Stacey’s revenge

If there is one person to whom Democrats should doff their hats to today, it is Stacey Abrams. She lost a narrow race for governor of Georgia to Brian Kemp in 2018 when Kemp, who was then the secretary of state and thus is charge of running the elections, pulled out all the stops to hinder voting by poor and minority communities.

Because of her impressive showing in spite of these massive obstacles, Democrats saw her as a future star and tried to recruit her to run for other offices. But she decided that what she wanted to do was fight vigorously to overcome the registration and voting injustices in her state and she has been indefatigable in pursuit of that goal. And now we see the results of that effort: Joe Biden won Georgia and now Democrat Raphael Warnock has won one senate seat and Jon Ossoff is very likely to win the other. These will have a far bigger impact on the national political scene than if Abrams had won the election to become Georgia’s governor or to some other office, because it gives control of the senate to the Democrats. The expected wins by both Democrats also further solidifies my reputation for getting election predictions wrong.
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Time running out for Mike Pence to decide whether to fish or cut bait

Last night revealed the real vice that the vice-president is in. Mike Pence has spent the last four year being an utter toady, one of the most obsequious yes-men to Trump, but now he is faced with the stark fact that Trump is demanding that he do what Pence, not being totally nuts like his boss, knows that he cannot do. But he cannot come right out and say it, so he is doing a tap dance in the hope that Trump will not force him to make a fool of himself when he presides over the joint session of Congress tomorrow when Joe Biden’s victory will have to be certified by him.
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God is punking Pat Robertson again

Pat says he has received word from his god that the Holy Spirit is going to do something dramatic before January 6th to change the results of the election so as to keep Trump as president.

This is the latest in a long, long list of predictions that never come true. I wonder how long it will take for Pat to cotton on the fact that his god is a prankster who likes making him look like a fool by feeding him nonsensical predictions.

Or perhaps the question should be how long it will be before Robertson’s viewers cotton on the fact that he is just stringing them along so that they will send him money.

The Georgia senate elections

Today voters will get to decide who the two senators from Georgia will be. If Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock both win, that will result in a 50-50 senate tie that will enable Kamala Harris to break the tie in Democrats favor. Both parties have put in a lot of effort into this race. Democrats eked out a small 12,000 vote victory for Joe Biden by mounting a vigorous effort to register voters and turn them out. The question is whether they can maintain that level of enthusiasm in non-presidential races where turnout typically drops off dramatically.
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Trump’s call suggests that he may actually believe his own fantasies

I listened and read the entire transcript of the call that Trump made to Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, on Saturday trying to get him to just ‘find’ 11,780 new Trump votes to overturn Joe Biden’s 11,779 margin of victory in the state. In the one-hour call, he spoke for about 90% of the time and shifts around from pleading (“So what are we going to do here, folks? I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break.”) to threatening to whining, but mostly whining. All the while he flings around all manner of numbers that he got from who knows which he purports to show that he won by tens of thousands of votes or by hundreds of thousands or even by half a million. As Raffensperger and his lawyer Ryan Germany try to rebut each point, Trump just moves to another one.
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Trump’s phone call was recorded because of his and Graham’s lying

One of the things I was curious about the recording being released of Trump pleading with Georgia officials to find ways of overturning the election result in the state was who recorded it and why was it released. It turns out that the Georgia secretary of state recorded it because he had been burned earlier by Lindsey Graham denying what he had said in a phone call and because of Trump’s reputation for lying. He then held the recording in reserve until Trump lied about the call, which of course he did.
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Why would you do this?

I was struck by this news item.

One in 9 couples planning to marry this year, or 225,000 engaged pairs, owe $3.7 billion in personal loans for canceled weddings during the pandemic, according to a new analysis from Loanry, an online personal lender. That works out to about $16,444 in outstanding balances on average for each couple.

“This last year will have been devastating for many couples,” said Ethan Taub, founder of Loanry, “especially for the percentage paying off loans for weddings that haven’t happened.”

The analysis considered five factors: the average number of weddings that take place each year, the percentage of those postponed this year, the number of personal loans taken out for weddings, the average cost and budget of a wedding, and the average loan amount for a wedding based on Loanry’s own data.

I can understand couples who want to have a nice wedding. Some like to have really grand weddings but the idea of taking out a huge loan for what is a one-day party is something I cannot wrap my mind around, because it means you will start married life with a huge debt burden hanging round. your neck.

It is one thing to take out a loan for college education because that is an investment that one can hope to recoup with higher income. But wedding expenses are not like that.

In Sri Lanka, wedding expenses were usually borne by the bride’s parents and there too there is the deplorable practice of families spending far more than they could afford just to keep up with the Joneses and to impress people.

In the US, I blame the wedding industry who have created the impression that a big fancy wedding is what everyone should aspire to. Celebrities feed into this mindset but they have the money to have a splashy party.

Denying reality to the end

Early yesterday morning, Trump tweeted the following:

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Trump gets more and more pathetic

Somehow the Washington Post has obtained a recording of a phone call made yesterday by Trump to Brad Raffensperger (the Republican secretary of state for Georgia) and Ryan Germany (general counsel for the secretary of state) pleading with them to find 11,780 extra votes for Trump so that Biden’s win in that state can be overturned.

Just listen as Trump invokes all manner of vague rumors to support his case. The level of delusional pleading is astounding. Here is a four-minute clip of the hour long call.

Trump has admitted to making the call.

These Georgian officials’ hearts must be sinking whenever they hear that Trump is on the line.