Trailer Trash Girls

You may be able to take the girl out of the trailer park…

But, you can never take the trailer park out of the girl.

Presenting:
U.S. Representative
Lauren Boebert, R-CO3

The voters in CO’s CD3 have had their 2-term-2-years-long fling, which began by electing the cunt from Rifle.

Now that she’s single again…

Oh!

And did you know that

Dear Georgia Voters: DO NOT VOTE FOR CHARLES MANSON!

Dear Georgia GOP voters,

I beseech you:

DO NOT
— DO NOT, DO NOT, DO NOT —
VOTE FOR CHARLES MANSON!!

‘Oh… but Charles Manson isn’t up for election, and in fact, he’s dead,’ you may say. ‘Besides, he’s a killer,’ perhaps you might add.

You’re only partially correct.

And as you recall, being “partially correct” is being ENTIRELY WRONG.

Charles Manson IS dead, but his spirit lives on… in Herschel Walker.

Here’s how.

First, Charles Manson NEVER killed anyone;
-and-
Secondly, Charles Manson NEVER ordered anyone to be killed.

Yup.

That’s correct.

Charles Manson NEVER killed anyone.

If you don’t recall, you need to familiarize yourself with that case.

Charles Manson’s conviction was one of history’s most stupendous criminal convictions, and a monumental achievement for the rule of law because of that fact. And the lead Prosecutor — Vincent Bugliosi (now deceased) is to be commended endlessly for his accomplishment to keep the People of California safe from Charles Manson’s wickedly wry predations, which was his innate ability to manipulate and control people.

There is NO ONE (no one in their proper mind, that is) who for even a microsecond, thinks that Charles Manson was in his proper mind. For he most certainly was NOT.

Neither is Hershel Walker.

And to be certain,

Herschel Walker Is Simultaneously Registered To Vote in Texas & Georgia

It’s been often said that “a picture is worth a thousand words.”

So, in that case, here are six… and a couple PDFs as well.

Voter Registration records are PUBLIC INFORMATION.

Which means that ANYONE can access them for ANY REASON.

Public means public.

Here, for your perusal, are images from the website of the office of the Secretary of State of Georgia -and- of Texas of Voter Registration for Hershel Walker.

A parting thought:

Republicans, in large part, if not exclusively, have raised a ruckus claiming all sorts of fraudulent vote-related activity, most of which has to do with the actual casting of a ballot, despite abundantly overwhelming evidence to the contrary. However, as they have done in recent history, Republicans, again, have also changed many laws pertinent to voting — which includes voting registration — to make offense of them, a felony act. A felony act, by definition, is a crime for which the penalty/punishment is/can be imprisonment/incarceration for a period of NOT LESS THAN 366 days, i.e., a year and a day (excluding leap years).

Felony acts are, by their punishment, considered to be the MOST SERIOUS of CRIMINAL offenses. And so, to be certain, when states’ legislators enact law that makes a deceitful act pertinent to voting, and/or registration, they are, in effect, saying that such an act is the moral equivalent of murder, which is itself a felony act.

The proliferation of legislatures — again, mostly, if not exclusively Republican — changing punishment for existing laws which have been considered misdemeanor acts into felony offenses (that is to say, increasing the severity of punishment) has in recent history INCREASED SIGNIFICANTLY. And so, it’s little wonder that in the United States, an ostensibly “free” nation, there are MORE PEOPLE INCARCERATED TOTAL -and- PER CAPITA than in any other nation the world over  — including Communist China, Russia, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Cuba, and other dictatorial, authoritarian, and totalitarian  regimes COMBINED.

Yeah.

Let that soak in a while.

It’s not a joke, it’s not exaggeration, it’s not hyperbole.

It’s the unvarnished truth, and a hard, cold, fact.

Even the Department of Justice acknowledges as much which the National Institute of Corrections, a subsidiary agency of the DOJ, quoted 2014 research article “The Growth of Incarceration in the United States: Exploring Causes and Consequences” published by the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine:

“After decades of stability from the 1920s to the early 1970s, the rate of imprisonment in the United States more than quadrupled during the last four decades. The U.S. penal population of 2.2 million adults is by far the largest in the world. Just under one-quarter of the world’s prisoners are held in American prisons. The U.S. rate of incarceration, with nearly 1 out of every 100 adults in prison or jail, is 5 to 10 times higher than the rates in Western Europe and other democracies. The U.S. prison population is largely drawn from the most disadvantaged part of the nation’s population: mostly men under age 40, disproportionately minority, and poorly educated. Prisoners often carry additional deficits of drug and alcohol addictions, mental and physical illnesses, and lack of work preparation or experience. The growth of incarceration in the United States during four decades has prompted numerous critiques and a growing body of scientific knowledge about what prompted the rise and what its consequences have been for the people imprisoned, their families and communities, and for U.S. society. [The report] examines research and analysis of the dramatic rise of incarceration rates and its affects. This study makes the case that the United States has gone far past the point where the numbers of people in prison can be justified by social benefits and has reached a level where these high rates of incarceration themselves constitute a source of injustice and social harm.”

Contributor(s): National Research Council; Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education; Committee on Law and Justice; Committee on Causes and Consequences of High Rates of Incarceration; Jeremy Travis, Bruce Western, and Steve Redburn, Editors

But, it’ll be interesting to see what becomes of this matter.

Will either state, Georgia, and/or Texas pursue justice?

Or, will the, again, mostly-Republican dominated state governments allow “one of their own,” i.e., the rich and famous, e.g., Herschel Walker, get off scot-free?

We’ll see.

Stay tuned.

Here are the images.

Herschel Walker campaign to Trumpublicans: Stop “deceptive fundraising” in Senate runoff

Why is Herschel Walker surprised?

Seriously… WHY?

The GOP (Grand Old Party, a Republican moniker which emerged c.1854) is no more, and is not even a mere shadow of its former self. It is LITERALLY the FGOP — Formerly Grand Old Party, or OGOP, Once Grand Old Party.

Today, it’s the POT (Party Of Trump) — a natural-born liar, swindler, cheater, chiseler, defrauder, narcissistic, racist, xenophobic, duplicitous, unpatriotic, treasonously treacherous traitor who will LITERALLY DO ANYTHING to get what he wants, everyone and everything else be damned — and his servile sycophantic boot-licking, pablum-puking puerile punks.

They’re ALL ass-kissers — as POS45 (Piece Of Shit 45) described his subservient anointed Ohio Senate candidate J.D.Vance while campaigning with him September 17, 2022 saying, “J.D. is kissing my ass he wants my support so bad“ — and mendaciously monolithic morons.

The last genuine Republican may have very well been the now-late Arizona Senator John McCain who so despised POS45 that, while in his last days on Earth, still in office and dying from glioblastoma, a brain cancer that typically kills its victims within 16 months +/-, that he gave specific orders FORBIDDING PO45 from attending his funeral.

So, for Herschel Walker, that poor fool-as-a-tool used by POS45 and the OGOP — a Black man, at that — it’s just another example of how the worthless scum who fly that elephantine banner treat Americans.

The “I love the poorly-educated” voters who cast their ballots for anything with the letter “R” beside their name (which instead ought to be a “T”), are unthinking “Concrete Block Republicans” who would literally vote for a concrete block instead of anyone in any other party, demonstrating that they’re vacuous prattling imbeciles who neither think, nor attempt to think, and very much vote for anything that flies that modern political jolly roger.

Moreover, it’s ABUNDANTLY CLEAR that PO45 will be VERY MUCH trying to buy his way back into the White House, and continues demonstrating his deliberately deceptive, swindling, chiseling, cheating ways.

It’s just pure putrid MAGA effluvium on the Trump Dump garbage scow.

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Herschel Walker’s  campaign to Republicans:
Stop〝deceptive fundraising〞in Georgia U.S. Senate runoff

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2022-election/walker-calls-gop-deceptive-fundraising-georgia-race-rcna57136
November 14, 2022, 1814 CST
By Marc Caputo

Republican politicians and associated committees are sending out desperate fundraising emails begging the GOP faithful to help save America by getting behind Herschel Walker in his Dec. 6 runoff against Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock in Georgia.

But what’s not immediately clear to recipients is how little of that money is going to Walker’s campaign: just a dime for every dollar given by small donors.

Walker’s campaign, which has trailed Warnock’s in fundraising throughout the election, is asking fellow Republicans to stop their fundraising practices — or at least to start sharing more with the candidate.

Herschel Walker during his Unite Georgia Bus Stop campaign rally in Norcross, GA, September 9, 2022.
Photo by Demetrius Freeman / The WaPo

“We need everyone focused onwinning the Georgia Senate race, and deceptive fundraising tactics by teams that just won their races are siphoning money away from Georgia,” said Walker’s campaign manager Scott Paradise on Monday.

“This is the last fight of 2022, and every dollar will help,” Paradise said. “The companies and consultants raising money off this need to cut it out.”

The campaign said it first noticed the problem Saturday when

Liars, Lunatics, and Losers: Today’s Republican Party Not So Grand

Liars, Lunatics, and Losers: Today’s Republican Party

The formerly “Grand Old Party” is now Not So Grand.

Can the once-Grand Old Party survive the onslaught which has filled its rolls with the likes of Donald Trump, Marjorie Taylor Green, Lauren Boebert, Paul Gosar, Herschel Walker, J.D. Vance, Tom Cotton, Rand Paul, Mitch McConnell, Matt Gaetz, Kevin McCarthy, et al, and other sycophants?

We’ll see… we’ll see.

“We, in America, have some of the cleanest air and cleanest water of anybody in the world. We don’t control the air. Our good air decided to float over to China’s bad air so when China gets our good air, their bad air has got to move. So it moves over to our good air space. Then, now, we’ve got to clean that back up.”
— Herschel Walker, Georgia GOP U.S. Senate candidate, campaign event, Hall County, GA, Saturday, July 9, 2022

After the Uvalde, Texas school massacre, where 19 students & 2 teachers were slaughtered, Hershel Walker was asked about gun control, and said:

Georgia GOP Signals Difficulty Ahead

Pulitzer prize winning, nationally syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts, who also happens to be a Black man, wrote recently about the moron who the Georgia GOP trotted out to represent their interests — the former footballer, wife beater, philanderer, mentally unstable liar, Herschel Walker.

Pitts’ observations are spot-on.

But moreover, what this matter speaks to, is the wretchedly miserable condition of the Georgia GOP.

The GOP only trotted out that moron because he’s Black.

Now, you tell me…

Is that not pandering to racism, and race-based politics — fielding a candidate EXCLUSIVELY because of skin color?

It’s the very height of arrogant cynicism, and an exemplary model of political “tone deafness,” to obliquely assert, and hold as true, that the only reason Black folks vote, is to vote for Black folks.

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U.S. Senator, Reverend Raphael Warnock, GA-D (wearing tie); Herschel Walker, GOP candidate for Georgia U.S. Senate

—excerpted—

“When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.”
— Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou, meet Herschel Walker, Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate.

Here he is on the Inflation Reduction Act:
“A lot of money, it’s going to trees. . . . We’ve got enough trees. Don’t we have enough trees around here?”

And on school shootings:
“What about gettin’ a department that can look at

Unqualified Georgia GOP Senate Candidate Hershel Walker a 2022 Herman Cain Redux

History repeats itself, we’re told.

… but only if we ignore it, wrote George Santayana.

George Santayana in Rome, 1944.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

– George Santayana (1863-1952), Spanish philosopher writing in his 5-part book “The Life of Reason” Volume 1 “Reason in Common Sense,” (published 1905-1906)

One only need look at Georgia to see that GOPers are doing it again.

What are they doing again?

“It” is using the same old failed plays to win.

This time they’re using Hershel Walker like a subway token, just like they did Herman Cain.

They’re parading an utterly unqualified, out-of-touch-with-reality, ultra-wealthy individual as a candidate for high-level elected public office at the Federal level.

Hershel Walker, love him, loathe him — or ambivalent — has never held any elected office, much less held an office of public trust… just like another recent failure who retired to a palatial Florida estate which doubles as a high-priced “Members Only” club. So, why would ANYONE in their right mind imagine that Hershel Walker — in any way, shape, or form — would somehow be “qualified” to be a United States Senator from Georgia?

Sure, the Constitution states that the only qualifications to be Senator are as follows:

“No Person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years, and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen.”
[U.S. Constitution, Article I, section 3, clause 3]

That bar is low enough that anyone — literally, anyone — could be a U.S. Senator. And according to that low standard, even a convicted felon still imprisoned could be a U.S. Senator. How preposterously absurd is that?!? Hershel Walker, as most anyone who’s been paying attention for the past several years, ought to know that

Alabama Crimson Tide Loses National Championship to Georgia

Every dog has its day,

and Monday was the Georgia Bulldogs’ day.

Indianapolis, Indiana – January 10, 2022: Defensive back Kelee Ringo #5 with the Georgia Bulldogs leaps to intercept a pass thrown by Heisman Trophy award winning Alabama quarterback Bryce Young #5, late in the 4th quarter, whose intended receiver was wide receiver #11 Traeshaon Holden during the 2022 CFP (College Football Playoff) National Championship Game at Lucas Oil Stadium on January 10, 2022 in Indianapolis, Indiana. After leaping perhaps at least 3 feet to intercept the ball, which some say was “thrown short,” Ringo ran 79 yards for a Bulldog touchdown, sealing the deal for the Bulldogs. (Photo by Andy Lyons/Getty Images)

Monday night on 10 January 2022, in Indianapolis, Indiana, in Lucas Oil Stadium, the 3rd-ranked Georgia Bulldogs met the 1st-ranked Alabama Crimson Tide for the NCAA Championship game, and cleaned up with them, taking home bragging rights for the first time as national champions since 1980 when 25-year head Georgia coach Vince Dooley lead them to victory.

Conditions were dry inside Lucas Oil Stadium, but the Georgia Bulldogs rained on the Alabama Crimson Tide’s parade in the 2021 NCAA championship game, taking home their first National Championship in 41 years, 33-18. And after 7 consecutive years of losses to the Tide, the Bulldogs finally managed to pull victory from the jaws of defeat.

This year’s NCAA Championship game was a grudge match, because earlier, the Bulldogs had lost the SEC championship game to Alabama, 41-24, on December 4 in Atlanta, so this victory was “sweet revenge” for the Dawgs.

Leading up to the SEC game, the Crimson Tide had

Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Green, and other House GOPers, Seek to Defund Police

Banana Republicans are 100% pure hypocrites.

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Matt Gaetz

Marjorie Taylor Greene

Florida Republican Representative Matt Gaetz (CD-1) and a group of other House Republicans on Friday, 30 April 2021 introduced legislation to defund the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, a law enforcement and investigative arm of U.S. Postal Service.

The legislation, “H.R.2921 – To prohibit funds from being used to implement the Internet Covert Operations Program under the United States Postal Inspection Service, and for other purposes,” was in response to a March bulletin distributed by the Postal Service’s Inspection Service’s Internet Covert Operations Program (iCOP), and reported by Yahoo News earlier this month. The bulletin cited the Postal Inspection Service’s concerns about potential “significant” likely violent protests planned for March 20 based upon “online inflammatory material,” and possible threats to the integrity and security of the U.S. Mail System, in conjunction with posts on radical right-wing social media platforms Parler and Telegram.

American intelligence agencies have debriefed Congress and issued reports about the serious threat to national security posed by domestic terrorists, particularly White supremacists, neo-Nazis and other racist groups such as Proud Boys, and others, following their concerted attack upon Congress on January 6, 2021 as they were performing their Constitutionally-mandated duties by certifying election results. Those groups, and others sympathetic with them, primarily used the radical right-wing social media platforms Parler and Telegram to coordinate their efforts, and attack.

Louie Gohmert-TX 1

Paul Gosar

“iCOP analysts are

At Least 50 Reasons Why Georgia SB202 Is A Bad Bill

FIFTY REASONS WHY GEORGIA SB 202 IS A BAD BILL

SB 202 Linked Here For Citations

HYPERCRIMINALIZATION: Georgia’s new law codifies mass disenfranchisement and intimidation and further expands criminalization policy in the voting process.1.Mass Challenges:Codifies that a single person can challenge the voter registration of an unlimited # of voters at once, resulting in that voter being purged. (lines 575–576)

1. Mass Challenges: Codifies that a single person can challenge the voter registration of an unlimited # of voters at once, resulting in that voter being purged. (lines 575–576)

2. Mass Challenges: Codifies that a single person can challenge the rights of an unlimited # of voters to cast their ballot in the upcoming election. 364k Georgians were frivolously challenged in the runoffs. In just 29 counties, 15,000 Black voters, 2,000 Hispanic voters, and 1500 AAPI voters were challenged.(lines 622–623)

Georgia’s nickname is the “Peach State,” and it is one of the 13 original colonies.

