Georgia On Everyone's Mind

Kyle Kondik of Sabato's Crystal Ball gives us the forecast for today's Georgia Senate runoffs, the question being whether the GOP can muster enough turnout today to break the Dems' early voting lead.

With Election Day voting underway in the crucial Senate runoffs in Georgia, we continue to see both races as Toss-ups. But after an early-voting period where Democrats may have performed better than they did in the lead-up to the November election, Republicans may need to follow suit with an impressive day-of-election performance to defend Sens. David Perdue (R-GA) and Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) against challengers Jon Ossoff (D) and Raphael Warnock (D), respectively.

Georgians have cast roughly 3 million votes so far in the contest through early in-person and mail-in voting. Even without accounting for any Election Day votes, this is an impressive turnout, about 60% of the roughly 5 million votes cast in Georgia’s high-turnout November election.

The last time Georgia had a Senate runoff, in 2008, only 2.1 million votes were cast compared to 3.9 million votes cast for president in the general election. So a dozen years ago, turnout in the runoff was just a little more than half that of the general election, and then-Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) won the runoff by 15 points after leading in the November vote by just three points.

The turnout in these runoffs as a percentage of the general election vote is going to be markedly higher than in 2008. The key question is how much higher.

The votes cast before Election Day in these Senate runoffs may be more Democratic leaning than those cast before the November general election. Perhaps the most encouraging data point for Democrats is that the Black voter share of the pre-Election Day vote is up a few points from the pre-Election Day Black vote in the general election. Given that Black voters overwhelmingly support Democrats, any increase in the Black share of the electorate is very important.

Democrats probably need a better electorate in the runoff than they got in November, because even though Biden narrowly won, Perdue ran a little under two points ahead of Ossoff in his election, and the combined Republican vote outpaced the combined Democratic vote in the jungle primary special election by about a point. In other words, if the two Senate elections held in November had been conventional contests with a single Democrat facing a single Republican with no runoff, Perdue would have been reelected and a Republican very well could have won the other race, too.

In the general election, about 80% of all votes were cast before Election Day. Joe Biden won this chunk of votes by about six points. Donald Trump won the Election Day votes by 23 points, which got him within a few tenths of a percentage point of winning, but he fell short. If Democrats have done better in the pre-Election Day vote this time, then Republicans either need to win the Election Day vote by more than Trump did, or have the Election Day electorate make up a bigger share of the total votes cast (and still vote heavily Republican).

Could this happen? Sure. It may be that some Republicans who voted before Election Day in the general election will switch to day-of voting this time, perhaps in response to President Trump’s endless and unfounded complaints about the integrity of the Georgia election — complaints he reiterated in an Election Eve Georgia rally last night. More broadly, the voting patterns and methods of a post-holiday runoff may be different than those of a general election.

This may be an oversimplification, but our sense is that if total turnout runs north of 4 million, and particularly if it’s clearly more than 4 million, the Republicans probably are getting a large enough Election Day turnout to win. If turnout runs south of 4 million, the Democrats may be in good shape given their likely advantage in the votes already cast, which constitute a healthy chunk of the eventual total. Our uncertainty about what the turnout ultimately will be is why we’ve decided to keep both races as Toss-ups.

Polling hasn’t provided much clarity beyond reinforcing a Toss-up rating: Democrats have led more often than Republicans, but often only by a little, with some polls showing a dead tie. Much has been made of how the president’s efforts to question the legitimacy of the election will affect the behavior of Republican voters in the runoff. Will his complaints motivate Republicans to show up on Election Day, powering Republicans to victory and saving the GOP Senate majority? Or will they depress Republican turnout, either because a crucial number of GOP voters will believe that their votes don’t matter or because the president’s outrageous behavior — as once again demonstrated in a weekend phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) — has turned off even some of his own electorate or pushed some cross-pressured voters to the Democrats. This, too, is a question mark, and it may have bearing on future Republican behavior. If Republicans lose the runoffs, and with them the Senate, it may push Republican leaders to distance themselves from the outgoing president and his rhetoric. If Republicans hold the seats and generate a high turnout, the lesson for Republicans may be that the president’s rage is a powerful electoral motivator even when he isn’t on the ballot himself.

Remember, Democrats need to sweep both races to forge a 50-50 Senate that they would control through Vice President-elect Kamala Harris’ (D) tiebreaking vote. Holding just one of the seats would be good enough for Republicans to retain a 51-49 majority (or 52-48 if they hold both). We do expect both races to break toward the same party, although there could be a split decision if both races are very close.

I've already predicted wins by both Ossoff and Warnock last week, not because of wishful thinking, but because Mitch McConnell will block everything if he remains in power and openly continue to sabotage the country otherwise, and people know it.

I think Georgia will surprise the country today. 

Suddenly, Republicans Want Police Stopped

 Because of course enforcing laws on Republicans is tyranny.

Washington, D.C.'s police chief said Monday he intends to reach out to GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert about her intention to carry a Glock handgun in the city, which has strict limits on carrying concealed firearms.

Chief Robert Contee III, when asked during a press conference about the newly elected Colorado lawmaker’s plan to carry a gun to the Capitol, said he wants to ensure that "she is aware of the what the laws of the District of Columbia are."

"That Congresswoman will be subjected to the same penalties as anyone else that’s caught on the D.C. streets carrying a firearm," Contee said.

