Last Call For The Return Of A Fat Stack Of Tubmans

After Donald Trump and Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin made sure that putting Harriet Tubman on the $20 would take no less than twelve years, delaying the 2016 Obama-era decision until at least 2028 for "counterfeit safety reasons" and scrapping a 2019 redesign that was nearly finished, for the sole reason that racist Trump loved racist Andrew Jackson as his favorite president and wanted to keep Jackson on the bill, it seems President Joe Biden has come to fix yet another Trump mess.

President Joe Biden is looking to resume work to redesign the $20 bill to feature abolitionist Harriet Tubman.

“The Treasury Department is taking steps to resume efforts to put Harriet Tubman on the front of the new $20 notes,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Monday.

She added that America's currency should "reflect the history and diversity of our country, and Harriet Tubman's image gracing the new $20 note would certainly reflect that.”

The effort, initiated late in former President Barack Obama’s second term, was backburnered by the Trump administration under former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Mnuchin has said that the delay was due to additional work needed on anti-counterfeiting security features, and that bills with her image on it were not likely to enter circulation before 2028.

A Treasury Department spokesperson confirmed that they are looking at ways to speed up the process but did not specify what those might be. When Mnuchin first announced the delay, he also said that the $10 and $50 bills would be refreshed ahead of the $20 denomination, and that work remains underway.

The redesigned note, on which Tubman would usurp President Andrew Jackson — a slaveowner who would be relegated to the backside of the note — was supposed to roll out in 2020. The timing of the design’s unveiling was initially supposed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which extended voting rights to women.

Jackson, the seventh president, proved to be one of former president Donald Trump’s favorite historical figures. Trump spoke of Jackson often on the 2016 campaign trail, deriding plans replacing him with Tubman as “pure political correctness” and suggested placing Tubman on the $2 bill instead.

The Treasury Department has previously denied that the delay was influenced by political considerations. In 2019 the department’s inspector general agreed to open an investigation into the decision to push back the redesign for several years.

 

I'm not sure how long the project will take, but it was supposed to be done last year. I'm hoping it can done sooner rather than later, especially before Republicans can add a poison pill to must-pass legislation that would kill the project completely.

Still, this is not a top priority, I'd rather have the $1,400 in my pocket today already, but it's something.

California Goes Viral, Con't

Under heavy pressure from industry and tourism groups, and facing a growing recall movement, California Gov. Gavin Newsom has not renewed the state's stay-at-home COVID orders even as new strains of the virus are now ravaging the state.

California officials lifted regional coronavirus stay-at-home orders across the state on Monday, a change that could allow restaurants and businesses in many counties to reopen outdoor dining and other services.

All counties will return to the colored tier system that assigns local risk levels based on case numbers and rates of positive test results for coronavirus infections.

Most counties will be classified under the “widespread” risk tier, which permits hair salons to offer limited services indoors but restricts many other nonessential indoor business operations.

The change, which takes effect immediately, could lessen restrictions in in the Southern California, Bay Area and San Joaquin Valley regions, which were still under stay-at-home orders, unless local officials adopt stronger restrictions. Throughout the pandemic, local leaders have been allowed to go beyond the state’s rules, approve their own stay-at-home orders or shut down additional activities they deem too risky for their areas.

“California is slowly starting to emerge from the most dangerous surge of this pandemic yet, which is the light at the end of the tunnel we’ve been hoping for,” said California Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly. “Seven weeks ago, our hospitals and frontline medical workers were stretched to their limits, but Californians heard the urgent message to stay home when possible and our surge after the December holidays did not overwhelm the healthcare system to the degree we had feared.”

It’s far from clear whether the decision will lead to easing stay-at-home rules in Los Angeles County, which has become a national hotbed of the coronavirus, with hospitals overwhelmed by patients. In less than one month, more than 5,000 people have died of COVID-19 in the county alone.

Still, the outdoor dining ban has been highly controversial, with some elected officials and the restaurant industry fighting in and out of court to overturn it. Officials in some other Southern California counties have been even more critical of the state-imposed rules, and had urged Newsom to give them more local control.

The governor announced the regional stay-at-home orders on Dec. 3 in an effort to reduce the strain on hospitals as case numbers surged. Although state data show hospital systems in Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley remain strained, the Newsom administration said models project ICU capacity in those regions and the Bay Area will exceed 15% — a threshold for lifting the regional shutdowns — over the next four weeks.

