Georgia Rhythm - 2022 Edition

The 2022 midterms are finally over.  Last week, in the Georgia runoff, Democratic U.S. Senator Raphael Warnock won a full six-year term against Republican challenger Herschel Walker.  Warnock's victory gives the Democrats a solid majority (including Kyrsten Sinema, who just became an independent - more on that later)  that doesn't have to share committee seats equally with Republicans, doesn't need Republican permission for subpoena power, and doesn't have to rely on Kamala Harris casting a tie-breaking vote over and over.

It also gives the Republicans a valuable lesson in the fact that putting up a guy against a black Democratic candidate just because the GOP candidate is also black does not endear you to black voters, who were offended at the idea that they were expected to vote for Walker on the basis of his race while white Republican voters voted for him on the basis of his political affiliation.  

It makes since that Warnock, as pastor of Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church, was elected primarily because people judged him on the standard a guy who had Warnock's job - Martin Luther King, Jr. - elevated . . . the content of one's character, not the color of one's skin.

It turns out that Herschel Walker had a bit of character himself, in that he conceded graciously and that he said he saw himself and his supporters as winners because they participated in the democratic process.  (Only an athlete could say that the most important thing about politics is not winning but taking part.)   Still, I don't know why Donald Trump recruited his old United States Football League pal to run for the Senate.  If Trump wanted to foil Warnock with a black opponent, couldn't he have found a black Republican in Georgia who at least looked - and sounded - the part of a U.S. Senator? 

Get Used To It

The investigation into Trump meddling in the 2020 Georgia elections looked to be picking up steam.  U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) was ordered by a federal appeals court to honor a subpoena and testify over what he knew bout Trump's plan to overturn the presidential election results in Georgia based on phone calls Graham had made at the time.  Graham, insisting hat these phone calls were related to his legislative work, appealed to the Supreme Court, which convinced me that he would get a reprieve of some sort - because he wouldn't have appealed to the highest court of the land if he didn't think the Court would help him.

It did - in the form of Justice Clarence Thomas blocking Graham's subpoena temporarily.

Now why would Thomas do such a thing?  It's not because he, born and bred a Georgia man, just cannot believe that Trump would try to corrupt his (Thomas') native state by trying to overturn an election, is it?

No, of course not.  It's more likely because his wife, a conservative activist, was trying to help get the election overturned herself.

This is just the latest in a series of right-wing extremist rulings form the justice, whose reactionary jurisprudence was once explained by his supporters as the result of anger of women pushing sexual-harassment charges against him during his 1991 U.S. Senate confirmation hearings that left him bitter and vindictive.      

In other words, it's Barbara Boxer's fault.

Yeah, right.

Lindsey Graham will likely have to testify in the grand-jury investigation of Trump in Georgia.  But if Clarence Thomas can't recuse himself when the situation calls for it, how can we be assured that, in a ruling in which he speaks for the majority, justice will be done? 

In response to those who objected to his mere presence on the bench when he first joined the Supreme Court, Justice Thomas is said to have offered these two sentences, each comprised entirely of monosyllabic words - "I'm on the Court.  Get used to it."

Peachy Keen

In a closely watched U.S, Senate campaign in Georgia, a state with two black Senate candidates form the two major parties, the Democratic incumbent is an articulate, well-spoken intellectual Baptist minister who pastors Martin Luther King, Jr.'s congregation and walks his faith like he talks it and his Republican opponent is an Heisman Trophy-winning idiot football player who played for Donald Trump's New Jersey Generals team in the United States Football League (created, according to Paul Slansky, under "the assumption that what America needs is more football") before going to the NFL and the Dallas Cowboys, fathered numerous children with different women with a sexual bravado that would embarrass Stephen Stills, cannot put a single sentence together, and supports pushing "bad air" to China to deal with global warming in America.  So you would think the Democrat would win going away, right?

Wrong.  Senator Raphael Warnock is so barely ahead of Republican Herschel Walker in the U.S. Senate election campaign that the margin is statistically insignificant.  How can that be?  Because this is Georgia, not New Jersey.  If the original United States Football League had succeeded, and Walker, a native Georgian, had made his home in New Jersey, and had run for Senate against Cory Booker - like Warnock, black, intentionally bald, well-spoken, and better dressed than Walker - it would be Booker by a mile.

