Coming Soon: Minority Leader Mitch McConnell - 1/6/2021

On this Quick News episode, we talk about the HUGE wins in the Senate runoffs in Georgia, where both Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff won. We also talk about the disgraceful actions of the Pennsylvania legislature, and the equally horrid decision made by Kenosha County District Attorney Michael Graveley in the Jacob Blake case.

Coming tomorrow: comments on the domestic terrorism at the US Capitol today. Listen to Joe Biden's speech here: https://www.quicknewsdaily.com/e/president-biden-addresses-nation-capitol-building-takeover/

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Rough Transcript:

OPEN

Today is Wednesday, January 6th, and all I can say is: wow! It's really not an exaggeration to say that the world that we woke up to yesterday morning vs. the world that we woke up to this morning are two completely different worlds. Not only did one Democrat win in Georgia, but they ended up winning both Senate runoffs, giving Democrats control of the Senate (because it'll be 50 R's and 50 D's when these two are sworn in, and VP Kamala Harris will be there to break most of the ties for Democrats). I really never expected them to win, and it's incredible when you think about what this means going forward. Let's stop beating around the bush and get right into it. 

GEORGIA

The race has already been called for Raphael Warnock over current Senator Kelly Loeffler (aka QAnon Kelly aka KKKelly for her embrace of conspiracy theories and white supremacy). They haven't called the race for Ossoff yet (as of the time of this recording), even though most of the votes are absentee votes from heavily-Democratic counties. I get that they want to be careful, but at some point, being cautious turns into being stupid and ignoring the facts of the situation. 

So, I'll give you the quick Wikipedia facts about Georgia's new Senators (and I literally am just reading off of Wikipedia, it's not like this is any great reporting). 

In the 1990s, Warnock served as the youth pastor and then assistant pastor at Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York (sorry if I'm butchering that church name). While Warnock was there, the church declined to hire workfare recipients as part of organized opposition to then-mayor Rudy Giuliani's workfare program. 

In 2005, Warnock became senior pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, which is Martin Luther King Jr.'s former congregation. He is the fifth and the youngest person to serve as Ebenezer's senior pastor since its founding. This says that Warnock has stated that he will continue in the post while serving in the senate, although I'm not quite sure how that'll be possible. 

 In March 2014, Warnock led a sit-in at the Georgia State Capitol to press state legislators to accept the expansion of Medicaid offered by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. He and other leaders were arrested during the protest. From June 2017 to January 2020, Warnock chaired the "New Georgia Project", a nonpartisan organization focused on voter registration. 

In terms of his political positions, Warnock supports expanding the Affordable Care Act and has called for the passage of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. He also supports increasing COVID-19-relief funding. A proponent of abortion rights and gay marriage, he has been endorsed by Planned Parenthood. He opposes the concealed carry of firearms, saying that religious leaders do not want guns in places of worship. Warnock has long opposed the death penalty, having advocated for death row inmate Troy Davis, who was executed in 2011 for killing a police officer despite evidence that supported his innocence. 

Warnock will be the first Black Democrat in history to represent a former Confederate state in the United States Senate, and the first Black senator from Georgia, period. That's not for lack of trying, it's just because that's literally how the system is designed in Georgia: so that Black citizens don't have any political power. In fact, the runoff process that Warnock just won was actually designed by a segregationist for the sole purpose of making sure that no African Americans could win. Georgia state representative Denmark Groover (by the way, what a helluva name that is. That sounds like a comic book character), a Democrat (from back when Democrats were the racist party in the South), came up with this system in 1963 because the thought was that if the race wasn't just between two people and there were other non-White candidates running against a Black candidate, then White voters would split their votes between the two White candidates, and the Black voters would all vote for their one candidate, so the Black candidate would win. In this runoff system, if nobody gets to 50% in the general election, there's a runoff between only two candidates. Groover thought that this would allow white voters to coalesce around their candidate, and that there would be more white voters than black voters. This whole thing makes Senator-elect Warnock's win so much sweeter. 

MAGA and Proud Boys started getting into fights with DC police after the race was called for Warnock, so apparently Blue Lives Don't Matter? 

