One of my favorite songs performed by Ray Charles is "Georgia on my mind".

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-white-house-correspondents-dinner-rally-a8858071.html

Another version that is worth listening to is the version that Usher sang at the White House in 2016:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c___lKiO1Bo

By the way, Obama is also a huge Ray Charles fan. At the same gathering, he and Usher sang together on stage:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4E9-crsKJVI

Tomorrow, Mark Kelly will be sworn in as the 48th senator, replacing March McSally, who was appointed to complete John McCain's term after she LOST her previous bid to Kyrsten Sinema. Like Trump, she is a two time loser, if you are counting the popular vote. The last time that Arizona had two Democratic senators was 1946, when Ernest McFarland and Carl Hayden were both in office.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_senators_from_Arizona

The current senatorial races in Georgia have been very close and will be settled in a run-off election on January 5.

A poll average done by 270 to win shows Ossoff with a narrow lead over Perdue.

https://www.270towin.com/2020-senate-polls/georgia/

Real Cleat Politics polls show that Pastor Warnock has a more substantial lead over Loeffler.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/senate/ga/georgia_senate_special_election_open_primary-7069.html#!

If you have been following this election closely, may have notices that both Perdue and Loeffler have recently been involved in insider trading controversies.

Loeffler and Perdue have released a panicky statement demanding that Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State resign immediately. In other words, Loeffler and Perdue don’t think they can win the runoff elections fair and square. They’re pinning their hopes on getting Georgia’s Secretary of State to resign, and hoping that his replacement will be more corrupt. But there’s no reason to believe the Secretary of State will resign just because these two turds said mean things about him.

Meanwhile, Kelly Loeffler’s coronavirus insider trading scandal just got even worse. David Perdue also appears to have criminal exposure in the insider trading scandal. The irony is that after Trump isn’t there to protect them anymore, Loeffler and Perdue could both eventually end up going to prison.

https://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/gop-senators-kelly-loeffler-and-david-perdue-hit-the-panic-button-ahead-of-georgia-runoff-elections/33893/

If both Warnock and Ossoff win, the makeup of the senate becomes 50-50, with Kamala Harris becoming the tie breaker vote.

Both of the Democrats will be getting help from an unexpected source this week, since Trump is planning to visit the state on December 5. The general consensus is that Trump's appearance will hurt, rather than help, the incumbent Republican senators, and he did not do them any favors when he criticized Brian Kemp a few days ago.

https://nypost.com/2020/11/26/trump-says-hes-heading-to-georgia-to-campaign-for-gop-senators/

The Daily Kos had several comments about the last paragraph this morning:

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/12/1/1999140/-Morning-Digest-Trump-takes-aim-at-another-disloyal-governor-and-may-foment-a-primary-challenge

Donald Trump's hostility toward yet another sitting Republican governor once again risks begetting yet another primary challenge: In a bonkers interview on Fox News on Sunday (which reporters for actual news outlets slammed as "propaganda"), Trump complained bitterly that Gov. Brian Kemp hadn't sought to overturn the results of Georgia's elections and moaned, "I'm ashamed that I endorsed him."

That outburst led the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Greg Bluestein to suggest that it "appears increasingly possible" a fellow Republican might seek to unseat Kemp in 2022, adding that "perhaps" outgoing Rep. Doug Collins could be the one to do it. Collins already lost his own challenge to a sitting GOP office-holder this year when he fell 6 points short of squeezing past Sen. Kelly Loeffler in the first round of Georgia's special election for the Senate. But Collins remains a favorite of Trump, who tapped him to lead his recount team in the state.

You may remember Collins from the House impeachment trial:

Dock:

These are great. I really miss a president who has a sense of humor.

I predict that Joe Biden will start attending the White House Correspondent's dinners.

Trump did not attend ANY as president.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-white-house-correspondents-dinner-rally-a8858071.html

The people surrounding Trump are just as crazy as he is.

Rudy Giuliani has been in the news a lot lately, but Sidney Powell is just as crazy.

