Georgia – Page 4 – Politics Plus

Open Thread August 16, 2023

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:04 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Aug 162023

Yesterday, Talking Points Memo’s Morning Memo, naturally, was all about Monday’s late night Georgia indictment. It was handed down at 9:00 p.m. Eastern, and released to the reporters “a few minutes before 11:00.” The Axios alert reached me at 9:17 p.m. Mountain, which was about 20 minutes after its public release. Not bad – but bare bones. But the Talking Points Memo morning memo is filled with information, pictures, quotes, tweets, plans, and names. It’s also very compact – it reads fast. Well worth clicking “Continue reading” for.

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The Daily Beast – Trump’s Bid to Sink the Manhattan DA’s Case Has Already Made It Stronger
Quote – For months, critics of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg Jr.’s case have called it weak because the case criminally charges Trump with faking business records—a lowly misdemeanor only bumped up to a felony on a technicality. Except that Trump’s ploy to move the case to federal court gave a judge there the opportunity to take the first swing. And he used that opportunity to make it clear that the case against Trump is far more serious than it otherwise seems—and that the burden for proving that Trump’s alleged falsification of business records are felonies is low.
Click through for story. It appears Karma is on the case.

NBC News – Parents can’t challenge Maryland school’s gender identity policy, court rules
Quote – The policy, which the Montgomery County Board of Education adopted for the 2020-2021 school year, permitted schools to develop gender support plans for students to ensure they “feel comfortable expressing their gender identity.” The policy directs school personnel to help transgender and gender-nonconforming students create a plan that addresses their preferred pronouns, names and bathrooms, and bars staff from informing parents of those plans without a student’s consent. Lawsuits are pending challenging similar policies in other states. The Maryland case was the first to be argued before a federal appeals court.
Click through for details… This is a good thing because the school’s policy is the right one and the parents in the case are Christofascist. I can see how the headline could be read the other way, though. And I could wish it had been decided on privacy rights rather than on standing to sue.

Food For Thought

Open Thread August 15, 2023

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:03 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Aug 152023

Yesterday, it was still cool – a high of 73F. It’s supposed to be warmer today, but still only in the high 80s. Also yesterday, Andrew Weissman said this on MSNBC: “The exact words because this is the provision that the court has to find to release someone on bail in Georgia, is that the defendant poses no risk of intimidating witnesses.” The reference is to the specific lehal language used in the Georgia criminal code. Federally and in most states, the burden of proof is on the government, but Georgia is different. I can tell you this caused a virtual party at Democratic Underground, with a plethora of jokes of various degreess of taste. And also yesterday – last night, really – after 9 p.m. my time – an alert came in that Trump** and 18 others had been indicted by a grand jury in Georgia. (I had heard earlier that they didn’t keep a 5:00 quitting time, but sent everyone to dinner and then re-convened into the night.) The alert didn’t name the 18 others, nor were they listed in the linked story at the time, but Axios usually develops these stories, so they may (or may not) be there now.

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CNN – Exclusive: Georgia prosecutors have messages showing Trump’s team is behind voting system breach
Quote – Investigators in the Georgia criminal probe have long suspected the breach was not an organic effort sprung from sympathetic Trump supporters in rural and heavily Republican Coffee County – a county Trump won by nearly 70% of the vote. They have gathered evidence indicating it was a top-down push by Trump’s team to access sensitive voting software, according to people familiar with the situation. Trump allies attempted to access voting systems after the 2020 election as part of the broader push to produce evidence that could back up the former president’s baseless claims of widespread fraud.
Click through for details. The nitty-gritty details of evidence are almost never anywhere near as much fun as the sweeping descriptions of the crime. But in order to prove stuff- prosecutors must dig through them.

Daily Kos (MargaretPOA) – Of Course Republicans are Angry. They Have Been Out Gamed… AGAIN.
Quote – As usual, Republicans acted on the assumption that Democrats would behave as dishonestly and unethically as they, themselves and so would never in a million years appoint a Special Counsel, even though the Democrats are as aware as anybody else that there is no evidence of wrongdoing because there was no wrongdoing. Republicans thought that they were safe to loudly and publicly demand a Special Counsel because they would never get one because they, themselves would never grant that if their positions were flipped. The fact that Republicans have long used a partisan DOJ to do their dirty work means that they can’t imagine an independent DOJ.
Click through for all the reasons – the quote is the first one. I like it because we all know it’s so, but it’s said so concisely and still in enough detail to be satisfying.

Food For Thought

Open Thread August 14, 2023

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:01 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Aug 142023

Yesterday, I saw Virgil and we were able to play cribbage. I think I’ve mentioned that the deck is not new, so it’s sticky, and there are at least a half dozen cards, 0maybe as many as 10, that bend in half, both of which make it hard to shuffle and also hard to deal, which can result in some strange happenings. For example, I had a hand with two 7’s, two 3’s and one 5 (including the starter.) Well, that’s a nice hand, but I don’t recall seeing anything quite like it before. But several hands later, I got the exact hand again, And several hands after that, I got a hand with two 9’s, 2 aces, and a five – which is essentially the same hand, just different denominations. And a few hands after that, I got that exact same hand again. Very strange. All in good fun, of course. I guess a little weirdness never hurts.