As for Senator-elect Jon Ossoff, Ossoff worked as a national security staffer and aide to U.S. Representative Hank Johnson for five years.[14] He had top-secret clearance for five months.[15] He left Johnson's office in 2012 to earn a master's degree at the London School of Economics.[16] Before working for Johnson, he served as an intern for U.S. Representative and civil rights leader John Lewis, who recommended him to Johnson.[17][18]

Since 2013, Ossoff has been managing director and chief executive officer of Insight TWI, a London-based investigative television production company that works with reporters to create documentaries about corruption in foreign countries.[19][20] The firm produced BBC investigations about ISIS war crimes and death squads in East Africa. He was also involved in producing a documentary about the staging of a play in Sierra Leone.[20] 

Loeffler is US Senator even though she never won more votes than anyone an election (appointed, didn't win in November, didn't win last night), just like Donald Trump didn't win the popular vote either of the times he was on the ballot. 

PENNSYLVANIA

Here's one thing that Republicans have done that they should enjoy while they can: yesterday in Pennsylvania, Republicans in the state legislature refused to swear in a Democratic member who won reelection in November.

GOP leaders forcefully seized control of the proceedings from Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman after Fetterman tried to insist on seating Sen. Jim Brewster for a new term (you know, like the voters chose). The Republican majority voted to remove Fetterman from presiding over the session. 

The Department of State has confirmed that Brewster won another term by just 67 votes over Republican Nicole Ziccarelli. This came after the state confirmed that certain mail ballots where voters didn't mark the dates properly could still be counted.

Ziccarelli has challenged the results in federal court, and her case is still pending with no deadline for action. She's asking for 311 mail ballots that arrived at election offices on time, but were missing handwritten dates, to be thrown out. That's it: they were missing dates. That sure doesn't sound like fraud to me. 

The state Supreme Court already ruled that ballots like these can be counted, but the problem is that the Senate district includes parts of two counties: Allegheny and Westmoreland. Allegheny County chose to count mail ballots without handwritten dates, but Westmoreland County did not. And here's the thing: I agree that this it's funky to count one county's but not the other's for the same Senate race, but if Ziccarelli and Republicans weren't afraid of voters, they'd be suing to count the ballots, not to have them thrown out. 

Republican leaders have said they intend to keep the seat empty while they "review" the election outcome. Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman called the situation "fairly unique, if not unprecedented." Yeah, because the people voted someone in, the courts affirmed that it was legal, but you and your cronies are still denying reality. That's what's unprecedented here. Corman didn't say how long Republicans plan to keep the seat empty. 

JACOB BLAKE

The big story in my neck of the woods yesterday was the decision from Kenosha County District Attorney Michael Graveley to not charge any of the officers involved in the shooting of Jacob Blake. If you'll remember, Blake was shot 7 times in the back by Officer Rusten Sheskey.  

DA Graveley is a Democrat, so a small part of me trusts him more than if a Republican had said this, but at the same time, he was squirming around so much during this announcement that you could tell he was making the wrong decision. Just go back and look at the body language. 

"It's absolutely incontrovertible that Jacob Blake was armed with a knife during this encounter. ... All the discussion that he's unarmed contradicts even what he himself has said multiple times." You know what's "incontrovertible" Graveley? The fact that all 7 shots went into Blake's back. Is it really self-defense when all 7 bullet holes are in the victim’s back?
Nobody has killed someone while their own back was turned to them. 

Also, the officer said “he used deadly force...because he was afraid Blake, while attempting to flee the scene, was trying to kidnap a child in the back seat of the vehicle” Can someone explain to me how you knife someone while driving away? Is it now self-defense to shoot someone just because they have a knife/gun on the floor of their car? These people are basically arguing that you can just kill anyone as long as they happen to have some sort of weapon in their car. These 2nd amendment people will say it's okay Blake was shot, but they don't realize what that argument means. But they don't understand that because they're probably white and Blake wasn't, so they never have to face any consequences. 

Police gave (murderer) Kyle Rittenhouse water and said they appreciated his group helping them out. The police also shot Jacob Blake 7 times in the back. *Rittenhouse audio*

Police aren’t afraid of weapons, they’re afraid of black people with weapons.

Evers also announced Monday he is mobilizing 500 National Guard troops ahead of the decision at the request of local officials. Remember: this means it's easier for them to call in 500 troops and deal with "riots" than it is to simply charge 1 white dude with attempted murder.