By delaying his final decision until late last night, Newsom gets to punt everything over to California local and county governments as far as remaining operational, and he can claim victory for keeping hospitals from being overwhelmed.

Except he can't really do that as hospitals are continuing to be overwhelmed, especially in Los Angeles County, home to some nine million Americans.

Newsom is betting county officials will be able to handle things, which they weren't in December.

It's going to be bad in California for a long time, folks. And this time, we can't put the blame entirely on Trump.

Portman, In A Storm

Ohio GOP Senator Rob Portman is the latest Republican in the upper chamber to announce his intent to retire in 2022, opening up a battle royale across the Ohio GOP for his seat.

U.S. Sen. Rob Portman emphasized bipartisanship as he announced he will not be running for re-election.

He said he hopes he will be remembered for the legislation he passed, and he urged politicians to do a better job of working together.

“If we just keep pushing out to the right and to the left, there’s not going to be much left in the middle to solve the real problems we face,” he said.

Portman whining about his Senate colleagues and "lack of bipartisanship" is just about the ultimate expression of eau d'Portman, the man has all the intestinal fortitude of a jar of Miracle Whip left out in the sun for a year.  To whit:

U.S. Sen. Rob Portman said he hasn’t decided how he will vote on impeachment during former President Donald Trump’s trial.

“I’m a juror, it’s going to happen,” Portman said. “As a juror, I’m going to listen to both sides. That’s my job.”

Portman said Trump contributed to partisan gridlock in Washington, and he also laid blame on Trump for the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

And Portman will refuse to convict just like the first time, because Rob Portman is a coward through and through.

The worst part about all this is that the smart money on Portman's replacement in the Senate is almost certainly on the repugnant Rep. Jim Jordan, and that's only because Gov. Mike DeWine was already a Senator once and seems to be happy as governor for now.

And no, considering the Ohio Democrats couldn't beat one single Ohio legislature Republican who voted for the scandalous multi-billion dollar FirstEnergy kickback bill last year, plus all the city council scandals that have sunk folks like P.G. Sittenfeld (and everyone hating Mayor Cranley) I barely expect Ohio Dems to be able to run a candidate, let alone win.

Short of Dem Sen. Sherrod Brown having a twin brother we don't know about, this seat is going to go to an even worse Republican in 2022.

Sadly, I have to give Jim Jordan his own tag now, because we're not going to be able to escape him now here in the Cincy media for the next two years.

StupidiNews!

• The Senate has confirmed former Fed chair Janet Yellen as the first female US Treasury Secretary in an 84-15 vote, confirmation was widely expected after a unanimous 26-0 Finance Committee vote.
• House impeachment managers officially delivered articles of impeachment against Donald Trump to the Senate, the Senate trial is expected to begin in two weeks.
• Five were arrested at Australia Day protests in Sydney as thousands protested for Indigenous rights on a national holiday that marks the anniversary of British colonists arriving on the island.
• A senior North Korean diplomat in Kuwait has been living in South Korea as a defector since 2019, South Korea has been protecting the diplomat and his family for over a year.
• Google Maps will be rolling out COVID-19 vaccine site location information to users across the country "in the coming weeks" starting with Louisiana, Texas, Arizona and Mississippi.

Last Call For The Great Former Trumpist Job Hunt

 Donald Trump is political cancer these days, but he's also resume cancer, and his close aides and confidants are now unemployed and remain unemployable.

“There’s a lot of resumé passing and people just wanting to help people land on their feet,” said a former Trump White House official.

It’s not been easy. Tainted by Trump’s reputation, several Trump aides described an increasingly bleak job market with virtually no chance of landing jobs in corporate America and some even having seen promising leads disappear after the rampage at the U.S. Capitol. A second former White House official said they knew of “people who got jobs rescinded because of Jan. 6.” A Republican strategist was blunter.

“They are really f---ed,” the strategist said, pointing to some top officials who stuck with Trump until the bitter end. “The Hill scramble, one of the few places where they’d be welcomed, already happened a month or so ago… They were told over and over to take their hand off the hot stove, and they didn’t want to listen.”

