The crazies can be dangerous

We may make fun of those who still cling, in the face of reality, to the idea that Trump won the election but was defrauded because of widespread cheating. But we have to realize that there will always be a few who decide that protesting is not enough and that they have a duty to take violent action based on that belief. The heavily armed man who went to ‘rescue’ children from the basement of a Washington DC pizza shop because he believe in the wild story that it was the location of a pedophile ring is a good example.
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The covid-19 vaccine rollout

There are over 17 million confirmed covid-19 cases in the US and over 300,000 dead, a staggering number thanks to our idiot president’s refusal to acknowledge the disease and take strong action early on. That works out to about 5% or the population or one in twenty who have tested positive. I read sometime ago that half the population knows at least one person personally who has tested positive and one third knows someone who has died.

Since I live alone and have been able to minimize contact with people, I was not surprised that until recently, I did not know anyone in either category. But last week a friend who lives nearby said that she had tested positive and had been isolating for the required period and then tested negative. She had no idea how she got infected because she had been working from home and only gone in to work about once a week and nobody else in her workplace had tested positive. But of course she has to do some shopping and the like and that may be how she got it.
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GOP’s ‘alternative electors’ try to cast their votes

When the members of the Electoral College met on Monday in their respective state capitals to cast their votes for president and vice president, the only people who could be present and vote were the slates of electors for the candidate who got the most votes in their states.

Trump and his allies have proposed one hare-brained scheme after another to try and stop this and one of their fanciful scenarios was to have the Trump slate show up in the states that he lost and claim that they are the ones who should be allowed to vote. The ‘brains’ behind this crackpot scheme is Trump aide Stephen Miller.
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Heavy early voting in Georgia

In other election news, early voting began on Monday for the January 5, 2021 run-off elections for the two US senate seats in Georgia. The Democrats face a stiff task in that they need to win both those races to get just a 50-50 tie in the US Senate. Since the vice-president in the one who has the tie-breaking vote in that body, Kamala Harris would be the one to decide the outcome in such an event.

Even though Joe Biden won the state, it was by a narrow margin in this is traditionally Republican state. Much of the credit has to go to Stacey Abrams for her tireless voter registration efforts and turning out the vote on election day. The Democratic Party must be hoping that she and the other people on the ground can repeat that feat on January 5th.
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Let us never forget: The election result was not even close

Amid all the frenzied tweeting by Trump and the 56 lawsuits brought by him and his acolytes to obfuscate the fact that he has lost, it is easy to overlook the fact that the final result is not even close. All 50 states have now certified their election results and the Electoral College has formally cast its votes to give Biden the expected 306-232 a margin of victory. In addition Biden easily won the popular vote by over seven million with a margin of 51.3-46.9%. In short, by any measure Trump lost badly and all the protestations by him and his supporters cannot hide that fact. The only thing he can boast about is that he got more votes than any other loser before him. What he has done by fighting it like this is to die a death of a thousand cuts, with a string of daily defeats in different venues.
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Election was stolen from Trump again!

CNN had a live tracker of the Electoral College voting by the states, updating it as the voters in each state met and recorded their votes. At 12:30 pm (ET), Trump was leading Biden in the Electoral College by 56-52 but then mysteriously Biden votes started appearing from nowhere and Trump’s lead disappeared! Biden suddenly shot into the lead with a 125-56 margin and he later won the votes in all the states that Trump has been contesting: Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Nevada, giving him a 302-232 lead, with just Hawaii’s four votes still to come.
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It’s about time. Cleveland baseball team to drop the ‘Indians’ name

It is being reported that this week will see the owners finally announce that they have decided to change the name that many people found offensive.

The 2021 season will be the last that a baseball team plays as the “Indians” in Cleveland.

A team source confirmed to cleveland.com that the club will announce this week its intention to play under the same name and uniforms through 2021, but will drop the “Indians” name after the upcoming season. A new name has not yet been decided.

The New York Times was first to report on Sunday that the name change is imminent. The Times also indicated the club is considering moving forward without a replacement name. That move would mirror the situation in Washington, where the city’s NFL franchise dropped its longtime “Redskins” moniker prior to the 2020 season and is playing as the “Washington Football Team” until a new name is chosen.

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Oregon decriminalizes possession of all drugs

One of the interesting results of the election that has been somewhat overlooked is that the state of Oregon became the first in the US to decriminalize all drug possession, with 58% voting in favor of the measure. Public drug use is still illegal, however.

Possessing heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and other drugs for personal use is no longer a criminal offense in Oregon.

Those drugs are still against the law, as is selling them. But possession is now a civil – not criminal – violation that may result in a fine or court-ordered therapy, not jail. Marijuana, which Oregon legalized in 2014, remains fully legal.

Oregon’s move is radical for the United States, but several European countries have decriminalized drugs to some extent.

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Some Democrats are fighting back against Republican outrageousness

We have seen the spectacle of Republicans in Congress going along with efforts to overturn the elections, the latest example being the 127 members of the House of Representatives who signed on the lawsuit filed by the Texas attorney general with the US Supreme court that was summarily tossed out. Some Democrats are fed up with this behavior and have decided to fight fire with fire.
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Jill Biden and the problem of default authority

A silly person named Joseph Epstein has apparently written an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (that is behind their paywall) saying that Jill Biden should not use the ‘Dr.’ when referring to herself because it is unseemly to do so. He seems to think that only those with medical degrees should refer to themselves as ‘Dr.’ To add further insult, he compared her earned 2007 PhD degree in education, which she received after submitting a dissertation on student retention in community colleges, to an honorary degree and apparently even referred to her as ‘kiddo’.
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