3. Mass Challenges: Mandates counties hold mass challenge hearings that challenged voter must show up to—within 10 days of frivolous challenge. (line 581)

4. Line–warming/Criminalization: Makes it a crime for volunteers or groups to hand water or snacks to voters in line. (lines 1873–1875)

5. Line–warming/Criminalization: Makes it a crime for *voters* in line to accept water or snacks from a volunteer or group. Bill later amended to allow an “unattended receptacle” near line. (lines 1873–1875, lines 1887–1889)

6. Criminalization: Creates a new misdemeanor for voters if the voter allows someone other than those authorized under state/federal law to see them marking their ballot at home. (lines 1339, 1347–1349)

7. Criminalization: Creates a new felony for anyone that witnesses someone else mark their *absentee* ballot at home — unless they are providing legally authorized assistance or are a child. (lines 2449–2454)

8. Criminalization: Creates a new misdemeanor for handling a completed application for anyone not authorized by law to assist voter. (lines 979–981)

9. Criminalization: Adds new misdemeanor for photographing your own *absentee* ballot or someone else’s. (expanding existing law to ensure VBM also criminalized) (line 2460)

10. Intimidation: Creates new fraud hotline that will accept “anonymous tips” and AG can launch investigations or prosecute within 3 days. (lines 171–178)

POWER GRABS/CONSOLIDATION OF ELECTION AUTHORITY: Georgia’s new law removes significant power from the Secretary of State and gives the GOP–led, gerrymandered state legislature majority control of the State Election Board.

11. Removes SOS Power: Removes the Secretary of State as Chair of the State Election Board (line 185).

12. State Legislature Controls SEB: Grants state legislature power to appoint new chair of State Election Board (SEB). Meaning state legislature will choose 3 out of 5 State Election Board members going forward, a majority. (lines 185 –189)

13. Removes SOS Power: Removes the SOS as a voting member of the State Election Board (lines 252–253).

14. Removes SOS Power: Bill amended at last second to remove SOS power to appoint members of performance review board. (lines 500–503, line 521, line 540 || vs. lines 499–502, line 520, line 540 of bill as passed SEI committee: LC280338S)

15. Removes SOS Power: Requires SOS provide all necessary support/assistance to SEB for county takeovers at the sole discretion of SEB (lines 270–281).

16. Removes SOS Power: Bans SOS/counties from proactively sending vote by mail applications without a request. (lines 966–970)

17. Legislative Power: Allows state legislature to overrule any emergency election rule (lines 2491–2494)

COUNTY ELECTION BOARD TAKEOVERS: Georgia’s new law removes judicial oversight from the county intervention process and grants a GOP–controlled State Election Board the power to replace county BOEs and local elections officials that have significant voter access and election certification responsibilities.

18. No Judicial Oversight: Removes judicial oversight from county takeover process. Georgia already had a process to deal with low–performing counties, but it required judicial oversight of the State Election Board (SEB). The new process replaces judicial oversight with opaque investigation/takeover powers. (See Georgia Code § 21–2–32 for previous process)

On The Dole: Marjorie Taylor Greene Profits From Low-Income Federal Subsidy Program

Is Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Green Pretending?

Cue Eric Clapton’s 1989 hit “Pretending.”

Clay Bennett is a native Alabamian, and Pulitzer prize-winning, long-time political cartoonist for the Chattanooga Times-Free Press.

While Marjorie Taylor Greene has claimed business success credentials as a candidate for Georgia’s 14th Congressional District – while spouting the bizarre lies and not-even-specious rhetoric as part of the QAnon conspiracy – what she has NOT said is that Federal subsidy of low-income housing, and Federal tax credits associated with them, has played a significant role in that “success.”

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution recently published an investigative article about Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Republican QAnon conspiracy theory supporter who moved her campaign headquarters from the state’s 6th to the 14th Congressional District exclusively in order to campaign for the U.S. House of Representatives. The Constitution does not require a Member of Congress to reside in the district they represent, only the state.

The 14th CD is located in the state’s uppermost northwest corner, bordering Alabama and Tennessee, a portion of which is considered part of the Chattanooga, TN Metropolitan Statistical Area.

Located slightly north of the state’s capitol city, from 1992-2018, GA’s 6th CD has, until recently, been a largely Republican-dominated suburb of the Atlanta MSA which has produced the likes of Newt Gingrich, Johnny Isakson, and former Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price.

Georgia’s 14th CD includes Dalton, which has long been known for the numerous carpet and floor covering firms which supply a significant portion of all carpet sold domestically and internationally, and with at least 150 factories, is colloquially known as the “Carpet Capitol of the World.”

It is in that region that Marjorie Taylor Greene projected herself to district 14 voters not as a “carpetbagger,” nor as a “scalawag” – even though she is an opportunist Republican profiteering from Federal poverty programs – but as a business owner/entrepreneur alongside her spouse, Perry.

The term “carpetbagger” refers to:

“a traveler who arrives in a new region with only a satchel (or carpetbag) of possessions, and who attempts to profit from or gain control over his new surroundings, often against the will or consent of the original inhabitants.”

While scalawag refers to:

“White southerners who, for various reasons, saw more of an advantage in backing the policies of Reconstruction than in opposing them.”

And in an ironic video she recently shared with her supporters, she attempted to cast aspersions upon, and belittle fellow Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York’s 14th CD with whom she indicated that she’d spoken, and challenged her to a debate on her “Green New Deal” saying that “she just has a government job” – the same type job Greene has.

“2. As a business woman in the construction industry, I’ve spent the last two decades alongside my husband, Perry, building our company and creating in jobs. The politicians in DC and really at all levels of government have let us down.”

2. As a business woman in the construction industry, I've spent the last two decades alongside my husband, Perry, building our company and creating in jobs.

The politicians in DC and really at all levels of government have let us down.

— Marjorie Taylor Greene 🇺🇸 (@mtgreenee) December 15, 2019

The top of her campaign platform was

Yes, Georgia’s New Republican Vote Restriction Law Makes Illegal Giving Water Or Food To Voters

Many questions have arisen, and comments have been made, about Georgia’s new voting restrictions law.

Republican state legislators who wrote, passed, and signed the bill into law (Republican Governor Brian Kemp was formerly Secretary of State when he campaigned for the Governor’s office… and as a state official, oversaw his own election… nope, no conflict of interest there, eh?) continue to claim that the “integrity” and “security” of the voting systems in Georgia should be strengthened – as if they were insecure to begin with.

They were not.

The essence of what has happened, as many have observed and stated, is that since Republicans lost in the national election for President, and in the Senate election, they’re changing the rules in order to make it easier for them to win next time.

There was NO fraud, NO irregularities, NO insecurity in the Georgia election, nor in any election in the nation. Period.

So, here for your perusal, is the word-for-word reading of the law, including a screenshot of the law as passed, and

Trump Talks Like A Mafioso

Complete shyster, liar, prevaricator, chiseler, swindler, cheat.

He’ll be indicted by several authorities.

This is simply more damnable icing on the corrupt cake.

The things he says, and the way he says them are purposely ambiguous, so that to even an expert witness in syntax, one would not be able to definitively say that he unquestionably stated a thing certain.

That’s how the mafioso talks. They’re deliberately ambiguous, vague, and speak in riddles and figurative language, such as “I hear you paint houses,” which means “I understand that you’re a hit man and kill people.”

Simply read what he says.

It’s as clear as a bell that he’s being ambiguous. But by the same tone, it’s equally clear what he wants.

“Something bad happened. When the right answer comes out, you’ll be praised.”

-and-

“The people of Georgia are angry, the people of the country are angry. And there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, that you’ve recalculated. So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state. So what are we going to do here, folks? I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break. There’s no way I lost Georgia. There’s no way. We won by hundreds of thousands of votes.” 

Neal Katyal, a Georgetown law professor who was Acting Solicitor General in the Obama administration, said Trump’s use of language is “the way that people in organized crime rings talk. I’ve heard the extraordinary excerpts that the Washington Post has and, at least based on those excerpts, it sounds like Donald Trump is talking like a mafia boss, and not a particularly smart mafia boss at that. This is the way that people in organized crime rings talk, and you see it there.”

“This is, you know, the heart of what the abuse of power that our founders worried about so much is — it’s, you know, the idea that the government official can use the powers of his office to try and stay in office and try and browbeat other officials that disagree with them.”

“So, one question is whether or not a high crime and misdemeanor was committed, certainly the tape makes it sound like it has. The second is whether or not there has been a criminal offense and the federal code 52 U.S.C. 20511 prohibits a federal official from interfering in a state election process.”

See also: Free speech or incitement? Here’s how Trump talks like a mob boss.
Mafia members like to use ambiguous language.
By Henry Farrell
February 10, 2021 at 12:20 p.m. CST
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/02/28/how-trump-speaks-like-mob-boss/

Note: We are reposting (with a new introduction) an article from Nov. 9, 2019, written during hearings on Trump’s conversation with Ukraine’s president, as it appears relevant to this week’s impeachment trial.

“Nothing the President said on January 6th was inciteful, let alone impeachable,” the Republican Party is arguing during former president Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial, “and in fact, President Trump urged supporters to exercise their rights ‘peacefully and patriotically.’”

Of course, Trump did not directly instruct his supporters to attack the Capitol, stop official proceedings and threaten members of Congress until they agreed to keep Trump in power, despite the election results. That is not how he talks. In the past, Trump has said that, “I did not make a statement that, ‘You have to do this or I’m not going to give you A.’ I wouldn’t do that.” We know from former Trump attorney Michael Cohen that Trump does not like to say things explicitly when they might get him into trouble. Instead, he prefers to communicate indirectly.

Cohen has said Trump “doesn’t give orders. He speaks in code. And I understand that code.” That’s the way that Mafiosi speak to each other, to avoid trouble. In my book on the political economy of trust, I discuss the oblique ways in which Sicilian Mafiosi communicate with one another and how this affects trust and distrust among them, building on the work of sociologists such as Diego Gambetta.

Popular culture shows how mobsters communicate in code when they are worried about being overheard by law enforcement, using indirect language to describe their intentions, so as to make it harder to pin responsibility on them. Similarly, Trump very possibly never said explicitly that Ukraine would be frozen out unless it helped discredit Trump’s potential election rival. Sondland’s testimony suggests that Trump tried to get Ukraine to hurt his presidential opponent through intermediaries using careful language that left no doubt what he wanted, but did so in a way that would preserve a crucial minimum of deniability.

Ambiguity makes it difficult to prove intent.

There is a reason why mob bosses prefer ambiguous language: it makes it harder to prove charges against them. The same is plausibly true for Trump. That is especially so when much of the jury (in this case, Republican senators) have strong political reasons to want to find Trump innocent. Trump has made a very successful career out of speaking in code, and ruthlessly throwing subordinates under the bus when they do what he wants them to do but then gets caught. It’s unlikely that he is going to stop any time soon.

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Trump Call to Georgia Lead Investigator Reveals New Details

by Cameron McWhirter
Updated March 11, 2021 10:08 am ET

ATLANTA—Then-President Donald Trump urged the chief investigator of the Georgia Secretary of State’s office to

Georgia Crackers & Banana Republicans Waffle Again

So they got their clocks unexpectedly cleaned in the November General Election, and now, they don’t like it.

And what do they do?

Change the rules, because they don’t like them any more.

That’s right!

Where, or in what sport does that ever occur – that the losing team seeks rule changes after a loss, because they lost?

None.

Why?

Because respectable teams understand that their losses are exclusively because of poor playing skills, including faulty strategy, bad tactics, and nothing more. And in politics, it boils down to the questions how well have you treated the people? What have you done FOR them to help, and benefit them?

Georgia elections official Gabriel Sterling, pictured in November 2020, pushed back on false claims about voter fraud. But he supports some Republican initiatives to change voting laws, saying it could help elections administrators.

It’s only been 16 years since Republicans last changed the voting rules in Georgia, and… well, read this article by Georgia Public Broadcasting about the matter -AND- the article by NPR in which Gabriel Sterling, Georgia’s Chief Operating Officer for the Secretary of State’s office, is interviewed.

“In 2005, the year that Republicans gained control of state government after decades of Democratic domination, HB 244 was a 59-page bill that contained nearly 70 revisions of state election code, including two major changes: adding a photo ID requirement for in-person voting and allowing Georgians to vote by mail without an excuse, and without an ID.

“At the time, Democrats and voting rights groups adamantly opposed both measures. Lawmakers compared the photo ID requirement to Jim Crow laws and warned that Georgia would have some of the country’s most restrictive voting procedures. The addition of no-excuse absentee voting did not reassure Democrats, either. In an eerie inversion of today’s positions, they argued that it would introduce a system ripe for abuse.

““By removing restrictions related to mailed absentee ballots, HB 244 opens a greater opportunity for fraud,” former Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, then a Democratic state senator, wrote in an op-ed. “Skeptics might point out that absentee voters have historically voted for Republicans in higher numbers.”

“Among the lawmakers who voted for the bill were Gov. Brian Kemp (then a state senator), House Speaker David Ralston, Speaker Pro Tem Jan Jones, Majority Leader Jon Burns, Senate Rules chairman Jeff Mullis, Georgia Republican Party Chairman David Shafer (then a state senator) and Reps. Terry England, Sharon Cooper, Ed Setzler, Lynn Smith and Barry Fleming, author of the current House omnibus which is one of the bills that would add an ID requirement to absentee ballots and applications.

“Democrats who opposed the 2005 bill included current Sen. Minority Leader Gloria Butler, Sens. Ed Harbison, Horacena Tate, Kasim Reed and Reps. Debbie Buckner, Roger Bruce, MARTOC chair Mary Margaret Oliver, and Calvin Smyre, currently the longest-serving member of the House, among others.

“Democrats said at the time that requiring photo ID to vote in person would disenfranchise lower-income, older and non-white voters, while pressing the idea that expanded no-excuse absentee voting without an ID requirement was an invitation to fraud.

““This bill would actually open the door wide to opportunities for voter fraud because it allows voting by mail where you present no identification whatsoever,” Democratic Secretary of State Cathy Cox said in an Atlanta Journal-Constitution article. “So those parts of the bill really don’t jive in my mind in terms of any real effort to crack down on what someone perceives to be voting fraud.”

“Fast forward to 2021: There has been no evidence of widespread fraud with absentee-by-mail voting and, until the 2018 governor’s race, the relative few voters that used absentee ballots skewed older, whiter and more Republican.

“A record number of Georgians participated in the November general election thanks in part to expanded voting rules and procedures pushed by Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Demographic changes and a surge in automatic voter registrations have shifted statewide politics to razor-thin margins, and Democrats took advantage of no-excuse absentee voting to flip the state’s electoral votes and both U.S. Senate seats.

“In the elections debate following the 2020 presidential race, the arguments might sound familiar. Former President Donald Trump and other top Republicans have questioned the security of the more than 1.3 million absentee ballots cast by Georgians in the November election, claimed that the state’s method of matching signatures to verify absentee ballots opened the door to fraud, and proposed sweeping changes to fix the system.

“Raffensperger told GPB News that adding an ID requirement to absentee ballots seemed like a logical solution given the complaints from both sides of the aisle.

““A year ago we were being sued by the Democrats,” Raffensperger said in the interview. “They did not like signature match, they said it was unconstitutional and now the Republicans are saying the same thing. Well, you guys are both singing off the same song sheet now, so maybe now we need a verifiable photo ID component with the absentee ballot process.”

“Gov. Brian Kemp supported no-excuse absentee voting in 2005, and by the end of his run as secretary of state in 2018, touted Georgia as a national leader in election law because of the state’s absentee rules, automatic voter registration and at least 16 days of in-person early voting — a distinction that his successor Raffensperger touts at the bottom of every press release.

“But other Republican legislators have changed their stances on the state’s election laws over the past decade-and-a-half.”
–––MORE–––

Georgia is recognized as a national leader in elections. It was the first state in the country to implement the trifecta of automatic voter registration, at least 16 days of early voting (which has been called the “gold standard”), and no-excuse absentee voting. Georgia continues to set records for voter turnout and election participation, seeing the largest increase in average turnout of any other state in the 2018 midterm election and record turnout in 2020, with over 1.3 million absentee by mail voters and over 3.6 million in-person voters utilizing Georgia’s new, secure, paper ballot voting system.

See: https://sos.ga.gov/index.php/elections/state_election_board_invites_dominion_voting_systems_to_discuss_2020_statewide_voting_system_implementation

See: Georgia Senate Republicans Pass Bill To End No-Excuse Absentee Voting
by Stephen Fowler
March 8, 2021; 6:07 PM ET
https://www.npr.org/2021/03/08/974985725/georgia-senate-republicans-pass-bill-to-end-no-excuse-absentee-voting

Georgia elections official Gabriel Sterling gained national attention a few months ago by pushing back against former President Donald Trump’s false claims of voter fraud. 

But Republican state lawmakers in Georgia, inspired by those falsehoods, have introduced a handful of bills that would increase barriers to voting for some people.

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Georgia Elections Official Gabriel Sterling Responds To Bills That Make Voting Harder

March 9, 2021; 5:04 AM ET

https://www.npr.org/2021/03/09/974948010/georgia-elections-official-gabriel-sterling-responds-to-bills-that-make-voting-h

Georgia is among 43 states that are considering similar legislation, according to the Brennan Center.

Sterling, a Republican who is now the chief operating officer for the Georgia secretary of state’s office, says some of the measures backed by Republican Georgia state lawmakers go too far. 

But he argues that many of the proposals could end up helping elections administrators.

There was no widespread fraud in Georgia, he says, but there were small numbers of double voting, out-of-state voting and felons voting. Rules involving photo IDs could make things easier for elections workers, he says.

“In a state like Georgia, where the election is getting closer and closer, every vote’s going to count,” Sterling says. “And anything we can do to make the system more secure and provide confidence to everybody, that’s the kind of things that we need to be focusing on.”

Sterling talked with NPR’s Scott Detrow on Morning Edition about the proposals under consideration and why he opposes the Democrat-backed voting rights bill that passed the U.S. House last week.