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The New Yorker – Can “Cop City” Be Stopped at the Ballot Box?
Quote – I reached out to Mayor Dickens to ask whether he believes that Atlanta voters should be able to decide, after all the conflict and concern expressed in the past two years, whether to build the training center in the South River Forest. A spokesperson, in an e-mail, disputed the notion that a referendum could repeal a city ordinance. This initiative, he wrote, “would violate the constitutional prohibition on the impairment of contracts. That said,” he added, “we welcome public dialogue and engagement around our goal to build the most progressive Public Safety Training Center in the nation.”
Click through for story, of which, if you aren’t aware, it is not Freya’s fault. I would point out that “”progressive” does not mean the same thing in training police that it does in politics. In police training, it appears to mean something like all the latest gadgets to more effectively vcontrol people. Also, IANAL, but the theory that a referendum cannot revoke a city ordinance appears to me to be in violation of the people’s right to petition the government for redress of grievances, a right guaranteed by the First Amendment. It’s an empty right if the government in question claims in advance that there can be no redress.

al dot com – ‘Get them off their fannies:’ Gov. Kay Ivey on how to grow Alabama’s workforce
Quote – According to the U.S. Department of Labor, Alabama has a labor participation rate of 72.1 percent. Only three states rank lower even as the state’s workforce of about 2.3 million represents a new high mark. Still, ranking near the bottom nationally in labor participation somewhat offsets the fact that Alabama is 7th nationally with a 2.2 percent unemployment rate. The unemployment rate, of course, only includes those looking for jobs. “Today, over 2.1 million people are employed in Alabama,” Ivey told the chamber audience. “That’s the most in state history, y’all.
Click thrugh for details. If you have so many job openings that you can’t fill them all, even with people who are not looking for work (and probably NOT “sitting on their fannies”), woudln’t it be a good idea to make your state more friendly to potential workers? Like with reproductuve rights and other health care, and diversity and friendliness? What am I missong? (Heck, they can’t even keep both Senators in the state. Tuberville has moved to Florida – not that he isn’t a good fit there.)

Food For Thought

Open Thread August 8, 2023

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:15 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Aug 082023

Yesterday, I got a note from James – our lurker who has had so many problems in the last few years, most recently multiple surgeries (and asked for vibes for those.) After six years, he has finally received SSDI. IIRC he had to re-apply once or twice, but even if that only went back to the most recent re-application, that’s still a couple of years back pay. He can finally be confident of a roof over his head, not starving, and being together with his beloved Cinnamon, the last surviving dog in what was once a family of house dogs (for a while he had to board Cinnamon with a friend, not only because of his absence due to the surgeries, but for financial reasons.) So he has freedom at last. Also yesterday – I know Colorado has a well deserved reputation for crazy weather – but can you even imagine a day when the temperature follows the pattern of the red line in the graph at the right? Yes, that was yesterday. Really. Finally, today is the big vote in Ohio nn a proposed highly unconcstitutional amendment to the state constitution. Be sure to keep them in your prayers (or however you communicate with the universe.)

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Wonkette – Black DA Elected In Augusta Georgia So White County Creates Own Separate, Unequal Judicial Circuit
Quote – Reporter Justin Glawe details in The Guardian how the day after the election, before the results were even certified, Republican state legislator Barry Fleming sent a text to Doug Duncan, the county commission chair for Columbia, one of the three counties in the circuit and by far the whitest. The text asked, “Does the board of commissioners want to be there [sic] own judicial circuit.” (No one has time for spelling when they’re busy screwing democracy!) Duncan thought this was swell, so by December, he’d officially asked the area’s lawmakers to introduce legislation separating Columbia county from the judicial circuit that also included Richmond and Burke counties.
Click through for story. After learning what’s been going on forever in Newbern, AL, this hit me with the realization that stuff like this has been going on, all over, since 1964 and we simply haven’t seen it, despite its being done in broad daylight. Apperently even woke Democrats aren’t woke enough.

Letters from an American – August 6, 2023
Quote – On August 6, 1880, Republican presidential candidate James A. Garfield gave one of his most famous speeches…. Garfield promised that “we will remember our allies who fought with us.” He explained: “Soon after the great struggle began, we looked behind the army of white rebels, and saw 4,000,000 of black people condemned to toil as slaves for our enemies; and we found that the hearts of these 4,000,000 were God-inspired with the spirit of liberty, and that they were all our friends.” As the crowd applauded, he continued: “We have seen white men betray the flag and fight to kill the Union; but in all that long, dreary war we never saw a traitor in a black skin.”
Click through for the untold story. Sounds to me like Garfield signed his own death warrant that night. I know tht’s not what the history books say., but…. Also, we need to add another Republican to the list of good presidents.