Warnock has held his own against Walker on the campaign trail and in the debates, citing economic concerns and crime (unlike most Democratic candidates this year) against Walker's failed businesses and honorary law enforcement badge, but he's been slipping lately.  Left with no choice to take the low road, Warnock has released ads bashing Walker for his hypocrisy on being anti-abortion buy paying for one of his baby mamas to abort a child, a charge Walker denies despite the evidence against him.  And Walker supporters are sticking by him, despite the evidence against him - because the Republicans need to flip this Senate seat if they want the Senate majority they are now so tantalizingly close to. 

Warnock may actually be in a better position for November, because of the black vote in Fulton County, where Atlanta, the most populous city in Georgia, is, and because Georgia black voters in general don't want a nimrod like Walker discrediting, not uplifting, the race.  But thanks to a third-party candidate in the campaign, the election my go to a runoff if no candidate gets a majority. 

If Warnock loses, he can always go back to his day job as pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church.  If Walker loses, well, maybe a future Republican President will give him a diplomatic post.  Maybe he'll make him ambassador to Georgia - but then what happens when Walker shows up in Atlanta instead of Tbilisi? 😄

The January 6 Hearings - Part Four

 he fourth public hearing of the January 6 House select committee got very interesting yesterday.  And not because of Georgia boys Brad Raffensperger and Gabriel Sterling, who told the stories of intense harassment and pressure from Trump supporters to overturn the 2020 presidential election, which we already knew about.  With House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy trying to downplay the insurrection in the hope of being Speaker of the U.S. House in 2023, the January 6 committee heard from the Speaker of the House of Representatives of the state of Arizona . . . a conservative Republican with far more integrity than McCarthy.

Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers (above) said he was pressured by Donald Trump and Rudolph Giuliani to have the Arizona presidential ballots overturned because they insisted that Joe Biden had won the state through fraud.  When Speaker Bowers asked Giuliani for proof, the Trump lawyer and former New York mayor promised to provide evidence . . . and never did.  Trump even tried to get Speaker Bowers to call a special session of the Arizona House of Representatives to negate the presidential election results, something he couldn't do without a two-thirds majority of the Arizona legislature's lower house (which he could never get anyway).  Trump pressured Speaker Bowers to find any way to overturn Biden's victory, even if it meant cheating and lying.  A religious conservative, the Speaker refused to violate the tenets of his faith.

Oh yeah, his faith . . ..  Bowers is a Mormon, and as a Mormon, he believes that the U.S. Constitution - to which he took an oath to support, an oath he deems as sacred as his local temple - is a divinely inspired document, and to violate the Constitution is to violate the word of God Himself.  Asking a Mormon to violate the Constitution is like asking an Orthodox Jew to work on Saturdays.  Speaker Bowers said he would not be bullied into lying and cheating and going against his faith. 

The day also presented damning evidence that Trump personally went after Georgia poll worker Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Shay Moss, for handling voters at their local polling station and accused the pair of manipulating and rigging the vote in their precinct.  Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss, who are black, are now afraid to go out in public and have confined themselves to home.

So, in other words, two black women are afraid to venture out on their own because a white man has ensured that they will be whipped and beaten if they do.

Just like in the days of slavery.  And, truth be told, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger's daughter-in-law and grandchildren (his son died) have received death threats as well as he.  Raffensperger had the thankless task of investigating Trump's bogus claims of dead people in Georgia having voted. 

If there's any levity to be found in yesterday's hearing, it's this . . . when Georgia elections official Gabriel Sterling testified about the integrity of the vote . . .

. . . must have been thinking, "Wait a minute! Roger Ebert was involved?  I thought he was dead!"

Yes, and like many deceased Chicagoans, Roger Ebert voted for Joe Biden, too.

We have to laugh once in awhile with regard to January 6.  If we don't laugh, we're going to have to cry.

Trump Triple Threat

If last week was a bad week for President Biden, this week was a bad week for Donald Trump. 

The Supreme Court - proving that, while it is sometimes foolish, it is not insane - rejected Trump's claim of executive privilege in his effort to keep the House January 6 select committee from obtaining his presidential documents.  Among the first such documents made public: a plan to seize voting machines to keep votes from being counted and to keep Biden's victory from being certified by Congress.  More revelations are sure to follow.

