Friend of the show, Marilyn Marks - executive director of the Coalition for Good Governance - joined me for a wall-to-wall conversation on election integrity in the state of Georgia.

First, on the day President Carter left Georgia to be eulogized in the nation's capitol, Marilyn shared a story from Carter's political launch when he overcame a party "boss" ballot-stuffing on behalf of Carter's state senate opponent. Pretty funny (now) story, actually. She also deftly pointed out Carter's pro-consumer (and business!) deregulation of the freight and airline industries.

As Republicans start rubbing hands together to ⁠plot more changes to our system⁠, the meat & potatoes of our discussion, however, centered on the state of the state of Georgia's election system.

Marks believes Georgia is the worst of all states when it comes to election integrity and even argues we, the voter, lack the privacy when we vote that the US Constitution guarantees us. That's not a new complaint, either, as evidenced by this story from WXIA-TV (11 Alive) in 2020.

She believes Republicans have some things right on their pecking order and that Democrats would be wrong to oppose some action items.

I wanted to share the touching tributes from President Jimmy Carter's friends and loved ones today, and told myself that's what I'd do, yesterday. Then I awoke today realizing the date - January 6th - and I couldn't do it.

We're 23-plus years removed from 9/11 and it feels as if too many of us lost as much track of January 6, 2021 in just four years as we have that fateful day nearly a quarter century ago.

Well, Congress affirmed the election results today, essentially allowing a four-year insurrection to complete what a violent mob couldn't, four years ago.

Still, we can't forget that day, and what led to it and who incited it. So today I reviewed some of the final January 6 Congressional committee hearing audio - including audio of some of the heinous footage at the Capitol that day - because we need to not let that fateful day and the organized effors that led to it to be swept under the rug so much of our country's less-than-prideful history has.

In the wake of the terror attack on New Orleans' famed Bourbon Street, President-elect Donald Trump made the (il)logical leap to tie the Biden administration's border actions to the carnage. Nevermind that it took mere hours for investigators to learn the murderous thug was an American-born former Army veteran who grew up Baptist but converted to Islam before being radicalized.

Did Donald Trump do the responsible thing and retract his Truth social post? Nah. He doubled-down on it.

That's a microcosm of what the next four years will be like; something it seems 49% of American voters had forgotten about from our prior experience under this (ahem) "leadership."

He pretends his prior term was free of domestic terror - having campaigned on that lie - which CNN deftly corrected. But again, America's amnesia.

The 'pandemic President' could conceivably walk into needing to address another one - bird flu. Thankfully, the Biden administration has been (at least somewhat) active in setting the table for America's response to it, should it become "a pandemic that could be far more deadly than Covid-19."

Do we remember how a prior Trump administration responded to that pandemic? Who's confident Trump's health secreatary nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a serious respondent?

Today we're just coming to grips with the horror levied on dozens of revelers on Bourbon Street in the early hours of New Year's Day, and I found it notable that Ken Suguira, a sports writer with the Atlanta Journal Constitution penned - in my mind - one of the more poingant pieces of journalism from the scene. There to cover the University of Georgai's football game, he was, instead, thrust into action reporting on a terror attack.

In Georgia's Cobb County - a decidedly (now) "blue" county has a deadlocked 2-2 commission split after the state's GOP-heavy general assembly redrew the county's commission district map - which drew an elected commissioner out of her district barely a year into elected office. A judge Tuesday affirmed that - let's call it what it is - partisan tactic. The unseated commissioner - Jerica Richardson - called it what it is: "precedent that the General Assembly has the blanket permission to remove a sitting elected official, at any time, and for any reason. "

Meanwhile, outside Augusta, a similar bedroom community county had toyed with incorporating all of its unincorporated areas to surround the only two incorporated cities in that county in what's a naked attempt to "freeze" a purported rise in the number of (ahem) "radical activists" in the growing hamlet of Grovetown (my hometown). Local conservative talk radio host Austin Rhodes fears "public housing" and "public transit" there and eventually creeping into the hoity-toity gated community area of the county some 7-10 miles away.

Knowing that town's history, as I do, it's incumbent on me to remind Austin that Groetown's history is rife with "low income" housing and "public transit" back when frontier folks took the PIcayune train "to town," but I digress.

Conservatives fear democracy; seek to smother it to sleep whenever possible in Georgia it would seem.

The New York Times released an 11-minute video with never-before-seen footage of a conversation between President Jimmy Carter and the Times in 2006. A rather solid summation of Carter's perilous four-year, one-term presidency and the decision he made to contiue pursuing his ideals, domestically and globally, after leaving office. Let's eavesdrop a little.