Here are excerpts of the interview:

One proposal would eliminate no-excuse absentee voting and add voter ID requirements for absentee voting. This is being characterized by many voting rights groups as nothing more than a response to the fact that Democrats won Georgia Senate races and the presidential race last year and that Democrats used absentee voting more than Republicans. Are they wrong?

––MORE––

Trump’s Georgia Shakedown A Preparatory For January 6 Insurrection

The transcript of then-President Trump’s hour-long call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is too lengthy to duplicate here, per se, but suffice it to say, it all boiled down to this oft-repeated remark by Trump during the call:

“The ballots are corrupt, and they’re brand new, and they don’t have seals, and there’s a whole thing with the ballots. But the ballots are corrupt. And you are going to find that they are — which is totally illegal — it is more illegal for you than it is for them because, you know, what they did and you’re not reporting it. That’s a criminal, that’s a criminal offense. And you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer.

“All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state.”

The audio and transcript of the call may be read and heard at several sites, but here are two:
• https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/the-post-has-published-trumps-full-phone-call-with-georgia-election-officials-listen-to-the-audio-and-read-the-transcript/ar-BB1crmJx

• https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/03/politics/trump-brad-raffensperger-phone-call-transcript/index.html

The call, which occurred on a Saturday afternoon, January 2, 2021, is a classic example of a shakedown.

In common parlance, the term “shakedown” refers to a criminal activity, describing extortion of money, as by blackmail. It is the preferred and primary definition in most reputable, and modern dictionaries.

Even the “Urban Dictionary,” a repository of modern colloquial use acknowledges similarly, but takes it at least one step further, by also acknowledging context of usage by writing that shakedown is,

“Another word for extortion/blackmail, or the obtaining of a good or service through means of force, threats/intimidation, or abuse of power.

“Shakedown by force, threats and intimidation:

“Shakedown by abuse of power:”

Only one other dictionary acknowledges that capacity by writing that shakedown refers to “extortion, as by blackmail or threats of violence.”

Merriam-Webster defines it as “to rob by the use of trickery or threats.”

The Online Slang Dictionary finds similarly, by writing that it means “to extort. That is, to obtain something via force, threats, intimidation, abuse of power, etc.”

Abuse of power by threats – such as

The Midnight Train To Georgia Has Left The Station

The Number 1 smash hit popularized by Atlanta, Georgia-based family band of Gladys Knight and the Pips in October 1973 was the work of a native Mississippian from Pontotoc named Jim Weatherly.

His family reported that Jim died recently at his residence in Brentwood, Tennessee, a tony suburb of Nashville, of natural causes, aged 77.

Weatherly wrote two additional tunes that became hits for Gladys Knight and the Pips: “Neither One of Us (Wants to Be the First to Say Goodbye)” and “Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me” – which was originally recorded by country singer Ray Price.

A star quarterback for the University of Mississippi, aka “Ole Miss,” in the 1960s, after graduation, Weatherly, who had already formed a band with some classmates, moved to Nashville where he hoped to find his fortune. Nashville, however, long known as a very cliquish town musically, rejected him. So he and his band moved to the Los Angeles area where he became a songwriter in that area’s then-hot music scene. It was a “training ground” for many musicians who later became immensely popular, super-star caliber artists, including Glen Campbell, Jackson Browne, Tom Petty, Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr, Brian Wilson, Beck, and many others who populated the Laurel Canyon area – a mountainous canyon region in LA’s Hollywood Hills West district, in the Santa Monica Mountains.

Although Laurel Canyon is a rocky, arid, and largely agriculturally inhospitable area, it was fertile ground for artists like Joni Mitchell, David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash, and Neil Young, Linda Ronstadt, The Byrds, Frank Zappa, Jim Morrison, Buffalo Springfield, Love, Michelle and John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas, Roger McGuinn, Gene Clark, Chris Hillman, J. D. Souther, Judee Sill, Carole King, the Eagles, Richie Furay (of Buffalo Springfield and Poco) and many, many more, almost too numerous to mention.

But, lesser known is the backstory of Jim Weatherly’s first hit song for Gladys Knight and the Pips.

After his college football days ended, Weatherly worked in Los Angeles as a songwriter.

During his off-time in LA he often played flag football with other creative types who had athletic backgrounds – among them, Lee Majors, who himself was a former college football player and was then starring in The Big Valley as Heath Barkley, alongside the lead and central character Victoria Barkley, played by renown actress Barbara Stanwyck. The Big Valley was a unique western television serial whose central character was a woman (Stanwyck), who had taken Heath as her own, though he was the illegitimate son of her character’s late husband Thomas Barkley, following his death.

Jim Weatherly was inducted to the Songwriters Hall of Fame at their 45th Annual Induction and Awards ceremony at the Marriott Marquis Theater on June 12, 2014 in New York City.

The Big Valley was

Greene Expelled

Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia’s 14th Congressional District has been expelled from her committee assignments – House Education and Labor Committee, and House Budget Committee – by a majority vote of Members of the House of Representatives.

House Resolution 72 – Removing a certain Member from certain standing committees of the House of Representatives – was passed by a vote of 230-199. The breakdown was as follows:

219 Democrats voting FOR,
11 Republicans voting FOR,

199 Republicans voting AGAINST,

2 Democrats Not Voting,
1 Republican Not Voting.

The resolution was introduced by Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D, FL-23) on 2/1/21, and was agreed to on 2/4/21 by Roll Call vote number 25 at 6:50 PM ET.

The text of the resolution may be read on the Congress.gov website, but it’s short enough to post here:

Whereas clause 1 of rule XXIII of the Rules of the House of Representatives 
        provides, ``A Member, Delegate, Resident Commissioner, officer, or 
        employee of the House shall behave at all times in a manner that shall 
        reflect creditably on the House.''; and
Whereas Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene should be removed from her 
        committee assignments in light of conduct she has exhibited: Now, 
        therefore, be it
    Resolved, That the following named Member be, and is hereby, 
removed from the following standing committees of the House of 
Representatives:
    Committee on the Budget: Mrs. Greene of Georgia.
    Committee on Education and Labor: Mrs. Greene of Georgia.

It’s only the SECOND TIME in recent history that a Banana Republican has been removed from their House committee assignments.

After a 17-year Congressional history, Steve King of Iowa’s 4th Congressional District was the first, however, though he was removed by GOP leadership (Kevin McCarthy) in January 2019 rather than by a vote of the House, as was Greene.

King’s list of egregious behavior was at least as extensive as Greene’s.

• In 2016, he was found displaying a Confederate flag on his Washington office desk.
• In 2017, he endorsed a Toronto, Canada mayoral candidate who had neo-Nazi ties.
• In 2018, during a trip to Europe financed by a Holocaust memorial group, he met with a far-right Austrian party which had been founded by a Nazi, with continued leadership of neo-Nazis.
• In 2018, he was recorded by The Weekly Standard referring to Mexicans as “dirt.”

In an interview with a website associated with the party, King (R-Iowa) declared that “Western civilization is on the decline,” spoke of the replacement of white Europeans by immigrants and criticized Hungarian American financier George Soros, who has backed liberal groups around the world.

On Twitter, he follows an Australian anti-Semitic activist, who proposed hanging a portrait of Hitler “in every classroom.”

In July 2013, King spoke about proposed immigration legislation and said of illegal immigrants: “For every one who’s a valedictorian, there’s another 100 out there who weigh 130 pounds — and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert.”

And in March 2017, King wrote, “Culture and demographics are our destiny. We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.”

https://apnews.com/article/d8e91a7d5782fc43bc0595b18ddbdd1a

What’s the difference between Marjorie Taylor Greene (aka MT-headed Greene) and a seal?

Q: What’s the difference between a trained seal, and Georgia Banana Republican MT-headed Greene?

Hmmm… a trained seal plays a tune on horns, performs tricks, and barks on command.

So does MT-headed Greene.

A: There is NO difference between a trained seal, and Georgia Banana Republican MT-headed Greene.

Greene Apologizes To GOP Colleagues — And Gets Standing Ovation
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/537263-greene-apologizes-to-gop-colleagues-and-gets-standing-ovation

Alternate headline:
Lapdog Barks, Owners Applaud

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-14, Georgia) pretend-apologized for some her past controversial remarks and embrace of the QAnon conspiracy theory during a heated closed-door House GOP conference meeting — and received a standing ovation at one point from a number of her colleagues.

Greene told her colleagues that she “made a mistake” by being curious about “Q” and said that she told her children that she learned a lesson about what to put on social media, according to two unnamed sources in the room.

She also denied that she knew what “Jewish space lasers” were and defended her comments that past school shootings were staged by stating that she had personal experience with a school shooting. (Oh? Really? Which one? What was your “personal experience”?)

She received a standing ovation from some members of the caucus at the conclusion of her remarks. (Trained seals receive standing ovations for their performances, too.)

The House will vote Thursday on removing Greene from the House Budget and Education panels, where she was placed by Republicans. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-California) has so far declined to take disciplinary actions against Greene. (McCarthy and Greene are two peas in a pod, insofar as they BOTH recently went trotting off to see the cult leader Wizard of Mar-a-Lago, seeking guidance and instruction.)

The first-year lawmaker is

Georgia’s M.T.-headed Greene Representative

Fear the Q.

That’s the message Georgia’s nutjob Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene is sending to Republicans, her constituents, and America.

The GOP is sunk.

They didn’t keep out the KKK, Communists, John Birch Society members, racist Dixiecats, and other such ilk in 1964, and look at ’em now! All grown up!

Mr. Lincoln would NOT be proud.

Of course, the utter nonsense of her demonstrably false claims of “voter fraud” in Georgia – which she claims led to Trump’s loss – somehow, magically, mysteriously, did NOT result in her loss.

She still hasn’t figured that one out.

Stupid cunt.

---

As Democrats Call For Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Removal, Republicans Stay Silent

January 30, 2021, 6:20 PM ET

The list is long of the baseless conspiracy theories that Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has embraced. She’s:
1.) Denied that a plane hit the Pentagon on September 11, 2001;

2.) Supported the idea that the Parkland school shooting was a “false flag” operation meant to usher in tighter gun laws;

3.) Seemed to agree that Hillary Clinton was recorded “filleting” a child’s face.

4.) Greene has also “liked” social media posts that called for executing “deep state” FBI agents, or that;

5.) Advocated removing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi with “a bullet to the head.”

6.) Greene supports QAnon and;

7.) Has said Muslims do not belong in government.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Georgia, CD-14, wears a “Trump Won” face mask as she arrives on the floor of the House to take her oath of office as a newly elected member of the House of Representatives on January 3. Erin Scott/Pool/AFP via Getty Images

As reports on Greene’s history and flirtations with violence have come to light, Democrats have rushed to condemn her, suggesting she be censured, stripped of committee assignments, or more: Representative Jimmy Gomez of California has promised to introduce a resolution that would expel Greene from the House of Representatives entirely. Other Democrats have said they would join that resolution.

Pelosi called Greene’s comments “absolutely appalling” and criticized House Republican leadership for placing Greene on the House Education Committee.

California Representative Barbara Lee said Greene “is a threat to the safety of members, staff, and our democracy. It’s time for her to go.”

Republican lawmakers have been more reticent. Utah Senator Mitt Romney indicated in a tweet that Greene was speaking “nonsense.” But most have stayed silent; a spokesperson for House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said he plans to “have a conversation” with Greene about her “deeply disturbing” comments. The lack of forceful denunciation doesn’t sit well with many Democrats.

“A member of your caucus has harassed a Parkland survivor and Representative @CoriBush, and made violent and dangerous statements,” Representative Katherine Clark, D-Massachusetts, tweeted Saturday. “How about serious consequences instead of a ‘conversation’, Kevin McCarthy?” (Representative Bush of Missouri is moving offices after a confrontation with Greene over Greene not wearing a face mask.)

But dealing with rogue members isn’t among McCarthy’s chief concerns these days. McCarthy’s priorities this year have been “traveling to Mar-a-Lago to make up with the former president,” keeping his job secure, and regaining majority control in 2022, NPR correspondent Ron Elving told Weekend Edition. McCarthy met with Trump on Thursday, reportedly to secure his support.

And those Republicans who are staying silent? If they opened their mouths, Democrats might not like what they hear. “There are also Republicans who want to circle the wagons and defend Representative Greene, much as they have defended the former president and his denial of the 2020 election results,” Elving said.

Even with a Democratic majority in the House, expelling Greene wouldn’t be easy. That would require a two-thirds majority vote, meaning around 70 Republicans would have to join the Democrats — something that would make them vulnerable to primary challenges. “And even then you’d have to ask, what would it ultimately accomplish?” Elving asked. “Would she not be more powerful as a martyr than she is now, far more important than she needs to be, with an even bigger megaphone?”

Some Republicans outside of Congress have condemned Greene. After the liberal group Media Matters reported this week on another conspiracy theory Greene had endorsed — that
8.) The November 2018 wildfires in California may have been caused by lasers from space linked to the Rothschild company — the Republican Jewish Coalition said it was “offended and appalled.” Other Jewish leaders have also vigorously condemned Greene’s embrace of “antisemitic canards.”

House Republicans have long known that Greene could be a problem for their party. “Everybody was well aware of her previous persona and who she is,” John Cowan, who challenged Greene during last summer’s primary runoff, told Axios. “Maybe they just assumed that the awe of winning an election would calm her down a little bit, and so she would actually be interested in governing and be interested in policy, and she’s just clearly not.”

In the absence of vociferous Republican condemnation in Congress, Greene is doubling down. In a statement Friday, titled “A Message to the Mob,” Greene thumbed her nose at detractors, claiming that the more the “radical, left-wing Democrat mob” and the “Fake News media” try to “take me out,” the more money she raises from supporters.

“Every attack. Every lie. Every smear strengthens my base of support at home and across the country because people know the truth and are fed up with the lies,” Greene wrote, blaming “cancel culture” and urging the GOP to stand in solidarity. “If Republicans cower to the mob,” she said, they would be “opening the door to let the vicious cancel culture mob take out every one of you.”

On Saturday, Greene said she had a “GREAT” phone call with her “all time favorite POTUS,” Donald Trump. “The blood thirsty media and the socialists hate America Democrats are attacking me now just like they always attack President Trump,” Greene said, adding: “I will never back down.”

https://www.npr.org/2021/01/30/962438098/as-democrats-call-for-marjorie-taylor-greenes-removal-republicans-stay-silent

Georgia Republicans Introduce Bill Making Voting More Difficult

If you cant win honestly, the next step is using dishonesty.

And that’s EXACTLY what Georgia Banana Republicans are doing – changing the rules in the middle of the game when it becomes apparent that they’re starting to lose favor with The People.

Lying, corrupt, sons of bitches, and bastards… every god-damned one of ’em.

---

A Georgia Republican is introducing a bill requiring voters to send copies of their photo ID to election officials two times before being permitted to cast an absentee ballot.

The legislation would also

Consuming A Steady Diet Of Lies Has Damaged The GOP

While I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of any political party, I am completely simpatico with Senator Sasse’s observations, and remarks.

Competition is good, wholesome, and healthy, and strengthens each competitor. So in a very real way, it would be disastrous for our political system – which for all practical purposes, is comprised of but two political parties – to suffer the loss of one. Instead, we should be seeking to increase the number of viable competitors.

The GOP’s problems are myriad, not the least of which are cowardice, and failure to stand for truth, and oppose lies, no matter their source, or who promulgated them. As evidenced by what they did the past 4 years, if the party cannot will not stand for “truth, justice, and the American way,” what will they fall for?

As the colloquial saying – and song by the same name – goes, “you’ve got to stand for something, or you’ll fall for anything.”

Sadly, the GOP has already fallen.

The following article contains abbreviated excerpts of the original, which may be found linked at the conclusion.

---

QAnon Is Destroying the GOP From Within

Until last week, too many in the Republican Party thought they could preach the Constitution and wink at QAnon. They can’t.

By Senator Ben Sasse
Republican of Nebraska
January 19, 2021

Eugene Goodman is an American hero. At a pivotal moment on January 6, the veteran United States Capitol Police officer single-handedly prevented untold bloodshed. Staring down an angry, advancing mob, he retreated up a marble staircase, calmly wielding his baton to delay his pursuers while calling out their position to his fellow officers. At the top of the steps, still alone and standing just a few yards from the chamber where senators and Vice President Mike Pence had been certifying the Electoral College’s vote, Goodman strategically lured dozens of the mayhem-minded away from an unguarded door to the Senate floor.

…

If and when the House sends its article of impeachment against Trump to the Senate, I will be a juror in his trial, and thus what I can say in advance is limited. But no matter what happens in that trial, the Republican Party faces a separate reckoning. Until last week, many party leaders and consultants thought they could preach the Constitution while winking at QAnon. They can’t. The GOP must reject conspiracy theories or be consumed by them. Now is the time to decide what this party is about.

The newly elected Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene is cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. She once ranted that “there’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take this global cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles out, and I think we have the president to do it.” During her campaign, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy had a choice: Disavow her campaign and potentially lose a Republican seat, or welcome her into his caucus and try to keep a lid on her ludicrous ideas. McCarthy failed the leadership test and sat on the sidelines. Now in Congress, Greene isn’t going to just back McCarthy as leader and stay quiet. She’s already announced plans to try to impeach Joe Biden on his first full day as president. She’ll keep making fools out of herself, her constituents, and the Republican Party.

