Is Georgia on your mind?

[ZiprHead]

CNN-Attorney who assisted Trump on call with Georgia officials resigns from law firm

Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who assisted President Donald Trump on the January 2 call when Trump pressured Georgia officials to "find" him votes, has resigned from her law firm.

National law firm Foley & Lardner previously said it was "concerned" with Mitchell's involvement in Trump's call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, and said the firm wasn't engaged in any legal work challenging the election results. Tuesday, it announced Mitchell was no longer with the firm.

"Cleta Mitchell has informed firm management of her decision to resign from Foley & Lardner effective immediately. Ms. Mitchell concluded that her departure was in the firm's best interests, as well as in her own personal best interests," firm spokesman Dan Farrell said in a statement Tuesday. "We thank her for her contributions to the firm and wish her well."

Mitchell told her friends and clients on Tuesday in a personal email that she had left her law firm after almost two decades, blaming "a massive pressure campaign in the last several days mounted by leftist groups" against her, the firm and her clients stemming from her affiliation with Trump and his post-election litigation and efforts in Georgia.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Ya ... she informed THEM of her decision to resign. That's definitely the way it happened.

 

[ZiprHead]

Tyler Perry was in Wyoming and didn't get his absentee ballot. So he flew back home to Georgia just to vote.

Good on him.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Tyler Perry was in Wyoming and didn't get his absentee ballot. So he flew back home to Georgia just to vote.

Good on him.

He still managed to produce two movies and write a script for a third while flying to Georgia. That guy is a machine!

 

[southernhybrid]

Stacey's revenge! Bwahhahahahaha

https://www.ajc.com/politics/politics-blog/abrams-revenge-warnocks-victory-a-direct-blow-to-her-rival-kemp/ZLMYY73FWBE23FBJ75K6WJD5K4/

A few weeks after Stacey Abrams narrowly lost her bid for governor, she spoke to a sold-out crowd in Nashville about her journey from despondency to determination.


“Revenge,” she said, “can be very cathartic.”

As Georgians awoke to a new political landscape on Wednesday, Abrams can claim payback against Gov. Brian Kemp, her once-and-probable-future rival.

Abrams spent much of the past decade constructing the statewide apparatus that laid the groundwork for Democratic successes, including Joe Biden’s victory in November. She built the Fair Fight voting rights group into one of Georgia’s foremost political powers after her 2018 loss.

And after passing on a U.S. Senate run herself, she recruited the Rev. Raphael Warnock to run for the open seat against Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler – Kemp’s hand-picked selection for the seat.

I have to admit that I was disappointed when Stacey endorsed Warnock, but as usual, Stacey is the smartest one in the room. She knew exactly what she was doing. And, while Warnock would never have been my first choice, This atheist is thrilled that we will have our first Black Senator, even if he does happen to be a Baptist minister. Once Ossoff wins, Moscow Mitch will no longer control which bills are brought to the floor and that's the best thing I've heard all year. Of course those on the furtherest edges of the Left in Congress won't get their way very often, but at least the Senate will have the opportunity to vote on a lot of bills that Moscow Mitch refused to bring to the floor. That makes me very happy.

It's almost certain that Ossoff will not only win, it's expected that he will win by more than .5%, so Perdue can whine all he wants, but if he loses by more than .5%, there will be no recount.

 

[ZiprHead]

This atheist is thrilled that we will have our first Black Senator, even if he does happen to be a Baptist minister.

Considering all the asshole evangelicals on the right in congress, this really doesn't bother me.

 

[ZiprHead]

Now it comes out.

U.S. Attorney In Georgia Replaced ‘By Written Order Of The President’

The U.S. Department of Justice announced a new acting U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia Tuesday after the previous attorney resigned unexpectedly following President Donald Trump’s controversial phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, raising new questions about the reasons behind the shakeup.

Former U.S. Attorney Byung J. “BJay” Pak, who Trump appointed to the position in 2017, resigned Monday, days after Trump referred to a “never-Trumper U.S. attorney” in his controversial phone call with Raffensperger attempting to overturn the election results.

