"So this country has had higher education since before the signing of the Declaration of Independence."

"But it wasn't until the late 19th century when Johns Hopkins University was founded as the Nation's first research university.... But around World War II is when the universities and the federal government really got to work with each other.... The idea was that the universities would get this research funding, it would fuel their labs, it would fuel the scientist, and then that research would flow into corporate America. It would flow into other parts of the government, other parts of academia. And the result was the country got new pharmaceutical drugs, new technology, Nobel Prize winners come out of university labs.... Now it's tens of billions of dollars a year that flow from the federal government down to the universities.... You know, you've got the University of Georgia, which for example, was getting federal funding for a lab that focused on peanuts. You know, Illinois, they get money for insulin research.... When you start talking about cutting research funding, the trickle down effect is enormous.... It's cutting off potentially state universities near you...."

Says NYT reporter Alan Blinder, in today's episode of "The Daily" podcast, "Trump’s Escalating War With Higher Education" (Podscribe link).

How did Georgia get all that money for peanut research? Are we supposed to think that's not super-elite, that shows the money is widely distributed and flows freely and equally — to the state universities as well as the Ivies — and the federal government is supporting research on practical things that benefit the general populace?

Or do we start wondering if there's something corrupt? I pursued my suspicion on Grok — you can read it here. I'll just quote one snappy sentence: "Georgia’s political muscle, peanut-centric identity, and strategic storytelling might give it an unfair leg up, leaving other universities and crops to wonder if the game’s rigged."

The NYT has 3 articles this morning about Biden cultivating the black vote.

1."In Atlanta, Biden Warms Up His Pitch to Black Voters/The president, who is trailing key states in recent polling, tried to cast the election as a struggle for democracy itself."

President Biden... asked Black voters at two campaign events in Atlanta to see the election as a choice between protecting democracy and letting it backslide.... Mr. Biden laid out his argument to a powerful slice of the electorate that has been drifting away from him during a campaign reception on Saturday afternoon: “We cannot let this man become president. We have to win this race, not for me but for America.”

2. "Live Updates: Biden to Speak at Morehouse Graduation/The visit to the historically Black college in Georgia gives President Biden an opportunity to speak to students in a battleground state as he works to shore up support among young voters." Oh! I took to long getting to this link. It's the speech, playing live, now.

This speech so far has been mostly about Biden’s upbringing — one of a law student, public defender and single father — rather than promoting the economic achievements of the Biden administration. The White House has been focused on promoting such policy achievements to galvanize a crucial constituency of Black voters frustrated with the Biden White House....“Instead of forcing you to prove you’re 10 times better, we’re breaking down doors so you can have 100 times more opportunities,” Biden says.

3. "In His Beloved Philadelphia, Biden Faces Wariness From Black Voters/Even in the president’s favorite political stomping ground, his standing has slipped with Democrats who will be vital to a repeat victory, interviews with nearly two dozen Black voters showed."

In interviews with nearly two dozen voters in predominantly Black neighborhoods in Philadelphia this week, as well as with elected officials and strategists, signs of softness in Mr. Biden’s standing were palpable. Just eight voters said they were committed to voting for Mr. Biden, while many others were debating staying home, or, in a few cases, supporting former President Donald J. Trump. They cited concerns about immigration, the cost of living and their sense that Mr. Biden was more focused on crises abroad than on fixing problems in their neighborhoods....

Clinton Geary III, 41, an entrepreneur and organizer who works to end community violence in Philadelphia, said he would support Mr. Trump in November, his first time casting a ballot. He saw Mr. Biden as more focused on wars abroad than low-income communities domestically. “How are you going to help go to war and you can’t help feed people?” he said. He also said he was worried about the country’s influx of migrants, a theme echoed by several voters, including anti-Trump ones.