If the GOP is to have a future outside the fever dreams of Internet trolls, we have to call out falsehoods and conspiracy theories unequivocally. We have to repudiate people who peddle those lies.

…

America’s Junk-Food Media Diet

The way Americans are consuming and producing news—or what passes for it these days—is driving us mad. This has been said many times, but the problem has worsened in the past five years. On the supply side, media outlets have discovered that dialing up the rhetoric increases clicks, eyeballs, and revenue. On the demand side, readers and viewers like to see their opinions affirmed, rather than challenged. When everybody’s outraged, everybody wins—at least in the short term.

This is not a problem only on the right or only on obscure blogs. The underlying economics that drive

Warnock and Ossoff Defeat Loeffler and Perdue To Win Georgia’s U.S.Senate Race

The two Democrats challenging Georgia’s incumbent Republican Senators, David Perdue, and the appointed Kelly Loeffler, have won.

A full 100% of Georgia’s 2652 precincts have reported, and their votes tallied.

Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has certified the results.

The Reverend Doctor Raphael Warnock, pastor of Atlanta’s famed Ebenezer Baptist Church, the spiritual home of the late Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr., has been declared the winner in his race against Kelly Loeffler, with 50.84%, or 2,259,769 votes, to 49.16%, or 2,185,063 votes, for Kelly Loeffler. Loeffler was temporarily appointed by Georgia’s Republican Governor Brian Kemp to fill the unexpired term of Republican Johnny Isakson, who announced his retirement effective 31 December 2019 to care for his health following a diagnosis of Parkinson’s Disease. The Reverend Doctor Warnock has made history by being only the 11th Black person to have been elected to the United States Senate.

In the other Senate race, Jon Ossoff has been declared victorious over incumbent David Perdue with 50.41%, or 2,240,822 votes, to 49.59%, or 2,203,958 votes for Perdue. Aged 33 years, Mr. Offoff will become the youngest United States Senator ever elected.

Jon Ossoff LEFT and Rev. Dr. Raphael Warnock RIGHT in a joint campaign event.

The balance of power in the Senate is now changed, with

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger interviewed by ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos on “Good Morning America”

“Truth matters.”

Hmm… where have we heard that before, eh?

ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos on “Good Morning America”:
“David Worley, a Democrat member of the State Election Board, which you chair, has asked you to open an investigation into the call. Will you open that investigation?”

Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger was interviewed by George Stephanopoulos, ABC News Chief Anchor on “Good Morning America” Monday morning, January 4, 2021 following Sunday’s news that President Trump and his team had called the Georgia Secretary of State and asked him to “find” enough votes to overturn the official results and throw the election to Trump.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger:
“I believe that – because I had conversation with the President, also he had conversation with our chief investigator after we did the signature match audit of Cobb County last week – there may be a conflict of interest.

“I understand that the Fulton County District Attorney wants to look at.

“Maybe that’s

Analysis: Trump’s Georgia Phone Call Word Count

When analyzing language, we’re told that the number of times that a word is mentioned often indicates its importance. Samuel Johnson expressed it this way in Rambler #2 (March 24, 1750) by writing that, “Men more frequently require to be reminded, than informed.”

It should also be borne in mind that sometimes, when making a request, or even in casual conversation, per se, language is sometimes “coded,” meaning that one word stands for, and substitutes for another idea, or thought. Consider the 2004 book “I Heard You Paint Houses”: Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran & the Inside Story of The Mafia, The Teamsters & the Last Ride of Jimmy Hoffa” which became a motion picture entitled “The Irishman,” directed by Martin Scorsese, starring Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, Harvey Keitel, and Ray Romano, among others.

The sentence “I heard you paint houses” was euphemistic (coded) language meaning to murder someone, that the person speaking the sentence was inquiring with the listener if the listener was a “hit man,” or murderer for hire, and obliquely, that the speaker wanted someone killed.

Trump’s beverage of choice is Diet Coke. It doesn’t seem to be working.

So, in the same way, when Trump speaks, he only barely hides his intentions. At least that’s the case in this example, though there are others, such as Trump’s now-infamous call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, for which Trump was indicted (impeached), when he said in part,

“I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike… I guess you have one of your wealthy people… The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation. … The other thing, There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it… It sounds horrible to me.” 

While the following list is neither the entire, nor complete list, it is a listing of the words that are germane to the topic of the phone call with the Georgia Secretary of State as it pertains to the November General Election in which Trump lost to Biden in that state, for which Trump sought illegal relief from the Secretary of State.

Trump and his hirelings have

Trump Recorded Asking GA SOS to Commit Election Crimes

By now, unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, or just checked in from an overnight trip to Mars, you’ve heard the news that the soon-to-be-former President suborned conspiracy and fraud from the Georgia Secretary Of State Brad Raffensperger.

The Washington Post, in conjunction with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, first published the story, which was quickly picked up by other news reporting outlets, including the Associated Press, Reuters, CNN, New York Times, NPR, and many others, including international news outlets.

• AJC – Trump demands Georgia elections official overturn his defeat in hourlong call
January 3, 2021 at 9:40:50 PM CST
https://www.ajc.com/politics/politics-blog/trump-demands-georgia-elections-official-overturn-his-defeat-in-hourlong-call/6MRGK445JNAGHBL2HXLZ3FIVZU/

• WaPo – ‘I just want to find 11,780 votes’: In extraordinary hour-long call, Trump pressures Georgia secretary of state to recalculate the vote in his favor.
January 3, 2021 at 8:59 p.m. CST
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-raffensperger-call-georgia-vote/2021/01/03/d45acb92-4dc4-11eb-bda4-615aaefd0555_story.html

Full transcript and audio – https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-raffensperger-call-transcript-georgia-vote/2021/01/03/2768e0cc-4ddd-11eb-83e3-322644d82356_story.html

• NPR – “This Was A Scam”: In Recorded Call, Trump Pushed Official To Overturn Georgia Vote
January 3, 2021 2:51 PM ET
https://www.npr.org/2021/01/03/953012128/this-was-a-scam-in-recorded-call-trump-pushed-official-to-overturn-georgia-vote

• NYT – Trump, in Taped Call, Pressured Georgia Official to ‘Find’ Votes to Overturn Election
January 3, 2021 Updated 10:06 p.m. ET
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/03/us/politics/trump-raffensperger-call-georgia.html

• Reuters – In recorded call, Trump pressures Georgia official to ‘find’ votes to overturn election
January 3, 2021 1:40 PM
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-trump/in-recorded-call-trump-pressures-georgia-official-to-find-votes-to-overturn-election-idUSKBN2980MG

• Associated Press – Trump, on tape, presses Ga. official to ‘find’ him votes
January 3, 2021 at 9:17:20 PM CST
https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-joe-biden-donald-trump-georgia-elections-a7b4aa4d8ce3bf52301ddbe620c6bff6

• Voice Of America – Trump, in Phone Call, Pleaded with Georgia Officials to Overturn His Election Loss
January 03, 2021 07:10 PM
https://www.voanews.com/2020-usa-votes/trump-phone-call-pleaded-georgia-officials-overturn-his-election-loss

• DW – Donald Trump heard on tape telling state official to ‘find’ him votes
03.01.2021
https://www.dw.com/en/donald-trump-heard-on-tape-telling-state-official-to-find-him-votes/a-56121196

• France 24 – Trump presses top Georgia election official to ‘find’ votes for him in recorded phone call
03/01/2021 – 22:53
https://www.france24.com/en/americas/20210103-trump-presses-top-georgia-election-official-to-find-votes-for-him-in-recorded-phone-call

• Guardian – “I just want 11,780 votes”: Trump pressed Georgia to overturn Biden victory
Sunday 3 January 2021 14.10 EST
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/03/trump-georgia-raffensperger-call-biden-washington-post

• Business Insider – Trump pleaded with Georgia’s secretary of state to ‘find’ additional votes to win the state in an hour-long phone call, according to new audio
January 3, 2021 at 2:01:12 PM CST
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-brad-raffensperger-phone-call-georgia-votes-presidential-election-2021-01

The Loser in Chief and POS45 LEFT, and Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger RIGHT

Throughout the entire call, The Lying Sack of Shit in Chief, aka the Loser in Chief and Criminal in Chief, was consistently inconsistent in asserting his “the Earth is flat” debunked fraudulent election claims.

And even though his figures throughout the hour-long recorded phone call were inconsistent, there was one thing he consistently stated, in many ways, that he wanted : For the GA SOS to invalidate enough votes from the already-certified election results which would cause the election to be thrown to him.

If that’s not corrupt – to blatantly ask (numerous times) for a criminal act to be performed (to suborn fraud and conspiracy, “suborn” being defined by Black’s Law Dictionary, 8th ed. 2004, as “to induce (a person) to commit an unlawful or wrongful act, esp. in a secret or underhanded manner”) – I don’t know what is.

And, as it turns out, it is illegal, at the State -and- Federal levels.

Republicans should rejoice that laws exist which regulate behavior involving elections and voting, and not just at the ballot box, either.

Georgia Code
Title 21 – Elections
Chapter 2 – Elections and Primaries Generally
Article 15 – Miscellaneous Offenses

Section § 21-2-604. Criminal solicitation to commit election fraud; penalties

(a) (1) A person commits the offense of criminal solicitation to commit election fraud in the first degree when, with intent that another person engage in conduct constituting a felony under this article, he or she solicits, requests, commands, importunes, or otherwise attempts to cause the other person to engage in such conduct.

(2) A person commits the offense of criminal solicitation to commit election fraud in the second degree when, with intent that another person engage in conduct constituting a misdemeanor under this article, he or she solicits, requests, commands, importunes, or otherwise attempts to cause the other person to engage in such conduct.

(b) (1) A person convicted of the offense of criminal solicitation to commit election fraud in the first degree shall be punished by imprisonment for not less than one nor more than three years.

(2) A person convicted of the offense of criminal solicitation to commit election fraud in the second degree shall be punished as for a misdemeanor.

(c) It is no defense to a prosecution for criminal solicitation to commit election fraud that the person solicited could not be guilty of the crime solicited.

(d) The provisions of subsections (a) through (c) of this Code section are cumulative and shall not supersede any other penal law of this state.

Code 1981, § 21-2-604, enacted by Ga. L. 2011, p. 683, § 21/SB 82.

-AND-

2010 Georgia Code
TITLE 16 – CRIMES AND OFFENSES
CHAPTER 4 – CRIMINAL ATTEMPT, CONSPIRACY, AND SOLICITATION
§ 16-4-7 – Criminal solicitation
O.C.G.A. 16-4-7 (2010)
16-4-7. Criminal solicitation

(a) A person commits the offense of criminal solicitation when, with intent that another person engage in conduct constituting a felony, he solicits, requests, commands, importunes, or otherwise attempts to cause the other person to engage in such conduct.

(b) A person convicted of the offense of criminal solicitation to commit a felony shall be punished by imprisonment for not less than one nor more than three years. A person convicted of the offense of criminal solicitation to commit a crime punishable by death or by life imprisonment shall be punished by imprisonment for not less than one nor more than five years.

(c) It is no defense to a prosecution for criminal solicitation that the person solicited could not be guilty of the crime solicited.

(d) The provisions of subsections (a) through (c) of this Code section are cumulative and shall not supersede any other penal law of this state.

-AND-

52 USC 20511: Criminal penalties Text contains those laws in effect on January 3, 2021
From Title 52-VOTING AND ELECTIONS Subtitle II-Voting Assistance and Election Administration CHAPTER 205-NATIONAL VOTER REGISTRATION

§20511. Criminal penalties

A person, including an election official, who in any election for Federal office-

(1) knowingly and willfully intimidates, threatens, or coerces, or attempts to intimidate, threaten, or coerce, any person for-

(A) registering to vote, or voting, or attempting to register or vote;

(B) urging or aiding any person to register to vote, to vote, or to attempt to register or vote; or

(C) exercising any right under this chapter; or

(2) knowingly and willfully deprives, defrauds, or attempts to deprive or defraud the residents of a State of a fair and impartially conducted election process, by-

(A) the procurement or submission of voter registration applications that are known by the person to be materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent under the laws of the State in which the election is held; or

(B) the procurement, casting, or tabulation of ballots that are known by the person to be materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent under the laws of the State in which the election is held,

shall be fined in accordance with title 18 (which fines shall be paid into the general fund of the Treasury, miscellaneous receipts (pursuant to section 3302 of title 31), notwithstanding any other law), or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both.

( Pub. L. 103–31, §12, May 20, 1993, 107 Stat. 88 .)

-AND-

18 USC 241: Conspiracy against rights
Text contains those laws in effect on January 3, 2021
From Title 18-CRIMES AND CRIMINAL PROCEDURE
PART I-CRIMES
CHAPTER 13-CIVIL RIGHTS

§241. Conspiracy against rights

If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same; or

If two or more persons go in disguise on the highway, or on the premises of another, with intent to prevent or hinder his free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege so secured-

They shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, they shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.

(June 25, 1948, ch. 645, 62 Stat. 696 ; Pub. L. 90–284, title I, §103(a), Apr. 11, 1968, 82 Stat. 75 ; Pub. L. 100–690, title VII, §7018(a), (b)(1), Nov. 18, 1988, 102 Stat. 4396 ; Pub. L. 103–322, title VI, §60006(a), title XXXII, §§320103(a), 320201(a), title XXXIII, §330016(1)(L), Sept. 13, 1994, 108 Stat. 1970 , 2109, 2113, 2147; Pub. L. 104–294, title VI, §§604(b)(14)(A), 607(a), Oct. 11, 1996, 110 Stat. 3507, 3511.)

-AND-

2 USC 10307: Prohibited acts
Text contains those laws in effect on January 3, 2021
From Title 52-VOTING AND ELECTIONS Subtitle I-Voting Rights
CHAPTER 103-ENFORCEMENT OF VOTING RIGHTS

§10307. Prohibited acts
(a) Failure or refusal to permit casting or tabulation of vote

No person acting under color of law shall fail or refuse to permit any person to vote who is entitled to vote under any provision of chapters 103 to 107 of this title or is otherwise qualified to vote, or willfully fail or refuse to tabulate, count, and report such person’s vote.

(b) Intimidation, threats, or coercion

No person, whether acting under color of law or otherwise, shall intimidate, threaten, or coerce, or attempt to intimidate, threaten, or coerce any person for voting or attempting to vote, or intimidate, threaten, or coerce, or attempt to intimidate, threaten, or coerce any person for urging or aiding any person to vote or attempt to vote, or intimidate, threaten, or coerce any person for exercising any powers or duties under section 10302(a), 10305, 10306, or 10308(e) of this title or section 1973d or 1973g of title 42.1

(c) False information in registering or voting; penalties

Whoever knowingly or willfully gives false information as to his name, address or period of residence in the voting district for the purpose of establishing his eligibility to register or vote, or conspires with another individual for the purpose of encouraging his false registration to vote or illegal voting, or pays or offers to pay or accepts payment either for registration to vote or for voting shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both: Provided, however, That this provision shall be applicable only to general, special, or primary elections held solely or in part for the purpose of selecting or electing any candidate for the office of President, Vice President, presidential elector, Member of the United States Senate, Member of the United States House of Representatives, Delegate from the District of Columbia, Guam, or the Virgin Islands, or Resident Commissioner of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.

(d) Falsification or concealment of material facts or giving of false statements in matters within jurisdiction of examiners or hearing officers; penalties

Whoever, in any matter within the jurisdiction of an examiner or hearing officer knowingly and willfully falsifies or conceals a material fact, or makes any false, fictitious, or fraudulent statements or representations, or makes or uses any false writing or document knowing the same to contain any false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or entry, shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.

(e) Voting more than once

(1) Whoever votes more than once in an election referred to in paragraph (2) shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.

(2) The prohibition of this subsection applies with respect to any general, special, or primary election held solely or in part for the purpose of selecting or electing any candidate for the office of President, Vice President, presidential elector, Member of the United States Senate, Member of the United States House of Representatives, Delegate from the District of Columbia, Guam, or the Virgin Islands, or Resident Commissioner of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.

(3) As used in this subsection, the term “votes more than once” does not include the casting of an additional ballot if all prior ballots of that voter were invalidated, nor does it include the voting in two jurisdictions under section 10502 of this title, to the extent two ballots are not cast for an election to the same candidacy or office.

(Pub. L. 89–110, title I, §11, Aug. 6, 1965, 79 Stat. 443 ; renumbered title I, Pub. L. 91–285, §2, June 22, 1970, 84 Stat. 314 ; amended Pub. L. 91–405, title II, §204(e), Sept. 22, 1970, 84 Stat. 853 ; Pub. L. 94–73, title IV, §§404, 409, Aug. 6, 1975, 89 Stat. 404 , 405.)

And yet, as of this writing, there has been only ONE reporting outlet with the gumption to tell it like it is.

POLITICO, which headlined their story “Trump’s pressure on Georgia election officials raises legal questions: In audio from a Saturday phone call, the president is heard urging the officials to reverse his loss,” they wrote in part that, “President Donald Trump’s effort to pressure Georgia officials to “find” enough votes to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s victory could run afoul of federal and state criminal statutes, according to legal experts and lawmakers, who expressed alarm at Trump’s effort to subvert democracy with less than three weeks left in his term.”