Pak did not give a reason for his departure, and Talking Points Memo, which first reported his departure and replacement, reports he had “previously indicated” he would not leave the position until President-elect Joe Biden takes office Jan. 20.

Pak was replaced by Bobby L. Christine, who is already serving as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Georgia and will now oversee both districts.

Christine, who Trump appointed to the Southern District in 2017, was appointed to the Northern District position Monday “by written order of the president,” the Justice Department’s website notes.

Appointing Christie(sic) to the position instead of the assistant U.S. attorney—who is a career DOJ prosecutor, rather than a Trump appointee—is unusual, former federal prosecutor Jennifer Rodgers told Law & Crime, as it’s traditional for an attorney’s successor to be a deputy from within their office.

 

[southernhybrid]

Now it comes out.

U.S. Attorney In Georgia Replaced ‘By Written Order Of The President’

The U.S. Department of Justice announced a new acting U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia Tuesday after the previous attorney resigned unexpectedly following President Donald Trump’s controversial phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, raising new questions about the reasons behind the shakeup.

Former U.S. Attorney Byung J. “BJay” Pak, who Trump appointed to the position in 2017, resigned Monday, days after Trump referred to a “never-Trumper U.S. attorney” in his controversial phone call with Raffensperger attempting to overturn the election results.

Pak did not give a reason for his departure, and Talking Points Memo, which first reported his departure and replacement, reports he had “previously indicated” he would not leave the position until President-elect Joe Biden takes office Jan. 20.

Pak was replaced by Bobby L. Christine, who is already serving as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Georgia and will now oversee both districts.

Christine, who Trump appointed to the Southern District in 2017, was appointed to the Northern District position Monday “by written order of the president,” the Justice Department’s website notes.

Appointing Christie(sic) to the position instead of the assistant U.S. attorney—who is a career DOJ prosecutor, rather than a Trump appointee—is unusual, former federal prosecutor Jennifer Rodgers told Law & Crime, as it’s traditional for an attorney’s successor to be a deputy from within their office.

Considering that TRump will soon be gone, I don't see that as too much of a problem. Trump is just a whining baby and a sore loser. It still amazes me how so many people were taken in by an incompetent grifter.

 

[TomC]

I have to admit that I was disappointed when Stacey endorsed Warnock, but as usual, Stacey is the smartest one in the room. She knew exactly what she was doing. And, while Warnock would never have been my first choice, This atheist is thrilled that we will have our first Black Senator, even if he does happen to be a Baptist minister.

I wondered about this myself. Since you obviously know far more about these folks than I, I'll just ask.
Is Warnock more like the raging evangelical Christians who seem to want political power? Or the kind of Christian who's faith is deep, but personal? I've known plenty of Christians who fall into the latter category. Some of the kindest, most inclusive, most secular people I know.
Tom

 

[laughing dog]

I think Reverend Warnock and Mr. Ossof should personally thank President Trump for all his help in their campaigns.

 

[lpetrich]

More from 538:

Perry Bacon Jr.:

“Will we love our neighbors as ourselves?” says Warnock, in one of several biblical references in his speech. This is a very COVID-19-era speech, as he is wearing a suit and tie but speaking from what looks like his home office. Warnock makes numerous references to his parents and Dr. King. He’s giving a very personal speech that sounded more like a sermon than a political address. “God bless you, Georgia, and God bless these United States of America,” he concludes.

Will a lot of right-wingers become born-again secularists?

Geoffrey Skelley:

One takeaway from the results tonight is that Republican fears seem to have materialized when it came to runoff turnout. They were concerned that their base voters might not be as motivated to turn out because of Trump’s rhetoric surrounding election fraud and the legitimacy of the vote in November. There was a lag in early voting in heavily Republican areas, such as northwest Georgia, so the GOP hoped that Election Day turnout would make up for it. However, if we look at counties where 99 percent of the expected vote has been reported, it seems Republicans were right to be worried. As the chart below shows, the more heavily a county backed Trump in the November general election, the more its runoff turnout tended to drop relative the general.

From an hour ago:

• RW-KL: NYT Prediction: +2.0 (+1.2 to +3) Current: +1.23 - Estimate: +1.41 +1.75
• JO-DP: NYT Prediction: +1.1 (<+0.5 to +1.9) Current: +0.39 - Estimate: +0.57 +0.91

The estimates were derived from the fractions of votes counted by county, using those counties' candidate margins. This estimate is for about 19,000 uncounted votes, so I scaled to 60,000 uncounted votes by multiplying by 3 for a second estimate.

 

[jab]

CNN-Attorney who assisted Trump on call with Georgia officials resigns from law firm

Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who assisted President Donald Trump on the January 2 call when Trump pressured Georgia officials to "find" him votes, has resigned from her law firm.

National law firm Foley & Lardner previously said it was "concerned" with Mitchell's involvement in Trump's call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, and said the firm wasn't engaged in any legal work challenging the election results. Tuesday, it announced Mitchell was no longer with the firm.

"Cleta Mitchell has informed firm management of her decision to resign from Foley & Lardner effective immediately. Ms. Mitchell concluded that her departure was in the firm's best interests, as well as in her own personal best interests," firm spokesman Dan Farrell said in a statement Tuesday. "We thank her for her contributions to the firm and wish her well."

Mitchell told her friends and clients on Tuesday in a personal email that she had left her law firm after almost two decades, blaming "a massive pressure campaign in the last several days mounted by leftist groups" against her, the firm and her clients stemming from her affiliation with Trump and his post-election litigation and efforts in Georgia.

View attachment 31149

one ringy-dingy, two ringy-dingys 3ringy-di--Hello. Hello, you could lose your job and be disbarred for this.

 

[lpetrich]

From recently:

• RW-KL: NYT Prediction: +2.0 (+1.2 to +3) Current: +1.24 - Estimate: +1.43 +1.80
• JO-DP: NYT Prediction: +1.1 (<+0.5 to +1.9) Current: +0.40 - Estimate: +0.57 +0.91

The counties with the largest fractions uncounted are Henry (S Atlanta, 94% counted, 98K total, 72K abs), DeKalb (E Atlanta, 97% counted, 328K total, 263K abs), and Chatham (Savannah, 98% counted, 116K total, 70K abs). All the others the NYT lists as >98%.


Mike Baker: Trump is falsely claiming that officials “just happened to find 50,000 ballots” in Georgia. Gabriel Sterling, a Republican election official in the state, says the claim is untrue.
Fourteen days and he's gone.

Shalia Dewan: If he wins, Jon Ossoff would be the youngest Democratic senator elected since … Joe Biden.
He's 33, a little above the Constitutional minimum age of 30.

Shalia Dewan: It’s worth remembering that Warnock will have to run for re-election in two years. Whoever wins the Ossoff-Perdue race will serve a full term of six years.

Me: That's because Senators' terms are staggered, with about equal numbers in each "class" of Senators. Class I Senators are elected in years 6n+2, Class II in years 6n+4, and Class III in years 6n (6n + 6).
JO will be a Class II Senator and RP a Class III one.


Glenn Thrush: Speaking to a gathering of die-hard fans near the White House, Trump seemed to concede that the G.O.P. Senate candidates had lost, telling the crowd that “they never had a shot.”

 

[ZiprHead]

 

[lpetrich]

I would also like to express my appreciation for the Libertarian in the General Election. Without them, this wouldn't have been possible. Always nice to have a spoiler hurt the other side every once in a long while.

This is the most historic thing about all of this. Unless I'm mistaken, it represents the very first time in history that a libertarian actually did something useful.

There was an earlier time: in the general elections last November, when Jo Jorgensen, the Libertarian candidate for President, likely drew off enough right-leaning votes to let Joe Biden win in GA, AZ, and/or WI.

 2020 United States presidential election

• GA: mrg 0.24 lib 1.24 frac 19%
• AZ: mrg 0.31 lib 1.52 frac 20%
• WI: mrg 0.63 lib 1.17 frac 54%
• PA: mrg 1.16 lib 1.15 frac 101%

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Now it comes out.

U.S. Attorney In Georgia Replaced ‘By Written Order Of The President’

The U.S. Department of Justice announced a new acting U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia Tuesday after the previous attorney resigned unexpectedly following President Donald Trump’s controversial phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, raising new questions about the reasons behind the shakeup.

Former U.S. Attorney Byung J. “BJay” Pak, who Trump appointed to the position in 2017, resigned Monday, days after Trump referred to a “never-Trumper U.S. attorney” in his controversial phone call with Raffensperger attempting to overturn the election results.

Pak did not give a reason for his departure, and Talking Points Memo, which first reported his departure and replacement, reports he had “previously indicated” he would not leave the position until President-elect Joe Biden takes office Jan. 20.

Pak was replaced by Bobby L. Christine, who is already serving as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Georgia and will now oversee both districts.

Christine, who Trump appointed to the Southern District in 2017, was appointed to the Northern District position Monday “by written order of the president,” the Justice Department’s website notes.

Appointing Christie(sic) to the position instead of the assistant U.S. attorney—who is a career DOJ prosecutor, rather than a Trump appointee—is unusual, former federal prosecutor Jennifer Rodgers told Law & Crime, as it’s traditional for an attorney’s successor to be a deputy from within their office.

Considering that TRump will soon be gone, I don't see that as too much of a problem. Trump is just a whining baby and a sore loser. It still amazes me how so many people were taken in by an incompetent grifter.

Respectfully, that is exactly what folks need to get past, that false expectancy that despite a person's behavior they will somehow one day just blossom into that perfect flower of freedom and open mindedness. What you see is what you get until what you see changes.

 

[lpetrich]

Jonathan Martin: Even before polls closed in Georgia, Republicans were grumbling that a “check-and-balance” message had tested well in polling — but it required the G.O.P. candidates to say Trump lost.

Shows what an own goal it was to talk about massive election fraud. Voter turnout went down by fraction of Trump support.

In football and similar sports, one is supposed to get a ball into one's opponent team's goal. Getting it into one's own is going the wrong way.

Georgia Senate: Trump completes his immolation of the Republican Party - "Loeffler and Perdue could have easily coaxed conservative voters to the polls, but Trump rushed in with a blowtorch and demands to reverse his own loss."

Georgia test: Are Martin Luther King and Raphael Warnock Christians?

Warnock is the Baptist son of Pentecostal preachers. He earned three graduate degrees, including a Ph.D., from Union Theological Seminary in New York. Since 2005, he has been the Senior Pastor at Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, where King and his father both commanded the pulpit. Like them, he preaches a social gospel Christianity that emphasizes not only personal spiritual transformation but also the sort of concern for the poor and the disinherited that is palpable in the Old Testament prophets and the slave spirituals. Christianity’s purpose is not just to save individual souls, he argues, it is to work to improve the lives of the poor and the oppressed here and now.

Is this Christianity?

Republicans define 'Christian' as them

Loeffler and her supporters say no. In an election cycle in which Senate Republicans have insisted that Supreme Court nominees should never be asked about their religious commitments, they argue that the religious commitments Reverend Warnock shares with Dr. King are disqualifying. They say that his social gospel is socialism. They say that this man of God is a “radical” and an “extremist.”

Critics called King an extremist, too, prompting him to ask in his now iconic “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” “Was not Jesus an extremist for love?” Yes, King wrote. Jesus was “an extremist for love, truth and goodness,” adding that “perhaps the south, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.”

 

[Treedbear]

NBC News projects Ossoff the winner.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Victory over 0.5% as well, as thought. Ponder Loefller and Purdue's challenges at this point, post attempted sedition.

 

[TomC]

Here's my hope.

TeaParty politicians lose their grip on power. Conservative politicians regain some.

Maybe it will become clear to some GOP leaders that TeaParty progressives don't represent The People. Trumpista progressives are only in it for themselves, and you've got to propose policies and candidates that represent enough Americans to get elected to matter. Banking on divisiveness and deceit to stay on the gravy train won't work for long. What it got them was Trump, and we're all seeing how that worked out.


The GOP has a huge hole to dig themselves out of, and they fell into it because their message didn't resonate with a voting majority of Americans. So they took the easy way out, adopting TeaParty progressivism and calling it conservativism. It isn't. And it clearly doesn't work. But it did get them a couple of election cycles.

However.....
Tom