AJC:

Inside the campaign to undermine Georgia’s election Part I

Judge James F. Bass Jr. dismissed the lawsuit. He found there was no evidence that election workers counted illegal votes or broke the law.

But the lawsuit established a pattern: Trump and his supporters made alarming accusations that created an impression of lawlessness. On closer inspection, the allegations amounted to nothing.

That didn’t stop Republicans from repeating the Chatham County allegations at the Buckhead rally that night. In the months ahead, Trump and his supporters continued to repeat such allegations long after they had been investigated and refuted.

The repetition of false claims convinced many Georgians they were true: By January, three-quarters of Republicans surveyed by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution believed there was substantial fraud in the presidential election.

AJC:

Inside the campaign to undermine Georgia’s election Part II

By late December, state Sens. William Ligon and Brandon Beach had done more than most elected officials in Georgia to aid Trump’s effort to overturn the presidential election.

They had called for a special session of the General Assembly to investigate voting fraud. When Gov. Brian Kemp and legislative leaders rejected the request, they circulated a petition among lawmakers to convene a session.

They had staged a televised hearing where Trump’s lawyers shared conspiracy theories about late-night ballot stuffing and rigged voting machines. And they had sided with Texas in its lawsuit against Georgia and other states.

On Dec. 22, Beach and Ligon showed they were willing to take on the leaders of their own political party to serve Trump.

WaPo:

Republicans and Democrats divided over Jan. 6 insurrection and Trump’s culpability, Post-UMD poll finds

The percentage of Americans who say violent action against the government is justified at times stands at 34 percent, which is considerably higher than in past polls by The Post or other major news organizations dating back more than two decades. Again, the view is partisan: The new survey finds 40 percent of Republicans, 41 percent of independents and 23 percent of Democrats saying violence is sometimes justified…

Overall, 60 percent of Americans say Trump bears either a “great deal” or a “good amount” of responsibility for the insurrection, but 72 percent of Republicans and 83 percent of Trump voters say he bears “just some” responsibility or “none at all.”

Will Bunch/Philadelphia Inquirer:

America gave up on truly educating all its kids. Then Jan. 6 happened. Coincidence?

A viral moment from Pennsylvania’s court battle over school funding about kids on ‘the McDonald’s track’ holds a buried truth on the anniversary of Jan. 6.

This lightbulb moment occurred in the middle of weeks of arduous testimony over unequal K-12 funding during the Harrisburg trial. On the witness stand was Matthew Splain, superintendent of the underfunded Otto-Eldred School District in sparsely populated McKean County and board president of the Pennsylvania Association of Rural and Small Schools. His inquisitor was John Krill, a lawyer representing the state’s top Republican lawmaker, defending a political regime that’s made Pennsylvania 45th in the nation in state support for its public schools.

Splain, who advocates for Harrisburg to do more for schools in rural areas experiencing economic hardship, testified about his belief that lack of resources is linked to lower student test scores in subjects such as biology and math in recent years. Krill then basically said the quiet part of Republican education policy out loud in the packed courtroom.

“What use would a carpenter have for biology?” asked Krill, questioning the need for learning for learning’s sake in a locale where many of the available jobs don’t require a college degree. In stating so plainly the modern conservative philosophy that public schools exist solely to develop a workforce — one in which not everyone need be a rocket scientist or a philosopher — the Harvard Law-educated Krill didn’t stop there.

NY Times  with NYC dealing with Omicron its own way:

Will Omicron Meet Its Match in the Perseverance of New Yorkers?

A new variant is surging, but vaccination rates are high, face masks are ubiquitous and residents are finding ways to soldier on.

Even as Omicron has torn through the country in the final weeks of the year, upending everything, setting case records, canceling flights, causing long lines at testing sites, threatening a smooth reopening of school in January, returning us to the devotional of the propane heat lamp, it is hard not to feel for New York an appreciation that is snobbish, imperious, unambivalent. Rivaling nearly any place on earth, the city’s vaccination rate among adults who have so far received one shot stands at 92 percent, a figure achieved before a mandate requiring private-sector employers to have their workers immunized went into effect this week.

Mask wearing on the subway and even on the street where you don’t have to cover your face — unless you are avoiding cloud bursts of weed smoke or the cold — is robust to the point that we must imagine it leaves public health officials in other places dumbfounded and envious. “There’s a matter-of-factness and a lack of whimpering, which gets everyone through,” as the playwright Paul Rudnick put it on Twitter the other day, making note of these commitments.

Opposite of fear mongering.

Old fake and harmful messaging on COVID: it’s just a cold.

New fake and harmful messaging: it’s just a sore throat (by the way, hospitals are straining right now with all these sore throat admissions on top of all the deaths from a cold).

I hope people appreciate how much work it takes to stay current to be able to lie like they do. It’s not easy and takes a professional touch to do it right.