Today is a huge day for political news. We are very close to winning the Senate. The two runoff races in Georgia finished yesterday. Raphael Warnock beat the Republican incumbent last night. In the other race, Jon Ossof, the Democratic candidate, is the apparent winner, but few news outlets have called it yet. Many people seem to consider it a done deal, but I will feel a lot better once it’s official. I am, as they say, cautiously optimistic.
In other news, Capitol Hill is hopping. Today is the day Congress is supposed to certify the national election results. President Trump has pressured Vice President Pence to block the results, but Pence acknowledges that he has no authority to do that. Even Mitch McConnell — who has enabled the GOP idiots for years — admits that there is no legal reason to set aside the election results, and has urged his party to accept the voters’ choice and move on. Yet, certain Republican members of Congress still refuse to admit that Joe Biden won, despite absolutely no evidence of the voter fraud and corruption they keep insisting has happened.
Also on Capitol Hill, two buildings in the Capitol complex have been evacuated. My husband is on the security team there and has been getting alerts about it, but there are still no details about why this is happening. There was a threat this week, claiming to come from Iran, saying a plane will be crashed into the Capitol today. But authorities don’t consider it credible. And in any case, the Capitol building itself, where Congress is currently debating the results, has not been evacuated. Instead, a congressional office building and one building of the Library of Congress (Bob’s building) have been. I’m glad he’s working from home today and isn’t actually there.
Also in Washington, D.C., today, thousands of sexist, racist, fascist protestors are swarming the city, many of them armed and few of them masked. And they’re there at the request of the President of the United States, to protest his loss in the election, which he still says was stolen from him. Apparently hundreds of these “deplorables” tried to storm the Capitol building, which could be the reason for the evacuations, though the buildings that were evacuated weren’t stormed. Currently the protestors have pushed aside the barricades and are on the Capitol steps; so far police are holding them back. What a mess.
I think I’ll just stay in the house today.
The Petrini Page 