They wrote further that,

“Georgia state law includes two provisions that criminalize “solicitation of election fraud” and “conspiracy to commit election fraud.” Trump’s detractors also pointed to a federal statute that criminalizes “the procurement, casting, or tabulation of ballots that are known by the person to be materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent.”

“Anthony Michael Kreis, a Georgia State University law professor, said: “The Georgia code says that anybody who solicits, requests or commands or otherwise attempts to encourage somebody to commit election fraud is guilty of solicitation of election fraud. ‘Soliciting or requesting’ is the key language. The president asked, in no uncertain terms, the secretary of state to invent votes, to create votes that were not there. Not only did he ask for that in terms of just overturning the specific margin that Joe Biden won by, but then said we needed one additional vote to secure victory in Georgia.”

““There’s just no way that if you read the code and the way the code is structured, and then you look at what the president of the United states requested, that he has not violated this law — the spirit of it for sure,” Kreis continued.

“Kreis added that the phone call could not be divorced from recent episodes in which Trump amplified a false conspiracy theory about Raffensperger’s family and his vows to end the political careers of people like the secretary of state and Kemp for upholding Biden’s victory in the election. He also said Trump’s request for a specific number of votes — just enough to prevail by one — undercut the notion that he was simply asking for the truth.

““If I’m the president of the United States and my pardon power is not — does not extend to state acts, I don’t think that in the last few days of my term that I would want to be engaging in activities that even remotely subject me to the possibility of state criminal prosecution,” Kreis said. “That’s what makes this even more bewildering to me, is because if he had sensible advisers they would just keep him off the phone.”“

Regarding the claims of inaccurate, or otherwise invalid absentee, and mail-in ballots, which require signatures, the Liar in Chief claimed that there were “thousands and thousands” of ballots illegally cast which did not properly have signatures authenticated properly.

Brad Raffensperger, Georgia Secretary of State:

“President Trump, we’ve had several lawsuits, and we’ve had to respond in court to the lawsuits and the contentions. Um, we don’t agree that you have won. And we don’t — I didn’t agree about the 200,000 number that you’d mentioned. And I can go through that point by point.

“What we have done, is we gave our state Senate about one and a half hours of our time, going through the election issue by issue, and then on the State House, the Government Affairs Committee, we gave them about two and a half hours of our time, going back point by point on all the issues of contention. And then just a few days ago we met with our U.S. Congressmen, Republican Congressmen, and we gave them about two hours of our time talking about this past election. Going back, primarily what you’ve talked about here focused in on primarily, I believe, is the absentee ballot process. I don’t believe that you’re really questioning the Dominion machines. Because we did a hand re-tally, a 100% re-tally of all the ballots and compared them to what the machines said and came up with virtually the same result. Then we did the recount, and we got virtually the same result. So I guess we can probably take that off the table.

“Mr. President, the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong. We talked to the congressmen and they were surprised.

“But they — I guess there was a person Mr. Braynard who came to these meetings and presented data and he said that there was dead people, I believe it was upward of 5,000. The actual number were two. Two. Two people that were dead that voted. So that’s wrong. There were two.”

 

The GBI (GA Bureau of Investigation) examined signatures (which change over time) on ballots and found no problems.

The entire state’s ballots was recounted at least three times – and once manually – and no problems were found which would have affected the outcome of the race.

The Associated Press reported on Saturday, November 21, 2020 that,

Kelly Loeffler Received Over $3M In Farm Subsidies… And Sits On The Agriculture Committee

Blessed are those who have, for they shall be given more.

That’s not a genuine Bible verse, by the way. And if you’re any kind of decently well-read individual, with more than a perfunctory, or minimal knowledge of the Judeo-Christian collection of holy writings collectively known as the Bible, you would know that already.

And by that same token, of being any kind of decently well-read individual, you would also know that there is an eerie parallel to a saying that Jesus of Nazareth made about a related matter – the Parable of the Talents – as recorded in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. A parable, of course, is a moralizing tale, a story meant to illustrate some matter, and to point out a wrong doing, or type of injustice in an unobtrusive, easy-to-understand manner.

We’re going to get to Georgia’s appointed Republican Senator whose net worth of $500M is BY FAR the wealthiest member of Congress in just a moment, but first you need some background for understanding.

Woodcut from Historiae Celebriores Veteris Testamenti Iconibus Representatae — dated to 1712 — depicts the Parable of the Talents as told by Jesus of Nazareth, in Matthew 25:14–30. Two men bring the money that was entrusted to them back to their master, while a third man searches for his money outside.

The story states that, in preparation for a journey of some duration, an owner/master entrusted and distributed his money to his 3 servants. The unspoken hope, or expectation those days, is that, upon his return, they would have increased the portion with which they were entrusted and charged.

To one, he gave he gave 5 talents (a monetary measurement), to another he gave 2, and to the third, he gave 1 talent. Upon his return, the first two who received 5, and 2, respectively, reported that they’d doubled the money. The third did not, and rather, reported that he buried the money in the ground, and had not gained anything. Upon hearing that news, the owner became enraged, called that servant lazy and wicked, fired him, then ordered that single talent to be taken from him and given to the one with 10.

That’s an important point, which you’ll see later, why.

Jesus of Nazareth, who was telling the story, made a moral assessment, and drew a conclusion based upon the actions of that one who did not return a profit, and reportedly said, “For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.”

While the story is simply told, the meaning behind it is uncertain, though there have been many sermons preached about the tale. And yet, the audience hearing that parable then, in the era in which is was told, would have interpreted it quite differently from today’s audience, according to Dr. Richard L. Rohrbaugh, STD, Professor Emeritus of New Testament and Religious Studies at Lewis and Clark College, whose primary scholarly pursuit was establishing proper historical and cultural contexts for Biblical texts.

Dr. Rohrbaugh said that, in the era in which the story was first told, the audience would have understood that the “profit” was made through the exploitative abuse of others, and that the third servant was the one which would have been considered honorable by the standard of the day. Thus, that interpretation of the parable, would mean that the first two servants were shameful, instead of the third. When asked about the matter, Dr. Rohrbaugh said in part that,

“[G]iven the “limited good” outlook of ancient Mediterranean cultures, seeking “more” was considered morally wrong. Because the pie was “limited” and already all distributed, anyone getting “more” meant someone else got less. Thus, honorable people did not try to get more, and those who did were automatically considered thieves: To have gained, to have accumulated more than one started with, is to have taken the share of someone else.”

As he explained in the Biblical Archaeology Society, “In the ancient world, greedy people who did not want to get accused of profiting at someone else’s expense – which was considered shameful – would delegate their business to slaves, who were held to a different standard.” Dr. Rohrbaugh explained that the reasoning was that, “Shameful, even greedy, behavior could be condoned in slaves because slaves had no honor nor any expectation of it.”

Again, in the parable, the master

Banana Republican Newt Gingrich Announces Move To La-La Land

Newt Gingrich, Georgia’s original nutty buddy, all-around hypocrite, liar, and one of the original Banana Republicans, recently used his quill to conjure up an OpEd to the right-wing newspaper Washington Times in which he falsely claimed in part that, “The entire elite liberal media lied about the timeline of the COVID-19 vaccine. They blamed President Trump for the global pandemic even as he did literally everything top scientists instructed. In multiple debates, the moderators outright stated that he was lying about the U.S. having a vaccine before the end of the year (note Vice President Mike Pence received it this week). If Americans had known the pandemic was almost over, that too was likely the difference in the election.”

FACT: Regarding “the timeline of the COVID-19 vaccine,” Moderna had a coronavirus vaccine designed January 13, 2020, TWO DAYS after the genome was published internationally online.

Moderna developed their vaccine only two days after the genetic sequence had been publicized internationally by Chinese researcher Professor Dr. Yong-Zhen Zhangm Ph.D. His humanitarian act of scientific generosity resulted in him being temporarily forced out of his lab.

Moderna’s vaccine design only took one weekend to develop at their Massachusetts facilities.

In fact, Moderna had completed development of their COVID-19 vaccine mRNA-1273 before the Chinese government had acknowledged the disease was transmitted by human-to-human means, and more than a week before the first confirmed coronavirus case in the United States – January 21.

And by the time the first American coronavirus death was reported a month later, on February 29, Moderna’s mRNA-1273 coronavirus vaccine had already been manufactured and shipped to the National Institutes of Health to begin its Phase I clinical trial.

All of that was long before the President had made any announcement about his “Operation Warp Speed,” the public-private partnership to develop a coronavirus vaccine, and yet even 2 months before Bloomberg News reported on April 29 that such a plan was in the works.

Gingrich then falsely claims that,

Georgia Banana Republican Kelly Loeffler Obviously Has A Thing For White Supremacists

“You’re known by the company you keep,”
is a well-known maxim.

In which case, Kelly Loeffler obviously has a penchant favoring White Supremacists.

LEFT to RIGHT: Georgia’s appointed Banana Republican U.S. Senator Kelly Loeffler, Joshua Motes, Arkansas Banana Republican U.S. Senator Tom Cotton, at a Loeffler campaign event September 3, 2020 in Gilmer County, GA

Even her newly-elected U.S. Representative Georgia conspiracy theorist QAnon nutty buddy Banana Republican Marjorie Taylor Green (14th CD) knew who Chester Doles was, and booted him from one of her campaign events.

But Loeffler, whose personal net worth of well over $500 million makes her, by far, the wealthiest Member of Congress, can’t be bothered to hire staff that’s worth a hoot in hell to ID bad apples.

Or, maybe she actually likes them.

Jewish Progressive action group Bend the Arc: Jewish Action recently posted this image to Twitter, and later provided it to HuffPost, which shows Joshua Motes standing between Banana Republicans Kelly Loeffler, and Tom Cotton at a Loeffler campaign event in Gilmer County, Georgia this past September 3, 2020. The image was originally posted by Chester Doles to the Russian social media site VK, a well-known haven for White Supremacists, neo-Nazis, and other right-wing radicals who have been kicked off Facebook, Twitter, and other American-based social media.

Joshua Motes is

David Perdue wrote a letter asking the POTUS to import cheap foreign labor.

If you want to know what a person will do, simply look at their past.

That’s a generally good rule to observe, and that principle is found in practically every activity of human life – even in politics.

So, let’s examine Georgia’s Banana Republican Senator David Perdue, who was formerly Dollar General CEO from 2003 to 2007 of the Goodlettsville, TN-based business.

David Perdue has been selling out Americans for a long time. As long as it made a fast buck for him, or whoever hired him, he was okay with that.

A little-known fact about Perdue – but one well worth remembering, and publicizing – who is campaigning against Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff (from whom he also hides and refuses to debate), is that when Perdue was Dollar General’s CEO, he was significantly responsible for driving manufacture of most of the company’s merchandise out of America, to Chinese factories. In a 2004 conference call with investors, he said in part that, “We have opened a sourcing office in Hong Kong, and I can tell you we have had a dramatic impact on our business by having direct contact with our manufacturers.”

Of course, Perdue

Violent Racist 2x Federal Convict Chester Doles & GA Banana Republican Kelly Loeffler Visit

Georgia’s appointed U.S. Senator Kelly Loeffler is seen here with notorious racist bigot Chester Doles, a self-described 4th generation Ku Klux Klansman white Supremacist. Loeffler is THE single wealthiest Member of Congress with an estimated individual net worth of $500 million aside from her husband Jeffrey Sprecher, Founder, CEO, and President of InterContinental Exchange, a firm which literally owns the New York Stock Exchange, and other exchanges. Together they are worth an estimated $1 billion. Her spokesman claims to have not known about Doles’ presence at her rally, yet QAnon conspiracy theorist and Banana Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene in September had kicked Doles out of one of her rallies. This image was posted by Doles on VK, a Russian social media website.

You know the saying.

“Shit draws flies.”

It’ll be up to you to decide which is which.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote this, in part, about their cordial visit:

“The photo shows the Republican smiling from beneath an American flag ball cap next to Chester Doles, a longtime white supremacist who spent decades in the Ku Klux Klan and the neo-Nazi National Alliance. He was sentenced to prison for the 1993 beating of a Black man in Maryland and again on weapons violations in Georgia. He also associated with the Hammerskins, a racist skinhead gang with whom he marched in 2017′s violent United the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.”

The “Hammerskin Nation” members, as they prefer to call themselves, are called one of “the best organized, most widely dispersed and most dangerous Skinhead group known” by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s anti-bigotry Intelligence Report, which “provides comprehensive updates to law enforcement agencies, the media and the general public” on the radical right in the United States. His March 2003 arrest by Federal authorities was for violating Federal law barring convicted felons from possessing firearms.

The Washington Post wrote this in part, about Doles and Loeffler’s friendly tête-à-tête:

“Smiling and sporting a dark green cap with an American flag, Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) posed side by side with a former Ku Klux Klan leader at a Friday campaign event in Dawsonville, Ga.

“But after the viral photo with Chester Doles drew intense criticism amid a crucial Senate runoff campaign, the senator is distancing herself from any association with the longtime white supremacist. A campaign spokesman told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Sunday that Loeffler was unaware she was posing with a man who spent decades in the KKK and the neo-Nazi National Alliance.

““Kelly had no idea who that was, and if she had she would have kicked him out immediately because we condemn in the most vociferous terms everything that he stands for,” wrote Stephen Lawson, Loeffler’s campaign spokesman, to the Journal-Constitution in a statement Sunday.””[Sunday, 13 December 2020]

But here’s the contradictory part to Loeffler’s story: Even the freakazoid newly elected QAnon conspiracy theorist Banana Republican Congress critter Marjorie Taylor Greene threw him out of one of her rallies in Ringgold, Georgia, Saturday, September 19, 2020 – and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution published a story about the ordeal the following Monday, and told the newspaper that same day that, “Yes, I asked him to be removed. He is not welcome at any events that I attend. Period.”

One should seriously ponder why it is that a low-level weirdo like Banana Republican QAnon conspiracy theorist like Marjorie Taylor Greene would have on-the-ball-staff, while the multimillionairess Loeffler whose net worth is $500 Million at minimum, would not. It just doesn’t make sense.

Another thing that makes no sense is why anyone with at least half an ounce of common sense would know that Loeffler does NOT normally dress like that – trucker cap, checkerboard shirt, boots, jeans, etc. – when she’s relaxing. And yet, she hasn’t figured out that simply wearing the clothes of a “commoner” do not make her one, any more than wearing a welder’s mask and gloves makes her a welder. Folks who are fooled by such low-level attempts at deception are to be pitied. Why, even that blue-and-white checkerboard shirt probably cost well over $500.

Any woman worth a minimum of $500 million like she is, wear garments made by the likes of haute couture houses of Fendi, Prada, Gucci, Chanel, Armani, Vitton,

Georgia’s U.S. Senate Candidates Debate

The Atlanta Press Club’s Loudermilk-Young Debate Series featuring U.S. Senate candidates Jon Ossoff (D), Rev. Dr. Raphael Warnock (D), and Kelly Loeffler (R) is now over.

The Atlanta Press Club’s Loudermilk-Young Debate Series hosted debates between the candidates for both of Georgia’s U.S. Senate seats.

While Jon Ossoff and Senator David Perdue were also invited to participate, David Perdue declined participation.

Poor Jon… he had the stage all to himself. Thus, the Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff having the floor all to himself, proceeded to pummel his opponent in absentia and “debated” an empty podium, because the cowardly incumbent Banana Republican Senator David Perdue skipped out. An yet, it’s an entirely apropos picture of the coronavirus-stock-trading fraudulent Senator.

Not smart, David. Not smart at all. In fact, it’s pretty damn stupid. You lost by not showing up. In sports terms, that’s called a “forfeit,” or if you prefer pecuniary terms, a “loss given default.” Which is also probably how it’ll all go down for you, anyway. But for Jon, it’s a Credit Default Swap, and he’s the one profiting from your loss/forfeit/default.

After Ossoff’s solo performance, or soliloquy (take your pick), which was broadcast live on Georgia Public Broadcasting, and available online, on Sunday, December 6 from 7 – 8PM EST, the appointed (not anointed) Banana Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler and Reverend Raphael Warnock also participated in a debate in the same venue.

Billionairess Banana Republican Kelly Loeffler stood at the podium with her standard smirky pseudo-smile and stared straight ahead throughout the event, rarely ever making eye contact with anyone present – either the moderator, her opponent Rev. Dr. Raphael Warnock, or the two panelists.

But in all fairness, she did turn her head a few times – but very few.

Reverend Dr. Raphael Warnock, pastor of Atlanta’s Ebeneezer Baptist Church, formerly pastored by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and where in significant part America’s Civil Rights Movement was cultivated, was calm, cool, collected, and willingly corrected for the record the deliberate misrepresentations, twists, and outright lies that Kelly Loeffler spouted. He was certainly more animated, though not exaggerated. Loeffler, however, was more robotic, automaton-like.

Warnock pointed out that, aside from campaigning, Loeffler had not visited any of Georgia’s rural areas, or small towns during the brief 10-month period of her appointment to office by Georgia Governor Brian Kemp. He contrasted himself with her lackadaisical and purposeful ignorance of her constituency by

Thanksgiving Tofurkey

Happy Thanksgiving 2020, y’all!

If you’re unaware, “tofurkey” is an imitation substitute for turkey, made from tofu, which is the semi-solid paste-like protein curd made from the soy bean.

It’s “supposed” to taste like turkey.

But!