More people close to Trump have been drawn into the spider's web of the plot to subvert democracy.  Rudolph Giuliani was subpoenaed by the committee to answer for charges - which are very credible I might add - that we was greatly involved in the plot to seat Trump electors in seven states Biden carried in the 2020 election.  Trump's own daughter, Ivanka, can expect a subpoena herself, as the select committee wants to hear from her and has invited her to show up. Since she likely won't - she's a whole lot smarter than her brother Eric, who did cooperate - the committee will have no choice to go from asking her to come in and tell what she knows to ordering her to.

Meanwhile, in Georgia, the Fulton County District Attorney's office has called for a grand jury to help investigate charges that Trump attempted to interfere in the counting of votes in Georgia  to prevent a Biden win there.  District Attorney Fani Willis explained in a letter that she "has received information indicating a reasonable probability that the State of Georgia’s administration of elections in 2020, including the State’s election of the President of the United States, was subject to possible criminal disruptions."

Criminal disruptions, like, Trump asking Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to "find" the exact number of votes Trump needed to carry Georgia. 

Hey, Trump - you "winning" yet?  You must be sick and tired of winning!

Our democracy hasn't been safeguarded yet.  But all of this news has made me feel a little better about the future.

Georgia Rhythm - A New Beginning

In the same way that Friday the 13th, Part V was a new beginning. Just when you think voter suppression, like Jason Voorhees, is dead, well, like Jason, it comes back.

The Republican-majority Georgia legislature passed - and the illegitimate Governor Brian Kemp signed - a new law tightening the screws on restricting he vote in the state. The law now mandates, among other things, voter ID for absentee ballots, a limit on the number of mail-in drop boxes, and the right of the state to take over a local elections board where fraud is "suspected."   It also bans giving food and drink to people waiting in line to vote on the grounds that it constitutes electoral bribery.

President Biden has vowed to do everything he can to fight voter suppression in Georgia and elsewhere - 42 other states, including my home state of New Jersey, have some form of voter restriction legislation pending in their legislatures - which is a way of saying he can do very little.  The President of the United States cannot unilaterally overrule a state's election laws (though Trump tried), and the voter-right law in Congress can't pass without eliminating the filibuster in the Senate, something Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia isn't prepared to support.  I have also heard - I don't know how true this is - that Senate Democrats have suggested excepting any legislation related to voting rights from the filibuster rule, but Manchin reportedly doesn't even want to make that exception.

Senator Raphael Warnock (D-GA), who was elected in a runoff for a special election to complete an unexpired Senate term, has made getting this legislation through and to President Biden's desk for his signature a priority, and he plans to persuade Republicans who are on record as having supported renewals of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.  If Warnock, above, can do that, he should consider selling ice cubes to Eskimos.  Because Republican senators are no longer in Congress to vote in favor of the interests of the general public.  They're there to satisfy the far-right GOP base.  And the base wants stricter voting requirements to stop Democrats from stealing elections (which Democrats do by voting legally). 

Senator Warnock is noncommittal on the issue of boycotts of Georgia-based businesses and calls to move events scheduled for Atlanta, or Augusta (like the Masters), elsewhere, preferring instead to focus on what he can do about voting rights in Washington.  I say, he's fated to lose his fight and also lose his bid for a full six-year Senate term in 2022, thanks to the new law - and will have be content with just continuing to pastor Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta come 2023.  The odds are simply against him.  But then, what do I know?  Three months ago this time, I didn't think he'd even get elected to the Senate in the runoff.

Block The Vote - 2021 Edition

The Capitol insurrectionists demanded that someone "stop the steal" - even though there was no fraud in the presidential election to get President Biden in - and now Republicans are taking the Big Lie to heart and acting accordingly.  

Numerous states are passing bills that would tighten voting rules by limiting or eliminating early voting, providing more ID at the polls to vote, or, in Georgia, where the Democrats won narrow presidential and U.S .Senate victories, demanding a reason for mail-in voting and getting rid of mail-in ballot receptacles altogether.  This is all designed to keep Democratic constituencies - especially blacks - from voting.

Can I offer any comfort to you?  No. Like Jacob Marley's ghost, I have none to give.   And there are three reasons for that.  First of all, Republicans, though out of power in Washington, did very well in state legislative elections in 2020, a census year, meaning Republicans have the upper hand in redrawing U.S. House districts (as well as state legislative districts) and they intend to bitch-slap Democrats with the back of it.  (Where was Martin O'Malley's Win Back Your State PAC when we really needed it?)  Second, Republicans already control the legislatures passing this voter-suppression legislation, and they're likely to be upheld by a Republican-dominated court system.  Third, the voting-rights bill passed by the House, which would negate state voter-suppression laws, has no chance in the Senate because Republicans will filibuster it and Senate Democrats haven't figured out a way to get the voting-rights bill around that roadblock.  