Boebert has made no secret of her intent to bring a handgun to the Capitol complex, where lawmakers are exempt from otherwise strict prohibitions on firearms, so long as they're stored in the members' offices and transported safely and unloaded. Democrats considered a change to the rules that would have barred even members of Congress from bringing guns to the Capitol, but the rules package introduced by House leaders last week included no change to the policy.

The current guidelines for weapons in the Capitol is set by the Capitol Police Board, which includes the sergeants-at-arms of the House and Senate, the architect of the Capitol and the chief of the Capitol Police. Lawmakers have been exempted by the board from the restrictions for decades.

Boebert drew attention to her plans for carrying a weapon on Sunday, when she posted a video on social media declaring her intention to carry her gun in Congress.

"Government does NOT get to tell me or my constituents how we are allowed to keep our families safe," she said.

 

That's the problem with entirely performative politics, eventually you run across somebody who doesn't give a damn about the performance part and it collides with cold, hard reality.

Now if Boebert wants to spend a few months in jail, it's going to make it hard to vote, especially if she's charged with felonious possession of a firearm.

Should be fun to watch how quickly she backs down.

StupidiNews!

• UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has announced a national lockdown to fight a new highly infectious strain of COVID-19, the lockdown is expected to last for at least six weeks.
• The US Attorney for Northern Georgia, Byung "BJ" Pak, has resigned suddenly due to what are only being called "unforeseen circumstances".
• The Trump regime says a "breakthrough" has been achieved in settling a nearly four-year terrorism dispute between Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Bahrain against Qatar.
• Both President-elect Joe Biden and Donald Trump attended in-person rallies in Georgia last night ahead of today's Georgia senate runoffs, some 3 million have already voted early.
  
• Ticketmaster has agreed to a ten million dollar fine as the company admitted in court that it hacked rival Songkick before putting it out of business in 2017.
  

Last Call For A Star, Chamber

With NOLA-area Congressman Cedric Richmond joining the Biden administration, the state is having a special election for his seat this spring and one very notable candidate has thrown his hat into the ring: Black activist Gary Chambers, who breaks out with this spectacular ad.

I know we've seen great introduction ads in the last two years, from AOC, from Jaime Harrison, from Cori Bush and others, (with widely varying levels of success and effectiveness) but I believe Chambers has a real shot at being a winner here. The seat isn't in any danger for the Dems being NOLA's House seat, and we need it filled ASAP. Any Dem would win on the general election ballot, so I'd like to see it filled with someone like Chambers.

We'll see how far he goes.

The Defense Of The Republic

All ten living ex-Secretaries of Defense, including Republicans Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Chuck Hagel, Mark Esper, and Jim Mattis, have signed onto an op-ed warning current acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller that the election is over, and that the US military cannot be used for whatever Trump may be planning in the coup department.

The U.S. presidential election, and the time for questioning its results, are over, all 10 living former secretaries of defense wrote in a forceful op-ed published on Sunday.

"Our elections have occurred. Recounts and audits have been conducted. Appropriate challenges have been addressed by the courts. Governors have certified the results. And the electoral college has voted," the 10 men from both Republican and Democratic administrations wrote.

"The time for questioning the results has passed; the time for the formal counting of the electoral college votes, as prescribed in the Constitution and statute, has arrived," they said.

The bipartisan group of leaders published the letter in The Washington Post as President Trump continues to deny his election loss to President-elect Joe Biden. On Saturday, during a one-hour phone call, Trump even pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to "find" votes to overturn his defeat.

Former Secretaries of Defense Ashton Carter, Dick Cheney, William Cohen, Robert Gates, Chuck Hagel, Leon Panetta, William Perry and Donald Rumsfeld signed the opinion piece.

Two Pentagon heads who served under Trump — Jim Mattis and Mark Esper — also signed it. Trump removed Esper in November as part of a major shakeup at the Department of Defense.

The op-ed comes as some Republican lawmakers in Congress plan this week to formally object to the certification of the Nov. 3 presidential election results.

Since the vote, Trump and his attorneys have repeatedly asserted false claims of voter fraud and blamed, without evidence, that his loss to Biden was due to widespread irregularities. But his insistence that the election was stolen has led to some speculation he could somehow use the military to remain in office past Biden's Jan. 20 inauguration.

The 10 signatories made it clear that any effort to involve U.S. armed forces in resolving election disputes would take the country "into dangerous, unlawful and unconstitutional territory."

They wrote, "Civilian and military officials who direct or carry out such measures would be accountable, including potentially facing criminal penalties, for the grave consequences of their actions on our republic."

Former Defense Secretary Perry, who served under President Bill Clinton, wrote on Twitter that the idea for the statement originated with Cheney, a Republican who served under President George W. Bush as vice president and President George H.W. Bush as secretary of defense.

"Each of us swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. We did not swear it to an individual or a party," Perry tweeted, reiterating the op-ed's lines.

 

We're really to this point, folks. 

 

Understand that war criminals like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld wouldn't be saying a word about this if they didn't believe there was a credible chance that Trump would resort to using the US military in a coup d'etat. To me, that means Trump has certainly called them and asked them about the possibility already, and this is their very public response.

