A Jewish atheist socialist and a fascist of color walk into a restaurant….
And yes, Wally is a socialist.
In this episode of TV Nation from the mid-1990s, Michael Moore visited Cobb County and kind of ambushed then-Speaker Newt Gingrich who had just risen to power under the Republicans’ Contract on America when Clinton and the Democrats probably suffered the most horrific first midterm election in modern history. As of yesterday, Cobb County proved itself to be reliably deep blue!
Let’s move more of the techies out of the SF Bay Area and into Georgia where they can do some good!
This was a very telling piece about the hypocrisy of politics. Yes, Democrats can be hypocrites too, but New Gingrich was the Olympic champion!
……
Meanwhile, this is how Warnock won.
According to CNN:
Democrats will have significant governing advantages compared to the 50-50 split in the current Congress, during which a power-sharing agreement gives Republicans considerable leverage over Democrats despite being in the minority.
- Democrats will hold majorities in each committee, allowing them to process legislation and nominations much faster. Democrats will also enjoy bigger staffs and budgets, giving them more ability to carry out committee work. Committees are currently evenly split – as are the resources – allowing Republicans to slow the pace of nominees they oppose. When a choice deadlocks in committee, Democrats must take time-consuming steps to discharge that person from committee and allow a floor vote. In one instance earlier this year, Republicans used Banking Committee rules to prevent a vote from even taking place by boycotting committee sessions, ultimately forcing President Joe Biden to withdraw a nominee for the Federal Reserve. Tuesday’s result will also free up additional floor time for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to use toward other nominees and Democratic priorities.
- Democrats will have stronger power to issue subpoenas. They will no longer need bipartisan support to issue subpoenas so they can bypass GOP opposition to using these key tools. This could increase the power and number of Democratic-led investigations.
- Centrist Democrats may not hold as much power over Democrats’ agenda. A two-seat majority margin gives Schumer more breathing room to pass legislation without needing support from all members of his caucus – like West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin and Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, moderates who will both be up for reelection in 2024. The two held enormous power in the 50-50 Senate.
- Filling a Supreme Court vacancy could be easier. The two-seat margin could also become critical if there were to be a Supreme Court vacancy as only a majority is needed to confirm a justice to that post, allowing Schumer to lose one vote.
- Harris might not be needed as often on the Hill. Democrats likely won’t have to rely as heavily on Vice President Kamala Harris to break tie votes on nominations and legislation, something she’s done 26 times so far in the current 50-50 Senate, the most by any vice president in modern times.
If you had seen Hunter Biden’s dick pics on Twitter, would you have voted differently?
So here’s the “bombshell” as I understand it. Please tell me what I’m missing and what we’ve actually learned with the Twitter email releases which is new. I’m not seeing much.
So in 2020 the FBI caught wind of a potential Russian social media misinformation campaign and wanted to avoid a repeat of 2016 so warned several major platforms to keep them from being played the way they had been the first time around. The FBI provided no specifics and certainly made no mention of Hunter Biden.
A few days later the right wing tabloid, known for posting crap they don’t bother to verify when it suits their agenda, broke the Hunter Biden laptop story – revealing basically that H. Biden is a B.S. artist who convinced a Ukrainian corporation that by paying him a large salary they would be buying influence with then VP Biden. For this, they got a five minute conversation in an airport. The NY Post falsely reported that VP Biden had lobbied to get the Ukrainian prosecutor fired because of an investigation involving his son and his company (the prosecutor had actually ended the investigation, which had pertained to the company prior to H. Biden’s involvement, and when VP Biden and some European leaders got the corrupt prosecutor fired, there was actually a chance that the new prosecutor would reopen the investigation – which he sort of did and came to the same conclusions as the first prosecutor).
Executives at Twitter assumed that the tabloid’s story was based on the warned about misinformation or a Russian hack job and based upon its policy regarding hacked materials, suppressed posts about it. The suppression lasted for a few days before caving to pressure to forego censorship without more information – including pressure from the very liberal Congressman Ro Khanna (so far the only pubic official doxed by the story, and he did exactly the opposite of what Democrats are accused of doing – arguing the First Amendment “principles”, though the Amendment doesn’t apply to a private entity as a matter of law).
Ro Khanna may possibly become the Bernie’s heir as leader of the Democratic left, and I agree with his statement: “A journalist should not be held accountable for the illegal actions of the source unless they actively aided the hack. So to restrict the distribution of that material, especially regarding a Presidential candidate, seems not in the keeping of the principles of NYT v Sullivan.”
His protest against the Twitter policy is really the only meaningful revelation I’m finding in the story. I liked him before. I like him even more now.
The most notable suppression was of Kayleigh McEnany’s account when it was suspended for a day under the policy. This actually drew more attention to the laptop story as I remember. The whole policy lasted about three days, from October 14 to 17.
