On a Veteran’s Day with troops in war zones in Southwest Asia and the Middle East, with troops being deployed on no notice to the southern border for a political “photo op”, the President of the United States stayed in his hotel in Paris rather than visiting the Belleau Wood battlefield and American cemetery while it was raining. [A brief narrative description of the Battle of Belleau Wood].

On the centenary of the end of the First World War with retired Marine four-star Generals as his chief of staff and Secretary of Defense, there was no possibility that Belleau Wood would not be on Trump’s schedule for this trip. General Kelly rounded up a delegation and made the 60 mile trip to Belleau Wood to lay a wreath for the Marines who fell in that battle.

Trump arrived late to everything and left early. He has no sense of history. He was not wearing an American Legion poppy. The speech he read when they finally got him to an American cemetery was read badly and he was still complaining about the weather. If he isn’t the “star”, he doesn’t want to be in the play.

I’m not about to question the authority of Trump and Rick Scott when it comes to fraud. I’ve never paid $25 million to settle a law suit like Trump University, and no one has topped the fine Rick Scott’s company paid for Medicare fraud – $1.7 BILLION. Those two people know a lot about committing fraud, but don’t seem to be able to define it when it comes to elections.

For those who don’t know, there are Republican and Democratic workers at every polling place in Florida. The Florida Secretary of State [appointed by the governor] has monitors in every county to observe the counting of ballots. There have been no official complaints from anybody in a position to observe misconduct.

The Florida law was and is self-contradictory when it comes to deadlines. Supervisors of Elections in the counties have to wait 10 days after the election for ballots mailed on or before the date of the election from an overseas location, but the state has required counting be finished last Saturday. That is for an ‘unofficial’ vote. Now the state has called for a machine recount because three races have differences of less than 0.5%. These deadlines are arbitrary. Scott wants counting stopped because the counties trying to finish are heavily Democratic and his lead is disappearing.

The ballot this year has a dozen ballot measures and a bunch of judges up for confirmation. My ballot was printed on both sides. I voted early and used the sample ballot to make my decision so when I got to the polling station all I had to do was transfer my choices to the official ballot.

It should surprise no one that Palm Beach and Broward counties take a long time to count ballots – they have a lot of voters.