Mark Esper signing this means that he believes the threat is real, because, again, he was almost certainly asked to do this. Same with Mad Dog Mattis. Imagine the phone call recorded Saturday by Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and do the math from there.

 

Trump isn't fundraising, guys. He's trying to stay in power through whatever means necessary. Just because the coup attempt is ham-handed and obvious doesn't mean that it's not a serious and dangerous one if enough enablers allow it to happen. 

 

Eric Edelman, a former ambassador to Turkey and undersecretary of Defense for George W. Bush who endorsed Biden for president, said he organized the letter after talking to Cheney.

“I talk periodically to Cheney,” Edelman recalled in an interview Sunday. “This summer, when I was starting to get ready to help organize the national security Republicans who endorsed Biden, along with Sean O'Keefe, who was [Cheney’s] secretary of the Navy … I was talking to him about this on and off and expressing my concerns about Trump, much of which he shared.”

“When the David Ignatius piece came out,” Edelman continued, "that was alarming. It was not inconsistent with conversations I had with Esper after he resigned, in term of concerns about what might be going on with this clown car of people that they’ve got over there around Miller.

“When you are a former senior official, people you know are still there, you hear stuff,” he added. “I'd heard things that were eerily similar to what was in the Ignatius column.”

 

I said last month that Trump was gathering civilian Pentagon officials who wanted him to use the Insurrection Act to overturn the election. It's well past time we start taking that seriously.

 

Deadly seriously. 

Back To The Business Of Giving The Business

Good morning.

We're back to normal as of today.

 

Normal in America also means Donald Trump is expected to hand out two more Presidential Medals of Freedom to his House GOP flunkies.

President Trump on Monday is expected to give Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, according to someone familiar with the plans.

Nunes is a close ally of the president, and one of Trump’s most vocal supporters in his quest to undermine the Justice Department’s investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

During an interview with “Fox & Friends” in October 2018, Trump criticized the investigation of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and praised Nunes, then the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, who had repeatedly accused FBI and Justice Department investigators of being biased against Trump. In the Fox News interview, Trump initially — and incorrectly — called for Nunes to receive the Medal of Honor, which is awarded for acts of military valor, before correcting himself and suggesting that Nunes receive the Medal of Freedom.

“What he’s gone through, and his bravery, he should get a very important medal,” Trump said.

Nunes has long supported some of Trump’s more outlandish conspiracy theories, including claiming that the intelligence community improperly “unmasked” the identities of several officials working on Trump’s presidential transition.

Trump — who is using his final days in the White House in part to reward friends and allies with pardons and other decorations — is also expected to give Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), another confidant, the same award next week, although those plans have not yet been finalized.

 

At this point, the Presidential Medal of Freedom should be renamed the "Presidential Medal of Patronage".

 

It's an insult to anyone who received one previously to 2017, and anyone who has gotten one from Trump should send it back to the White House in pieces.

 

 

StupidiNews!

• A suspect now in police custody in the killing of a church pastor in Texas on Sunday had previously eluded a manhunt on Saturday, a second victim remains hospitalized.
• Media interview giant Larry King remains hospitalized in Los Angeles with COVID-19, King was admitted over the weekend for symptoms of the disease.
• The Trump FDA is considering cutting COVID-19 vaccine doses in half for those under 55 in order to immunize twice as many people.
• Nancy Pelosi has been reelected House Speaker by a narrow margin, getting 216 of the 214 vote needed on Sunday, House minority leader Kevin McCarthy received 209 votes.
• The Human Genome Project turned 30 in 2020, scientists took 13 years to map the human genome and revolutionize medicine across the planet.
  

Orange Meltdown, Con't

As the clock ticks away and Donald Trump's regime comes closer to its endgame, we're now seeing Trump openly pushing his GOP enablers to produce a "win" for him, or they will be crucified by his brownshirts.

President Trump urged fellow Republican Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, to “find” enough votes to overturn his defeat in an extraordinary one-hour phone call Saturday that election experts said raised legal questions.

The Washington Post obtained a recording of the conversation in which Trump alternately berated Raffensperger, tried to flatter him, begged him to act and threatened him with vague criminal consequences if the secretary of state refused to pursue his false claims, at one point warning that Raffensperger was taking “a big risk.”

Throughout the call, Raffensperger and his office’s general counsel rejected his assertions, explaining that Trump is relying on debunked conspiracy theories and that President-elect Joe Biden’s 12,779-vote victory in Georgia was fair and accurate.

Trump dismissed their arguments.

“The people of Georgia are angry, the people in the country are angry,” he said. “And there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated.”

Raffensperger responded: “Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong.”

At another point, Trump said: “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.”

The rambling, at times incoherent conversation, offered a remarkable glimpse of how consumed and desperate the president remains about his loss, unwilling or unable to let the matter go and still believing he can reverse the results in enough battleground states to remain in office.

“There’s no way I lost Georgia,” Trump said, a phrase he repeated again and again on the call. “There’s no way. We won by hundreds of thousands of votes.”

Several of his allies were on the line as he spoke, including White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and conservative lawyer Cleta Mitchell, a prominent GOP lawyer whose involvement with Trump’s efforts had not been previously known.

In a statement, Mitchell said that Raffensperger’s office “has made many statements over the past two months that are simply not correct and everyone involved with the efforts on behalf of the President’s election challenge has said the same thing: show us your records on which you rely to make these statements that our numbers are wrong.” 