Despite Musk’s promise of providing evidence that Twitter acted “under orders from the Government” (which was being run by Trump at the time – I guess he forgot that), no evidence has been produced so far, and Matt Taibbi says there isn’t any. Musk is whining about the shoulder-shrugging of the media treating it like a “nothingburger” (Musk’s term) and even the NY Post is referring to the dump as “a dud.” Meanwhile, Twitter employees across the board are really angry that Musk and Taibbi felt it necessary to reveal names (who will now be threatened by crazies) as well as private email addresses.
However, Trump thinks this is all evidence that the election was stolen and is calling for the election to be overturned pending a new one, and “termination” of all rules, regulations, etc., “even those found in the Constitution.” And Republicans are silent about that even as they’re feeling let down by Musk.
Am I missing anything?
For the record, Twitter ought to have consulted the FBI as to whether the Post story about the laptop was part of the misinformation campaign they were anticipating, and should not have drawn conclusions about the story even knowing the unreliability of the source. It was an overreaction. But did it have any impact on the election? Only to the extent that the NY Post’s lying innuendo about the Ukrainian prosecutor and Biden’s involvement in his firing might have misled voters the same way Comey’s last minute statement did. We all knew abou the laptop then, and we know about it today. And we’ll be hearing about it ad nauseum for the next two years.
Meanwhile, give Ro Khanna his due!
No significant changes to any races that I can see.
The final report and precinct stats come out next week.
The scenario is mostly uplifting because much like the Civil Rights Movement organizing against Jim Crow 1.0, it appears that similar efforts and enthusiasm may be in play in Georgia right now – not enough to help Stacy Abrams a few weeks ago, but it looks like enough to secure a Warnock win. As I noted a couple of days ago, the weekend saw large turnouts in the blue counties which were open for early voting despite the Republicans’ failed lawsuit attempt to shut it down on Saturday. But it didn’t end there. Turnout is breaking records, and in all of the right areas for a Warnock win. Of course, as we know the bulk of Republican turnout will be next Tuesday. Still, it’s good to have votes banked!
But there is definitely suppression, and it takes different forms. Obviously, shrinking the early voting from four weeks to one will make a difference in ultimate turnout. We have no idea how many votes are being negated for lack of meeting the requirements including but not limited to photo I.D. People waiting in line cannot be given food or water, because, you know that someone who has waited for two hours to vote will change their mind as to whom they will vote for if bribed by a slice of pizza or bottle of water.
But the lines which are generating waits sometimes as long as three hours are definitely deterring some voters who simply do not have that kind of time to spare. There are people driving to their polling places and deciding to come back when they see lines extending down the block. It looks uplifting, but it is the manifestation of suppression – because money for machines and voting space is not allocated proportionately to the voting population in the community. Through this link you can find links to waiting times being reported by certain counties – most of them urban or suburban. And you can see that the further you are from Atlanta proper, the less waiting time is involved. In other words, these lines are longest in the urban areas – where most of the black voters vote.
The good news is that black voters have responded despite, or perhaps even because of, the suppression moves. And through this link you can see that turnout is high in the Atlanta metropolitan area, and so far lower in most of the rural areas (particularly up in the northwest corner of the state where MTG dwells). Now compare that map to the November results, and you will see that it’s working pretty well for Democrats. One exception is Chatham County which contains Savanah – the Democrats really need some GOTV down there. But in most of the other areas, they’re doing pretty well. But also note the low black turnout in the rural areas on one of the maps through this link.
Really good start in Georgia if you support Warnock. Some counties were open for early voting today. Check out this line! Some of the voters had two hour waits.
This almost didn’t happen as the Republicans tried to kill the Saturday voting in court. They lost because the prohibition against Saturday voting following holidays in the statute only specifies primary and general election, not a runoff. The Georgia Supreme Court saw that the prohibition for runoffs was in the original draft, but not the final legislation and so the presumption is that the omission was intentional – even though it was apparently just a sloppy slip-up. You can bet the Republican majority in the state legislature will change this for future run-offs. So the counties had the option of starting up today as opposed to Monday, when everyone will start.
So 22 of the 160 or so counties started early today, including the Atlanta metropolitan areas including Fulton and Dekalb counties and the county which contains Savanah – very blue areas. Most of the red counties opted to wait until Monday anticipating that the Republican Secretary of State would win in court – they got some bad legal advice and their effort to suppress the voters who need early voting opportunities the most (especially since it’s now very difficult to get an absentee ballot on time) has backfired.
It’s not over. There will still be five days of early voting and then the same day voting. But it’s a great start for Democrats.
Out of respect to the privacy of children, I can’t go into details, but my wife and I pulled our daughter out of the Eureka City Schools system because she was unsafe, as are all students. I am critical of charter schools, and some of the local CSs are less than impressive, but we had no options. When Van Vleck started talking about roping the charters back into district control it made me think of Gilead trying to reclaim its children lost to Canada. His leadership comes from another era. And the School Board is blind.
Lost Coast Outpost has some coverage of that last very disappointing meeting where they Board read a prepared “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” statement as the district continues to lose its best talent in teachers and staff.
Sohum Parlance II 
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