It’s not just the lower- and mid-level staffers getting pinched. Two people familiar with his thinking said Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows, who spent seven years in the House of Representatives before joining the White House, was even considering a position at the Trump Organization because of a lack of options.

Faced with these employment hurdles, staffers have circulated an informal directory of plausible job openings among each other. Other Trump officials decided to start their own businesses or transitioned back to Republican offices on Capitol Hill or hired their former colleagues. Former White House director of strategic communications Alyssa Farah, for example, recently tapped a former aide to Vice President Mike Pence to join her new consulting operation, according to a person familiar with the move.

It’s a far different reality from where Trump and his aides had envisioned they would be. A month ago, everything seemed crystal clear: He had lost the 2020 election but would soon launch a juggernaut campaign for the presidency in 2024, and his allies and inner circle would be there to help. Now, the former president’s team is scampering away — willing to leave Washington, in some cases for red states like Texas and Florida, to increase their job prospects — while his own second act is clouded by uncertainty.

One former senior administration official noted that many inside the White House were waiting until after the Electoral College votes were counted to begin their job search in earnest, so as not to step on messaging about Trump’s efforts to challenge the election results. But then, the riots on Capitol Hill upended their plans.

“They looked to that [Jan. 6] as the end of the limbo state people were operating in so they could start moving on to the next thing” the former official said. “But the 6th put a shock to that.”

Crying shame that sticking with your seditionist coup-coup bird of a boss has wrecked your job prospects, huh.

Maybe that $600 will help, yeah?

Meanwhile, some former Trumpists are moving ahead with their own plans to join the only job market that's really left to them: GOP politician. 

Sarah Sanders, Donald Trump’s former chief spokeswoman and one of his closest aides, announced Monday she’s running for Arkansas governor, vying for political office even as the former president’s legacy is clouded by an impeachment charge that he incited the deadly siege at the U.S. Capitol.

The former White House press secretary, who left the job in 2019 to return to her home state, launched the bid less than a week after the end of Trump’s time in office and as the ex-president faces an impeachment trial.

But her announcement reflected how much she expected voters in solidly red Arkansas to embrace the former president, if not his rhetoric.

“With the radical left now in control of Washington, your governor is your last line of defense,” Sanders said in a video announcing her bid. “In fact, your governor must be on the front line. So today I announce my candidacy for governor of Arkansas.”

The daughter of former Gov. Mike Huckabee, Sanders had been widely expected to run for the office after leaving the White House — and Trump publicly encouraged her to make a go. She’s been laying the groundwork for a candidacy, speaking to GOP groups around the state.

Sanders joins a Republican primary that already includes two statewide elected leaders, Lt. Gov. Tim Griffin and Attorney General Leslie Rutledge. The three are running to succeed current Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican who is unable to run next year due to term limits. No Democrats have announced a bid to run for the seat.

 

Doesn't matter that a state's governor has no executive experience in a party that elected Trump, right? Not only do I expect Sanders to win the primary, I expect her to win the governor's race and take her rage out on the Little Rock press corps while lining up regular interview spots on MAGA TV.

She's in the perfect spot to win, still a hardcore Trumpist but far enough away from the failed coup and COVID disaster that she won't be blamed for either when running.

Keep an eye on her. She's going to be dangerous in the years ahead.

The Coup-Coup Birds Come Home To Roost, Con't

Federal law enforcement sources are investigating threats against Congress over Trump's upcoming impeachment trial, stoked by Trump himself no doubt. I do so very hate being right about this.

Federal law enforcement officials are examining a number of threats aimed at members of Congress as the second trial of former President Donald Trump nears, including ominous chatter about killing legislators or attacking them outside of the U.S. Capitol, a U.S. official told The Associated Press.

The threats, and concerns that armed protesters could return to sack the Capitol anew, have prompted the U.S. Capitol Police and other federal law enforcement to insist thousands of National Guard troops remain in Washington as the Senate moves forward with plans for Trump’s trial, the official said.

The shocking insurrection at the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob prompted federal officials to rethink security in and around its landmarks, resulting in an unprecedented lockdown for Biden’s inauguration. Though the event went off without any problems and armed protests around the country did not materialize, the threats to lawmakers ahead of Trump’s trial exemplified the continued potential for danger.

