Georgia

President Joe Biden delivered one of the worst and most widely condemned speeches of his presidency earlier this week in Georgia while lobbying for a federal takeover of elections. He asserted that Americans who do not support the Democrats' bill are "domestic enemies" who stand on the side of segregationist George Wallace. White House press secretary Jen Psaki defended the unifier-in-chief on Wednesday by asserting that Biden's foes had nothing to say about former President Donald Trump's controversial use of language. "I know there have been a lot of claims of the offensive nature of the speech yesterday, which is hilarious on many levels, given how many people sat silently over the last four years for the former president," Psaki argued.

The jurors who convicted the killers of Ahmaud Arbery delivered accountability after a shocking crime, prosecutorial misconduct and an often disappointing trial. Their just verdict was based on foundational constitutional principles, the law and the facts. Travis McMichael, Gregory McMichael and William Bryan chased down and killed the unarmed Arbery as he jogged through the residential neighborhood of Brunswick, Georgia. Bryan filmed the attack, which culminated in Travis McMichael firing a shotgun at point blank range at Arbery. For nearly two months, prosecutors refused to file charges or even arrest the killers. Then Bryan’s film was leaked, a public uproar ensued, and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation took over the case.

The Supreme Court upheld two Arizona voting laws on Thursday in a case that could have major implications for election integrity across the country. The two Arizona laws at stake in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee prohibited ballot harvesting — which most commonly refers to political operatives collecting voters's ballots en masse and turning them in to polling places on their behalf — and tossed ballots that were cast in the wrong precinct. The DNC argued in its initial lawsuit that the laws violated the Voting Rights Act because they were discriminatory against minorities and did not appear to prevent voter fraud.

We live in the wackiest of times, when woke corporate leaders should propagandize for promoting 'racial equity'. They tried it in Georgia, to no avail. The state passed a law to improve a haphazard, disorderly voting process shaped (or unshaped) by pandemic requirements. The heads of two Georgia-based corporations, Coca-Cola and Delta Airlines, scowled. Their finger-wagging lectures to non-woke state leaders were absurd but much publicized. Major League Baseball wasn’t going to put up with being ignored on a matter unrelated to game length and such like. In a door-slamming, cat-kicking snit, MLB announced it was moving the All-Star Game from Atlanta, capital of the offending state, to Denver. Take that, all you Trump fans!

When Major League Baseball announced the removal of their All-Star Game from Atlanta, their statement directly referenced President Biden’s own statement Georgia's voter ID law being 'Jim Crow on steroids’. Thus sports becomes even more politicized. But Major League Baseball, so eager as it has been to follow corporations such as Coca-Cola and Delta, so eager to signal to corporate America that it is 'on the right side of history', may not have thought this move through. By embracing a long laundry list of mostly proven false grievances from liberal activists — claims that were then laundered through cable and web/print media — the MLB finds itself embroiled in a row it should have nothing to do with concerning mail-in voting in Georgia, and now Colorado.

The Washington Post issued a mammoth correction this week on a story about Donald Trump's search for election fraud. The paper had admitted that they misquoted the former president twice. WaPo’s botched story is a cautionary tale of what happens when political biases cloud reportage and a reminder of why public trust in the media is so low. The original story, which was reported in January and written by Amy Gardner, broke the news that Trump had a December phone call with Georgia's top election investigator about the 2020 presidential election results. The scoop was sourced to an 'individual briefed on the call', who claimed Trump urged the official to 'find the fraud' and promised she'd be a 'national hero' if she did so.

Not long ago I attended a gathering of young White House and congressional Republican staffers. Conversation turned, as you might expect, to the prospects for the GOP in Georgia’s two Senate runoff races in January — races that will swing control of the chamber if Democrats win them both. Only one young man dared to say the unsayable: not only would the GOP lose those races, but it should lose those races for the party’s own good. His points were sharp, even if no one was entirely persuaded. There would indeed be a silver lining to losing the Senate majority, and while few Republicans will wish for that, Trump voters will have some consolation if David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler go down next month.

