World’s Shortest Press Release November 1, 2020 But first: Why the media decided not to cover the Hunter Biden laptop emails. . . . Trump and his allies say there is evidence of corruption in emails and documents allegedly found on a laptop belonging to Democrat Joe Biden’s son. . . . But the Wall Street Journal and Fox News — among the only news organizations that have been given access to key documents — found that the emails and other records don’t make that case. Leaving aside the many questions about their provenance, the materials offered no evidence that Joe Biden played any role in his son’s dealings in China, let alone profited from them, both news organizations concluded. . . . U.S. intelligence agencies say Giuliani is being used by the Russians to spread this disinformation. Trump and his followers trust Putin’s word over that of the U.S. intelligence community. Maybe Putin is on our side and the FBI hates America . . . but color me skeptical. Just as I was skeptical Trump’s investigators had “found stuff you wouldn’t believe” about Obama’s birthplace, or that Trump had a plan to give everybody great health care at “a tiny fraction” of the cost — or that COVID was a “Democratic hoax,” or that climate change is a hoax, or that Russian attacks on our elections are a hoax, or that the crowd at his inauguration was the largest in history. Forty percent of the country is quite sure I’m wrong — Carl and Tom, among them. And a meaningful fraction of that 40% (not Carl and Tom) believe Democrats are Satan-worshipping cannibalistic pedophiles. Please vote. Why yet another prominent Republican is ashamed of his party. . . . These are painful words for me to write. I spent four decades in the Republican trenches, representing GOP presidential and congressional campaigns, working on Election Day operations, recounts, redistricting and other issues, including trying to lift the consent decree. [But] my party is destroying itself on the altar of Trump. . . . This is as un-American as it gets. It returns the Republican Party to the bad old days of “voter suppression” that landed it under a court order to stop such tactics — an order lifted [by Chief Justice Roberts] before this election. . . . . . . Proof of systematic fraud has become the Loch Ness Monster of the Republican Party. People have spent a lot of time looking for it, but it doesn’t exist. Trump has devoted his campaign and the Republican Party to this myth of voter fraud. . . . [D]isenfranchising voters has become key to his reelection strategy. . . . Well worth reading — and sharing — the whole piece. Trump’s critics focus on how horribly he has failed us since the virus hit our shores. To me, the more telling and tragic criticism is that Trump has weakened everything from our State Department to our Intelligence Community to our CDC . . . in this specific case, dismantling the forward-deployed China team that might well have kept the virus from ever leaving China in the first place, and ignoring the detailed pandemic response plan the previous administration had left behind for dealing with it if it ever did. So what happens Tuesday, as the whole world watches? From 538: . . . [W]e should have a pretty good idea of where things are headed on election night, even if no candidate is able to clinch 270 electoral votes (which is the threshold required to win) until later in the week. We should get near-complete results in Florida in a matter of hours; Arizona and North Carolina will release the vast majority of their ballots very quickly, although if the race is too close to call they may not provide a final answer for days. Georgia and Texas should tally most ballots on Nov. 3, but counting may stretch into Wednesday or Thursday. We should know the winner in Wisconsin by Wednesday morning; Michigan and Pennsylvania, by contrast, will probably take until the end of the week. Of course, there are a lot more races on the ballot than just the presidential contest, so read on to get a more detailed picture of every state. One last caveat before you dive in: These are just our best guesses based on what we know right now. Things can always go sideways thanks to human error or technological failures. And, of course, even the fastest-counting state may leave a race uncalled for days if the margin is close enough. . . . And now, finally: WheelTug Friday issued the shortest press release I’ve ever seen. The company says it has “received a significant additional investment for the completion of its 737NG program.” If that pans out and WheelTug does in fact receive FAA approval and begins flying — neither yet a sure thing — I have to think that Borealis, which owns about 58% of WheelTug, has a shot at being valued at many times more than its current $40 million market cap (5 million shares at $8 each). Inch by inch . . .