the US

Trump doesn't give a damn about the criminality of Turkey's Erdogan. Trump should be pushing Turkey out of NATO, not Gulen out of the US. Instead it's all about a peace deal with the Joos. I smell Javanka. I smell a one term president.

To ease Turkish pressure on Saudis over killing, White House weighs expelling Erdogan foe:

The requests on Gulen in mid-October mark at least the second time the Trump administration has re-examined Turkey's extradition request since taking office. In the weeks after Trump's inauguration, the White House asked the Justice Department to review Gulen's case, NBC has reported.

Some officials have described the first request as a routine part of a new administration reviewing its relationship with a key ally. The request, however, took place under Trump's former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, whose ties to Turkey came under scrutiny in special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian election meddling. Flynn, who resigned in February 2017, entered into a plea agreement with Mueller last December and has been cooperating with the investigation.

Making it easier to vote makes it easier to commit fraud

Ending Election Fraud

Time to nuke Mexico: Think of it as increasing your defensible perimeter against wildfires

Libertarian Senator Mike Lee talks grandly about "conservative" criminal justice reform when all he's after is throwing out federal mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses

Mike Lee thinks selling drugs (even while armed with a gun!) doesn't hurt anyone when the evidence is pouring in that marijuana is bad for the health of those who use it.

And he obviously hasn't lived with a user. If he had he'd know they make lousy family members and lousy Americans.

Did the young father of two let his children play with his gun, Senator?

Thanks for nothing, Utah!

Mike Lee: A conservative case for criminal justice reform:

For example, when I served as an Assistant United States Attorney in Salt Lake City, Weldon Angelos -- a young father of two with no criminal record -- was convicted of selling three dime bags of marijuana to a paid informant over a short period of time.

These were not violent crimes. No one was hurt. But because Angelos had been in possession of a gun at the time he sold the drugs (a gun which was neither brandished nor discharged in connection with the offense), the judge was forced by federal law to give him a 55-year prison sentence. The average federal sentence for assault is just two years. The average murderer only gets 15 years. While acknowledging the obvious excessiveness of the sentence, the judge explained that the applicable federal statutes gave him no authority to impose a less-severe prison term, noting that “only Congress can fix this problem.”

If only Donald Trump knew that he was president

Feinstein urged Obama in 2014 to use 'broad power' to limit immigration:

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., told then-President Barack Obama in the summer of 2014 that he could use "very broad power" to limit immigration as he saw fit, according to a letter obtained by Fox News.

In the July 29 letter, Feinstein cites Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act -- the same federal legislation cited by the Trump administration Thursday in unveiling a rule denying asylum claims to migrants who enter the country illegally.

"Whenever the president finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States," the legislation states, "he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate."

Feinstein's letter initially notes that the senator has discussed possible legislation with then-Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson. Feinstein then writes: "there is also an argument that there is sufficient flexibility in current law for the government to respond to the current crisis and that further legislation is not needed." She adds that the authority vested in the presidency by Section 212 (f) means that "no legislation is necessary to give your administration the tools it needs to respond to this crisis, and that any needed temporary measures can be implemented through presidential action."

Crackpot Maxine Waters set to become chair of House Financial Services Committee, bank stocks fall

Maxine Waters says easing banking regulations 'will come to an end' when she takes committee chair

The peers must be incompetent: Peer-reviewed ocean warming paper in premier journal found to have big math boo-boo

From the story here:

However, the conclusion came under scrutiny after mathematician Nic Lewis, a critic of the scientific consensus around human-induced warming, posted a critique of the paper on the blog of Judith Curry, another well-known critic.

“The findings of the ... paper were peer reviewed and published in the world’s premier scientific journal and were given wide coverage in the English-speaking media,” Lewis wrote. “Despite this, a quick review of the first page of the paper was sufficient to raise doubts as to the accuracy of its results.”

Co-author Ralph Keeling, climate scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, took full blame and thanked Lewis for alerting him to the mistake. ...

“Our error margins are too big now to really weigh in on the precise amount of warming that’s going on in the ocean,” Keeling said. “We really muffed the error margins.”

A correction has been submitted to the journal Nature.