Another one of Trump's lawyers who is not playing with a full deck is Joe di Genova, who said Monday that Christopher Krebs, the government’s former top election security official who rebutted Trump’s baseless claims about massive election fraud, should be “taken out at dawn and shot.”

Krebs, during an appearance Tuesday on NBC’s “Today” show, suggested he might take legal action in response to such comments.

“It’s certainly more dangerous language, more dangerous behavior,” he said. “We’re taking a look at all our available opportunities.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/12/01/joe-biden-trump-transition-live-updates/#link-QXHVOE5WLBFUPBRZSLVFKQK4SU

I read "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump" a while back, and a few of you have also done so.

In this morning's Arizona Republic, Bandy Lee, the lady who wrote the book, weighs in on what Trump is going to be like until January 20, 2021.

"As the world celebrated a Biden-Harris victory, mental health professionals braced for the two-and-a-half months that we deemed would be the most dangerous period of this presidency. Indeed, in just the days since announcement of election results, Donald Trump has refused to concede, has obstructed a peaceful transfer of power, has fired and replaced top officials responsible for the nation’s security, and has contemplated catastrophic war. All this is on top of ignoring a surging pandemic that is now infecting more than 150,000 per day and killing more than 1,500 Americans per day."

" Whereas I consider it unethical for a medical professional to opine on whether or not the 25th Amendment should be invoked — it is not within the boundaries of our expertise — we as mental health professionals can and should say if a president must be removed for public health and safety reasons, whatever the means. Indeed, thousands of mental health professionals have joined together in this assessment since the start of this presidency, with more than 800 petitioning Congress about the dangers almost a year ago, and, more recently, 100 senior mental health professionals going on video record to declare the current president too psychologically dangerous and mentally unfit to be in the presidency or candidacy for reelection. We recently published more than 300 pages of our letters, petitions, and conference transcripts in an attempt to alert the authorities. When these did not have effect, we reconvened top experts in the fields of law, history, political science, economics, journalism, social psychology, climate science and nuclear science at an emergency interdisciplinary conference, to follow up on a meeting with the same speakers at the National Press Club in early 2019, with the full three hours broadcast on C-SPAN.

https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/2020/11/23/trump-mentally-unfit-president-column/6382407002/?itm_medium=recirc&itm_source=taboola&itm_campaign=internal&itm_content=BelowHomepageFeed-FeedRedesign

wwjd Wrote:

The book is about to be released, but selected parts have been pre-released. Most of the sources are those closest to the president. AKA... not just one deep throat, but many.

washingtonpost.com/politics/white-house...

Listen to the recording between Trump and Woodward.

Bottomline: Trump is legally unfit to be president. He is mentally and emotional unstable. His own legal team classifies as a pathological liar and sociopath . He has been involved in Mob type criminal activities for decades.

It's becoming a joke when trump say "Oh you wrote about book about me? Nobody told me about it. How come you didn't interview me". It code words for "I fucking lying to you". It's trump's pathetic attempt to create plausible denial, but its a bit like a little kid caught with chocolate cake all in his mouth and all over his face, while pointing to the family dog as the guilty party.

Woodward's next book, "Rage" was recently released - and I got my copy at the library this morning.

Although I plan to read the entire book, the summary on the jacket cover provides an excellent summary:

Here's a few snippets:

"Trump's head pops up when he is told in January 2020 that the pandemic could reach the scale oft he 1918 Spanish flu that killed 675.000 Americans"

"Mattis, Tillerson, and Coats struggled to keep the country safe as the president dismantled any semblance of collegial national security decision making"

"Trump insists to Woodward he will triumph over COVID-19 and the economic calamity"

Woodward obtained copies of the 25 personal letters between Trump and Kim, and described the bond between the two as "out of a fantasy film".

Being a lame duck president has made Trump even loonier.

His interview with FOX on Sunday proves that he is one taco short of a combination plate.

In a phone interview on Sunday with host Maria Bartiromo, the soon-to-be-former president used the opportunity to tote his usual baseless allegations of voter fraud. He went from suggesting that the FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ) are involved in a conspiracy against him to alleging that dead people applied for mail-in ballots and poll watchers were thrown out of counting rooms by “thugs” in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin, and Nevada.

