Politics

In one sense, the two runoff elections taking place in Georgia on Tuesday are relatively simple. If Democrats win both of the seats that are up for grabs, they gain control of the Senate. Anything less than that and they don’t. A Republican sweep of the seats means Joe Biden will begin his presidency alongside a 52-48 GOP Senate majority. Nothing is that simple in the strangest White House transition process on record, however. As with so much else over the past four years, President Trump looms large. He has not conceded the presidential race and Georgia is one of the states where he is contesting the results, even though that puts him at odds with local Republican elected officials.

Steve Bannon’s plan to build a great populist ‘movement’ in Europe hasn’t quite yet come to fruition. But the former White House chief strategist has formed an interesting relationship with Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, a former Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, who these days talks as if he’s been avidly listening to Bannon’s War Room podcast instead of reciting the rosary. The two men have just released an extraordinary interview, in which the prelate describes the connections between what he calls the global ‘Deep State’, that serves China’s interests, and the ‘Deep Church’, led by Bergoglio — or, as most the world knows him, Pope Francis I.

Like most Greek stories, the tale of Pandora’s box is fraught with ambiguity. Most of us, when we first encounter the story, learn that it is a fable about the dangers of curiosity, not unlike the story ‘of man’s first disobedience, and the Fruit/ of that Forbidden Tree’. As Eve sneaked the apple, so Pandora took the lid off a box that she was forbidden to peek inside. Bang! Death, illness, famine and all the other miseries of the world escaped to blight man’s life, leaving behind only hope as a sort of consolation prize. But is hope a consolation? Or is it a subtler, more insinuating evil?

The American middle class is in a precarious position. After decades of decline — the percentage of Americans in the middle class fell by 10 points between 1971 and and 2011 — the most important income group in the country seemed to be stabilizing. That likely won't be the case much longer if the government-ordered economic shutdown continues to put the squeeze on everyday Americans. The middle class was largely left out of the conversation as politicians and pundits spent months debating a second round of COVID relief. Republicans re-discovered their fleeting affair with fiscal conservatism, advocating for slashing unemployment insurance bonuses and sneering at the idea of more substantial stimulus checks, both of which would provide huge benefit to middle income earners.

In a speech to the Federalist Society in November, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito reiterated his concern that ‘in certain quarters, religious liberty is fast becoming a disfavored right’. Small wonder that the subject was on his mind. A week earlier, the Court had heard oral arguments in the latest religious-liberty case, Fulton v. City of Philadelphia. In it, Catholic Social Services — one of some 30 agencies used by the city to place foster children in private homes — claimed religious exemption for its policy of placing kids in traditional mom-and-dad family settings. So far, one might think, so unremarkable: a Catholic agency conforms its good works to Catholic principles. But what about nontraditional couples — like those of the same sex?

How many passes does Anthony Fauci get? How many times must he be categorically wrong before people stop ogling his every facial expression and treating him as some sort of minor deity? Let me state unequivocally that enough is enough and it’s time for him to step aside. ​He won’t, of course. He’ll sit for magazine covers, attend sporting events the rest of us don’t get to go to, perhaps take CBS up on their offer to appear on Dancing with the Stars or sign a multi-year cable news contract. As COVID-19 tears through the country, and more importantly, through the parts of the country like California where elected officials worship Fauci like a sun-god, he continues his tour of the television studios. He continues to mislead the public.

At the end of the day, the votes cast and counted determine who wins and who loses. Though it might be the case that many people cast ballots in 2020 who weren’t eligible to do so for one reason or another, putting that horse back into the barn after the election is nearly impossible. The vote totals in seven Ohio counties shows why Donald Trump barely lost the election to Joe Biden while Republicans down ticket did extremely well. Republican congressman Troy Balderson’s 12th Congressional District encompasses parts of heavily-Democratic Franklin County (Columbus and its suburbs) along with six other suburban and rural counties north and east of Franklin County. Those counties include: Delaware, Licking, Marion, Morrow, Muskingum and Richland.