For all the caterwauling on the left about one William P. Barr, he hasn’t really delivered for Donald Trump, apart from performing some fancy footwork on the release of the Mueller report. The latest affront arrived today when Barr declared that he has discovered nary a shred of evidence of voter fraud. Presumably, Barr searched high and low, like one of those fanatics you see using wearing headphones and deploying metal detectors to sweep a grassy era for precious metals or valuables. But he arrived at the conclusion that 'to date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election’.To be sure, Barr was careful to specify 'to date’, suggesting that perhaps something might yet emerged.

Right-wingers on social media are calling for Trump supporters to refuse to vote for Republican candidates Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue in the Georgia Senate race. Instead, tweets with the tag #boycottGArunoff are encouraging voters angry at alleged fraud in the presidential race to write in President Trump for both seats. The instruction is a bit confusing since Georgia law does not even accept write-in candidates for a runoff election. A protest vote in this case might make someone feel better, but it won’t be counted and we’ll have no idea how many people actually opted to ‘boycott’ the election. There is a reason Newsmax’s Joe Pinion dubbed the Georgia boycott his ‘whiff of the week’ on his show Saturday.

Control of the Senate is going to come down to two January 5 runoffs in Georgia. Sen. David Perdue came a hair’s breadth from winning his race against Jon Ossoff outright, but ultimately fell just short of 50 percent plus one. Sen. Kelly Loeffler will face off against the Rev. Raphael Warnock to complete the term of former Sen. Johnny Isakson (the reward for the winner is running again in two years for the full term). Somewhat surprisingly, articles discussing these races have framed the races to claim that Republicans are favored in both. Politico declares that Democrats begin behind the eight ball, while other pieces casually cast Republicans as 'likely' or 'probable' victors in the Peach State. I’m not sure that is correct.

With the last dominoes of Georgia and Pennsylvania falling, there is now clarity on the 2020 election cycle. Based on all of the data available at the time and, more fundamentally, the political antennae cultivated over the last three decades, I predicted Donald Trump would be reelected with a 305 to 233 electoral vote victory. My presidential tally was wrong. Joe Biden will secure at least 306 electoral votes, assuming North Carolina also doesn’t fall when final numbers are released next week.But (there is always a but), in my defense, I was also right.

As of 1:00 a.m. on Election Night, assuming Montana and Alaska go to Donald Trump and Nevada goes to Joe Biden, the presidential race sits at a standstill with Joe Biden at 243 electoral votes and Donald Trump at 216 electoral votes. Ignoring the single electoral votes in Maine and Nebraska, that leaves five states left to be awarded. The focus over the next two days will be on how many votes are left to count compared to what the current margins between the two candidates are in those states.Here is a breakdown and what Biden needs to do to overcome the Trump leads in the remaining five states, with my prediction on what likely will occur:Georgia (16 electoral votes)With 82 percent of precincts reporting, Trump leads by 310,107 votes out of 4,108,591 total votes cast.

The coronavirus doomsayers could not even wait until the fall for the apocalyptic announcements of the dreaded second wave. Because the red states recklessly loosened their lockdowns, we are now told, the US is seeing a dangerous spike in coronavirus cases. ‘EXPERTS SKETCH GLOOMY PICTURE OF VIRUS SPREAD: FAUCI TELLS OF “DISTURBING” WAVE, WITH A VACCINE MONTHS AWAY,’ read the front-page lead headline in the New York Times on Wednesday. ‘VIRUS SPREAD AKIN TO “FOREST FIRE”’ read another front page headline in the Los Angeles Times on Monday, quoting Michael Osterholm, one of the media’s favorite public health experts.

‘You don’t run for second place.’ That’s how Stacey Abrams responded when asked if she would consider being presidential hopeful Joe Biden’s running mate during a March 2019 interview on ABC’s The View. Annoyed at the posed hypothetical, the 2018 Democratic Georgia gubernatorial candidate’s answer lacked a basic understanding of her place in the Democratic party. But now, a short year later, Abrams is making it abundantly clear to anyone who is willing to listen: she is absolutely, passionately and gracelessly running for second place, so help her God.