SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:56 P.M. ET:

FIDEL IS DEAD – FROM CNN:  Fidel Castro, the Cuban despot who famously proclaimed after his arrest in a failed coup attempt that history would absolve him, has died aged 90.  Castro's brother, Raul, announced his death on Cuban TV.  At the end, an elderly and infirm Castro was a whisper of the Marxist firebrand whose iron will and passionate determination bent the arc of destiny.  "There are few individuals in the 20th century who had a more profound impact on a single country than Fidel Castro had in Cuba," Robert Pastor, a former national security adviser for President Jimmy Carter in the 1970s, told CNN in 2012...No other nonroyal ruler clung to power as long as Castro did.  I can't wait for the grief that will come from American college campuses.  Memorial services maybe.  Or maybe a good flash-mob attack on an appliance store.  There are many ways to mourn.

THE GRAND KNIFE IN THE BACK – FROM THE HILL:   President Barack Obama called Hillary Clinton to persuade her to concede the White House on election night, according to a forthcoming book on Clinton’s defeat.  Authors Amie Parnes, The Hill's senior White House correspondent, and Jonathan Allen cite three Clintonworld sources familiar with the election-night request in the unreleased book from Crown Publishing.  “You need to concede,” Obama told his former secretary of State as she, her family, and her top aides continued to watch results trickle in from the key Rust Belt states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. The latter state, called after 1:30 a.m. by The Associated Press, was the clear tipping point for the White House race, ensuring Trump would crest over the 270 electoral-vote threshold needed to win.
Clinton ultimately heeded Obama’s advice and called Trump to acknowledge her defeat in the early morning hours Wednesday.  The Obamas and Clintons never liked each other, and Obama's phone call, entirely unnecessary and unprecedented, was the extra blood on the floor.

SUDDEN INTEREST IN CLEAN ELECTIONS – FROM THE HILL:   Wisconsin will undertake a recount of its presidential election votes after two requests from third-party candidates.  Green Party nominee Jill Stein filed her request just before the deadline Friday afternoon, the Wisconsin Elections Commission announced. Reform Party candidate Rocky De La Fuente also filed for a recount.  “We are standing up for an election system that we can trust; for voting systems that respect and encourage our vote, and make it possible for all of us to exercise our constitutional right to vote,” Stein said in a statement.   “We demand voting systems that are accurate, secure and accountable to the people. This is part of a larger commitment to election reform that our campaign and the Green Party has long stood for, which includes open debates, an end to voter ID laws and voter suppression, and ranked choice voting."  The Wisconsin Elections Commission said it is working under a Dec. 13 deadline to finish the recount.   She's also trying to get recounts in Michigan and Pennsylvania.  Gee, when Republicans warned about corrupt elections, they were laughed at.  I don't hear any laughing now.  I guess it depends on who gets hurt.  There is, by the way, no evidence that the counts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania are inaccurate.

November 25, 2016