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Today I am very sad and yes, even angry as a result of the activities that happened at our nations Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. I never thought I would see a mob of anarchists siege our sacred halls.

I have volunteered in Kenya, the Ukraine and Belarus where this type of mob action might be expected, but I was always proud to share how our nation handles differences. Now we are just like these countries and others and no longer the example to the world. We never will be an example for nations again.

The most surprising was to see this incited by our president. He asked for this action. I am also very disappointed in Wisconsins Sen. Ron Johnson who was one of the Senate leaders encouraging this action by supporting the presidents lies and conspiracies. He should be censured, and he needs to be replaced at the next election.

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The Tea Party takeover of the Republican Party allowed for President Trump to be elected. The party no longer believes in democracy. It is time for it to turn back to the Eisenhower Republican Party era beliefs when I was proud to volunteer for the Army and serve. If not, it should disappear and be replaced by a party that believes in democracy.

I encourage this paper that publishes editorial columns to comment about lies like that this election was filled with fraud when columnists continue these conspiracies. Written word conspiracies matter.

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Letter: Republicans must rethink core of party | Opinion - telegraphherald.com

A slow-simmering conflict among Republicans has burst into open hostilities at a perilous time for the party, as it seeks unity heading into Tuesdays crucial Senate election in Georgia and prepares to confront a new Democratic president.

As President Trump has refused to admit defeat in the November presidential election, his resistance to moving offstage has driven a wedge between his staunchest loyalists and many Republican party leaders.

The tensions are growing in the aftermath of legislative battles that pitted much of the GOP against Trump on key policies, last week producing the first veto override of his presidency, on a defense bill, and a blunt rejection of his 11th-hour demand for increased COVID-19 relief payments.

The through-line on those battles leads to the question of how Trump-dominated the Republican Party will remain after he leaves the White House. Two momentous political events this week Georgias special election for its two Senate seats and Wednesdays debate in Congress over ratifying President-elect Joe Bidens electoral college victory will be early tests of the strengths of the opposing GOP factions and will help define the partys future path.

If the Democrats win the Senate seats, which started out as Republicans to lose, Trump will surely get much of the blame for sowing division within the party, in part with his extraordinary call over the weekend pressuring Georgias secretary of State, a Republican, to overthrow Bidens win in the state. Democratic victories in Tuesdays election would produce a 50-50 Senate, making Vice President-elect Kamala Harris the tiebreaker and giving Democrats control of both houses of Congress and the White House.

If Republicans narrowly lose the GA Senate run-off elections to give Democrats unified control of the federal government, it will be the greatest self-own in politics in modern history, Michael McDonald, a nonpartisan election expert at the University of Florida, said on Twitter.

Conversely, if Georgias incumbent Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler win, after going to extraordinary lengths to stay in the presidents good graces, it will likely strengthen Trumps hand as a continuing force to be reckoned with in the party.

The battle between Trump and the party establishment raged intensely during his first campaign, went mostly underground during his presidency and has once again burst to the surface.

The presidents allies believe the establishment is clinging to an outdated view of a Republican electorate that has been transformed by Trump to include more blue-collar workers.

Are there tensions? Yeah. But Trump has realigned the Republican party, said Ken Blackwell, a conservative activist and Trump supporter in Ohio. If the party wants to remain the majority party, they have to accept that the party is realigned. These are growing pains.

But many other Republicans, including some who have largely supported the president, say he risks tarnishing his legacy with extreme measures to overturn an election result that has been certified by a bipartisan array of state and local officials, after courts all the way to the conservative-dominated Supreme Court rejected dozens of Trumps lawsuits alleging fraud and other irregularities.

The recording of Trump demanding that Georgias secretary of State find additional votes to overturn Bidens victory was the most blunt measure to become public.

The tape was a real threshold, and Trump crossed it, said Scott Reed, a GOP strategist. It moved a lot of people into the Enough! category. They just had enough.

Key members of the political establishment rallied against the electoral challenge Monday. The Business Roundtable, which represents major U.S. corporations, issued a statement saying that the peaceful transition of power is a hallmark of our democracy and should proceed unimpeded and that efforts to impede the transition threaten the economic recovery. The Republican-friendly U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Assn. of Manufacturers issued similar pronouncements.

