SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:55 P.M. ET:

ARIZONA UPDATE – The vote count in the Arizona Senate race goes on, and may not be completed for another two or three days, or more.   Kyrsten Sinema, the whackjob Democrat, has taken the lead against Republican Martha McSally.  That lead increased from 9,000 this morning to more than 20,000 by evening.  Most observers believe, based on where outstanding ballots are from, that Sinema's lead will continue or grow.  This is a Republican seat, held by the retiring Jeff Flake.  If it flips, it will be the second GOP seat lost, the first being Dean Heller's in Nevada.  It really doesn't look good for Martha, an outstanding woman, a patriot, and a choice vastly superior to the apparent winner.

FLORIDA UPDATE – As always in Florida, strange things are happening.  We thought, at the end of election night, that Republican Governor Rick Scott had been elected to the US Senate, replacing incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson.  We thought that Republican Congressman Ron DeSantis had been elected governor, defeating Democratic demagogue and showboat Andrew Gillum.  That's what we thought.  But a strange thing has happened.  Votes started coming in from Broward County, a place not known for purity in vote counting, and vote officials refused to play by the states's rules.  Now both our victories are suddenly in jeopardy.  As each new batch of votes mysteriously appears, the margins of victory in the Senate and governorship races get thinner and thinner.  If the margins are within half a point, a machine recount will be called.  If a margin goes within a quarter of a point, a hand recount is ordered.   Rick Scott won two court victories today, as judges came down hard on those in charge of Broward's machinery.   This may be the start of a major scandal, and it's possible that we're seeing an election stolen before our eyes.

YOU CAN'T MAKE THIS UP – FROM THE ALGEMEINER:  The New York Times, under pressure, has suspended its moneymaking “Times Journeys” journalist-guided vacation tours of the Islamic Republic of Iran.  The 106-page printed catalog of 2019 departures hit mailboxes of Times subscribers this week. It includes trips to Antarctica, China, Japan, and the Galapagos Islands. But terror-sponsoring, Israel-hating Tehran, which has been a destination for the Times since the “Times Journeys” launched in 2014, has been unceremoniously dropped from the list.  A Times spokeswoman didn’t immediately respond to a question about why the trips had been stopped. The US Treasury also didn’t immediately respond on the record to a question about whether the Trump administration’s newly-tightened sanctions on Iran had required the Times to stop offering the journeys.  A booking representative for the Times Journeys explained that the Times Iran tour had been put “on the shelf for the next year or two,” the result of “just a change in the kind of direction that we wanted to go with the travel program.”  Next, a nostalgic Times tour of Nazi sites in Germany...and for small extra fee, a tour of Pearl Harbor from the Japanese perspective.

November 9,  2018