That reminds me. Over at TikTok, I keep seeing things like this:

@johnou81

♬ original sound - john

It's true that Trump is doing a rally in the Bronx. The NYT reported that a couple days ago, here: "Trump Plans a Campaign Event in the Deep Blue Bronx/The former president, who has sought to make some political appearances around New York as he stands criminal trial, is set to speak at an event next Thursday at Crotona Park."

The former president told donors at a Manhattan fund-raiser this week that he was planning something in the South Bronx, making a joke that he might get hurt in the neighborhood.

“We’re going to have a tremendous rally. You may never see me again,” he said, prompting laughter, according to an attendee who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private event. “That could be a tricky one.”

Trump is way ahead of Biden in Georgia and Michigan... according to CNN.

"CNN Polls: Trump leads Biden in Michigan and Georgia as broad majorities hold negative views of the current president."

Isn't impossible to visualize an Electoral College win for Biden if he loses those states? Here's an interactive Electoral College map.

Control of the Senate will not depend on the Georgia runoff.

The Nevada race has gone to the Democrat.

That's a relief. It's good to be emerging from this period of uncertainty about the balance of power.

If the Republican had won in Nevada, we'd have a repeat of 2020, spending weeks obsessed with Georgia, dependent on Georgia.

I see that Georgia has moved up the date of the runoff election, so it is the first week of December now. After the 2020 election, the runoff was in January. That's better, but it's also much better to not have control of the Senate depend on a runoff in one state.

The Democrats are massively constrained after the 2022 election, if, as it seems, Republicans do take control of the House. It's unlikely that there will be another Supreme Court opening before 2024, and if there is, the Supreme Court will only be put into more of a balance — 5-4 instead of 6-3.

"[Stacey] Abrams immediately tried to 'contextualize' her remarks..."

"... by pointing to declining wages and the state’s high maternal mortality rates. Days later, she called her comments 'inelegant' but her sentiment true."

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports, in "'Bless her heart.' Kemp ad slams Abrams for ‘worst state in the country to live’ remark." 

Here's Kemp's ad:

ADDED: To what extent is "Bless her heart" an insult? That's a question I considered 10 years ago, when Mitt Romney said it about Obama.

AND: Southern Living says: "Southerners know that the meaning of the phrase depends on the tone in which it's spoken, and a slight change in inflection or volume can make all the difference...."

"David Perdue, the former U.S. senator from Georgia and ally of Donald Trump, plans to announce on Monday that he will run in a Republican primary..."

"... against the state’s incumbent governor, Brian Kemp.... Mr. Trump has vowed to orchestrate Mr. Kemp’s defeat as payback for the governor’s refusal to help overturn the former president’s November election loss in the state.... Mr. Perdue’s decision to try to knock out a fellow Georgia Republican in 2022 is... sure to ignite an ugly — and costly — intraparty war before a general election in which the Republican nominee will likely face Stacey Abrams, the Democratic superstar whose national fame will allow her to amass a huge campaign war chest.... The former senator has told people he was uncertain about running but decided to run because he’s gravely worried about her prospects for victory over an incumbent who has been weakened by Mr. Trump’s unrelenting attacks."

The NYT reports.

"Redistricting in this way — drawing districts so contrived as to be ludicrous, to shore up power that is clearly fading — reads like a balding man trying to fool the world with an embarrassing combover."

Says state senator Michelle Au, quoted in "As Georgia grows more Democratic, its members of Congress will not" (NPR).

ADDED: To extend the analogy, I'd like to ask Au if she'd agree to solve the "embarrassing combover" problem by adopting the equivalent of a buzzcut. And then Democrats and Republicans have to go on with the buzzcut. No going back to a combover. 

But the question is: What would a gerrymander buzzcut look like? Can we leave it to a computer that is programmed with information that does not include anything about race, ethnicity, past voting patterns, or political affiliation? 

Would Au agree to that?

The media genius strikes again — with a tomahawk.

