The Ron Show

... and America's biggest threat to democracy is America's President. Don't believe me; ask local & state election officials.

Well that's odd; the same Rick Jackson who told primary voters he'd be Donald Trump's favorite governor and govern like Trump and be 'Trump with a southern accent' had his digital people take all mentions of Donald Trump off his website. What's up with that, I wonder?

His opponent, Keisha Lance Bottoms, meanwhile, rolled out a lengthy list of law enforcement endorsements yesterday. That's useful in countering the narrative that she was absent or soft on crime (despite current crime data providing a glimpse into the foundation she helped lay while mayor).

If only she had campaign money to advertise that.

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It's not hyperbole; state and local election officials across the country are popping Pepto Bismol tablets, riddled with anxiety, over what (not "if") Donald Trump and his administration will try to do to influence the November election.

All the more reason it's incumbent upon us to overwhelm the polls in numbers that make it impossible to distort what "we, the people" will say in early voting, mail-in voting and on election day.

It's also why no Republican who failed to stand up to Trump or has his leather shoe taste on their tongues deserve a pass this cycle.

Ho hum; another mass shooting in the US takes the lives of two (hopefully that'll be all) and inuring nearly three dozen more in rural Vienna, Georgia over the weekend.

The existence of a block party didn't cause it. The town not having a police department didn't cause it. That 'everybody's packing' in rural Dooly County (and throughout Georgia and the U.S., let's be honest) certainly was - at minimum - contributory.

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Patricia Murphy, writing for the Atlanta Journal Constitution, found a handful of prominent 'Buckhead Democrats' - who lived in and/or led civic organizations within Atlanta while Keisha Lance Bottoms was mayor - who've announced she won't have their vote.

That's bad enough; that they're shortsighted enough to be swayed to vote for Rick Jackson? Sorry, but WTF? If you couldn't vote for Brian Kemp or Donald Trump (I mean, did you?) than voting for Rick Jackson is twice as awful as just deciding not to vote in that particular race.

Public safety is what comes up most often with these voters, but they don't want to credit Bottoms' term as mayor being what led to Buckhead having an additional police substation or the city getting the Atlanta Public Safety Training facility deep-pocketed Buckhead movers and shakers pushed into existence (including many of these same prominent 'Buckhead Democrats').

I, too, have psychological scars from COVID-era Atlanta living; but I'm not a depthless thinker who thinks all that the summer of 2020 wrought us was due to the city's mayor, and I certainly won't forget how the state GOP's elected officials' singular mission - it seemed - was to embarrass her. If it wasn't their mission, they certainly saw it as 'added benefit.'

That said, I also implore the former mayor to host a town hall in Buckhead - without any guest gatekeeping - and absorb their questions and statements, then set the record straight, because believe it or not - she has fingerprints all over the lower crime the city enjoys now. She just needs to get that record out before the public - and sewing up the easiest votes to sway in a 'dead heat' race is. going. to. matter.

PLUS: Rick Jackson's shadowy TX data center project is as shadowy as that PAC ad campaign he swears he wasn't tied to before he got into the GOP primary.

The Georgia Elections Board thought now was the time to ⁠invite the Trump Department of Justice to intervene on the state's use of touchscreen voting machines and QR codes to tabulate votes⁠ -less than two weeks before early voting begins. They've had two years of the existence of a "Trump DOJ" to ask, but waited until just now for the⁠ SEB director to pen his letter to Todd Blanche?⁠

Then there's MAGA SEB member Salleigh Grubbs' lobbing a ⁠hair-brained idea to have local poll workers "shuffle" the ballots⁠ by hand.

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I've not wandered into the conversation much with regards to data center construction and the ill effects many communities are experiencing nor the impact of more of these massive facilities coming would have on local water supplies and utility costs. That said, it's notable that a Texas effort to plop a massive data center in deep-red MAGA country - northeast Texas - has ⁠Rick Jackson's fingerprints on it; or that he sought to keep those fingerprints from being identified.

Also, why are Georgians pessimistic about the future? Could it be that the GOP's created a miserable 'current' for the middle class?

Thank goodness there's still remnants of sanity in our legal system despite the flood of Trump-appointed ne'er do-wells. The latest Trump administration judicial loss being the rebuff of the Trump Department of Justice having access to sensitive voter data like your social security number, date of birth, drivers license number.

Why would they need that, anyway?

Also, why's the FBI taken longer than nine months to possess Fulton County 2020 ballots to still have nothing to show for it?