While the current fight focuses on loyalty to Trump, it has deeper roots, going back at least to the populist anti-establishment forces of the Tea Party movement, which formed in opposition to the Obama presidency, then turned its energy to making the GOP into a more conservative, confrontational party.

The divisions were seeing now reflect those in the period of 2010 to 2016 between Tea Party conservatives and governing conservatives, said Republican pollster Whit Ayres. Donald Trump tapped into the populist elements of the Tea Party movement and expanded and exacerbated the division.

Its a split that has been hard for any Republican leader to straddle, Ayres said, because the populist wing doesnt necessarily want a specific policy agenda so much as it wants a party that visibly fights perceived enemies.

Thats what they got with the pugnacious Trump, who has commanded more loyalty than the party: An October Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found that among Republican voters, 54% considered themselves to be more a supporter of Trump than of the GOP; just 38% said they were supporters of the party more than of Trump.

The Republican electorate is not what the establishment thought it was, said John J. Pitney, a former Republican Party official who is a professor of politics at Claremont McKenna College.

Trump in some ways is an unlikely heir to the Tea Party, because he did not embrace the fiscal conservatism that was the movements original animating issue. But he built on its belief that the GOP establishment was complacent.

We dont love all his policies, but hes been willing to go to war for what he believes in, said Mark Meckler, a co-founder of Tea Party Patriots. Candidates who are starting to jockey for 2024 its going to take someone who has some serious fight in them to win in 2024.

Thats why many observers read 2024 politics into the spectacle of Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, a potential presidential candidate, last week becoming the first Republican senator to announce that he would challenge the certification of the electoral college vote. Hawley openly defied a plea from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to refrain from a challenge, which would delay but not prevent certification of Bidens victory.

McConnell, who spent much of the last decade trying to tame the Tea Party, wanted to avoid the roll-call vote on Trumps electoral fate that Hawleys challenge would require. The vote or multiple ones, if Republicans challenge more than one states slate of electors will force Republicans to vote up or down on Trumps false claims of election fraud.

That will be especially difficult for Republican senators facing tough reelection fights in 2022, forcing them to anger significant numbers of voters whichever way they go. It will amount to a referendum on one of the most controversial tenets of Trumpism: his willingness to break democratic norms and disrespect national political institutions in order to maintain power.

The prospect has split leading conservatives. Hawley got support from Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, a conservative with Tea Party roots who is also considering a 2024 bid. But another possible presidential contender, Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, criticized the effort.

Other opponents include a veritable reunion of Reagan Republicans, including former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz, a member of Congress from Wyoming and of the House GOP leadership; former House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin; and former Sen. John Danforth of Missouri, a longtime home-state booster of Hawley.

The challenges are directly at odds with the Constitutions clear text and our core beliefs as Republicans, Liz Cheney wrote in a lengthy memo to fellow Republicans in the House, arguing that for Congress to second-guess state decisions on electors would be a power grab at states expense.

Democrats have long attempted, unconstitutionally, to federalize every element of our nation including elections, she wrote. Republicans should not embrace Democrats unconstitutional position on these issues.

On Monday, in the aftermath of Trumps call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, the list of Republican senators refusing to join the challenge to the electoral college grew, joined by Sens. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and Kevin Cramer of North Dakota. Capito, fresh off a reelection victory in a state where Trump is wildly popular, said in a statement, The 2020 presidential election is over. Our country should unite.

Whatever happens in Georgia and in Congress, Trump is on track to keep one important part of the Republican Party machinery in his corner. The Republican National Committee is slated later this week to reelect his ally, Ronna McDaniel, as party chair defying the longstanding tradition of a party shaking up its leadership after a presidential loss.

Still, Trumps postelection campaign against members of his own party could undercut his efforts to continue to lead it.

If he had played this right and talked about his legacy and the good of the country, he could have been in a stronger position to lead the party post-White House or run again and win, said a Republican official who asked not to be named. But his exaggerated tales of election fraud are a bridge too far for many Republicans.