The White House, the Trump campaign and Meadows did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Raffensperger’s office declined to comment.

 

This isn't the first time Trump has gone after state officials demanding they "find" more votes for him. Hell, this isn't even the first time Trump has personally leaned on Brad Raffensperger of Georgia demanding that he steal the election for him.

 

And yes, Trump made it crystal clear what the consequences will be if Raffensperger doesn't deliver, saying in the call that Raffensperger would "certainly never be elected again".

 

Again, the Washington Post has audio of the entire conference call. At one point Trump suggested that nobody would question Raffensperger if he simply told the world that he just had to "recalculate" the vote totals.

We've got Trump on tape, cold, actually trying to blackmail the Secretary of State in Georgia to steal the election for him. This should be the end of him, 25th Amendment, Mike Pence and the cabinet remove Trump. But it won't be, because every single Republican still remaining in Trump's corner is just as fascist and corrupt as he is, and the ones that haven't left the party yet are just waiting for a more competent white supremacist fascist to follow into a new era of Jim Crow.

And very soon, we'll get that person.

Sunday Long Read: Pandemic, The Sequel

The Atlantic's Ed Yong takes us through the a preview of COVID-19 as the Biden years open, and the short version is that we still have several months of hell ahead of us, and a death toll in 2021 that I've already predicted will greatly surpass 2020's 330,000 dead, if not easily triple it.

The influenza pandemic that began in 1918 killed as many as 100 million people over two years. It was one of the deadliest disasters in history, and the one all subsequent pandemics are now compared with.

At the time, The Atlantic did not cover it. In the immediate aftermath, “it really disappeared from the public consciousness,” says Scott Knowles, a disaster historian at Drexel University. “It was swamped by World War I and then the Great Depression. All of that got crushed into one era.” An immense crisis can be lost amid the rush of history, and Knowles wonders if the fracturing of democratic norms or the economic woes that COVID-19 set off might not subsume the current pandemic. “I think we’re in this liminal moment of collectively deciding what we’re going to remember and what we’re going to forget,” says Martha Lincoln, a medical anthropologist at San Francisco State University.

The coronavirus pandemic ignited at the end of 2019 and blazed across 2020. Many countries repeatedly contained it. The United States did not. At least 19 million Americans have been infected. At least 326,000 have died. The first two surges, in the spring and summer, plateaued but never significantly subsided. The third and worst is still ongoing. In December, an average of 2,379 Americans have died every day of COVID-19—comparable to the 2,403 who died in Pearl Harbor and the 2,977 who died in the 9/11 attacks. The virus now has so much momentum that more infection and death are inevitable as the second full year of the pandemic begins. “There will be a whole lot of pain in the first quarter” of 2021, Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told me.

But that pain could soon start to recede. Two vaccines have been developed and approved in less time than many experts predicted, and are more effective than they dared hope. Joe Biden, the incoming president, has promised to push for measures that health specialists have championed in vain for months. He has filled his administration and COVID-19 task force with seasoned scientists and medics. His chief of staff, Ron Klain, coordinated America’s response to the Ebola outbreak of 2014. His pick for CDC director, Rochelle Walensky, is a widely respected infectious-disease doctor and skilled communicator. The winter months will still be abyssally dark, but every day promises to bring a little more light.

On the Fourth of July, Ashish Jha wants to host a barbecue at his house in Newton, Massachusetts. By then, the state expects to have rolled out COVID-19 vaccines to anyone who wants one. The process will be bumpy, but Jha is hopeful. He thinks that the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus will still be spreading within the U.S., but at a simmer rather than this winter’s calamitous boil. He expects to keep all his guests outside, where the risk of transmission is substantially lower. If it starts raining, they could come indoors after putting on masks. “It won’t be normal, but it won’t be like Fourth of July 2020,” says Jha, the dean of the Brown University School of Public Health. “I think that’s when it’ll start to feel like we’re no longer in a pandemic.”

Many of the 30 epidemiologists, physicians, immunologists, sociologists, and historians whom I interviewed for this piece are cautiously optimistic that the U.S. is headed for a better summer. But they emphasized that such a world, though plausible, is not inevitable. Its realization hinges on successfully executing the most complicated vaccination program in U.S. history, on persuading a frayed and fractured nation to continue using masks and avoiding indoor crowds, on countering the growing quagmire of misinformation, and on successfully monitoring and countering changes in the virus itself. “Think about next summer as a marker for when we might be able to breathe again,” said Loyce Pace, the executive director of a nonprofit called the Global Health Council and a member of Biden’s COVID-19 task force. “But there’s almost a year’s worth of work that needs to happen in those six months.”

The pandemic will end not with a declaration, but with a long, protracted exhalation. Even if everything goes according to plan, which is a significant if, the horrors of 2020 will leave lasting legacies. A pummeled health-care system will be reeling, short-staffed, and facing new surges of people with long-haul symptoms or mental-health problems. Social gaps that were widened will be further torn apart. Grief will turn into trauma. And a nation that has begun to return to normal will have to decide whether to remember that normal led to this. “We’re trying to get through this with a vaccine without truly exploring our soul,” said Mike Osterholm, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota.