As Jay Bookman writes, a Trump-coerced investigation into 'widespread voter fraud' found three cases in Georgia since 2008. Three. That's one-third as many times as a former Georgia Republican vice-chair voted illegally.

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I've long said Democrats have gotten away from Kennedy-era aspirational projections, and with five decades of GOP-led scare tactics rattling their base over nefarious non-white folks of various types and the doom their presence in the U.S. will surely bring, Americans haven't had much to feel optimistic about from its elected leadership.

In Georgia, a recent poll shows most Georgians are pessimistic about their kids having a better life than their own. Yikes. Most of those polled want life-improving programs like access to quality childcare - aka "socialism."

Also, at some point, the party in charge of all branches of federal governance and, here in Georgia, have long had unfettered control ot state government, should bear at least SOME responsibility for this, right?

Then there's the state ranking near the bottom in worker rights. The (ahem) "number one state to do business" is one of the worst states to be a worker.

PLUS: Where's Geoff, Mike and ... Stacey?Former Biden DOJ special prosecutor Jack Smith was made to testify under oath before a Senate Judiciary committee hearing, and Missouri Senator Eric Schmitt (R) "outed" Smith ... as a Caitlin Clark fan ... while trying to "gotcha" Jack into confessing he'd been to Atlanta - because he was at a Hawks/Warriors game on February 3, 2024, which surely meant he met with Fulton DA Fani Willis (and maybe Nathan Wade, too!) Right?

RIGHT?!?

In subpoenaed text messages, Smith's staffers discussed Jack being it a HAWKEYES game - as in Iowa - when they played at Maryland. Remember how big a deal it was to see Caitlin Clark and Iowa back then? Hell, it still is a big draw in the WNBA.

That Jack Smith - a straight white male without a daughter on the court - might have attended THAT basketball game never entered Senator Schmitt's mind, nor did it occur to any of his staffers, because as much as they'd have you believe they're here to "protect" women's sports, women's sports isn't actually top-of-mind for them.

Pretty telling in and of itself; except after Senator Amy Klobuchar exposed the gaffe, Schmitt fled the room to a safe space - The Charlie Kirk Show - where the host gave him a virtual high-five for that "gotcha" that wasn't. Schmitt didn't correct anyone then, nor did he come clean when cornered on the streets by TMZ/DC or on a remote appearance back to his home state of Missouri for a St. Louis FOX-TV affiliate.

Nope. Confess no mistake. Make no apology for insisting Smith had perjured himself or calling the witness a 'dirtbag.' Just remain 'eyes forward' and if the questions get uncomfortable, pivot the conversation to whatever "whatabout" comes to mind first.

If yesterday's snapshot into the mindset of the modern GOP in its "MAGA" era doesn't properly encapsulate their movement, it's on a long(er and growing) list of prime examples, at the very least.

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Hey, so I've made it no secret I'm disappointed in the Georgia Democratic gubernatorial field (save for Rep. Ruwa Romman, running for state Senate and thus busy with her own race, and former state Senator Jason Esteves) not continuing to work for the party to win that office they themselves coveted. Seems their goals were more personal than ideological, then, no?

As for Esteves, he'd be forgiven for wanting to mourn the loss of his mother or be home with his wife and kids after months on the road campaigning. Instead, he's doing more than Geoff Duncan, Mike Thurmond or ...

... former Georgia Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams.

She's spent more time in Alabama working for that state's Democratic gubernatorial nominee than for the one in her home state.

Stacey, your home village needs you, because "it takes a village" - a coalition - for Democrats to win the governor's mansion back.

Georgia Humanities' President Mary McCartin Wearn wrote a salient op-ed for the Atlanta Journal Constitution that fills in a lot of gaps in Rick Jackson's made-for-TV (ads) autobiography.

From Team Jackson, you'd believe, he singularly overcame his broken family, alcoholic mother, being a foster child and living in Techwood Homes, without much mention of (as the AJC detailed in a 2015 biography of Jackson) the disabled uncle (on public assistance) that aided the young Rick's pathway to safety or the foster parents (surely with state foster system funds to assist) there for him or that - yeah - he lived at Techwood Homes, but that it was public housing (pre-dating integration, so it was all-white).

For Rick, "it took a village." You wouldn't come away with that impression from his splashy TV ads, though. Yet I have to wonder: if any of the young people featured as beneficiaries of his benevolence later ran for office and touted themselves in the same manner (and left him out of the TV ads), would he not take umbrage?