Similar to those intercepted by investigators ahead of Biden’s inauguration, the threats that law enforcement agents are tracking vary in specificity and credibility, said the official, who had been briefed on the matter. Mainly posted online and in chat groups, the messages have included plots to attack members of Congress during travel to and from the Capitol complex during the trial, according to the official.

The official was not authorized to not discuss an ongoing investigation publicly and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.

Law enforcement officials are already starting to plan for the possibility of armed protesters returning to the nation’s capital when Trump’s Senate trial on a charge of inciting a violent insurrection begins the week of Feb. 8. It would be the first impeachment trial of a former U.S. president.

Thousands of Trump’s supporters descended on the Capitol on Jan. 6 as Congress met to certify Biden as the winner of the 2020 presidential race. More than 800 are believed to have made their way into the Capitol during the violent siege, pushing past overwhelmed police officers. The Capitol police said they planned for a free speech protest, not a riot, and were caught off-guard despite intelligence the rally would descend into a riot. Five people died in the melee, including a Capitol police officer who was struck in the head with a fire extinguisher.

Though much of the security apparatus around Washington set up after the riot and ahead of Biden’s inauguration — it included scores of military checkpoints and hundreds of additional law enforcement personnel — is no longer in place, about 7,000 members of the National Guard will remain to assist federal law enforcement, officials said.

The Guard Bureau said that the number of Guard members in D.C. is less than 20,000 as of Sunday. All but about 7,000 of those will go home in the coming days. The Guard Bureau said that the number of troops in D.C. would then continue to decline in the coming weeks to about 5,000. They are expected to stay in D.C. until mid-March.

So DC will remain an armed Green Zone trying to deal with terrorist attacks for at least the next six weeks, during a pandemic that now has new strains of the virus, and Republican lawmakers themselves egging on the terrorists. Still. Again.

Open threats against lawmakers may be the strongest evidence yet that Trump has to be convicted and barred from ever holding public office again (and that Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley need to be expelled from the Senate) because if the Senate GOP refuses to do so now, there will be more coup attempts, and eventually they will be successful.

We've already had one Trump-fueled terrorist attack, where the deaths of dozens of members of Congress, and maybe the loss of the country, were only narrowly averted. More attacks are already being planned openly.

Swift justice has to be delivered to this army of seditionists, guys.

Or we will be under terrorist assault for a very long time.

Location, Location, Location!

The New York Times's Kate Murphy warns of yet another piece of critical infrastructure that the US government has been ignoring for decades: the Global Positioning System. Updates and security precautions need to be taken now, and the US needs to decide on a system to replace it, or America could suffer a devastating outage.

Time was when nobody knew, or even cared, exactly what time it was. The movement of the sun, phases of the moon and changing seasons were sufficient indicators. But since the Industrial Revolution, we’ve become increasingly dependent on knowing the time, and with increasing accuracy. Not only does the time tell us when to sleep, wake, eat, work and play; it tells automated systems when to execute financial transactions, bounce data between cellular towers and throttle power on the electrical grid.

Coordinated Universal Time, or U.T.C., the global reference for timekeeping, is beamed down to us from extremely precise atomic clocks aboard Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites. The time it takes for GPS signals to reach receivers is also used to calculate location for air, land and sea navigation.

Owned and operated by the U.S. government, GPS is likely the least recognized, and least appreciated, part of our critical infrastructure. Indeed, most of our critical infrastructure would cease to function without it.

The problem is that GPS signals are incredibly weak, due to the distance they have to travel from space, making them subject to interference and vulnerable to jamming and what is known as spoofing, in which another signal is passed off as the original. And the satellites themselves could easily be taken out by hurtling space junk or the sun coughing up a fireball. As intentional and unintentional GPS disruptions are on the rise, experts warn that our overreliance on the technology is courting disaster, but they are divided on what to do about it.

“If we don’t get good backups on line, then GPS is just a soft rib of ours, and we could be punched here very quickly,” said Todd Humphreys, an associate professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Texas in Austin. If GPS was knocked out, he said, you’d notice. Think widespread power outages, financial markets seizing up and the transportation system grinding to a halt. Grocers would be unable to stock their shelves, and Amazon would go dark. Emergency responders wouldn’t be able to find you, and forget about using your cellphone.