Read more:
Republicans splinter as they balance Trump's loyalty test - Los Angeles Times

ALBANY A new year is about to dawn, and the first big event for kids in 2021 will be at the Albany Museum of Art. The second annual American Girl Winter Tea Party is scheduled for 2-4 p.m. on Jan. 16 at the AMA.

The event is called American Girl, but it is for girls and boys and their best friends. The best friend can be any type of doll, stuffed animal or action figure that the child wants to bring. Because of health guidelines, the guest list will be limited to 12 kids, but each child also may bring a parent.

Brighten up your chilly new year with a cozy cup of tea and make new friends with us, AMA Director of Education and Public Programming Annie Vanoteghem said. This is a great opportunity to share your doll with friends and their dolls.

The first tea party in January 2020 was the kid social event of the season, and Vanoteghem says this one will be, too. Kids arent required to dress up for the occasion, but they are welcome to do so.

I always loved to dress up my doll and myself for a special tea party with friends; this will be a safe and fun afternoon for all, she said.

Tea will be served, as well as tasty treats. Party-goers will be able to play games and engage in three creative activities. Each also will take home a special gift for that best friend.

You will make special creations for you and your doll, enjoy a warm cup of tea and goodies, and play with old friends and new, Vanoteghem said.

The cost to attend is $20 for AMA members and $25 for non-members.

Of course, its free for the doll and the parent, Vanoteghem said.

On the Wall, murals by David Hale, Shanequa Gay, Amanda Jane Burk and Chris Johnson, and paintings by Sarah Emerson, is in the Haley Gallery through Feb. 20;

Midlands, works by Courtney McClellan, is in the East Gallery through Feb. 20;

Escape Plan, works by Elinor Saragoussi, is in the West Gallery through Feb. 20;

Georgia Artists Guild of Albanys 27th annual exhibition is in the McCormack Gallery.

See the article here:
Albany Museum of Art announces Winter Tea Party - The Albany Herald

In her 2016 book, Strangers in Their Own Land, Hochschild went to the Deep South to study an emerging conservative identity and came away with something like a Rosetta stone for the rise of Donald Trump. She offered a psychological allegory for the right-wing worldview, which she called the deep story.

Read: The lines that divide America

The deep story went like this: You are an older white man without a college degree standing in the middle of a line with hundreds of millions of Americans. The queue leads up a hill, toward a haven just over the ridge, which is the American dream. Behind you in line, you can see a train of woeful soulsmany poor, mostly nonwhite, born in America and abroad, young and old. Its scary to look back, Hochschild writes. There are so many behind you, and in principle you wish them well. Still, youve waited a long time. Now youre stuck in line, because the economy isnt working. And worse than stuck, youre stigmatized; liberals in the media say every traditional thing you believe is racist and sexist. And whats this? People are cutting in line in front of you! Something is wrong. The old line wasnt perfect, but at least it was a promise. There is order in the fact of a line. And if that order is coming apart, then so is America.

Hochschild tested this allegory with her Republican sources and heard that it struck a chord. Yes, they said, this captures how I feel. In the past few years, shes kept in touch with several of her connections from the Deep South and keenly tracked their philosophical evolution. Shes watched the locus of their anxiety move from budgets (They never talk about deficits anymore, she told me) to the entrenched and swampy political class. She also witnessed the Trumpification of everything. There used to be a Tea Party, she said. Now its all Trumpism.

If we want to understand this movement, Hochschild told me, we have to understand what happened in the past five years to the people in the line. I now see that the line metaphor in my book was only Chapter 1 of the deep story, she said. What Im seeing now is there are more chapters.

If Chapter 1 was The Line, Chapter 2 was The Arrival. When Trump appeared to the members of the broken line, Hochschild saw that he embodied the most ineffable aspects of the deep story. Trump might be a lifelong bullshitter, but one thing he has never had to bullshit is his grievance toward liberal elites and his antipathy for the groups whom Tea Party Republicans already knew they hated. He animated their distrust toward Barack Obama with his birtherism claims. He gave shape to their hatred for Hillary Clinton by leading Lock her up! chants. From his first rallies, Trumps basic message has always been I love you, and you love me, and we all hate the same people, Hochschild said.

The rest is here:
The Deep Story of Trumpism - The Atlantic

Kim Cook, Associated Press Published 11:54 a.m. ET Dec. 29, 2020 | Updated 12:10 p.m. ET Dec. 30, 2020

Coronavirus topped the list of things people want to leave behind in 2020 and not take into the new year at the annual Good Riddance Day paper shredder event in Times Square. (Dec. 28) AP Domestic

Dont want to stay up till midnight on the last day of the year? Families, early sleepers and those wanting to social distance due to the coronavirus pandemicmight consider a midday celebration for Dec.31.

Its easy to bring the festive feeling of a nighttime soiree into the daylight hours at home.

First, and most importantly, keep your circle small, according to COVID-19 health guidelines. The safest way to celebrate the new year is to celebrate at home with the people who live with you or virtually with friends and family, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Health advises.

One way to combine a glittery New Years Eve vibe with a daytime feel is by holding a British-style high tea party, suggests Maria Lucia, a designer and stylist with the online serviceDecorist.Ask everyone, including those online, to wear fun hats, tiaras or crowns, and consider getting personalized face masks.

Deck the halls with a mix of silver and gold patterns and solids, Lucia says. The blend of whimsical with traditional will give the party a unique look thats appropriate for all ages.

Decorations might include safe, LED flameless candles; confetti; string lights, hanging or in glass containers; and plates and balloons with an iridescent or mirror-ball disco vibe.

Or take a more sunlit approach. Martha Stewart Livings home editor, Lorna Aragon, suggests forsaking the glitter and glam of midnight revelry.

Start the day in a fresh, ready-for-the-new-year way, she says. A colorful tablecloth, runner and fresh flowers are a lovely choice. Choose different shades of one color (she likes green for renewal) for flowers, linens and candles.

Sarah Wentworth ofIvy Paige Partiesin Meridian, Idaho, has a downloadable template for a Noon Years Brunch place or buffet card.

If youre holding your small celebration outside, have plenty of blankets and pillows on hand.

Depending on your timing, you can still ring in the new year with noisemakers as the clock strikes 12 in other countries around the world.

New York wedding and events planner Marcy Blum suggests collecting New Years resolutions from everyone on pieces of paper, putting them in a bowland then reading them one by one, guessing whose is whose. Online guests could send resolutions in advance, or enter them in a chat.

You might also ask everyone to suggest or offer one thing that would go in a group time capsule.

A daytime NYE party should still feel special and festive, says Greg Lofts, deputy food editor for Martha Stewart Living. For beverages, bubbles are a must, even if alcohol is not, to set a celebratory mood. Make a mocktail as the featured drink.

For a quick and easy idea, he says, brew and chill hibiscus tea, then combine over ice with a squeeze of lime and high quality ginger beer.

Blum suggests Bloody Marys for a noon fete, in Mason-style jars.

Later, she says, you can swap out the booze for hot chocolate by laying out pre-packaged mixes, wrapped chocolate spoons and festive mugs.

For Lucias high tea, consider mini sandwiches, dessert bites on tiered platters, iced teas or hot teas.

Fondue is an entertaining way to feed the younger family members, says interior and event designer Kate Spiro of New York.

Try toasting with champagne flutes filled with milk, paired with homemade cookies, she adds. Acrylic or stemless glasses might be safer for little hands.

Spiro also suggests fruit smoothies or non-alcoholic sparkling cider.

Lofts says his years of catering experience for kids and adults alike taught me that the most precious, fancy and labor-intensive hors doeuvres will never be as popular as pigs in a blanket with ketchup and mustard for dunking."

Make a dip or two, like a sour cream ranch and herby green goddess, and serve with a giant platter of kid-friendly crudits (think carrot and celery sticks and mini sweet peppers) and crackers, he says.

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Want to ring in 2021 early? Celebrate the new year before midnight with 'Noon Year's Eve.' - USA TODAY