Riddle me this:

Why would vegetarians want to eat something that tastes like meat?

And if you can also answer this, you’ll be doing quite well:

Why is there such as thing as turkey “bacon”?

Bonus points for this one:

Almond “milk” and other milk substitute products from plants are anything but natural, and are highly processed, chemically-enhanced, made-in-a-science-laboratory substitutes for dairy milk – a 100% all-natural product – and should be called “juice” or “beverage” rather than milk. If one eschews highly processed foods, and chemical additions to food, why would anyone drink plant by-products which are falsely advertised as “milk”?

Once again, why avoid and attempt to imitate the natural thing?

It’s nonsensical, isn’t it?

Know what else is nonsensical?

Allowing the GOP to maintain control of the Senate.

Mitch McConnell is the LEAST liked politician in America.

See the numbers compared at the end of this article.

If you live in Georgia, or know anyone who does, encourage them to

Trump/GOP Vote Count Schizophrenia Is Mental Illness Defined

Schizophrenia is a mental illness which is not fully understood, but is diagnosed by the presence of symptoms, many of which are unique to the disease, but by no means exclusive. Delusions (unshakable belief in something untrue), hallucinations (actual perceptions, not imagined, originating in the absence of a real object, either auditory, visual, olfactory, tactile, etc.), withdrawal from reality, and disorganized patterns of thinking and speech are among the most remarkable, and readily identifiable symptoms of schizophrenia.

Colloquially, most laypersons would note delusions and and hallucinations as the most renown symptoms of schizophrenia, and while they are correct, they often add paranoia (irrational distrust or suspicion of others), thus, in their estimation, “delusions” often become “paranoid delusions.” But again, because schizophrenia is a heterogeneous disease (consisting of dissimilar elements or parts, i.e., miscellaneous), paranoia doesn’t always accompany the diagnosis of schizophrenia.

Schizoaffective disorder is a very similarly related mental health condition which is characterized by a combination of schizophrenia symptoms, such as hallucinations or delusions, as well as mood disorder symptoms, such as depression or mania. And typically, treatment of schizoaffective disorder combines treatment for both symptoms – mood disorder, and schizoid features.

But the point being, it is the schizoid feature of delusion upon which I wish to focus, because it is perhaps the most renown, and most common.

At its core, delusions are strong beliefs in something that is untrue. And when I use the term “belief,” I mean specifically to refer to the level of personal, mental confidence – acceptance or conviction of the validity, or truth of something – that an individual possesses in something, some idea, some thought, theory, or tenet, that is as yet, largely unproven. And while I remain a critic and detractor of the Wikipedia website for numerous reasons, I will use this definition of delusion found upon the site because I find it inclusively succinct.

“A delusion is a fixed belief that is not amenable to change in light of conflicting evidence. As a pathology, it is distinct from a belief based on false or incomplete information, confabulation, dogma, illusion, or some other misleading effects of perception.”

For example, while it is untrue that the Earth is flat, there remains at least one “Flat Earth Society” whose members are adherents to the false, and disproven notion that the Earth is flat, rather than ball-shaped, or round. Thus, anyone who holds to that idea, is deluded.

And being so deluded in the presence of overwhelming and irrefutable abundance of evidence to the contrary, it would call into question the mental stability of the individual(s) holding forth that disproven and false idea as true, when it is so blatantly and obviously not true.

So it is with the GOP,
Donald John Trump,
and his cult-like supporters.

They are deluded, and their mental condition is immediately suspect.

Bluntly, they are sick.

If you don’t laugh after reading the headlines below and see the utter hypocrisy of the GOP… you may be a Trumper.

Those mofos just can’t be pleased.

Seriously.

They can’t.

First, they want the vote counting in Pennsylvania stopped… because.

Yes, because.

When the Montgomery County, Pennsylvania judge asked the Trump/GOP lawyers if they were alleging fraud… here’s the transcript from the oral argument:

THE COURT: In your petition, which is right before me — and I read it several times — you don’t claim that any electors or the Board of the County were guilty of fraud, correct? That’s correct?

MR. GOLDSTEIN: Your Honor, accusing people of fraud is a pretty big step. And it is rare that I call somebody a liar, and I am not calling the Board of the DNC or anybody else involved in this a liar. Everybody is coming to this with good faith. The DNC is coming with good faith. We’re all just trying to get an election done. We think these were a mistake, but we think they are a fatal mistake, and these ballots ought not be counted.

THE COURT: I understand. I am asking you a specific question, and I am looking for a specific answer. Are you claiming that there is any fraud in connection with these 592 disputed ballots?

MR. GOLDSTEIN: To my knowledge at present, no.

THE COURT: Are you claiming that there is any undue or improper influence upon the elector with respect to these 592 ballots?

MR. GOLDSTEIN: To my knowledge at present, no.

So the President’s own lawyers are not alleging fraud – at least not in Pennsylvania.

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And now, we turn to Georgia, where the Associated Press has maintained silence on “calling” the race for either candidate, simply because it’s still “too close to call.”

Amidst that cacophony, the state’s Republican Secretary of State, Brad Raffensberger, has announced a “pre-emptive” move, of sorts, to not only canvass the count, and statistically sample it as well by performing a risk limiting audit, but as part of that process, they’re going to perform a manual, by-hand count of every single ballot cast in the Presidential race in Georgia. That means, that every single, solitary ballot will be touched by human hands to physically examine them for the vote cast in the Presidential race.

Of note, there are some conditions that, if one does not understand the terms, lack of understanding the phenomenon could be deliberately twisted to deceive the public. Those two most common events are called “undervote” and “overvote,” and describe the condition in which a voter does not cast a vote for a particular race (or may vote for more than one, though that now rarely occurs), but votes for other candidates or measures on the ballot. So, for example, in a given sample of 100 ballots examined, not all 100 voters will have cast ballots in every race. For the purpose of illustration, let’s say there is a grand total of 5 candidates and measures upon the ballot. Not all 100 voters will cast a ballot (make a decision upon) all 5 races. Some will, though not all will.

Thus, it’s entirely possible, and quite likely, that each race will have some “undervotes,” which are the number of voters who chose not to cast a ballot in those particular races. So, in Race 1, there could be 90 votes cast (70 + 20 for a+b), while in Race 2, there could be 100 votes cast (60+40 for a+b), and in Race 3, there could be 60 votes cast (50+10 for a+b), while in Race 4 there could be 98 votes cast (90+8 for a+b), and in Race 5, there could be 20 ballots cast (15+5 for a+b).

The results would look like this:

Hypothetical Election

Using an example of 100 total voters, this is to show that not all voters cast ballots in every race, and how to account for the discrepancies in the individual races.

Race/Question	Votes a/b		Votes Cast a+b	Undervotes	TOTAL VC+U
Race 1	90	10	100	0	100
Race 2	70	10	80	20	100
Race 3	10	60	70	30	100
Race 4	15	85	100	0	100
Race 5	30	31	61	39	100

 

Secretary Raffensberger announced that the Presidential contest will undergo a risk-limiting audit, which requires a full by-hand recount in each of Georgia’s 159 counties, and said “It will be an audit, a recount and a recanvass all at once. It will be a heavy lift.”

Secretary Raffensberger said that 97 of Georgia’s 159 counties have submitted their final tallies from the election to his office, and that the margin of victory for Democratic Presidential candidate Joseph R. Biden, Jr. has increased to 14,111 over the incumbent Republican President Donald John Trump.

Trump’s campaign and the Georgia Republican Party sent a letter to Secretary Raffensberger on Tuesday, November 10, 2020 requesting a manual hand recount of all ballots cast in the state before his office certifies the election results. In their letter, the Trump campaign and Georgia state GOP allege unspecified voting discrepancies and errors at unmentioned locations in the state, and failed to provide any evidence to substantiate their claim.

In one case, the GOP & Cult of Trump want the counting stopped. In another, they want it to continue, and in yet another, they got what they wanted before they asked, and now they don’t like it.

What is it with those sick bastards, eh?

Seriously.

What IS their major malfunction?

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ajc.com

Recount process in Ga. faces objections from Trump, GOP

by Mark Niesse, Tamar Hallerman, Amanda C. Coyne

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The recount aims to verify election results reported so far in Georgia, where 16 electoral votes are at stake. Joe Biden held a 14,000-vote lead over Donald Trump as of Thursday morning.

Elections workers across the state are expected to work through the weekend to finish the labor-intensive task before the deadline.

Here’s what you need to know:

6:53 p.m.

Trump, Republicans complain about recount procedures

President Donald Trump’s campaign and the Georgia Republican Party raised objections Thursday to the state’s recount process, saying it doesn’t satisfy their demands for a hand count.

They wrote in a letter to their fellow Republican, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, that they have “serious concerns regarding the training and directives” for how the hand count will be conducted.

The letter seeks a re-review of absentee ballot signatures because the number of ballot rejections reported so far is lower than in the 2018 election. Ballot rejections declined in part because Georgia law changed to eliminate the requirement for voters to write in their birth years or addresses on ballot envelopes, instead only mandating their signatures.

In addition, the Republicans sought greater access for partisan monitors, more public notice before the recount begins Friday and strengthened ballot security protocols.

The secretary of state’s office gave no indication it plans to change recount procedures.

Gabriel Sterling, Georgia’s voting system manager, said Thursday that the process will be safe.

“This office spends a heck of a lot of time on making sure that the equipment involved is secure,” Sterling said. “The decentralized nature of votes in Georgia is a security measure in and of itself. It’s 159 counties. There’s not a single target.”

Explore5 million ballots from 159 counties: How the Georgia recount will be done

5:38 p.m.

Fulton set to start recount Saturday morning

The county with the most votes in Georgia will begin its state-ordered recount on Saturday.

Fulton County will count by hand its 528,000 presidential ballots, which accounts for about 10.5% of the state’s entire tally.

The county sent a news release early Thursday evening saying the count will start Saturday at 7 a.m. and “continue daily” from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. through Wednesday.

The audit will be conducted “within public view” of the public, press and assigned party monitors, according to the news release. The tallying with be livestreamed, and the county is calling upon about 300 people to count ballots.

Read more about Fulton’s plans here.

3:10 p.m.

Gwinnett to begin recount Friday morning

Gwinnett County is still finalizing the details for its manual recount, but elections officials have set the start time for 9 a.m. Friday, in part because they have to set up tables and equipment to accommodate the count.

Gwinnett has more than 416,000 votes to count by hand over the course of six days. The process will occur in the county elections warehouse, said county spokesman Joe Sorenson.

The county isn’t yet sure how many people it’ll need to complete the recount by the Wednesday midnight deadline, or how long officials will have to work each day, Sorenson said. Elections department employees and poll workers are expected to conduct the count, and local political parties can appoint official observers to watch the process.

Read more about Gwinnett’s plans here.

2:55 p.m.

DeKalb plans to start recount Saturday, Fulton details TBD

Our colleague Tyler Estep reports that DeKalb County plans to begin its manual recount of the presidential election at 7 a.m. Saturday.

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger had said counties should begin their work by 9 a.m. Friday. But DeKalb elections director Erica Hamilton said during a Thursday afternoon elections board meeting that more time is needed to get things in order.

“There’s a lot of coordination which has to occur,” county attorney Viviane Ernstes said, referencing public safety measures and “the sanctity of moving those boxes” of ballots.

Hamilton said the plan is for the recount to take place from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. each day at the former Sam’s Club building off Turner Hill Road in Stonecrest until the work is complete. The plan is to utilize two shifts of 150 poll workers, who will work in pairs to complete the separating and counting of ballots.

Meanwhile, few details were available about the recount in Fulton County, the state’s largest trove of voters. A Fulton spokeswoman said the county was creating its plan and expected to release details later Thursday.

2:35 p.m.

Helpful primer on Georgia’s recount system

In case you have any lingering questions about how Georgia’s recount process will work, here’s a really digestible (and cute) primer the Secretary of State’s office showed county elections officials this morning:

The video was made by the organization VotingWorks, an election audit software company working with the state.

2:13 p.m.

Recount process explained

Many metro Atlanta counties are still determining when they’ll begin manually recounting hundreds of thousands of votes. They must do so by 9 a.m. Friday, the state’s mandatory start time.

Cobb County will begin the process at 9 a.m. Friday at the Jim Miller Park Event Center in Marietta. Gwinnett County expects to start at 9 a.m. in its elections warehouse. But Clayton, DeKalb and Fulton counties had not announced their timelines by 1 p.m. Thursday.

The count will involve dozens of elections department workers and poll officials, and it will likely last through the weekend and into next week.

Votes will be recounted in batches of 100 or less, with a two-person audit board handling each batch. Most counties will have multiple audit boards running at once to expedite the process. The state will recommend how many each should have in order to finish the count by the Wednesday midnight deadline.

“I want you to be very deliberate in your counting,” Vander Roest said. “Take your time.”

Each audit board will work at its own table, where staffers will stack the ballots by candidate. There will be separate stacks for votes for President Donald Trump, President-elect Joe Biden, Libertarian candidate Jo Jorgensen, write-in candidates and ballots with no presidential vote or an “overvote” — when a voter selects more than one candidate in a race requiring a single choice. Both members of the audit team should be counting together to verify the accuracy of their count, said Ginny Vander Roest, an election implementation manager with election audit software company VotingWorks.

Once each batch is complete, vote totals will be logged and ballots will be moved to secure containers for safekeeping.

“These ballots are the currency of the election,” Chris Harvey, the state’s elections director, said in a Thursday training webinar. “They need to be protected at all times.”

Monica Childers, a product manager with VotingWorks, recommended counties start with absentee ballots first before moving on to votes cast in person during early voting and on Election Day. Absentee ballots are filled out by hand, while early and Election Day votes are cast using machines. That means absentee ballots will likely be less uniform and may need closer scrutiny if a voter’s choice is not obvious. A superintendent will be designated to break ties if the members of an audit board disagree about a ballot.

Audit boards are only checking for presidential vote selection; they are not counting any down-ballot races or verifying signatures.

1:51 p.m.

Secretary of state self-quarantining

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is self-quarantining after his wife tested positive for COVID-19, Channel 2 Action News reported.

Raffensperger, 65, will get tested himself this afternoon. His exposure comes as the state is beginning a manual recount of more than 5 million presidential ballots. Counties were able to begin the process Thursday afternoon, and must start by Friday at 9 a.m. The recount must be finished Wednesday at midnight. Raffensperger will likely still be quarantining by then, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend a 14-day quarantine period for anyone who has had close contact with someone who has tested positive for COVID-19.

 

11/11/2020 — Atlanta, Georgia — Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger speaks with Georgia county elections directors without a face mask following a press briefing outside of the Georgia State Capitol building in downtown Atlanta, Wednesday, November 11, 2020. (Alyssa Pointer / Alyssa.Pointer@ajc.com)

Credit: Alyssa Pointer / Alyssa.Pointer@ajc.com

1:02 p.m.

Georgia prepares for hand recount

The large, statewide hand recount of the nearly 5 million ballots cast in Georgia’s presidential race must start in every county by Friday morning and finish by Wednesday at midnight, state election officials said Thursday.

The recount aims to verify election results reported so far in Georgia. Joe Biden held a 14,000-vote lead over Donald Trump as of Thursday morning.

“The sooner you can get this started, the easier this will go,” said Monica Childers, a product manager with election audit software company VotingWorks, on a Thursday training call.

Elections workers across the state are expected to work through the weekend in order finish before the deadline.

“Frankly, I don’t see how many people cannot work on the weekends to get this done,” said Elections Director Chris Harvey.

Teams of election workers will check voters choices for each candidate and report results.

The recount will require human review of nearly 5 million ballots, stacked into piles sorted for each candidate and then tallied in each county.

Georgia has never conducted a statewide recount of paper ballots before, and it wasn’t possible before this year when the state added paper ballots to the process. Previous recounts were conducted by recalculating vote counts stored on computers.

The recount is certain to be a labor-intensive process starting just eight days before the Nov. 20 deadline for Georgia’s final results to be certified by Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. At stake are Georgia’s 16 votes in the Electoral College, which is scheduled to meet to cast votes for president Dec. 14.

Explore Hand recount moves ahead under interpretation of Georgia election rules

Raffensperger announced the recount Wednesday following demands from Trump’s defenders and calls for his resignation from his fellow Republicans, Georgia Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue.

Details of how the recount will be conducted were expected to be announced Thursday morning. Then county election officials can begin.

Observers from the Republican and Democratic parties will be present to oversee the process.

The recount will be conducted under Georgia’s new audit rules, which require election workers to review the printed text or filled-in bubbles on each ballot. Ballots won’t be rescanned by computers.

See AJC.com for updates.

Appointed Georgia Senator Kelly Loeffler Violated Federal Campaign Finance Law & Senate Ethics Rules On National Television

Today, Wednesday, 18 November 2020, Georgia’s Appointed Senator, multimillionairess Kelly Loeffler flagrantly violated Federal Campaign Finance laws, and Senate ethics rules by requesting/seeking/soliciting campaign contributions/donations for herself while on Senate property.

Senate Rules PROHIBIT any kind of political or candidate fundraising on U.S. Government/Congress property.

“Well, look… we know that hundreds of millions of dark, liberal money is pouring into our state. That’s why it’s so important that everyone across the country get involved. They can visit Kelly for Senate dot com, to chip in five, or ten bucks, and get involved, volunteer…”

– Appointed Georgia Senator Kelly Loeffler on Fox News program “America’s Newsroom,” Wednesday, 18 October 2020

The ethics rules established by the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Ethics are explicitly clear:

Senate resources may only be used for official purposes.