I do have one ray of hope, a silver lining of sorts, to throw out.  And it's not President Biden's executive order securing the right to vote; that's purely symbolic.  In states like Georgia, mail-in-voting has been traditionally used more by Republicans - who are older and have trouble getting to the polls - than Democrats.  So this suppression of mail-in voting could keep more Republicans than Democrats in Georgia from casting a ballot and end up being a wash that doesn't help the Republicans one iota.

With this legislation all but certain to become law, Democrats in Georgia will have to work with what they have.  If they have to stand in line all day to vote, so be it.  They can't let the bastards win.  And if you're a Georgia resident and you need water to sustain you while waiting to vote, BYOB - Georgia's new voting legislation doesn't allow people to hand out water bottles to voters either.

There Was a Riot Goin' On

Like many people across America, I saw the House impeachment managers present video evidence at Donald Trump's Senate trial of how close congressional lawmakers - and then-Vice President Mike Pence came to being assassinated, as shown in the video still below, and the managers tied it perfectly to Trump's call for a "wild" time on January 6.  More is to come today.

Alas, you can count all of the Senate Republicans currently siding with Trump who can be persuaded to change their minds on one hand with fingers to spare.  And I'm being optismtic.  Trump is still going to be acquitted, and that means he's still likely to remain a free man unless the Justice Department finds reason to prosecute him.  And so it's easy to understand why Trump bootlicker Lindsey Graham has been holding Merrick Garland's appointment as President Biden's Attorney General.

But a federal investigation may be unnecessary, as there is now a criminal investigation focusing on Trump's meddling in the state of Georgia for that obscene phone call he made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.  It looks like the case that puts Trump in the slammer will come not from the Empire State but the Empire State of the South.

Peachy.  

MTG KO'd

It's a knockout.

If looks could kill, they probably will, which is why I'm glad that U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) has to wear a "face covering" in Congress.  ("Censored" - what a kidder!)  But at least Representative Taylor Greene has been neutered. MTG (as I will call her hence) lost her House committee assignments when the House Democratic majority and eleven Republicans voted to remove them from her portfolio.  Now all she can do representing Georgia's Fourteenth U.S. House District is vote on bills.  She has no more power than anyone who takes part in the the surveys on Michael Smerconish's weekly CNN program but she'll still be around to shoot off her ironically covered mouth.

And that is why Republicans are afraid to deal with her.  Despite her crazy beliefs about staged mass shootings, Jewish space lasers, and demonic sacrifices, the QAnon congresswoman has so much support from the Republican - i.e., Trump - base that no one wants to offend the Trumpists by punishing or even reprimanding MTG, so the Democrats had to do it for them.  House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy has warned the Democrats that he and his caucus can discipline Democratic House members next time the Republicans are in the majority in the House - which, thanks to gerrymandering and voter suppression, could happen as soon as 2023 - by removing a Democrat from committee assignments . . . maybe like, say, Rashida Tlaib for calling Trump a motherfucker.  Or maybe they'll do the same for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for her barbs against fellow politicians.  Please - AOC is too busy going after other Democrats to bother bashing Republicans.  But the Democrats have no regrets about punishing MTG for her hateful, wacky comments, and they're certain that they will be vindicated in the end.  Though I would get ready to sue the Republicans for voter suppression as soon as they start pulling their tricks.  (They've already started; they're trying to tighten voting requirements in MTG's home state of Georgia.)   

Meanwhile, in the Senate, Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz must think that all of the attention MTG is getting have allowed them to get off the hook for their treasonous crimes.  Don't look now, guys - you're next! 

Georgia Rhythm - The (Not Really) Final Chapter

Lost in the noise made by the Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol last week was the fact that Democrats managed to win not one but both of the U.S. Senate seats up for election in a pair of runoffs in Georgia.  They were given at best the chance of winning one of those seats, which would not have been enough for the Democrats to take control of the Senate, as winning both seats was (with incoming Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tie-breaking vote).  Thanks to Stacey Abrams and her relentless drive to get voters in Georgia to the polls, however, incoming President Joe Biden now has a chance to get the most sweeping Democratic agenda since Lyndon Johnson's Great Society program passed.  And Georgia couldn't have chosen two better individuals to help him.