If you listen to the three videos in the link below, it's obvious that he needs to be housed in a padded room so that he doesn't hurt himself.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/11/29/1998842/--Thugs-Trump-resorts-to-namecalling-in-first-televised-interview-since-losing-election?detail=emaildkre

Close.

The translation is actually "they've all been hit by the windmill and gone completely mad".

I published the article below more than 5 years ago, and somebody someplace in the world read it yesterday.

It's an interesting piece for two reasons:

1) You can see Trump with his actual hair

2) A link (from the Atlantic magazine) within the story explains why Trump had a commanding lead over the other Republican candidates at that time.

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2015/10/donald-trump-is-buffoon.html

In October of 2015, Trump polled ahead of everyone else because (1) he was tough on immigration (no surprise) and

(2) because he was MORE LIKELY TO RAISE TAXES ON RICH PEOPLE.

He made good on the first part by hiring Stephen Miller, but the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 made a mockery of his second promise, since wealthy Americans cut their taxes cut, not raised.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/10/the-potential-and-limitations-of-the-trump-coalition/408742/

An article in the Quora Digest explains WHY Trump has had such a high turnover:

"I recommend Michael Lewis’s excellent book “The Fifth Risk” which describes in detail how bad the transition was.

The problem is, it was all Trump’s fault.

Chris Christie tried to warn Trump that under federal law, he had to start vetting presidential appointees before the election and convinced Trump that (1) it was a good idea to comply with federal law and (2) if he didn’t do it it would look like he was conceding the election. However, after Christie did some excellent work, Trump found out the process had cost $2 million of “his money” and disbanded it.

For example, at the Department of Energy in 2008, staff welcomed 30 of Obama’s transition team the day after the election and gave them full briefing books. They also prepared briefing books for Romney’s team in 2012, but never used them.

On November 7, 2016, the DoE was shocked that Trump had won but was still ready to greet Trump’s team with full briefing books. However, no-one showed up. No-one showed up the next day either. Or the day after that. The following week, DoE staff got in touch with Trump’s team to ask when someone would be coming. They weren’t told.

Eventually, Rick Perry showed up, alone, in early December. It was clear he thought the DoE was involved with oil, gas and coal. He had proposed disbanding it. That day, Perry found out the DoE mostly regulates nuclear energy and nuclear materials, including tracking bomb-making material. Perry was visibly shocked by the news and never questioned the function of the DoE again.

Trump met Obama soon after the election and mentioned he was looking forward to working with Obama’s White House staff. For some reason, no-one in Trump’s campaign had bothered to explain to him that all the White House staff was leaving with Obama and he had to find about 2,000 people to replace them. It was left to Obama to break the news. Trump was visibly shocked.

In total, the president gets to choose 6,000 posts in the government, from the cabinet on down. Trump only ever bothered to appoint 4,000 people and left several key posts, like the ambassador to South Korea, vacant."

The current issue of the Atlantic magazine mentioned that a new book about the separation of church and state was recently published. It's called "The Religion Clauses". and I just put it on reserve at my local library.

"The relationship between the government and religion is deeply divisive. With the recent changes in the composition of the Supreme Court, the First Amendment law concerning religion is likely to change dramatically in the years ahead. The Court can be expected to reject the idea of a wall separating church and state and permit much more religious involvement in government and government support for religion. The Court is also likely to expand the rights of religious people to ignore legal obligations that others have to follow, such laws that require the provision of health care benefits to employees and prohibit businesses from discriminating against people because of their sexual orientation. This book argues for the opposite and the need for separating church and state. After carefully explaining all the major approaches to the meaning of the Constitution's religion clauses, the book argues that the best approaches are for the government to be strictly secular and for there to be no special exemptions for religious people from neutral and general laws that others must obey. The book argues that this separationist approach is most consistent with the concerns of the founders who drafted the Constitution and with the needs of a religiously pluralistic society in the 21st century"-- Provided by publisher.