Politico's politics editor David Ciders cleaned out his 2024 campaign notebook that's pretty insightful, with some notable quotes and quips from Americans from all over the campaign trail. Take a listen.

Lastly, there are reasons to compare the late Jimmy Carter and President-elect Donald Trump (political outsiders agitating DC norms) but that' about where the comparisons end between the two, despite the fact that one was a southern baptist evangelical Christian, and the other continues to enjoy support form southen Baptist evangelical Christians.

When I'd heard of the passing of President Jimmy Carter, I knew right away the two conversations I wanted to have - and I'm grateful both guests had the time for me.

Georgia WIN List executive director Melita Easters was a reporter on the ground in Plains, Georgia the night a triumphant Carter returned as "President-elect" and brings a wealth of anecdotes, background and insights into Carter's life before, during and after his presidency.

Author, historian and professor of sociology, Mal Hyman, picked up the conversation for today's second half, and adds his perspective on Carter's era and lasting legacies.

NOTES:

The Andrew Young Foundation's documentary: "Carter," incidentally, is a wonderful watch. You can view that HERE.

Atlanta native and journalist Sean Keenan wrote a poignant piece about "Jimmy" from a booth Carter frequented in a piece of Atlanta political turf - Manuel's Tavern. HERE is a gift link.

Atlanta Journal Constitution political cartoonist Mike Luckovich had three options to commemorate President Carter, but couldn't choose just one, so he shared three - HERE.

Atlanta Journal Constitution opinion writer Bill Torpey minced few words; in fact, he may have over-flowered a bit. Nonetheless, his summarizing the aftermath of a Georgia Appeals Court ruling that Fani Willis and the Fultono County DA's office has to cough up the Trump election interference case lays bare all that Willis and Nathan Wade did to potentially ruin (my opinion) the most rock-solid case agains the convicted felon about to re-take the White House.

Meanwhile, while the latst "governent shutdown" threat has been averted, it's time to mark a line in the sand: the second Trump presidency began this week, and in predictably disastrous and embarrassing fashion.

Oh, and congrats to our new ambassador to The Bahamas - Herschel Walker. Enjoy that vacation, big guy.

Friend of the show Jay Bookman penned a piece chonicling how unpopular taxpayer funded private school vouchers are with conservatives and liberals - red and blue states. He also deftly explained what's happening in Georgia as a program set to aid maybe 6% of the state's student population attend a private school - with 1% of its education budget - suddenly appears to be available to nearly 20% of the state's students - at a much higher taxpayer cost - due to an interpretation by an unelected board tasked with managing the voucher program.

Also, the disparate storytelling from Fox-owned WAGA-TV and Cox Media's WSB-TV. My goodness.

Leigh McGowan, aka "Politics Girl" called for a Democratic Party "reboot" in one of her latest social media "rants" (her word; not mine) and I'm in near-total agreement with everything she said.

Also, is Senator Chris Murphy prepping for a Presidential run? Sure seems like it. He ripped Georgia Rep. Barry Loudermilk's interim January 6th report recommending a criminal investigation into former Rep. Liz Cheney and has honed his anti-Trump/Musk messaging effectively, too. Just putting a pin in this for 2028.

Bill Maher's made a quite comfortable living pointing out how Fox News & right wing talk radio has manipulated a bloc of voters - in his brand of comedic political satire from "Politically Incorrect" to "Real Time" to ... well, now, this era where he doesn't sound all that awfully different than Joe Rogan, honestly.

Rogan, of course, is also a white male whose political views are actually very closely aligned to Maher's - and Maher's recent guest, Jane Fonda.

Jane and Bill sat down for his "Club Random" podcast a few weeks ago, and I had a long drive back from Savannah last night, so I finally got around to eavesdropping on them. In this sit-down tequila swig, Fonda - age 87 - proved to be still sharp as a tack and didn't hold back when occasionally callhing Maher out for losing his liberal way.

Bill's spent the past few years grousing about "far left" things like the NAACP issuing a travel advisory for anyone going to Florida as examples of "wokeism" run amok, but also confesses Demoratic politicians aren't governng in response to it and that Republicans just use these salacious headlines as fodder to campaign on.

Fonda, meanwhile, spent the entire conversation parsing out valid points of view to support opposition to the sort of right wing dogwhistles ("Defund the police!" or trans carciturization) Maher himself has fallen victim to.

As I'd mentioned Monday, I did a lot of reading over the weekend, and was struck by two pieces that offered two Democratic congressional reps offering differing rationales for why Democrats lost control of Washington. What's funny is, they almost actually sound the same, despite one being a blue collar district moderate, the other the new chair of the Progressive caucus.