You’ve succeeded in business, made it as a TV star and got yourself elected president. What could possibly top that? Donald Trump may have stumbled on the answer. He has, perhaps accidentally, become a religious leader. Christianity has always played a major role in US politics. What’s new about Trump is the fervor he excites in his supporters, and how easily it can be combined with a kind of religious devotion. Trump fans bring crucifixes and rosaries to his rallies.

It’s been a month since the President pardoned a turkey, so why pardon a flock of them now? Presidential pardons and commutations may be lawful and traditional, and the conduct of government agencies in the Trump years has certainly confirmed that presidential fiat might be fairer than the Justice Department. But some of the names in Trump’s flurry of pre-Christmas pardons smack of the Washington insider-trading that Trump has decried — and suggest we might be better off with no pardons at all.There are exceptional cases, of course, but they are rare. The necessity of Andrew Johnson pardoning Confederate combatants after the Civil War is obvious.

If you were called upon to invent the human antithesis of rock and roll, you couldn’t do better than our nation’s 37th president, Richard Nixon. Habitually clad in a funereally dark suit and dress shoes, even when strolling on the beach, Nixon’s tastes in music ran to the semi-classical strains of Mantovani and the Boston Pops, and a penchant for sitting alone at night brooding to Wagner. I once asked the legendary White House fixer Gordon Liddy what his chief thought, if anything, about pop music. ‘Crap,’ Liddy replied succinctly. In late 1970, the 57-year-old Nixon was at something of a low point. A combination of the continuing war in Vietnam and domestic economic woes proved disastrous for the GOP in that November’s midterm elections.

President Donald Trump is the best. I already thought he was great, but I became even more convinced of his genius when I saw the updated rules on clothes washers, dryers, and showerheads issued by the Department of Energy on December 15, 2020 (new rules on dishwashers came out recently as well). The new regulations relax stringent regulations on the amount of water and energy consumption permitted in household fixtures and appliances, which save energy but impair functionality.I hear you thinking: do minor regulations on laundry, dishes and showers belong on the measuring stick of presidential greatness? It’s a fair point: the gallons of water per minute issuing from the average Joe’s showerhead aren’t on a par with peace in the Middle East.

The world has many island nations, and sometimes the United States counts itself among them. We have water on either side of us, and though we share our big island with Canada and Mexico, neither poses any threat. America is immune to invasion, a castle surrounded by the safest of moats. This wasn’t always so, and it isn’t really true today, unless we forget about Hawaii and our Pacific and Caribbean territories, most of which would be easy prey for other states if they weren’t under our sovereignty. In the earliest days of the republic, we shared the North American continent with outposts of Europe’s leading powers: France, Russia, Spain and Britain.

Have you met Tina? You may have seen her this month leading a charge outside Mac’s Public House on Staten Island, protesting a second wave of economic terrorism against small business owners enacted by Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo.The fiery, bombastic blond with the thick New York accent and colorful vocabulary has shown up at anti-lockdown events across the city, broadcasting footage to her 206,000 Twitter followers at a time when everyday New York Republicans are having a bit of time in the spotlight. https://twitter.com/RealTina40/status/1335652275532992512 A couple of years ago, the city cheered Vickie Paladino, a mom from Queens who was driving home one day and saw de Blasio surrounded by reporters on the street.

Tulsi Gabbard will retire from Congress at the end of the year. The Hawaii representative is going out with a bang, introducing several bills that show why she is so despised by her establishment Democratic counterparts — and why she could potentially become a very powerful broker in the American political realignment. Last week, Gabbard introduced the Protect Women's Sports Act, legislation that would prevent biological men from competing in women's sports. Gabbard understands that keeping men and women's sports separate is a question of basic fairness for female athletes — Chelsea Mitchell, a high-school track runner, for example, has lost out on four state titles because she's had to compete against two individuals who were born male.