$$$$$ in Georgia runoff – With a few weeks still to go, the Georgia Senate runoff is the most expensive Senate race in history, already exceeding $370 million. Nine of the ten most expensive Senate races occurred this year, but they are dwarfed by spending in the Georgia races. An article in Governing notes: “the numbers are staggering — and made even more so by the speed at which hundreds of millions of dollars have poured into the state: baskets of checks to the candidates from millionaires, buckets of cash poured in by corporations and advocacy groups, waves of small-dollar online donations, open-ended commitments from the political parties and untold millions more in secretive spending by “dark money” groups.” The winners of the January 5th run-off will determine control of the Senate.
News of the weird: Underwear poisoning – From Reuters: Alexei Navalny, one of President Vladimir Putin’s most outspoken critics, was airlifted to Germany for treatment in August after collapsing on a plane in Russia. Germany has said he was poisoned with a Soviet-style Novichok nerve agent in an attempt to murder him, an assertion many Western nations accept. Navalny said on Monday he had tricked a Russian secret agent into disclosing details of the botched plot to kill him and had been told that poison had been placed in his underpants.
The next influential president – Pollster Scott Rasmussen weighs in on what the nation can expect from the next influential president: A president who has come of age in the digital era, who looks to the future and not the past, who will “redefine the national dialogue and parameters of American politics,” and a president who will help the political system catch up to where America has already gone. The digital world is fundamentally different than the centralized world that produced President Trump and President-elect Biden. It demands a decentralized political system with no defined hierarchy…Citizens who customize everything in their daily life have little desire to follow standardized rules made by distant officials.The next influential president will be someone who recognizes this disconnect and gives voice to it. She or he will understand that their job is not to change America. Instead, they must force America’s political system to change so that it can catch up with American society.
No one made a fuss over calling Martin Luther King, Jr. ‘doctor’ – Chris Wallace, a Fox News host noted that nobody has ‘made a fuss’ about using the title “Dr.” “So many people over the years — I think of Dr. Henry Kissinger, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King — have gone by the title doctor even though they’re not medical doctors.”
The author of a Wall Street Journal op-ed earlier this month mansplained to Dr. Biden that she should drop the “Dr.” because she “only” had a doctorate in education and had not delivered a child. (Which of course she has, out of her own body.) Perhaps his undergraduate degree was less well-rounded than it could have been, because “doctor” comes from the Latin word for “teacher.” It was used by scholars and theologians long before medical practitioners.