 

I was in denial. He didn't go to the game, I thought. It was in the Daily Mail, Meade said, and that wasn't enough. I've got to check. There's the screen shot. Maybe that was some other occasion? But no, that's in The Guardian. It's real. The man went to the World Series. And Melania looks utterly pleased to be screwing with the haters alongside her eminent husband.

I think the tomahawk chop is awful and that the people of Atlanta ought to want to abandon it, but they're not succumbing to chop-shaming, and the irrepressible ex-President is with them:

Trump and Melania doing the racist tomahawk chop.

Trump loves endorsing racist sports issues. pic.twitter.com/brKgx7WMRf

— Resist Programming 🛰 (@RzstProgramming) October 31, 2021

ADDED: The haters say she's faking it:

"Atlanta is still seething that Major League Baseball stripped the All-Star Game away from their beloved city this summer."

"Well, politics or not, there’s absolutely nothing MLB can do to stop Atlanta now. Atlanta will host the World Series for the first time since 1999."

Bob Nightengale writes in USA Today.

It's hard even to remember what offense Georgia committed that deserved the punishment imposed. Something un-woke? Something about voting regulations implying racism? Whatever... so now those terrible people are triumphing, and I don't think they're going to give up singing that doltish "Indian" tune while doing "the tomahawk chop."

The only alternative is another Southern city, those cheaters in Texas.

Ah, baseball is boring, all the Northerners sniff.

"In the span of two years, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms has gone from one of President Joe Biden’s most prominent surrogates — important enough to get vetted as a potential VP pick..."

"... to abandoning what once was considered a shoo-in re-election bid.... [A] 60% spike in homicides and accusations that she had become disconnected from the community seriously complicated her chances.... [Bottoms's statement] lacked... any sort of explanation about why she isn’t running. So her allies are filling the void. They say she genuinely believed she could have won a second term, but passed because she felt her motivation sapping.... Will she run for another office? Bottoms didn’t rule it out, and several statewide offices are up for grabs next year. Your Insiders are skeptical of this possibility. If she faced a tough citywide re-election bid this year, a statewide race with a more conservative electorate would objectively be an even heavier lift."

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. 

Here's an AJC article from January: "Atlanta’s deadliest year in decades has city on edge and demanding change": 

"One has to wonder how these rankings are established. I lived in Georgia for 30 years owing to professional reasons. Not a day went by that I did not want to leave."

"Even though I lived in one of Georgia's best places (Athens, I was in the geology faculty at UGA), I never found any redeeming qualities in the Southeast. And I tried, oh I tried. I found the climate and the vegetation oppressive, the landscape depressing, and the culture alien. I finally found two good things about Georgia: Atlanta's airport (the departure lounge only, never liked baggage claim) and Delta. I retired on January 1 of this year and moved to Santa Fe three days later. This place is, for me, as close to perfect as possible (at least among places that I can afford). Everything that I hated about Georgia I love about New Mexico. Yet according to this article New Mexico ranks near the bottom in terms of quality of living." 

A highly rated comment on the NYT article "The Best (and Worst) States for Remote Work/A recent study ranked all 50 states and Washington, D.C., to find where working from home was most attractive to workers and employers." 

The study in question ranked Georgia first for "living." Factors that counted: The size of houses and housing lots and the presence of swimming pools! 

Another comment: "I have lived in several states, and visited virtually all of them. Ranking 'living environment' in New Hampshire as only the 44th best, and Colorado's as 47th, is something of a joke, although I suppose if the most important attribute that the pollster can think of is a private swimming pool, as opposed to, say, a wondrous outdoor environment, that might account for this bizarre finding."

It's a good idea for an article, as many people these days are in a position to relocate and work remotely, but the specific advice is ludicrous. Even if your favorite thing is having a swimming pool taking up your backyard, it doesn't matter who else in the same state has a swimming pool, only that it's warm enough to justify having a swimming pool. You can install a swimming pool! And why would a young person — working remotely — want the largest house and yard? How about a well-designed, easy-to-maintain smaller house? 

