Morning Reads for National Bicarbonate of Soda Day (December 30)

Bicarbonate of soda is baking soda, in case you were wondering, and yes, it absolutely has it’s own “holiday.” It’s not exactly one of those well-celebrated items in the household, but it is a staple!

I will spare you the year-in-review posts in today’s links, but on this, my last Morning Reads of 2020, I wish you a happy and safe 2021. Here’s to better things to come!

Now, let’s get on to the news.

Pat Conroy

• President-elect Biden will be in Atlanta on Monday to campaign for Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock.
• Now all four Senate candidates say they support $2,000 stimulus checks.
• Unsurprisingly, investigators didn’t find a single fraudulent ballot in their audit of Cobb County. (Alternate link.)
• Judge Leslie Gardner has stopped Muscogee and Ben Hill Counties from removing 4,000 voters from their roles ahead of the January 5th runoff.
  • Some conservative news outlets have insinuated that Gardner being Stacey Abrams’ sister has influenced her decision, but it seems like her ruling (which you can read here) is firmly based on federal precedent.
• Rev. James Woodall, president of the Georgia NAACP, has resigned from the Secretary of State’s election task force, calling it a farce. (Alternate link.)
• The New York Times has an in-depth profile on Black Voters Matter and their quest to knock on two million doors ahead of the runoff. (Alternate link.)
• Food pantry lines are becoming a standard in metro Atlanta. (Alternate link.)
• Braves legend Phil Niekro has died at the age of 81.

Alice Walker

• The girlfriend of the man who set off a bomb on Christmas day in Nashville had warned local authorities in 2019 that he was making bombs.
• The Social Security Administration’s internal inspector general’s report has found the agency failed to pay 27,724 eligible recipients owed $52.1 million. It’s also calling to have the agency’s political appointees removed. (Alternate link.)
• Louisiana Congressman-elect Luke Letlow has died of COVID-19. He was 41 years-old.
• Colorado health officials believe they’ve found their second case of the U.K.-variant of COVID that is highly infectious.
• Louisville policemen Myles Cosgrove and Joshua Jaynes have been terminated over their roles in the raid that killed Breonna Taylor.
• Brexit may really, really be coming to an end this time.
• The U.K. has approved the AstraZeneca-Oxford COVID vaccine.
• 16 have been killed in a blast at an airport in Yemen. The target seems to have been the new government ministers, none of whom were hurt.

Flannery O’Connor

• A third of Americans believe President-elect Biden won due to voter fraud, 40 percent believe COVID was formed in a lab in China, and other sad facts from NPR’s recent poll on misinformation and conspiracy theories.
• President Trump intends to hold his New Year’s Eve gala for hundreds of attendees at Mar-a-Largo in spite of rising COVID cases.