 

The damage from the Trump regime is so great that it will take us months just to dig out of the hole they left us in, and we'll be replacing the space in that hole with hundreds of thousands of American dead.

HoliDaze: Orange Meltdown

The Senate GOP is moving on in a world where Mitch McConnell is in charge of the Republican Party, and not Donald Trump.

The Senate on Friday overrode President Donald Trump's veto of a $741 billion defense policy bill, delivering a rare bipartisan rebuke to the commander in chief in his administration's waning days.

Senators voted 81 to 13 to enact the annual National Defense Authorization Act, well above the two-thirds majority needed to overturn the presidential veto. The House voted to override Trump by a wide margin on Monday.

The override is the first of Trump's term, handing the outgoing president a stinging loss in his showdown with Congress. Lawmakers in both parties banded together to defy the White House despite Republicans' wariness of crossing Trump throughout his term — and with many even supporting his efforts to contest the outcome of the election he lost.

"Today’s vote sent a clear message that Congress will not allow President Trump to stand in the way of that support, and I’m relieved the critical bipartisan priorities we fought for will become law," Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), said in a statement after the vote.

Republicans could have torpedoed the bill if enough GOP senators had switched their votes to side with Trump. But no one changed their vote from when the bill was originally passed three weeks ago. Seven Republicans, five Democrats and Vermont Independent Bernie Sanders opposed the measure after also voting against it last month.

Trump vetoed the defense measure, H.R. 6395 (116), because it didn’t include his demand to repeal legal protections for social media companies. His 11th hour demand to repeal the liability shield, known as Section 230, was largely sidestepped by lawmakers because it isn't a national security issue.

Trump also opposes several other major provisions in the bill, including a measure that would force the renaming of military bases that honor former Confederate leaders over a three-year period, authored by progressive Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). The White House also opposed provisions that would limit his push to withdraw thousands of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and Europe.

Trump has also argued the bill is a gift to China, contradicting many Republican lawmakers who contend it is toughest defense legislation Congress has passed regarding Beijing in years. The bill, for instance, sets aside $2.2 billion for a new Pacific Deterrence Initiative to boost the U.S. military presence and deter China in the Indo-Pacific region.

Several big things there: 

First, the Senate GOP is hanging Trump out to dry in his final, pitiful days as a wannabe tyrant. He no longer commands the party...well, at least not 100% like he did even a few weeks ago. 

Second, as I said, the Senate GOP will mostly still be here in a Biden administration. We'll see if that means Mitch is the majority leader...or minority leader.

Third, the Trump loyalists in the House and Senate can still make things tough on those who voted to override on January 6th. It's going to be a day of ugly, ugly spectacle on Wednesday.

Finally, there's a specific reason Trump vetoed this bill, and it had nothing to do with any of the reasons he's stated.

An historic anti-corruption measure ending anonymous companies in the United States became law on Friday, capping a more than decade-long campaign by transparency advocates, after both Chambers of Congress voted to override the president’s veto of the annual defense bill. The Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency (FACT) Coalition, which led the organizing effort, praised the enactment of the Corporate Transparency Act, which was included in the National Defense Authorization Act.

Ian Gary, executive director of the FACT Coalition, issued the following statement:

“After more than a decade-long campaign to end the formation of anonymous shell companies that are abused by the criminal and the corrupt, the United States has enacted historic reforms to protect Americans and our financial system from abuse. We applaud Senate and House lawmakers for passing this critical, bipartisan anti-corruption reform by overwhelming margins. We look forward to working with the incoming Biden Administration to ensure the strong and timely implementation of the new law.

“For years, experts routinely ranked anonymous shell companies — where the true, ‘beneficial’ owners are unknown — as the biggest weakness in our anti-money laundering safeguards. Virtually every national security expert, law enforcement official, and human rights advocate that looked at the issue called for an end to anonymous companies. It’s the single most important step we could take to better protect our financial system from abuse.

“For more than a decade, the FACT Coalition and our members have worked tirelessly to assemble a powerful alliance of ideologically-diverse constituencies to back an end to anonymous companies. Supporters of transparency eventually included hundreds of national security experts, police and prosecutors, banks and credit unions, CEOs, the real estate sector, large businesses, small business owners, faith groups, anti-human trafficking groups, human rights organizations, global development NGOs, anti-corruption advocates, labor unions, and conservative and liberal think tanks. The campaign was so successful that the State of Delaware and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — both of which had previously opposed reform — ultimately endorsed transparency.

Now, who do you know who would be massively upset by a new law targeting anonymous shell companies to go after international money-laundering operations in the US, and whose company is already under state investigation for possible tax fraud and financial crimes?

Trump basically has to pardon himself now or he's absolutely going to face the feds hungry to go after him with this new law. He may never be charged by the DoJ (and almost certainly won't be) but it'll expose him as the fraud andster he is to the world, and he can't have that.

Either way though, Trump knows he's in dire trouble and has only days remaining...

HoliDaze: Sedition Edition

House Republicans are apparently planning to make good on their efforts to disrupt the counting of electoral votes on Wednesday, and Senate Republican Josh Hawley of Missouri is going to make his GOP colleagues follow up on it, presenting a gigantic mess for Mitch McConnell, Mike Pence and America.

Two Republican members of the House of Representatives tell CNN that they expect at least 140 of their GOP colleagues in the House to vote against counting the electoral votes on January 6 when Congress is expected to certify President-elect Joe Biden's victory. 

President Donald Trump's Republican allies have virtually zero chance of changing the result, only to delay by a few hours the inevitable affirmation of Biden as the Electoral College winner and the next president. 

There have been no credible allegations of any issues with voting that would have impacted the election, as affirmed by dozens of judges, governors, election officials, the Electoral College, the Justice Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and the US Supreme Court. But Trump is determined to claim he didn't lose -- which he did, significantly -- and many GOP politicians either share his delusion or fear provoking his wrath -- even if that means voting to undermine democracy. 

Both a House member and senator are required to mount an objection when Congress counts the votes. Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri said Wednesday he will object, which will force lawmakers in both the House and Senate to vote on whether to accept the results of Biden's victory. Other senators -- including incoming ones -- could still join that effort, which Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has privately urged Republicans not to do. 

Trump has been pushing for Congress to try to overturn the election result as his campaign's attempts to overturn the election through the courts have been repeatedly rejected. 

Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse spoke out against that strategy -- and the complicity of some of his GOP colleagues -- in a Facebook post Wednesday night, urging Republicans to "reject" the effort to object to the certification process.

"The president and his allies are playing with fire," he wrote. "They have been asking -- first the courts, then state legislatures, now the Congress -- to overturn the results of a presidential election. They have unsuccessfully called on judges and are now calling on federal officeholders to invalidate millions and millions of votes. If you make big claims, you had better have the evidence. But the president doesn't and neither do the institutional arsonist members of Congress who will object to the Electoral College vote." 

Let's not forget that these GOP terrorists are aiding and abetting Trump's attempts at sedition and treason, and should be roundly punished as such. The true goal of course is to make Biden's first days and weeks so impossible, with the very real threat of widespread terrorist violence, that for "the good of the nation" Biden asks New York to drop their investigation into Trump, or better yet, to cut Trump a deal that he can immediately blab to the press, guaranteeing a Democratic collapse in 2022 and opening the door to a triumphant Trump "return" in 2024.

It's pretty awful, and there's a very good chance that enough violence will happen that the press will screech at Biden to give in to Trump on everything.

But yeah, that's a topic for next week.

Zandar's 2021 Predictions

It's that time of year again, where I extrapolate the future and mostly get it wrong, only this year the stakes are a lot higher if I'm off.

1) Joe Biden will be sworn in as the 46th President of the United States on January 20th. I know, this is where I'm starting from, and at this point, this is still an assumption, because I honestly don't know how the next three weeks are going to play out, let alone the next year, but here we are. I gotta start somewhere though, and if I'm somehow wrong on this, well, yeah.

 

2) Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock will win the Georgia runoffs and Mitch McConnell will be relegated to Senate Minority Leader. Look, Kentucky is never getting rid of Mitch, but the other 99 senators maybe we can do something about, if albeit briefly.  Things are not going to get better until Mitch McConnell is no longer in charge of the Senate, so I have to hope that they win.

3) Even if Dems get the Senate back, the filibuster and the current size of SCOTUS will remain. No, I don't have any faith in Schumer to convince anyone on the Dem side that the filibuster needs to go, and Biden will back Schumer up on this. Considering the Dems will almost certainly lose the House in 2022 and probably the Senate again too, Schumer just can't afford it. He won't have the votes anyway.

4) The total US death toll from COVID-19 will surpass 1 million Americans by the end of the year. People aren't going to take this seriously. There will still be tens of millions of Americans who will refuse the vaccine,or masking, or social distancing. The vaccine will be available and I expect it will be ramped up for those who want it, but it's still going to be grim for the first half of the year. And yes, I know I predicting that twice as many people will die from COVID-19 in 2021 as 2020. That is horrific. I still make this forecast.

5) The Roberts Court will allow states to regulate abortion out of existence. I've been predicting this one for a couple of years running now, but there's a reason for it now with the court's 6-3 conservative bent. Come the end of the year, abortion will be not only illegal for clinicians to perform in several red states, but in more than a few states women seeking an abortion will be made into a felony. It's going to be bad, folks. The pressure on Biden will be tremendous, but the Senate won't budge.

6) Donald Trump will not be indicted.  I covered this earlier, but Donald Trump won't be charged and the New York state investigations will conclude without a grand jury indictment. They will have to, because of the very real danger of deadly terrorist violence erupting nationwide if he's arrested. We've already seen one terrorist bombing in Nashville. Imagine that, only worse, in downtown NYC, or downtown small-town America. I don't like it any more than you do, but it's very real. And if you're thinking any of the Trumps are going to jail, well, in America, we don't jail our rich felons, we rehabilitate them in the press. I want to hope again, but hope has been brutally smashed out of me by the last four years.

7) Hunter Biden will be indicted. Yeah, Joe Biden's son is going to face charges related to Ukraine and China, and Republicans will call for Joe Biden to resign. They're going to take advantage of both Bidens and try to destroy them, and by the time the 2022 elections roll around, well...

8)  No movie will break $100 million at the box office in 2021.  Hell, don't be surprised if most theater chains will be out of business by the end of the year. Movies, theater shows, concerts, eating out, we're all looking forward to those again, but the prevalence of COVID in 2021 will make things horrific for the first several months of the year, and the lack of vaccinations will only prolong the pain. The number one film in America this year was Bad Boys For Life, and that made $62 million.

9) The Dow Jones will be under 25,000 by the end of the year. This time, Republicans will have every incentive to destroy the economy and tip us fully into the Trump Depression. Unemployment will be 8% or more, and Biden will get the blame for better or for worse.

10) ZVTS will make it through 2021. You know what, if I could survive this year, everything else should be cream cheese frosting on carrot cake. And I love carrot cake. And as always, you readers will make the difference.

So we begin the journey tomorrow.  See you in 2021.

HoliDaze: Follow The Funny Money, Honey

Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance is ratcheting up the NY state investigation into fraud at the Trump Organization, and he's getting ready for the day Trump ends up on his ass outside the White House.

The Manhattan District Attorney's Office has retained forensic accounting specialists to aid its criminal investigation of President Trump and his business operations, as prosecutors ramp up their scrutiny of his company's real estate transactions, according to people familiar with the matter.

District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. opened the investigation in 2018 to examine alleged hush-money payments made to two women who, during Trump’s first presidential campaign, claimed to have had affairs with him years earlier. The probe has since expanded, and now includes the Trump Organization's activities more broadly, said the people familiar with the matter. Vance’s office has suggested in court filings that bank, tax and insurance fraud are areas of exploration.

Vance has contracted with FTI Consulting to look for anomalies among a variety of property deals, and to advise the district attorney on whether the president’s company manipulated the value of certain assets to obtain favorable interest rates and tax breaks, according to a person with knowledge of the investigation who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because the matter remains highly sensitive. The probe is believed to encompass transactions spanning several years.

Spokesmen for Vance and FTI Consulting declined to comment.

Representatives for the Trump Organization did not respond to a request for comment. In the past, company officials have rejected the merits of Vance’s investigation, calling it politically motivated.

Headquartered in Washington, FTI provides a range of financial advisory services to clients worldwide in public and corporate sectors. “We provide the industry's most complete range of forensic, investigative, data analytic and litigation services,” according to a corporate brochure, which also noted FTI’s “extensive experience serving leading corporations, governments and law firms around the globe.”

The analysts hired by Vance probably have already reviewed various bank and mortgage records obtained from Trump’s company as part of the ongoing grand jury investigation, and they could be called on to testify about their findings should the district attorney eventually bring criminal charges, said the person familiar with the arrangement.

 

See, Trump going to prison is an imperative, but it'll never happen. His cult won't allow it. 

A significant number of Americans believe misinformation about the origins of the coronavirus and the recent presidential election, as well as conspiracy theories like QAnon, according to a new NPR/Ipsos poll.

Forty percent of respondents said they believe the coronavirus was made in a lab in China even though there is no evidence for this. Scientists say the virus was transmitted to humans from another species.

And one-third of Americans believe that voter fraud helped Joe Biden win the 2020 election, despite the fact that courts, election officials and the Justice Department have found no evidence of widespread fraud that could have changed the outcome.

The poll results add to mounting evidence that misinformation is gaining a foothold in American society and that conspiracy theories are going mainstream, especially during the coronavirus pandemic. This has raised concerns about how to get people to believe in a "baseline reality," said Chris Jackson, a pollster with Ipsos.

"Increasingly, people are willing to say and believe stuff that fits in with their view of how the world should be, even if it doesn't have any basis in reality or fact," Jackson said.

"What this poll really illustrates to me is how willing people are to believe things that are ludicrous because it fits in with a worldview that they want to believe."

 

Trying to send Trump to prison will result in massive, nationwide violence, and Democrats and the American people most likely won't have the stomach for it after the next dozen or so Nashville-style suicide bombings and/or Las Vegas-style shootings.  Biden will be hated and blamed for it, and rightfully so, but the most likely outcome is that Trump will never be charged and the New York state investigations will conclude without charges.

There's nothing to make me think justice exists in America, and being Black in America in 2020, I at least am over the illusion that it ever did.

Hope has been burned out of me. It's survival now, that's victory moving forward.

Zandar's 2020 Prediction Scorecard

Welp, it's that time of year again, where I get to try to console myself with enough half-credit points out of my ten predictions for the year that I can skate by with five or more and not feel like a complete imbecile. And then I'll do it again! 

1) Joe Biden defeats Donald Trump and becomes President.  Yeah, this is a safe guess and a pretty likely outcome, but I think it's what will happen.  Biden has been ahead in the primaries and leading in head-to-head matchups with Trump for all of 2019.  I have to believe that Biden will win, but whether or not Trump concedes in 2021 is a question for 2021. 

 

Got this one, thank Christ.

2) Trump will be acquitted in his Senate trial.  I know, I know, next I'll tell you water is wet and the sun is made of burny stuff that is hot.  But it'll happen, and it'll be a big reason why...

 

Easiest call I made all year.

3) The Democrats will reclaim the Senate in 2020.  Those votes to acquit are going to wreck vulnerable GOP senators like Susan Collins, Cory Gardner, Martha McSally and Thom Tillis, and I think they're going to lose. A 50-50 tie with Biden winning means Biden's VP is the tiebreaker and the Dems will prevail...unless Joe Manchin switches parties or something. That's why I'm predicting Dems get 51 or 52 seats with Iowa's Joni Ernst losing, Pat Roberts's open seat in Kansas getting picked up, and Doug Jones holding on.