FROM THE EMAIL: Georgia has its proponents. Joseph says:

WaPo Fact Checker gives Biden 4 Pinocchios for saying that the new Georgia voting law is "sick … deciding that you’re going to end voting at five o’clock when working people are just getting off work."

Glenn Kessler writes: 

On Election Day in Georgia, polling places are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., and if you are in line by 7 p.m., you are allowed to cast your ballot. Nothing in the new law changes those rules.... 

So where would Biden get this perception that ordinary workers were getting the shaft because the state would “end voting at five o’clock"? We have one clue. The law used to say early “voting shall be conducted during normal business hours.” Experts said that generally means 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The new law makes it specific — “beginning at 9:00 AM and ending at 5:00 PM.”

Obviously, nearly everyone would read Biden's statement to refer to Election Day. The bit about early voting could have been used to cut Biden some slack and back off from the full 4-Pinocchio denouncement, but that would be wrong, because the new law didn't even cut back early voting. 

I'm glad to see Kessler giving 4 Pinocchios when deserved. Last month, I was critical of him for backing off to 3 and said: "Stop babying Biden! He's the damned President. If he needs to be babied, get him out of the presidency."

"We are seeing again and again this version of Jim Crow in a suit and tie..."

"... because it is designed explicitly for the same reason as Jim Crow did, to block communities of color from active participation in choosing the leadership that will guide their democracy... In the last two election cycles, we saw a dramatic increase in the number of voters of color who voted by mail, the number of young people who used early voting, the number of African Americans who voted on Saturday and Sunday.... We saw unprecedented levels of turnout across the board. And so every single metric of voter access that has been a good in Georgia is now under attack.... This is entirely driven by the existential crisis of a Republican Party that has decided that rather than adapt to the changing needs of the populace, it is easier to stop the people from participating."

Said Stacey Abrams, quoted in "Georgia Republicans Pass the Most Restrictive Voting Laws Since Jim Crow" (Mother Jones).

"If you took the fact out that he is the president of the United States and look at the conduct of the call, it tracks the communication you might see in any drug case or organized crime case. It’s full of threatening undertone and strong-arm tactics."

Said Michael J. Moore, the former United States attorney for the Middle District of Georgia, quoted in "Atlanta Prosecutor Appears to Move Closer to Trump Inquiry/The Fulton County district attorney is weighing an inquiry into possible election interference and is said to be considering hiring an outside counsel" (NYT).

"The Georgia results broke the back of Trumpism. His phone call to Brad Raffensperger was hunker-in-the-bunker bonkers."

"The President’s coattails are toxic. He under-performed all five Republican congressmen in Wisconsin, who won election without difficulty. Had he matched their performance, he would have won the state. Georgia, we should note, elected a Republican legislature in November and until today had two Republican U.S. senators. Republicans in November flipped two Democratic seats to take 10 of its 14 House seats even as Trump lost the state for the first Republican defeat in 28 years..... As for the crazies who would suspend the Constitution in order to install Donald Trump for four more years, they are our version of the Squad and their social justice warriors. Tuesday 2021 is on Donald Trump.... It will take some time for the Republican party to detoxify itself from Trump’s paranoid narcissism. But the man did show the way to a worker-oriented, traditional values political movement. The party’s task is to find someone with the common touch who isn’t batty. So far, Sen. Tom Cotton looks good. Maybe Ben Sasse or Nikki Haley. Like they say after hurricanes, we will rebuild."  

Says David Blaska (on his blog).

"Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong."

 

Via "‘I just want to find 11,780 votes’: In extraordinary hour-long call, Trump pressures Georgia secretary of state to recalculate the vote in his favor" (WaPo):

The rambling and at times incoherent conversation offered a remarkable glimpse of how consumed and desperate the president remains about his loss, unwilling or unable to let the matter go and still believing he can reverse the results in enough battleground states to remain in office.