Raphael Warnock is the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s old job.  And like Dr. King, Reverend Warnock has been committed to social justice, having demonstrated for human rights and universal health care in particular and having campaigned and protested (and gotten arrested) for his beliefs.  He is a genuinely caring and magnanimous pastor, and he will work hard for the interests of all Georgians. 

Jon Ossoff got what few Democrats who lose elections get - a second chance at public office.  Having been the nominee in a special election to fill a U.S. House seat in 2017, he lost a contest that many felt he should have won, and he was written off as a one-hit wonder, like so many other failed Democratic nominees for public office.  But Ossoff, who was an intern with the late Georgia congressman John Lewis and has worked as an investigative journalist and documentary producer exposing human rights violations around he world, was undeterred by his loss.  Using the same dogged determination that he applies to his work as a documentary filmmaker, he worked hard to get a seat in the Senate to bring his liberal values to Washington, and his relentlessness paid off.  If he works as hard for Georgia as a U.S. Senator as he did to get elected - and he will  - Georgia will be all right.

And now that the Democrats have won the Senate, all of those Democratic Senate candidates on other states who came up short can be forgiven. And forgotten.  Jamie Harrison in South Carolina turned out to be a paper tiger, and no one is going to give Cal Cunningham in North Carolina, after his "sexting" scandal, another shot at a Senate seat when the retiring Richard Burr's seat is up in 2022.  Sara Gideon in Maine, whom Democrats pinned so many of their hopes on to oust Susan Collins?  Girl, you're through.  If you can't beat Susan Collins, you need to get out of politics and find another line of work.

To think that many Democrats put more of an emphasis on Maine than Georgia.  It looks like they focused on the wrong state famous for its pine trees.  

Power Plays and Loose Ends

The past week showed how the great civilizations of Europe have long since gotten their acts together after three thousand years of history and how America is neither great nor civilized.  While Great Britain and the European Union have successfully finalized their separation, the United States Congress has torn itself asunder for no good reason other than for political power plays.  Trump was  pushing for more COVID stimulus money, something Democrats want (for which I give him credit) and he also pushed for a repeal of the regulation that protects Internet platforms - platforms like Twitter - from lawsuits against what their users - uses like Trump - post, along with a call for a voter-fraud investigation, neither of which Democrats want (which instantly cancels out that credit).  Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (below) proceeded to put all of that into one bill, knowing that the Democrats wouldn't vote for it (and thus the stimulus money wouldn't pass, McConnell's preferred outcome) and knowing also that Democrats would go on record as having opposed more money for Americans in desperate need.  Democrats immediately called this out, letting McConnell and their constituents know that they would not be played, and Vermont senator Bernie Sanders demanded (forcefully, but unsuccessfully) that the extra COVID stimulus money be voted on separately.  And after all that, the old Congress expired, as did the COVID extra-stimulus legislation. 

And meanwhile, the COVID vaccinations are going so slowly in the U.S. that we may be dealing with the bug for the rest of the decade - and it's only 2021.

McConnell also did this to allow Georgia's two Republican senators, David Perdue (currently in quarantine after being exposed to someone with COVID) and Kelly Loeffler, to vote for the extra money and thus improve their standing with voters in the Georgia U.S. Senate runoff elections being held tomorrow, but their respective Democratic opponents, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, have been vehement in calling out their duplicity, and they've been persistent in pushing the issue of fairness and decency at a time when Republican power plays are anything but that.  Heck, they might just pull it off and win tomorrow, giving the Democrats the Senate! 

It'll take awhile to count the votes in Georgia, though, and even if Ossoff and Warnock win, we can expect policies in 2021 to be a messy affair in which loose ends are left untied or tied very sloppily in the 117th Congress.

Georgia On His Mind

I can't wait until Trump is out of office, in part because he'll give me less to write about when he's an ex-President.  (I'm dreaming, aren't I?)

It seems that Trump - who's known for never admitting defeat - called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (above) yesterday to pressure him to find a number of votes - 11,780 votes, to be exact - that would overturn the Georgia presidential elections results and tip the state to him instead of President-elect Joe Biden.  Trump even told Raffensperger, a Republican, that his handling of elections in Georgia would be to blame for the outcome of the U.S. Senate runoffs on Tuesday should incumbent David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler lose.  Raffensperger listened calmly, even made a couple of interjections (like to say that the data Trump relied on to prove his rightful win of Georgia are erroneous), and put up with Trump's guff for sixty-two minutes (one minute for every 190 votes in Georgia that Trump feels he was wrongly deprived of) before telling Trump goodbye and hanging up.  Just as calmly.

Unfortunately, this is not likely to change the minds of congressional Republicans who are siding with Trump and demanding recounts in enough states to overturn Biden's victory and concede that Biden will be President.  But it may be enough to have Trump retroactively impeached and convicted in Congress - I have heard that there's some sort of mechanism to allow that - so he can't pull a Grover Cleveland and run for a second nonconsecutive term in 2024.  By the way, Cleveland's first failed bid for a second term in 1888 ended with a popular-vote victory but he lost the electoral vote, giving him the right to run again (and win back the White House) in 1892.

Trump has more in common with the Republican President who served in between Cleveland's two terms, Benjamin Harrison.  They're the only two Presidents who lost the popular vote . . . twice!

Oh yeah, they also were instrumental in the appointments of two inept Postmasters General.

Meanwhile, Trump continues to call the high rate of COVID deaths "fake news." 

Trump Can Still Win. NOT!

 Some people just won't take no for an answer.

Donald Trump, who still can't believe that he lost to Joe Biden - the same Joe Biden who accidentally appropriated a British politician's' life story in his first bid for the Presidency and once referred to Franklin Roosevelt addressing the nation on television from the White House after the 1929 stock market crash - is still contesting the election after nearly a month since Biden was declared the winner.  When he got a recount of votes in two countries in Wisconsin, Biden ended up getting more votes to add to his statewide popular victory.  Trump then sued to get 20,000 ballots in Wisconsin thrown out after the results were certified.  He did that even as Arizona certified its results for Biden.  After failing to get thousands of votes thrown out by a federal appeals court in Pennsylvania, his lawyers vowed to appeal to the Supreme Court.  No such appeal has since been filed.

And now that Georgia's presidential vote has been counted thrice and certified, Trump is suing that state and complaining about how Republicans there have run the election, raising the possibility that Republicans in Georgia won't come out to vote in the U.S. Senate double runoff in January because they don't trust the system - because Trump told them not to trust it.

This all prompted Gabriel Sterling, prompting a Republican electoral official in Georgia, to tell Trump to cut it out or someone could get hurt by some reactionary nut out to take action against GOP "traitors" who won't help Trump overturn the election - an election that even Attorney General William Barr says was free of mass voter fraud.  This puts him in concurrence with Chris Krebs, the former Trump Administration cybersecurity official who got fired for saying that the election was safe and secure.  Even Lindsey Graham is telling Trump to put up or shut up in regard to offering proof that the election was stolen.  And yet Trump went online for over 45 minutes to talk about how there was fraud, and no one cared a twit about a word he said.   

You think it was bad that Trump lawyer Joe DiGenova saying that Krebs should be executed (and Krebs is looking at suing him)?  Consider the freshly pardoned Michael Flynn calling for martial law to allow the election to be done over.

Give it up, Donald - haven't you done enough already?  

Georgia Rhythm - The Sequel

Georgia has not one, but two U.S. Senate runoff elections scheduled for January 5, the first Tuesday of the new year.  And what's going on now in the Peach State could affect the election later.

Democrats Raphael Warnock (left) and Jon Ossoff are respectively challenging Republican incumbents Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, the former matchup being a special election to determine who completes a term that expires in January 2023.  Despite the numerous and numerously valid charges of corruption against the Republican senators, they are both favored to win at this point because Georgia is just such a Republican state and because Democrats don't normally vote in off-elections.  And here's the thing.  The Republicans just need one of these seats to win control of the Senate in the 119th Congress; the Democrats have to win them both.

But there's more.  Although Georgia has certified its results for the presidential election and given its 16 electoral votes to Joe Biden, Donald Trump's lawyers promising a lawsuit of "biblical proportions" that they say will "blow up" the state, a suit expected to implicate Republican Governor Brian Kemp and Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger as part of a plot with a voting machine company to commit major fraud. This could affect the runoff election in two ways.  (The Trump campaign has already requested a third vote count in Georgia in an effort to overturn the result.)  On the one hand, this move could embolden already angry Georgia Republicans to turn out and put Senators Loeffler and Perdue back in their seats.  On the other hand, it could tear up the Republican Party in Georgia and allow Democrats to help Warnock and Ossoff win the elections, as many Republican voters would be turned off by the Trump team's antics and many of them wouldn't even bother to vote.

