monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

We all know exactly why he had to win in 2016.
There will never be any forgetfulness about that aspect of his presidency.

A rare photo in natural habitat of the near-extinct orange crapbird and the two-legged stink turtle together

Each one looks like they’ve just let out a silent stinker and are hoping the other doesn’t notice.

I've been offline since about 2 PM yesterday so just now find that Warnock has won and Ossoff is likely to win as well. That was my hope of course but I wouldn't have bet on this outcome.

Now I can relax. Had McConnell remained in control, we all know how he would have thwarted Biden at every turn. To see McConnell disempowered brings me more delight than I can easily express but the more important aspect is that now the Dems are in a position where they can begin to repair the broad damage that has been done and set to correcting the many prior pandemic failures. So this is big.

I'm not terribly worried about DC today other than the chances that some few might get hurt. Nor am I much concerned the overweight, out of shape, bearded poseurs in these militia groups (who I've seen referred to as the "Gravy Seals") have the capacity to do anything other than make noise and embarrass their mothers.

The GOP, to the extend that it is not consumed in internal fractious conflict, will now continue ramping up their "election integrity" themed voter suppression schemes and that will bear watching and fighting (but the Dems have very good people working on this full time now). And the right wing media machine will continue doing what they do because so many are getting very rich doing so.

But now America has a chance of surviving without a sharp and surely permanent shift to corrupt leadership and authoritarianism.

It's a good day today.

Yes — to shut down Pizzagate and other operations by the Democrat global paedophile network.

True — we'd have all forgotten it by now but for the efforts of this member who reminds us on a near weekly basis.

What makes this victory so sweet to me(well, there are a lot of things, but this is a biggie) is that this is a dagger right in the very heart of “Dixie”.

Georgia is where Stone Mountain is, the largest, most revered monument to the confederacy. Georgia was the home of Lester Maddox, maybe the most virulent racist Governor ever. And there’s much much more that makes Dems winning in Georgia HUGE.

Georgia is sending a Black man and a Jew to represent them in the Senate.

We all came up a little this day, people.
I am so GLAD!!

if Ossoff wins by more than .5%, Perdue cannot request a recount...

Yup and he was already at 0.4% in the wee hours this morning.

I agree, this is fantastic. And let's not overlook the real star of this show. We owe so much to Stacey Abrams.

She needs to either be Governor of GA (take it back from cheatin’ Kemp), or provide some REAL leadership as DNC chair!

Hey, I just noticed something...
There’s a conspicuous absence of long posts full of conspiracy and fraud rants cited from nutjob rightwing sources.

Phew

theyre busy paging through batshit webbsites to come up with some more crap.

Im amazed that in my lifetime weve gone from someone like LESTER MADDOX to Rev WARNOCK duly elected.

I hope it all comes through. I won’t feel happy until after Biden is inaugurated.

Never has evil been so vocal in defeat.

It’s a definite change in the right direction. The last time a black pastor from Ebenezer Baptist Church tried to be active politically was 60 years ago, when MLK tried to speak out and got jailed for his trouble.

I hope we all take a look at this election in Georgia...and realize how far we have all come.


When I was a young man, if anyone had ever suggested that Georgia would vote more liberal than conservative...and that they would send a black man to represent them in the SENATE...

...that person would have been considered insane.

I just hope the Democrats make the right moves...and that they can get the kind of support for a progressive direction that is needed right now.

Holy moley. I NEVER thought I would live to see the day where results like this would be reported.

Glad I did...even if it means having lived through the last four years of watching the party of Lincoln...debasing America and its institutions.

The Republicans are well able to block the Democrats from violating people's civil liberties or imposing any sort of leftist agenda on the nation.

First they still have the filibuster. And second all they need to do is persuade a single moderate Democrat to side with them and they can even defeat a simple majority vote.

I think we can agree that Trump has some talent as a demagogue. But it takes more than that to win elections and govern. He was prevented from becoming a successful populist because of his narcissism. He drank up the adoration of his base, confusing their enthusiasm with the actual widespread appeal which always eluded him. As long as he could stage a "successful" rally he thought he was king, but it never occurred to him that it was just the same people turning out again and again, just the people in his base, and that never amounted to more than a minority of the electorate.

A candidate who is elected by a majority can hope to win re-election by keeping most of the people who voted for him the first time. But a candidate who squeaks in with a minority of the popular vote had better work on expanding his base if he wants to win the next time. Trump didn't have the vision to see this. As far as he was concerned, he was there to kiss the ass of his base, and that's it. He didn't dare try to expand it by, say, extending the DACA program, because his supporters would object. His vaunted infrastructure promises were also sabotaged by his need to preserve his standing with the anti-tax, anti-government crowd that elected him — the plan he came up with basically dumped responsibility onto the cash-strapped states with little in the way of federal subsidies, which he couldn't have supplied anyway after the foolish tax cuts. Somehow this genius of a deal maker could never deal with the fact that his programs weren't popular enough to generate much appeal and without addressing the concerns of the rest of the population he wasn't likely to win in a convincing manner, if he could win at all.

We'll get him his second term in 2024.