The worst of it is the threat: 

During their conversation, Trump issued a vague threat to both Raffensperger and Ryan Germany, the secretary of state’s general counsel, suggesting that if they don’t find that thousands of ballots in Fulton County have been illegally destroyed to block investigators — an allegation for which there is no evidence — they would be subject to criminal liability. 

“That’s a criminal offense,” he said. “And you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer.”... 

"President Trump took to Twitter Friday evening to make the unfounded assertion that Georgia’s two Senate races are 'illegal and invalid,' an argument that could complicate his efforts..."

"... to convince his supporters to turn out for Republican candidates in the two runoff races that will determine which party controls the Senate... Some Republican leaders are afraid that his supporters will take the president’s argument seriously, and decide that voting in a 'corrupt' system is not worth their time, a development that could hand the election to the Democrats."

The NYT reports. 

I'm pretty sure the NYT wants to help the Democrats, so anything that looks like advice to Trump not to do what he's doing should probably be translated into an expression of fear that it might work. 

One might say that Trump's continued assertions about rigged elections keep Republican voters stirred up. They may get the idea that they need to win by enough to overcome the cheating. They may feel outraged that cheaters have been stealing elections and that it's crucial to fight back right now. 

Alternatively, it might be that Trump doesn't mind losing the GOP majority in the Senate. He might prefer to fight his way back to power in 2024 with his party excluded from power. He'll be more of an outsider and able to attack everything in a much more interesting and theatrical way if we're not distracted by the day to day efforts of McConnell et al.

This is actually not the slightest bit like moonlight through the pines.

 

I noticed that because of "Broadway stars rally behind Stacey Abrams’ Fair Fight ahead of Georgia elections" (L.A. Times). 

I wonder how people in Georgia feel about having the whole country sucking up to them right now and if it pleases them to hear this one song aimed at them over and over. This is a song about a man remembering a lost love, a woman named Georgia. It's not about the state, though it has been the state song of Georgia since 1979. It's kind of weird to be singing about a state as if it were a woman you were longing for. It's weird to think of your state as a woman — though it has a woman's name, and it's not the only state with a woman's name — and weird to address your own state as if you wished you could get back there. You don't need a road leading back. You are there!

"Not surprisingly, Warnock’s beliefs have already been widely mischaracterized in coverage of the Georgia Senate runoff. Conservative pundits claim..."

"... they inject politics into the pulpit. They appear to be completely unaware that the 'politics' of the Black church tradition are rooted in the words of Jesus, who called for every Christian to be a champion of the poor. Warnock’s preaching has also been branded as 'anti-American.' But he is following Jesus — and in the footsteps of the best-known articulator of the Black church tradition, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who believed poverty, racism and militarism were the triple evils that threatened America’s democratic ideals. Both Jesus and King said that people of faith must serve God with all our heart, mind and soul — and that placing service to a government above the embodiment of love is an act of idolatry. Far from being new or extremist, this belief has been preached from pulpits and hush harbors since Black people began worshiping in this country without the infringement of White overseers.... As senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church — where King and his father were both pastors — Warnock has devoted himself to the social-justice demands of his Christian faith. He has said that, as a senator, his priorities will reflect the moral imperatives central to Black theology."

From "Raphael Warnock is the man to bring the gospel back into public life" by the Rev. Otis Moss III senior pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago (WaPo).

A "hush harbor" was a place where American slaves congregated in secret to practice religion:

Christianity was the prominent religion of the African Slaves after being transported to the Americas.... The hush harbors served as the location where slaves could combine their African religious traditions with Christianity.... The songs created by slaves were known to contain a double meaning, revealing the ideas of religious salvation and freedom from slavery. The meetings would also include practices such as dance. African shouts and rhythms were also included. Slaves would suffer punishments had they been caught in a hush harbor meeting.....

The Trump rally in Georgia.

You can watch here: