The newest phase in the evolution of the nation’s response to COVID-19 was best articulated last week by an obviously exasperated Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey.“I don’t know. You tell me,” Ivey said when asked what she could do to get more people in the state which has the country’s lowest vaccination rate to get their shots.
Category: Tom Baxter
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Who ever heard of an ex-president getting involved in a lieutenant governor’s race? Now we have
Donald Trump just can’t get Georgia off his mind. Now he’s jumped in the middle of the lieutenant governor’s race.
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The next election cycle begins, on waves of restless cash
With a flurry of checks and a rally for the governor, the 2022 campaign got off to the closest it will come to an official start last week. It seems early still, but we’re less than a year away from the May 24 primaries and the June 24 runoffs.
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Yet another land deal story clouds Perdue’s campaign for educational eminence
At a charity roast several years ago in Louisiana, a former aide to Gov. Edwin Edwards recounted the problems Edwards had satisfying the demands of a Lafayette pol whose appetite for grift surpassed even the generous standards of that state and time. Finally, the aide said, a look of relief came over the legendary kingpin of bayou politics. “I know what we’ll do,” the aide said Edwards told him triumphantly. “Let’s make him an educator!”
Posted inTom Baxter
Justice Department to take a harder look at harassment of election officials
In most stories last week, the news that the U.S. Justice Department is forming a task force to investigate and prosecute violent threats and intimidation of election officials and poll workers was played several paragraphs below the news that the feds were challenging Georgia’s voter law.
Posted inTom Baxter
“Pirates,” “Biden Baptists” battle for control of the Southern Baptist Convention
f the Southern Baptist Convention had decided to follow the “pirates” last week at its annual gathering in Nashville, it would have fit too easily into the standard narrative of deepening fissures pulling one part of America away from the other. America is more complicated than this narrative implies, and so are the Southern Baptists.
Posted inTom Baxter
Another Georgian caught in the slow-rolling aftermath of the Capitol riot
According to the criminal complaint filed last week against Kevin Douglas Creek of Alpharetta, when he was asked in an FBI interview if he regretted what he did at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, he replied, “50/50.”
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Gathering in smaller rooms: Counting the chairs at the counting party’s convention
It wasn’t remarkable that Gov. Brian Kemp and Attorney General Chris Carr got booed at the state Republican convention last weekend. Johnny Isakson, Saxby Chambliss and Nathan Deal are among those who’ve been booed in previous conventions. What was notable was the room they got booed in.
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Coke, woke, catches flack from a new direction
If you were channel surfing and missed the first few seconds of the new ad slamming Coca-Cola and its CEO, James Quincey, you might think it came from some lefty consumer organization — “poisoning America’s youth and worsening the obesity epidemic” — or maybe a group of activist investors — “years of dismal sales… terrible 2020 results.”
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With a new administration, Spaceport Camden’s liftoff looks in doubt
In his eerily prescient 1865 novel, “From the Earth to the Moon,” Jules Verne wrote about an intense rivalry between Florida and Texas to determine which state would be the site of the first moon launch. In the book, as in reality a century later, Florida won. Jules Verne didn’t write about Georgia, but it, too, has at times cast an ambitious eye on the heavens.
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Tax Day, stretched across the calendar, is still a time for tribulation
The pandemic has played havoc with our national calendar. There was a time not long ago when April 15 was looked upon as a shared day of tribulation, that day every year when our taxes were due.
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Don’t cry for me, Atlanta: Bottoms’ exit scrambles the mayor’s race
“Someone said to me yesterday, whatever you do, don’t cry,” Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said at a press conference Friday after announcing she won’t seek a second term. “And for God’s sake, don’t have an ugly cry.” There was a damp tissue or two, but this was definitely not an ugly cry.
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A messenger which will change medicine arises from the pandemic
In interviews over the past couple of weeks, Moderna CEO Stephan Bancel has described what would be his young company’s latest blockbuster: an annual booster, like today’s flu shots, which would protect people from both the flu and COVID, keeping pace with new variants as they come along.
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Biden marks his first 100 days with another trip to Georgia
So far, Joe Biden has been the most deliberative of the past several presidents, seldom making a move without carefully weighing its political implications. On the eve of his 100th day in office, the president and First Lady Jill Biden will travel to Atlanta for a rally Thursday. We can be sure the location was chosen carefully.
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When it comes to infrastructure, we’re at the head of the class. A sorry class
Who would have thought that when the states were graded on the sturdiness of their infrastructure, Georgia would be at the head of the class? Unfortunately, that’s more a commentary on the overall rickety condition of the nation’s infrastructure than on anything we’ve done right.
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Duncan looks ahead to GOP 2.0, as Big Money looks for a political home
Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan has been the most interesting character in the Georgia Republican soap opera of the past year, if only because he’s the one whose intentions haven’t been entirely clear.
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The nation’s focus has been on Georgia, for way too long; the voting law won’t help that much
Big Media’s searching eye is, in fact, quite lazy. It drifts familiarly over Washington and New York, with an occasional glance toward bad weather or civil unrest in the hinterlands. Only rarely is its gaze trained on one place for as long as it has been, over the past several months, on Georgia.
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The next election won’t be like the one the voting bill is based on
By Tom Baxter If they had been thinking more about the next election than the last one, the voting bill passed by the legislature and signed by Gov. Brian Kemp might have been a lot different. The last election was a contest of giants, with Georgia playing a prominent (though not decisive, as some now […]
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Call it alternative energy or Patriot Power, solar energy is widening its reach
f the subject of solar power makes you think of Birkenstocks and tofu, an advertisement currently going the rounds of conservative email lists will be a surprise. The Patriot Power Generator, sold by a small company in Tennessee, is a solar-powered generator with a continuous output of 1,800 watts, enough to keep the refrigerator running and the lights on for several hours.
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Fiscal bonanza hasn’t got Republicans singing ‘Happy Days Are Here Again’
How do you look a $4.7 billion gift horse in the mouth? Last week, as the buzz from crossover day at the legislature dissipated into a deep torpor, Georgia Republicans were contemplating that question, and they weren’t singing “Happy Days Are Here Again.”