Food For Thought

Open Thread August 1, 2023

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:07 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Aug 012023

Yesterday, as I had predicted, I slept in hard. And woke up feeling pretty good, both physically and attitude-wise. Today is a new month, and I already have all the cartoons checked – Of the 31 TC had for this month in 2015, 29 are usable, and I have already made the other two. On to September!

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Wonkette – DA Fani Willis Said The Fun Will Begin In August. Guess What Month Starts Tomorrow, Donald Trump?
Quote – Just as last week’s indictments were coming down, news was coming out of Atlanta that they were starting to put up barricades around the courthouse. Why? Because it’s Fuck Around And Find Out Summer! Plus, Willis had already said the fun was going to start in August. Now, there are a couple more fun new developments on that front…. And speaking of Fani Willis, she talked to reporters this weekend, and here is what she said:
Click through for article. It is Substack, so click on “continue reading” when it pops up, scrolling down first if necessary. I figure if we must have news involving TFG, we may as well have a little fun with it. Also, Substack videos can be weird, so I made a rough transcript of the one near the end: “First, [I made] a commitment to the American people but most importantly the citizens of Fulton County that we are going to be making some big decisions over the election investigation and that I would do that before September First 2023. [With what we’ve] accomplished over the last two and a half years, we’re ready to go.”

Common Dreams – What Florida Students Could Learn From PragerU Kids
Quote – A cartoon Booker T. Washington distorting the history of the Civil War. A narrator explaining that embracing climate denialism is akin to participating in the Warsaw Uprising. An instructional video telling girls that conforming to gender stereotypes is a great way to embrace their femininity. A dramatization of the supposedly civilizing, benevolent era of British colonial rule in India. These are just some of the episodes of PragerU Kids—an offshoot of right-wing propaganda organization PragerU—that Florida has just approved for use in its public school classrooms, reflecting and potentially accelerating the state’s hard conservative turn.
Click through for details. The title does not mean what I first thought it meant, which would have been something like, “PragerU kids may be baby MAGAts, but there is still something positivie to be learned from them.” Instead, it means something more like “Horrible things that Florida could be learning from PragerU propaganda if someone doesn’t put a stop to it.” You mey remember during the Vietnam war we mocked the remark “We had to destroy the village to save it.” But – if one thinks, not of the people of Florida en masse but of Floridas educational structure – this may be a time when that is actually true.

Food For Thought

Video Thread 7/16/2023

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 11:51 am Open Thread, Politics

Jul 162023

Glenn Kirschner – Trump files brief in Georgia Supreme Court demanding they STOP DA Fani Willis from indicting him

The Lincoln Project – Blood in the Water

Talking Feds – Merrick Garland’s RARE Appeal of January 6th Sentences in BAD NEWS for Trump

MSNBC – Rep. Raskin: Trump’s devolved GOP into ‘authoritarian cult’

Hyperobject Industries – A Love Letter from Darth to Exxon

Rescue Kittens Love To Ride Around On Dad’s Shoulders

Beau – Let’s talk about Biden’s briefing booboo…. 😀

Open Thread July 11, 2023

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:01 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Jul 112023

Yesterday, I managed to solve the New Yorker’s “Name Drop” on the first clue without even an opera being involved. Succeed or fail, when you get to the answer, the quiz will say something snarky, which today for me was “The world needs more trivia heroes like you.” It got a chuckle out of me. I do have some trivia knwledge, but it’s very specialized, and I am absolutely no “trivia hero.” ALso yesterday I learned – and I’m sorry – from Beau that “Captain Kori”‘s pirate ship has left the dock. If that means nothing to you, you should probably ignore it. But if you do recognize the name and want more information, here it is. I won’t be putting it in the video thread.

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Raw Story (via Archive Today) – Opinion | Neuroscientist sounds the alarm on the right wing, the GOP and the ‘contagious sociopaths’ who live among us
Quote – One cannot talk about contagious sociopathy without considering righteousness – a term describing the phenomenon by which malicious acts – including harming and killing others – are justified as long as the bad actor can consider the ‘victims’ to be an enemy. This is a bedrock of the Trump and MAGA attacks on the Left and any that criticize or oppose them. I have written and said it before and I will do so again: The contagious spread of sociopathy has provided us with potential and actual leaders who embody the worst that humanity has to offer according to moral, legal, religious/spiritual, and societal norms…and they continue to run on this platform.
Click through for full opinion. If you thought thatBandy Lee and Mary L. Trump were sounding “Fire!” at the three-alrm level … how many alarms is this!

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution – Grand jurors who will consider Trump charges to be selected Tuesday
Quote – Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who oversaw the special purpose grand jury, will preside over Tuesday’s selection of the two grand juries for this term of court. Each panel will have 23 grand jurors, plus three alternates. One panel will meet Mondays and Tuesdays, the other Thursdays and Fridays. Both will work in secret and are expected to decide whether to hand up indictments in hundreds of cases. It is unclear which one will consider the much-anticipated election-meddling case.
Click through for details including procedural details. I appreciate those, since knowing them helps make sense of the process for us on the outside of it.

Food For Thought