No official resources may be used to conduct campaign activities.

In addition to this general prohibition, there are several criminal statutes that impose additional restrictions on campaign activities by Senate Members and staff:

No Campaign Activity in a Federal Building

Senate Members and staff may not receive or solicit campaign contributions in any federal building.

It’s also contrary to Federal law to do so, and 18 U.S.C § 607 states:

After appointed as Georgia Senator, Kelly Loeffler bought a $10M jet to fly back & forth from GA & DC?

Yes, that’s 100% TRUE.

She used Trump’s 2017 tax cuts “loophole” to purchase a 2010 Bombardier Challenger 300 and claims she uses it for campaign travel.

While it’s unclear exactly how much she paid for the jet, which seats 8 passengers and can travel 3000 nautical miles, essentially coast-to-coast on one fill-up, an online listing of other such jets for the same year, make, and model, in an online listing shows $9.7 million to be an average asking price.

Kelly Loeffler’s Bombardier jet N830EC

Trump’s tax cuts essentially made private jets flying tax shelters for the wealthy. Under his changes, the entire purchase price of a new or used aircraft bought by a company can be a 100% tax deductible write-off against its earnings.

What the multi-millionairess did, was to create an “ownership trust” which is a company that owns the plane, rather than herself personally. By so doing, it offers some degree of anonymity by giving it the appearance of isolation from the individuals whom actually control it. Essentially, it’s a type of “shell company” set up exclusively for the purpose of ownership, and nothing else. It’s greatest single benefit? It helps avoid taxes.

Shell companies, while not illegal, per se, and can have legitimate uses, often deliberately “fly under the radar” to avoid payment of taxes, or for money laundering purposes, and are registered in the names of the attorneys or accountants who manage them, thus avoiding any readily identifiable connection with the person who truly owns it or benefits from it. Most often, shell companies are incorporated in nations with tax laws favorable to them, aka “tax havens,” which by law do not have to report income such as in Cayman Islands, Seychelles, Panama, Switzerland, Hong Kong and Belize, or other island or “offshore” nations.

The so-called “Panama Papers,” also sometimes called the “Mossack Fonseca papers” for the name of the obscure Panamanian law firm from which they were obtained, is a collection of well over 11.5 million documents identifying 214,488 entities and shell corporations, their owners, lawyers, and the often-illegal network established to manage them, which were made public in 2016.

Each aircraft has a registration number, often called a “tail number,” which is like an automobile license plate, or VIN, because it identifies an aircraft uniquely from among all other aircraft, under a system managed by the Federal Aviation Administration, and used in other nations. But unlike cars’ license plates which require regular periodic renewal (license plates essentially prove a tax has been paid), the tail number stays with the aircraft permanently, and is never reassigned to any other aircraft. So when a plane is sold, retired, or crashes, the number always accompanies the craft to identify it, regardless of its disposition.

N830EC, Kelly Loeffler’s Bombardier model BD-100-1A10 jet

There are some limitations on registration of aircraft in the United States to foreign individuals and/or corporations, however, which is to say, that unlike ocean-going vessels such as cruise ships, or cargo ships, under United States law, aircraft which are either majority or fully owned by foreign individuals or interests cannot be registered in the United States to be assigned a “N number,” aka “tail number.” An overview of the requirements and limitations can be found on the Federal Aviation Administration’s website here: https://www.faa.gov/licenses_certificates/aircraft_certification/aircraft_registry/register_aircraft/.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission requires shell companies to register with them, and Loeffler’s aircraft – N830EC (FAA registry page here: https://registry.faa.gov/AircraftInquiry/Search/NNumberResult?nNumberTxt=830EC) – is registered to

Alabama Proves To America Racism IS Alive And Well

Is it irony, or mere coincidence that these events are happening in the former “slave states” in the Deep South?

Is it irony, or mere coincidence that these events are practically all created by Republicans?

Is it irony, or mere coincidence that these events are being given the thumbs-up by a largely Republican Supreme Court?

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propublica.org

Why Do Non-White Georgia Voters Have to Wait in Line for Hours? Their Numbers Have Soared, and Their Polling Places Have Dwindled.

by Stephen Fowler, Georgia Public Broadcasting
Oct. 17, 2020
5 a.m. EDT

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Congress works for you. Learn how to be a better boss with the User’s Guide to Democracy, a series of personalized emails about what your representatives actually do.

This article is co-published by ProPublica, Georgia Public Broadcasting and National Public Radio.

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Kathy spotted the long line of voters as she pulled into the Christian City Welcome Center about 3:30 p.m., ready to cast her ballot in the June 9 primary election.

Hundreds of people were waiting in the heat and rain outside the lush, tree-lined complex in Union City, an Atlanta suburb with 22,400 residents, nearly 88% of them Black. She briefly considered not casting a ballot at all, but decided to stay.

By the time she got inside more than five hours later, the polls had officially closed and the electronic scanners were shut down. Poll workers told her she’d have to cast a provisional ballot, but they promised that her vote would be counted.

“I’m now angry again, I’m frustrated again, and now I have an added emotion, which is anxiety,” said Kathy, a human services worker, recalling her emotions at the time. She asked that her full name not be used because she fears repercussions from speaking out. “I’m wondering if my ballot is going to count.”

By the time the last voter finally got inside the welcome center to cast a ballot, it was the next day, June 10.

The clogged polling locations in metro Atlanta reflect an underlying pattern: The number of places to vote has shrunk statewide, with little recourse. Although the reduction in polling places has taken place across racial lines, it has primarily caused long lines in non-White neighborhoods where voter registration has surged and more residents cast ballots in person on Election Day. The pruning of polling places started long before the pandemic, which has discouraged people from voting in person.

In Georgia, considered a battleground state for control of the White House and U.S. Senate, the difficulty of voting in Black communities like Union City could possibly tip the results on Nov. 3. With massive turnout expected, lines could be even longer than they were for the primary, despite a rise in mail-in voting and Georgians already turning out by the hundreds of thousands to cast ballots early.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder decision in 2013 eliminated key federal oversight of election decisions in states with histories of discrimination, Georgia’s voter rolls have grown by nearly 2 million people, yet polling locations have been cut statewide by nearly 10%, according to an analysis of state and local records by Georgia Public Broadcasting and ProPublica. Much of the growth has been fueled by younger, non-White voters, especially in nine metro Atlanta counties, where four out of five new voters were non-White, according to the Georgia secretary of state’s office.

The metro Atlanta area has been hit particularly hard. The nine counties — Fulton, Gwinnett, Forsyth, DeKalb, Cobb, Hall, Cherokee, Henry and Clayton — have nearly half of the state’s active voters but only 38% of the polling places, according to the analysis.

As a result, the average number of voters packed into each polling location in those counties grew by nearly 40%, from about 2,600 in 2012 to more than 3,600 per polling place as of Oct. 9, the analysis shows. In addition,

Georgia Slave Patrol

History is sometimes unimaginably ugly.

Especially when it concerns slavery.

By reading this, perhaps you can gain a greater understanding of how this abusive practice was effectively translated into vigilantism, and lynch mobs.

Perhaps as well, it’s easy to see the roots of the modern practice of “stop and frisk”  which was used widely in New York City, most notably under then-Mayor Mike Bloomberg, then a Republican, and other such stops and detainments simply because of the individual’s skin color, or ethnicity.

Essentially, such a procedure is a violation and denial of the Constitutionally guaranteed right of freedom of movement.

---

Beginning in 1757 Georgia’s colonial assembly required white landowners and residents to serve as slave patrols.

Asserting that slave insurrections must be prevented, the legislature stipulated in “An Act for Establishing and Regulating of Patrols” that groups “not exceeding seven” would work in districts twelve miles square. The statute, modeled on South Carolina’s earlier patrol law, ordered white adults to ride the roads at night, stopping all slaves they encountered and making them prove that they were engaged in lawful activities. Patrollers required slaves to produce a pass, which stated their owner’s name as well as where and when they were allowed to be away from the plantation and for how long. Patrols operated in Georgia until slavery was abolished at the end of the Civil War (1861-65).

A Georgia statute ordered White adults to ride the roads at night, stopping all slaves they encountered and making them prove that they were engaged in lawful activities. Patrollers required slaves to produce a pass, which stated their owner’s name as well as where and when they were allowed to be away from the plantation and for how long.
From The Underground Railroad, by William Still

Whites could hire substitutes to patrol for them; absentees were fined. Much of the burden of patrol duty fell to non-slaveholders, who often resented what they sometimes saw as service to the planter class. The Chatham County grand jury complained in the mid-1790s about the difficulty it faced in enforcing the patrol requirement. By the early nineteenth century it became necessary to pay people to perform what had been voluntary unpaid service. In 1819 Savannah‘s city watch received one dollar for every evening they served and shared in any reward for the forced return of fugitive slaves.

To disperse any nighttime meetings, patrollers visited places where slaves often gathered. Owners feared such gatherings allowed slaves to trade stolen goods for liquor and other forbidden items.

River patrols were organized in Savannah and Augusta to combat “midnight depredations” and to

Atlanta Fire Investigators Name Suspect in Wendy’s Arson Case

Atlanta, Georgia Fire Investigators are actively seeking a woman whom they identify as “Natalie White” – a 29-year-old White female – as a suspect in the arson of the University Avenue Wendy’s Restaurant.

Atlanta, Georgia Law Enforcement Authorities have released video of a female suspect whom they identify as 29-year-old Natalie White, seen here in still images from store security video cameras, and wearing the exact same attire as the woman seen in the video of the night of the arson of the University Boulevard Wendy’s Restaurant.

Atlanta authorities have released images from store security cameras of a woman fitting that exact description, and wearing the exact same clothing whom is apparently shopping.

The restaurant, which was the site of Rayshard Brooks’ murder by Atlanta Police, who shot him in the back as he fled arrest for suspicion of DUI – even though he was not driving – was torched the next night.

An arrest warrant has been issued by Atlanta Fire Investigators for Ms. Natalie White. She has been identified as a suspect in the arson fire that burned down the Wendy’s Restaurant (125 University Ave) on Saturday, June 13th. Call 404-577-TIPS or 1-800-282-5804 with any info. pic.twitter.com/Xu6W2hgOi6

— Atlanta Fire Rescue (@ATLFireRescue) June 20, 2020

In video of the event in the night in question, a White woman in a black tank top and black thigh-length shorts can be seen reaching inside the broken-out front window of the restaurant, and

The Lost Cause is the Root Cause of Violence Against Blacks

It’s Open Season on Black men and women in America.

Cops kill with impunity.

The Department of Justice (especially under this administration) does nothing.

There is NO justice in this land.

But Fortunately, Open Season on Blacks in America is Closing Soon.

Tuesday, November 3, 2020 marks the day.

That’s the day of the General Election.

And it’s time to vote OUT those with a “R” after their name, and most especially, to clean out the White House and rid it of the infestation of vermin which have afflicted it and this nation for the past 4 years.

George Floyd’s death in Minnesota is just the latest, and hopefully, the last straw – the one that proverbially broke the camel’s back in this miserably shameful and ongoing horror story.

That the POTUS has chosen to NOT address the nation during this crisis speaks volumes, none of which have any good in them.

It wasn’t too long ago that a young man in Alabama who had just entered the United States Army, and was home on leave during Thanksgiving, was shot and killed by the Hoover Police Department at the Riverchase Galleria mall in Hoover, a suburb of Birmingham on November 22, 2018.

The deceased young man was the type of person the NRA holds out as a proverbial exemplar of the “good guy with a gun” character they often tout. The only problem was, that in his case, he was Black. The fact that he was properly licensed to carry a concealed weapon – and did – made no difference.

The facts of that case were that following the sound of

This is what revolution looks like.

When I think about all those sissified wanna-be “macho men” White boys in Michigan and other places running around with their assault rifles hanging off them like penises in a porno movie talking all kinds of shit, that 2A is supposed to protect us from an oppressive government, etc…

You’ll note one very interesting thing here.

No guns among the people.

When he activated the Ohio National Guard, Republican Governor Mike DeWine said,

Arrogant Kelly Loeffler

Loeffler: “Not dropping out” of Georgia US Senate race after stock trade controversy law violation

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/499116-loeffler-says-she-wont-drop-out-of-georgia-senate-race-after-stock-trade

Kelly Loeffler was appointed by narrow-margin-of-victory Georgia Republican Governor Brian Kemp to fill the unexpired term of three-term Georgia Republican US Senator Johnny Isakson who resigned from office at the end of 2019 due to Parkinson’s disease.

The gubernatorially-appointed temporary fill-in “Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler told Politico she is not dropping out of the Georgia Senate special election despite facing scrutiny over $20 million in stock sales she made following a closed-door Senate briefing in January about the coronavirus.

““Not only am I not dropping out, but I’m gonna win,” Loeffler told the news outlet Thursday.

“Loeffler, who is married to New York Stock Exchange CEO Jeff Sprecher, has said she does not control her own stock portfolio and that she was unaware of the exchanges. She has submitted documents to the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission, both of which are investigating trading action among senators around the coronavirus pandemic.”

Loeffloer’s net worth is reportedly well over $500,000,000, and is being investigted by the FBI and the Senate for suspicious stock sales timing in response to insider knowledge of the coronavirus obtained in the Senate.

Republican Coronavirus Bullshittery Abounds

Lawmakers’ Stock Trades and Other Virus Outrages

Some lawmakers have a lot of explaining to do. Plus, punishing poor people and shaping up the cruise-ship industry.

By Joe Nocera 3/20/2020, 10:47:09 AM

Joe Nocera is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering business. He has written business columns for Esquire, GQ and the New York Times, and is the former editorial director of Fortune. His latest project is the Bloomberg-Wondery podcast “The Shrink Next Door.”

————
Of the many things taking place in Washington that make your blood boil, the — how should I put this? — timely stock trades by senators during the coronavirus outbreak has to go right to the top of the list. Two of them have tried to explain them away, but the details are just so… suspicious.

At least three Republicans and one Democrat 1 sold stock before the country got serious about Covid-19, but let’s focus on one: Kelly Loeffler.

A Republican from Georgia, Loeffler has been in the Senate for less than three months; she was appointed to fill the seat of Senator Johnny Isakson, who retired early for health reasons. She has a Wall Street background — she was in investor relations at the New York Stock Exchange, where she married the boss, Jeffrey Sprecher, the Chief Executive Cfficer of Intercontinental Exchange Inc., which owns NYSE

On Jan. 24, Loeffler attended a Senate briefing on the coronavirus, which she tweeted about. That same day, she and her husband began selling stock. By the time they were finished, they had dumped 27 companies, including Exxon Mobil and AutoZone, saving millions of dollars when the market later tanked. (Senate financial disclosure forms don’t give exact numbers.)

A month later, she sent out this tweet:

Trump wants GA Rep. Doug Collins for DNI?

Representative Doug Collins (GA-9, R) of Gainesville, is the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee.

Numerous reports have stated that POS45 is considering Georgia’s U.S. Rep. Doug Collins, a Republican of Gainesville to become the next Director of National Intelligence.

But Collins has publicly rejected that idea, and said to Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business Network on Friday, 21 February 2020 that, “this is not a job that interests me; at this time it’s not one that I would accept because

Once upon a time in Atlanta…

For breakfast, I ate a Russet potato which was steamed in the pressure cooker for about 10 minutes. It was kept out of the water by placing it in a basket placed atop a trivet inside the stove-top cooker.

Most often, in any pressure cooker, the food being cooked rests in the water. However, I wanted to find out what the food would be like if it did not.

The potato had been thoroughly cleansed and rinsed in the usual manner some weeks earlier, which for me, includes a capful of common, unscented, household bleach in addition to Dawn® brand liquid dishwashing soap.

My general rule is, all fresh fruit and vegetables get that treatment because:

1.) You don’t know how many people handled it at the store having not washing their hands after toileting, and;

2.) You don’t know about the conditions in which it was grown, if e.coli or other really bad cooties might have been present, or if it “picked up” something in transit.

While recalls of vegetables tainted with e.coli or other pathological bacteria are neither rare, nor common, per se, they are ONLY on the outside of the food, never within. So, every vegetable – including green leafy ones – tubers, and fruits of all kinds – are all

Voting Problems Exist Because There’s No National Uniform Voting Standards Law

Cindy McCain, widow of late Arizona Republican Senator John McCain (1936-2018)

Cindy McCain, widow of late Republican Arizona Senator John McCain, on Thursday, November 8, 2018 criticized the Arizona GOP about a state GOP-initiated lawsuit over counting mail-in ballots by Tweeting, “@AZGOP I am one of those mail in ballots. I was under the impression my vote was always counted.”

Her Tweet was in response to the Arizona GOP’s efforts to get a judge to issue orders to stop counting mail-in ballots in the race for US Senate to fill the seat being vacated by Jeff Flake, a Republican. The two candidates, Republican Martha McSally and Democrat Kyrsten Sinema find themselves in extremely close competition.