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Meanwhile, Rick's opponent - former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms - is having to find some media space with a big marketing deficit (and precious little air time to even buy up) so she sat for interviews with Major Garrett on CBS News' 'Takeout' and with WXIA-TV (11 Alive) and journalist Zack Merchant to provide context for her years as mayor.

If you're like many Americans who spend the weekend absorbing football games on Saturday and Sunday, it was awful hard to miss that spray-tanned, purse-lipped face that won't let us escape his orbit anytime soon. Between his appearing at half the Texas-Tennessee college game Saturday (wreaking havoc on the coaches' communication equipment) to the Air Force One flyover at halftime (seriously?) to - get this - taxpayer funded TV commercials touting Donald Trump's perceived accomplishments and aspirations, the man was everywhere.

Which begs the question: why are we allowing our taxpayer dollars to be used to recycle (literally!) Trump campaign ads? For a party that's beat the drum ginning up fear of fascism and state-run media, the silence from Republicans is deafening on this and the rollout of "Trump TV" from the White House, no?

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Then there's the "narrative-to-nothing" trajectory of the Trump administration's assertion that non-citizen voting is worthy of tens of millions of taxpayer dollars in investigation - and maybe even armed ICE agents at polling places - that's become much ado about nothing in swing states like Nevada and yes, in Georgia, where they found three. Not three thousand or three hundred; just three. All that after salivating over the prospect of eliminating non-English ballots in the state. They're telegraphing to us all what their strategy is: it's just falling flat.

But wait - there's more (waste): we already knew of ICE/DHS splurging on detention facilities because they over-spent in nearby Social Circle, but a GAO study found taxpayer dollars wasted throughout the country by ICE, and it leaves me wondering "where's 'Big Balls' and his DOGE cronies?"

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As an aside, how hilarious is it to have Fox News, MAGA and Trump fearmonger us about cOmMuNiSm and sOcIaLiSm while they skip work to go to a White House gala for China's President?

Upon review of my upbringing - between my Mom's almost all-black female staff of co-workers (who'd often babysit my sister and I) and some of my earliest educators in elementary school, to my college (and still) bestie Sonya - I've been influenced by African-American in ways that I have to conclude shaped my civil rights, political and sociological views over time.

I'm not saying that makes me better than the white male conservative counterparts I grew up alongside, but I'm not one for bedwetting over my beloved home state being led by black women, either.

The historic opportunity this election year presents Georgians isn't lost on Dr. Karri Bryant, either. The author, entrepreneur and pastor at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Stonecrest opines that Georgians need to recognize the leadership women have been providing all along and to embrace the space for it to thrive.

Feels worthy of a deep dive, so I climbed up the diving board and jumped right in.

Then, I shared some Georgia Democratic Party convention speeches from many of the slate of black women running for statewide office here in Georgia.

It's a plan that worked for Donald Trump in 2024: when faced with the prospect of getting his debate clock cleaned by a more veteran politician (who I suppose just happens to be a black woman), Rick Jackson is making history in ditching debate after debate.

Jackson said 'no' to WXIA-TV/Tegna, was a no-show at a Macon debate, and has now stiff-armed the Atlanta Press Club's debate series - a 32-year first for Georgia's gubernatorial race.

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Meanwhile, it's somewhat flown under the radar that the GOP nominee for governor and the state's GOP chairman, Josh McKoon, hadn't so much as shared a lunch since Jackson became the nominee. Is McKoon tight with Burt Jones, the outgoing lieutenant governor Rick ambushed with attacks during the primary?

Maybe now that they're - I guess - working together to win in November, Josh could help 'slick Rick' sharpen up his housing affordability policy position and square it with his past where - as the affluent owner of a sprawling estate with the 82-room mansion - he fought affordable housing being built anywhere near his estate.

Cathy Woolard is someone I've long admired - as a trailblazing out politician in Atlanta, one of the early believers in the Atlanta Beltline project and for just being a grounded and outspoken liberal in a sea of right wing nonsense (often appearing on FOX-5's "The Georgia Gang" having to smack down silliness from the likes of Phil Kent).

That she's leaving a city she's poured so much energy and passion into wouldn't be a big deal if she were any other retiring, coupled up person; that it's Cathy Woolard, though, to me, is notable.

What does it say about the state of the city - or the state that surrounds it? What does it say about where transit and affordability within the city, currently?

A lot.

Whose fault is that? Not just local elected officials (of which she was one); not just elected state-level Republicans.

The answer's complicated, but I gave it a go.