Hold on this one until next week.

 

4) Democrats keep the House.  Nancy Pelosi continues to outmaneuver the White House and I think high turnout in November will not only assure a Biden win, but a big House gain for Team Blue.

I'll take the win on this one,despite Dems losing a dozen seats.

5) The US Supreme Court will give states sweeping powers in rulings on abortion and discrimination.  I don't want to be right on this one, but I forsee a huge hole being blown in Roe and another in the Civil Rights Act as SCOTUS will come down on the side of letting states make their own rules on abortion clinic access and LGBTQ discrimination, and by January 1, 2021 it's entirely possible that there will be a dozen states with no abortion clinics, and there will be no protections for sexual orientation or gender identity at the federal level.

This has not happened.  Yet.

 

6) US Attorney General Bill Barr will announce indictments for James Comey and John Brennan. Trump has wanted these two heads for ages, and he's going to get them.  The court fights are going to be bad, but Trump rounding up FBI folks for personal revenge will be the last straw for a lot of voters.

Nope, and Barr actually resigned rather than doing this.

7) The Dow Jones will end up under 25,000 by December 31.  I don't think the recession will hit in 2020, but it'll definitely catch up to us next year. The global slowdown will be too much to overcome.

 

Another miss, the Dow did crash to 18K, but has climbed into positive territory for the year thanks to Mitch McConnell $6 trillion "COVID-19" giveaway.

8) Marvel movies will not rule the box office in 2020.  That's not to say parent company Disney won't have an incredible year again, with a pair of Pixar features (Onward, Soul), Harrison Ford starring in Call of the Wild based on the Jack London novel, and live action movies of Mulan and Jungle Cruise.  But of the three Marvel properties, New Mutants, Black Widow, and Eternals, I only see Black Widow breaking half a billion.

 

Only one was released, New Mutants, and it was a dud like everything this year, so yeah, Marvel definitely did not rule the box office in 2020.

9) Trump will finally get around to those pardons.  He'll have nothing to lose once, well, he loses.  Oh wait, he'll be headed for state cases against him and jail time, but in the meantime the pardons will be the least awful thing he does.

Boy did he ever turn pardons into a side business, full-on white-collar crime boss style.

10) And of course, ZVTS will make it through year 12.  It'll be thanks to all of you who have stuck with me since the 2008 primary race and through 4 presidential contests.

 

Yep. And this year was...bad.  But you're all still with me.

So, final score, 6-3 with one left to be determined. Not bad, considering the year we had.

My 2021 predictions will be up later today.

HoliDaze: He'll Always Be Terribly Popular

In a final reminder of how much of a garbage fire America is in 2020, Trump has finally edged out President Barack Obama as Gallup's most admired man.

President Trump has ended former President Obama's 12-year run as the most admired man in America, edging out his predecessor in the annual Gallup survey released Tuesday.

Eighteen percent of the survey's respondents named Trump as their most admired man, compared to 15 percent who named Obama and 6 percent who named President-elect Joe Biden. Three percent named National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci, while 2 percent chose Pope Francis.

Rounding out the top 10 were Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James and the Dalai Lama, all of whom received 1 percent.

The sitting U.S. president has been named the pollster’s most-admired man in 60 out of 74 years, including all eight years of Obama’s presidency and every year of George W. Bush’s presidency except for 2008. Trump had finished second to Obama in 2017 and 2018.

The 2020 rankings are the 10th time Trump has ranked among the top 10. Before entering the political sphere, he made the list in 1988, 1989, 1990 and 2011. Biden made only his second appearance in the top 10 after making the list in 2018.

Among Republicans surveyed, 48 percent of respondents named Trump as their most admired man. No other public figure got more than 2 percent Republican support, according to Gallup. Among independents, both Obama and Trump received 11 percent support. Fauci was the choice of 5 percent of Democrats but just 1 percent of Republicans.

 

Imagine being such a hate-filled, racist, ignorant, white supremacist pus-sack boil on humanity's rectum that you believe Donald Fucking Trump is the most "admired" man in the world.

Now imagine being that way for the rest of your life.

That's describing tens of millions of our neighbors, co-workers, and acquaintances, folks.

All happily ready to burn America down in the name of their "God-Emperor".

 

They're willing to give their lives for his beliefs.

 

One Louisiana Republican Congressman-elect already has.

Louisiana Congressman-elect Luke Letlow died Tuesday at Ochsner LSU Health in Shreveport from complications of COVID-19.

Letlow, 41, was transferred from St. Francis Medical Center to the Ochsner LSU Health ICU on Dec. 23 and has been treated there since then.

Letlow is survived by his wife, Julia Barnhill Letlow, and two young children — Jeremiah, 3, and Jacqueline, 11 months.

"The family appreciates the numerous prayers and support over the past days but asks for privacy during this difficult and unexpected time," spokesman Andrew Bautsch said in a statement. "A statement from the family along with funeral arrangements will be announced at a later time."

 

Letlow made a point of campaigning without masks at events, he caught COVID-19, he ended up in the hospital and died from a heart attack brought on by the disease's assault on his body. He leaves two young kids behind.

 

And Republicans already consider him a martyr who died for Trump.

 

 They are a cult now.

 

They are not going anywhere.