Either way, this blog endorses both Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, for all the obvious reasons.

Georgia Rhythm

How could the state that managed to successfully stage the 1996 Olympics and secretly smuggle Muhammad Ali into Atlanta to light the Olympic flame screw up a primary election?

Reports of closed polling places, voting machines either broken or missing, and lines of people waiting to vote that were interminable both in length and duration plagued the Georgia primary to the point where it was obvious that nothing in the Peach State is peachy keen.  After all the dust settles (note tense), it won't (again, note tense) matter who won what.  (Although, noted 2017 U.S. House also-ran Jon Ossoff won the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination, and a right-wing conspiracy theorist may end up winning a U.S. House nomination on the Republican side).

Top Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams has long complained about irregularity in access to voting in her state, much of it based on racism and voter suppression against blacks but also based on a lax, incompetent, disorganized approach to running elections - primary or general - and making them free and fair.  The increased reliance on mail-in balloting due to COVID-19 didn't help matters any either.  This fracas gave Abrams a see-I-told-you-so moment, and while it won't necessarily get her the 2020 vice presidential nomination, it does highlight how poorly run elections are not just in Georgia but in Wisconsin and several other states.  And that's a concern going into the November general election.

One thing we did learn about the Georgia primary: The Democrats have their work cut out for them in trying to win a state they haven't won since 1992.  Joe Biden and Donald Trump won their respective presidential primaries all right, but more Republican primary voters case a ballot for Trump than Democratic voters who cast a ballot for Biden.  And with so much political as well as racial division in Georgia - maybe more so than the country at large - are there even any independents there any more?

The Picture of Dorian

This is it.

And it's a hell of a storm. It is expected to approach the eastern coast of Florida sometime after the Labor Day holiday as a Category 4 hurricane. While the likeliest scenario for Dorian is that it makes landfall somewhere on the Florida peninsula, there are computer projections suggesting that it might stop short of landfall and hug the coast as it turns north.  

Whatever happens in Florida, though, may only be the first chapter in this story.  If Dorian were to stay off shore as it moves north, it could have a serious impact on Georgia and the Carolinas.  And depending how the upper winds steer it, it could affect areas farther north than that.

I'll come out and say it - Dorian could strengthen over the ocean and possibly affect the greater New York area, where I live, this time next week!  Fortunately, the chances of that remain low . . . for now.

All that said, It's too early to tell where it ultimately goes until it makes landfall - or doesn't make landfall - in Florida.  And even though the storm may seem to stay the same, its picture gets stronger!        

Washington Hijinks

A few pundits gave been saying that the Senate health care bill isn't the final bill, just a negotiating tool.  Right - a negotiating tool to determine just how large the tax cuts for the rich will be.  But the disagreements over what to leave in and what to leave out - or who to leave out - will make it very tricky to get it through.  Meanwhile, the Democrats are fervently defending the existing Affordable Care Act tooth and nail . . . without much power to stop or retard the progress of the GOP's health bill.  It figures that they would suddenly defend and "own" the Affordable Care Act after it's too late.  They have to rely on Republican ineptitude.   Fortunately, that actually looks like a possibility.  And it may even be a reality; Mitch McConnell has just delayed a vote on the Senate bill, which likely won't come up until after Congress's Independence Day recess.

At the same time, lot of people are blaming Nancy Pelosi for the party's last special-election losses in Georgia and South Carolina.  Well, she's not going to be deposed - the old guard in the Democratic Party isn't going to let go of power so easily - but she's not to blame for these losses either.  Except for maybe her appointment of Representative Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico as the chairman of the committee that runs Democratic House campaigns, as he dropped the ball on these two races plus the the two in Kansas and Montana.  Geez, the Democrats could have won the South Carolina race if they gave more money to candidate Archie Parnell, but Luján concentrated on the the impossible dream of winning Georgia's Sixth House district seat.

It must have amused observers to see that the Democrats, having failed to make Hillary Clinton the first female President, spent so much money on this one district and saw Karen Handel and Handel's supporters use Nancy Pelosi, the first female House Speaker, in ads for Handel's candidacy in this district in order to win and become the first female U.S. Representative elected to the House from Georgia . . . and Handel, of course, was the Republican candidate.        