 

 

Both candidates are also Arizona Congressional Representatives. Democrat Kyrsten Sinema has represented the 9th Congressional District, while Republican Martha McSally has represented the 2nd Congressional District.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/415894-cindy-mccain-rips-arizona-gop-for-suing-over-counting-mail-in-ballots-i-am

In court Thursday morning November 8, 2018, state Republican leaders were challenging mail-in ballots in Yuma, Navajo, Apache and Maricopa counties after the GOP parties in those counties filed a lawsuit challenging the way counties verify signatures on mail-in ballots that are dropped off at the polls on Election Day. The lawsuit did NOT allege any type of fraud.

The US Census Bureau estimated the 2017 population of Apache County as 71,606; Navajo County as 108,956; Yuma County as 207,534; and Maricopa County as 4,307,033. Maricopa County is location of the Phoenix–Mesa–Glendale, AZ Metropolitan Statistical Area. Together, those four counties comprise 66.9% of Arizona’s 7,016,270 estimated 2017 population.

Maricopa County Judge Margaret R. Mahoney

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Margaret Mahoney ruled that the counties should continue doing what they’re doing, and set another hearing for 2 p.m. Friday. And as of Friday morning, Sinema had a 9,000 vote lead over McSally. However, by Friday afternoon, her lead had expanded to over 20,000 votes.

When the two parties met in court, there was little fanfare, no grandstanding, and no contentious sparks flew, so it made for very poor political theatre, though others nationally attempted to inject false explosive allegations and deceptive narratives into the matter by deliberately gross mischaracterization.

The primary point of the suit involved a much more mundane matter, and specifically, the legal challenge was focused upon on a lack of procedural consistency in the time frame that counties allowed voters to correct signature “issues” on mail-in ballots.

And in only a matter of minutes after the AZ GOP held a grandstanding news/press conference in which they made accusation saying, “The Democrats are stealing the election and we’re not going to allow it,” and immediately before the court hearing, all of the counties and the Republican groups had come to an agreement, which Judge Mahoney approved with no fanfare.

The settlement, was that all of Arizona’s 15 counties would allow voters to verify the signatures on their ballots through 5 p.m. on Nov. 14.

Martha McSally, R-AZ

Kyrsten Sinema, D-AZ

And the overriding irony of the matter, is that the counties whose election practices they ended up changing, were largely run by Republicans.

As of Saturday, 10 November, the Democrat Kyrsten Sinema still had about a 20,000 vote lead over Republican Martha McSally, according to The Arizona Republic, online as AZCentral, which is the state’s most-widely circulated newspaper.

There were also an estimated 360,000 outstanding ballots still being counted statewide. Of those, an estimated 266,000 are from Maricopa County.

For now, Sinema is leading in Maricopa and Pima counties by a net 83,652 votes. McSally’s lead in the state’s other 13 counties is 65,113.

Arizona’s protracted vote-count is due in large part to the need to verify signatures for those who vote by mail, which represents the bulk of ballots.

So far, the Democrat Sinema is winning the Republican-leaning Maricopa County by 3.3 percentage points.

One reason the race and ballot count is so hotly contested, is because the Republicans are in jeopardy of losing a Senate seat in the state for the first time in 30 years. As well, what also makes this race particularly interesting, is that Maricopa County has traditionally been a GOP stronghold, where Republicans outnumber Democrats by 130,000.

But, in essence, here’s a nut of what’s been happening not only there, but in other states, as well.

In some states, there are so-called “exact match” laws, rules, or regulations concerning the signatures of voters who cast absentee, or mail-in ballots, and in essence, those “exact match” laws, rules, or regulations give broad discretion to anyone counting those ballots to exercise their personal opinion – untrained, non-expert, unscientific independent judgment – about someone’s signature, specifically, whether they believe it was signed by the person who attested to signing it, or not. In other words, no expertise is required.

That is problematic for several reasons, not the least of which is that

Attorney, Entrepreneur, Banker Donald V. Watkins Offers POTUS Trump Advice

Donald V. Watkins is an American Attorney, Entrepreneur, and Banker.

Update: Saturday, 20 February 2021
NOTE: TO THE READER: As you read any story mentioning, involving or written by Donald V. Watkins, Sr., it must be borne in mind that he is now a Federal Convict, and along with his son, Donald V. Watkins, Jr., was found guilty of numerous charges. “Donald Watkins Sr. was convicted of seven counts of wire fraud, two counts of bank fraud and one count of conspiracy. Donald Watkins Jr. was convicted of one count of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy.” As of the date of this note, he is in Federal Custody at Oklahoma City Federal Transfer Center, an administrative security facility, having been relocated away from the minimum security Federal Prison Camp on Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama.

DONALD V. WATKINS
Register Number: 36223-001
Age:	72
Race:	Black
Sex:	Male
Located at: Oklahoma City FTC
Release Date: 01/10/2024

Department of Justice, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Northern District of Alabama
FATHER AND SON SENTENCED TO PRISON IN MULTIMILLION-DOLLAR INVESTMENT FRAUD SCHEME
Tuesday, July 16, 2019
https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndal/pr/father-and-son-sentenced-prison-multimillion-dollar-investment-fraud-scheme

Here also is the SUPERSEDING INDICTMENT dated December 2018 entitled as:
IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ALABAMA SOUTHERN DIVISION, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. DONALD V. WATKINS, SR. and DONALD V. WATKINS, JR. – 2:18-cr-166-KOB-TMP
https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1116081/download

See also: Donald Watkins, Son Sentenced For Federal Fraud Convictions
Updated Jul 16, 2019; Posted Jul 16, 2019
https://www.al.com/news/2019/07/donald-watkins-son-to-be-sentenced-for-federal-fraud-convictions.html

See also: Donald Watkins’ $1.5 Billion Question: Was It Ever Real?
Updated Feb 23, 2019; Posted Feb 23, 2019
https://www.al.com/news/2019/02/donald-watkins-15-billion-question-was-it-ever-real.html

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Donald V. Watkins is an American Attorney, Entrepreneur and Banker.

–––//–––

March 26, 2017

Open Letter to President Donald J. Trump

Dear President Trump,

I am a longtime political independent who cherishes America’s form of participatory democracy. Even though my ancestors were slaves who worked on plantations in Mississippi, my parents, siblings and other relatives finally got a chance to vote after Congress enacted the Voting Rights Act in 1965 and President Lyndon Johnson signed it. I have even held elective office within this democracy.

I believed in America when I could not drink from public water fountains or use bathrooms that were reserved for “Whites Only”. I did not sit in an integrated classroom until I entered college at Southern Illinois University in 1966. I attended law school at the University of Alabama from 1970 to 1973 on a desegregation scholarship awarded to me by the national office of the NAACP. I arrived on campus a full year before any black athlete played on a sports team at the University.

Donald Trump, 45th United States President, official portrait

When I started practicing law in 1973, a few diehard segregationists in Alabama’s court system openly referred to me as the “nigger lawyer from Montgomery” during official court proceedings. I was not addressed as “Attorney Watkins” or “Mr. Watkins” in these courtrooms until sometime in 1976. A few judges just barked out instruction to me without ever looking me in the eyes or addressing me as a human being.

I got through all of these degrading experiences by focusing on the American flag in each courtroom I entered. To me,

The Power of One Small Idea: How Alabama could hit a home run WITHOUT raising taxes in the budget crisis.

Creativity is in short supply in Monkeytown, Alabama.

I refer, of course, to Montgomery.

And to be certain, there is a backstory on the nickname.

Seems the Montgomery Zoo was originally located in Oak Park, and then named Oak Park Zoo. The zoo also had an island of monkeys, which once escaped. Hence, the nick name.

For what it’s worth, the Montgomery City Planetarium, formerly known as Gayle Planetarium, is also located in Oak Park. I encourage you to go there, sometime! I have.

But back to the creativity thing.

Alabama is in dire straits fiscally. But, then again, that’s nothing new. Governor Bentley has promised (and broken) numerous pledges in his first & second campaigns. The one bothering most folks is the “read my lips… no new taxes” promise he unwisely made while campaigning for a second term.

It may not be the lie the second time around, as much as it is the entire deception thing from the get-go. Because he, the AL GOP, and the entire Legislature knew all about this well in advance. They knew there would come a day when the monies they “borrowed” from the Alabama Trust Fund must be repaid. That day has come… and is now gone. They’re essentially reneging on their promise, which not only makes them liars, but thieves as well, since money is involved.

So, you’re damn skippy the people are hopping mad!

Again, to be certain, Alabama is in a

Philip Lutzenkirchen Autopsy: Blood Alcohol Content 0.377

This is indeed tragic news, a permanent stain of shame awash a wave of indignation.

To put things in perspective, Blood Alcohol Content is expressed in percentages and abbreviated as BAC. In medical terminology, it measures a concentration ratio of blood to ethanol alcohol (beverage alcohol).

So, BAC of 0.10 (which is 0.10%, or one tenth of one percent) would be written as BAC 0.1, and would mean there is 0.10 g (gram) of alcohol present in every deciLiter (dL) of blood.

So in other words, with a BAC of 0.377 Mr. Lutzenkirchen was EXCEEDINGLY DRUNK, quite possibly even to the point of alcoholic toxicosis (alcohol poisoning), and very possibly, unconsciousness.

There is no doubt he was a beloved collegiate athletic figure.

For him to die in such an undignified manner… I have no words.

There are four very sorrowful lessons which may be learned in this tragedy:
1.) FRONT OR BACK, ALWAYS WEAR YOUR SEAT BELT;
2.) NEVER EVER DRIVE INTOXICATED;
3.) NEVER EVER ALLOW ANYONE INTOXICATED TO DRIVE, and;
4.) NEVER EVEN THINK ABOUT RIDING WITH AN INTOXICATED DRIVER.

***

UPDATE: Friday, 08August2014; Add Linked Story

Philip Lutzenkirchen, aged 23, Auburn University great Tight End #43 & Ian Davis, U of Georgia athlete killed in wreck ejection

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Philip Lutzenkirchen and driver were legally drunk in deadly crash, according to toxicology report

By Brandon Marcello | bmarcello@al.com
@bmarcello on Twitter
on August 06, 2014 at 9:45 AM, updated August 06, 2014 at 10:29 AM

AUBURN, Alabama – Former Auburn star Philip Lutzenkirchen and the driver of the vehicle that crashed on June 30 and resulted in their deaths were both legally drunk, according to documents released Wednesday.

Wesleyan’s Ian Davis (5) steals second base in a game vs. Greater Atlanta Christian School on March 25, 2008, in Norcross. (Jason Getz / AJC) Davis was the driver of a vehicle in a multiple-fatality crash in the early morning hours of June 29, 2014. The vehicle failed to stop at a stop sign and traveled approximately 451 feet before overturning several times in a church yard, according to Georgia State Patrol. Davis and former Auburn Tigers tight end Philip Lutzenkirchen died in the crash. Photo by Jason Getz.

Joseph Ian Davis, the driver, registered a blood alcohol content level of

Philip Lutzenkirchen, aged 23, Auburn University great Tight End #43 & Ian Davis, U of Georgia athlete killed in wreck ejection

May he rest in peace, and his memory be blessed.

EVEN AS PASSENGERS – FRONT OR REAR – WEAR YOUR SEATBELTS!!!

***

UPDATE: Friday, 08August2014

Philip Lutzenkirchen Autopsy: Blood Alcohol Content 0.377

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AUBURN, Ala. — Former Auburn tight end Philip Lutzenkirchen died in a wreck early Sunday morning outside of LaGrange, Ga.

He was 23.

Lutzenkirchen’s fatal accident occurred in Troup County, just southeast of LaGrange, at approximately 3:06 a.m. Sunday morning, according to Master Trooper B.N. Talley of the Georgia State Patrol, who responded to the scene.

“It happened at the intersection of Upper Big Springs Road and Lower Big Springs Road,” Talley said. “The vehicle was a 2006 Chevy Tahoe and the driver missed a stop sign at the intersection of those two roads, which is more or less a ‘T-intersection.’ They traveled through the intersection off into a churchyard. They were out of control for about 450 feet.”

General area of crash, where Auburn University football great Philip Lutzenkirchen was killed

Specific location crash site

Auburn tight end Philip Lutzenkirchen (43) spins a football during Auburn’s first Spring practice of the 2012 season, Friday March 23, 2012 in Auburn, Ala.
(AP Photo/The Birmingham News, Hal Yeager)

Auburn H-Back Philip Lutzenkirchen (43) stretches with teammates before the Chick-fil-A Bowl game in the Georgia Dome Saturday night in Atlanta, Ga., December 31, 2011. Lutzenkirchen is a native of Marietta, graduating from Lassiter High School.
AJC photo by Jason Getz

At that point, Talley said, the vehicle overturned, ejecting three of the four passengers.

“Philip was one of them,” Talley said,” and he was killed at the scene.”

The driver of the vehicle, Joseph Davis, was also killed.

Lutzenkirchen, who was seated behind Davis, was not wearing his seat belt. Talley said they “are still looking into” how fast the vehicle was traveling when it ran through the stop sign.

Updates to come.

http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/2014/06/29/3177530/breaking-former-auburn-tight-end.html?sp=/99/210/

—

Impact location – Google Maps
https://goo.gl/maps/WJl8b

Google Earth
http://j.mp/1mbxzMR

—

Auburn great Philip Lutzenkirchen killed in car accident

By Wesley Sinor | wsinor@al.com

Follow on Twitter
on June 29, 2014 at 12:09 PM, updated June 29, 2014 at 12:51 PM

Former Auburn star Philip Lutzenkirchen has died in a car accident Sunday morning, AL.com has confirmed.

According to the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer, the accident occurred at 3:06 a.m. in Troup County outside of LaGrange, Ga.

“The vehicle was a 2006 Chevy Tahoe and the driver missed a stop sign at the intersection of those two roads, which is more or less a ‘T-intersection,'” said Master Trooper B.N. Talley of the Georgia State Patrol. “They traveled through the intersection off into a churchyard. They were out of control for about 450 feet.”

According to Talley, the vehicle then overturned and ejected three of the four passengers, including Lutzenkirchen, who was killed at the scene.

The 23-year-old from Marietta, Ga., was one of the most popular Auburn players in recent history. He ranks first in touchdowns by a tight end in school history with 14 from 2009 to 2012.

Lutzenkirchen saw his collegiate career end after suffering a major hip injury against Ole Miss in 2012. He signed a free agent contract with the St. Louis in April 2013, but was released four months later due to the lingering injury that eventually required surgery.After hanging up the cleats, Lutzenkirchen had been working at a wealth management company in Montgomery and volunteering with the football team at St. James School in Montgomery. St. James head coach Jimmy Perry confirmed the news of his death with AL.com.

Several of Lutzenkirchen’s coaches, teammates and fans have shared their condolences after hearing the news.

Big Beer Still Bets on Lager

If you’re a beer drinker, if you enjoy quaffing the suds, a cold one after work, or on a summer day, you may be interested to know that Anheuser-Busch (now Anheuser-Busch InBev), Molson, Coors (now MolsonCoors), Miller (now SABMiller) are NOT American-owned companies.

That’s right.

They’re foreign-owned, multinational corporations – every one.

The Craft Brew Beer industry in America is the antithesis of Big Beer, which in large part, developed as a result of consistently poor quality products made by Big Beer, and their inattention to customers. The emergence of me-too wanna’ be ‘craft brewed beers’ made by Big Beer is a sure sign that they’ve noticed what’s happening – a reduction in beer consumption, i.e., their sales.

Those sales have gone to micro & craft brewed beer, and their American-made, locally-sourced mom & pop competitors.

More power to locally sourced craft brewed beers!

Cheers!

***

Why Lager Is the Future of Craft Beer

BY Jason Notte | 06/19/14 – 10:00 AM EDT

PORTLAND, Ore. (TheStreet) — Small craft brewers and the craft divisions of huge international breweries can talk about wheat beers, shandies and even IPA all they’d like: This is still lager country.

Despite recent gains by craft beer and recent shifts by Anheuser-Busch InBev, MolsonCoors and SABMiller toward brands including Blue Moon, Shock Top, Goose Island and Leinenkugel’s, the overwhelming majority of beer sold in this country is lager or some derivative thereof. It’s been so relentless and pervasive that even hard-line craft beer advocates have begun embracing it in its light, familiar form.

Consider that MolsonCoors/SABMiller’s MillerCoors and Anheuser-Busch InBev still sell about 74% of the beer this nation drinks. Consider further that Corona and Heineken make up roughly another 10% of that market. Throw Pabst, Modelo and newly “craft” brewer Yuengling into the equation and 18 of the 20 best-selling beers in the U.S. are some form of either lager or pilsner.

You can argue that most are losing sales — and many including Budweiser, Bud Light, Miller Lite and Busch are. But import brands including Heinkeken, Corona and Modelo saw sales rise even during the recession. The same holds true for Coors Light, Pabst Blue Ribbon and Yuengling, with each posting double-digit percentage point gains in 2012 alone, according to Beer Marketer’s Insights.

The problem isn’t lager, but the overall beer market. The Treasury Department’s Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau reported a 1.5% decrease in overall beer sales and a 2.6-million barrel loss in beer production. That’s basically akin to shutting down Boston Beer’s Samuel Adams brand (which produced 2.7 million barrels in 2012) for an entire year. Beer consumption overall has fallen in four of the past five years, with many of the slumping mainstream brands responsible for the damage. That has reduced reduced beer’s share of the overall alcohol market from 55% in 2000 to 49% in 2012. Meanwhile, craft beer volume increased by an estimated 15% last year, with imports putting up roughly 5% growth.

The Beer Institute, a beer industry organization based in Washington, points out that