Execution On My Mind

The United States is the only major industrialized country that allows capital punishment.  And as if that weren't bad enough, Georgia, one of 34 states that has the death penalty at the state level, is planning to execute Troy Davis, a black man accused of killing a white Savannah police officer in 1989 despite the lack of solid evidence and the fact that seven out of nine witnesses have recanted their testimony in which they identified Davis as the killer.

In fact, the police are known to have coerced and influenced witnesses into identifying Davis as the killer, and the suspect lineup was run by one of the police officers who also was investigating the murder in an obvious conflict of interest.  Despite all of this - and despite the fact that the man who accused Davis has in fact confessed to the crime - Davis is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection today.

More than 600,000 petitioners asked the Georgia parole board to gratn clemency for Davis, but the board  concluded that the evidence was sufficient to convict Davis despite the obvious eagerness of police to get a man convicted in the killing of one of their own.  Not only have death penalty opponents like Al Sharpton have been opposed to this execution, former Georgia congressman Bob Barr - a death penalty proponent - is against it.  That two ideologically opposed men should agree on this case is enough reason to grant Davis a stay of execution.  But the Georgia parole board won't do so.  Governor Nathan Deal can't do so - he doesn't have that authority.

Somehow, Georgia's motto - "Wisdom, Justice, Moderation" - seems sadly irrelevant. 

More Primary Concerns

A slew of primary elections held yesterday produced mixed results.

In Colorado, progressives were dealt another setback when their preferred candidate Andrew Romanoff lost his Senate bid to incumbent appointed junior senator Michael Bennet, who got the support of the White House. Romanoff pushed a decisively liberal agenda, and he even had the support of former President Bill Clinton, but the former Colorado House speaker couldn't overcome Bennet in yesterday's voting. President Obama was able to claim a victory, but progressives who wanted to push a more bold Democratic agenda were hit with a Rocky Mountain low. Unlike Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas, Bennet will probably prevail with the Democratic base, if only because he has a staunchly conservative opponent in the general election - Republican Ken Buck, who claims not to be a member of the Tea Party movement but is a favorite of the TP crowd. It's hard to tell whether Bennet can win outright. The gubernatorial contest pits Republican Dan Maes agianst popular Denver mayor John Hickenlooper, with ex-Republican congressman and noted immigrant basher Tom Tancredo running as a third-party candidate and possibly splitting the Republican vote.

Meanwhile, in Connecticut, wrestling mogul Linda McMahon cruised to victory in a Senate primary necessitated by an inconclusive spring state Republican convention. Spending her way past once-favored GOP candidate Rob Simmons, she now plans to spend $50 million against the Democratic nominee, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal. As it became apparent before the votes were counted that McMahon was going to be the nominee, the press began to take note of her record of peddling violence and sadism to children, and it won't be long before they start looking at the abuse of steroids in her "sport" that led to murder and suicide in the Benoit family case mentioned earlier on this blog. People are afraid of McMahon's deep pockets, but Blumenthal has the brand name and the record of service; his opponent's strategy is to drive up her poll numbers with her financial numbers and hope he slips up. But Blumenthal already did slip up, with poorly chosen words on his Vietnam War-era service that were blown out of proportion and lowered his ratings in the polls only temporarily. I can't imagine McMahon getting that lucky again.

I'll have more on McMahon later. For the Republican gubernatorial nomination in Connecticut, where Republican governor Jodi Rell is retiring, Tom Foley was nominated to run in November. Ned Lamont, who won the Democratic senate nomination in 2006 but lost the general election to Joseph Lieberman, couldn't even get the Democratic nomination for governor this time, losing to former Stanford mayor Dan Malloy. In Minnesota, where Governor Tim Pawlenty is retiring, Mark Dayton, a department store scion (the Minneapolis-based Dayton's chain was taken over by Federated Stores and given the corporate Macy's name) and one-term U.S. senator who was practically asked to leave Washington, narrowly won the Democratic nomination for governor; conservative state representative Tom Emmer won the Republican nomination, the easy winner of the GOP line on the ballot. Neither Connecticut nor Minnesota, so-called blue states, have elected a Democratic governor since 1986.

Now it's onto Georgia, where former governor Roy Barnes won the Democratic nomination for his old office, with the results for the Republican gubernatorial nomination still too close to call between former Georgia secretary of state Karen Handel and former U.S. Representative (and former Democrat) Nathan Deal. While other states may not like incumbent officeholders, the trend in Georgia seems to be in favor of former officeholders.