Mr. Humphreys got the attention of the U.S. Department of Defense and the Federal Aviation Administration about this issue back in 2008 when he published a paper showing he could spoof GPS receivers. At the time, he said he thought the threat came mainly from hackers with something to prove: “I didn’t even imagine that the level of interference that we’ve been seeing recently would be attributable to state actors.”

More than 10,000 incidents of GPS interference have been linked to China and Russia in the past five years. Ship captains have reported GPS errors showing them 20-120 miles inland when they were actually sailing off the coast of Russia in the Black Sea. Also well documented are ships suddenly disappearing from navigation screens while maneuvering in the Port of Shanghai. After GPS disruptions at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport in 2019, Israeli officials pointed to Syria, where Russia has been involved in the nation’s long-running civil war. And last summer, the United States Space Command accused Russia of testing antisatellite weaponry.

But it’s not just nation-states messing with GPS. Spoofing and jamming devices have gotten so inexpensive and easy to use that delivery drivers use them so their dispatchers won’t know they’re taking long lunch breaks or having trysts at Motel 6. Teenagers use them to foil their parents’ tracking apps and to cheat at Pokémon Go. More nefariously, drug cartels and human traffickers have spoofed border control drones. Dodgy freight forwarders may use GPS jammers or spoofers to cloak or change the time stamps on arriving cargo.

These disruptions not only affect their targets; they can also affect anyone using GPS in the vicinity.

“You might not think you’re a target, but you don’t have to be,” said Guy Buesnel, a position, navigation and timing specialist with the British network and cybersecurity firm Spirent. “We’re seeing widespread collateral or incidental effects.” In 2013 a New Jersey truck driver interfered with Newark Liberty International Airport’s satellite-based tracking system when he plugged a GPS jamming device into his vehicle’s cigarette lighter to hide his location from his employer.

The risk posed by our overdependency on GPS has been raised repeatedly at least since 2000, when its signals were fully opened to civilian use. Launched in 1978, GPS was initially reserved for military purposes, but after the signals became freely available, the commercial sector quickly realized their utility, leading to widespread adoption and innovation. Nowadays, most people carry a GPS receiver everywhere they go — embedded in a mobile phone, tablet, watch or fitness tracker.

 

Now here's the kicker:

An emergency backup for GPS was mandated by the 2018 National Timing and Resilience Security Act. The legislation said a reliable alternate system needed to be operational within two years, but that hasn’t happened yet.

Part of the reason for the holdup, aside from a pandemic, is disagreement between government agencies and industry groups on what is the best technology to use, who should be responsible for it, which GPS capabilities must be backed up and with what degree of precision.

 

Congress has passed a fix. And then the GOP punted it to this Congress.  The yearly cost of maintaining the GPS constellation of satellites is $1.7 billion, and gosh, we don't have the money for it, according to Republicans, even though I'm pretty sure we could find some Pentagon money for it.

No, what Republicans really want to do is monetize yet another piece of public infrastructure so they can exploit it for lobbyist cash.

Here's hoping Democrats get this fixed.

I know, I know, it's a long list.

But it needs doing.

StupidiNews!

• President Biden will reinstate COVID-19 international travel restrictions lifted by the Trump regime, barring non-US citizen entry via the UK, the EU, and South Africa.
• The International Olympic Committee plans to vaccinate all 2021 Tokyo Summer Games athletes in order to allow the games to proceed later this year.
• The USS Teddy Roosevelt carrier task force has entered the South China Sea as tensions between Beijing and Washington heat up over China's massive crackdown on Hong Kong dissidents.
• The Biden White House is dealing with a bipartisan group of 16 senators to try to get a $1.9 trillion COVID relief package passed, but so far Republicans are only signaling interest in vaccine funds.
• An employee for ADT Home Security has admitted to illegally accessing security cameras inside 200 homes over five years, spying on customers in order to find women and couples having sex.
  

Last Call For Retribution Execution, Con't

We don't even get a week of Donald Trump not trying to destroy America and remake it in his image as he's expected to shortly begin his long campaign of revenge against Republicans who failed to help him pull off his coup, targeting them publicly for submission to his rule or to make them face political obliteration and replacing them with those who will submit.

Donald Trump is reportedly moving forward with his plans to create a 'Patriot Party' to put pressure on Republicans who oppose him and attempt to head off conviction in his second Senate impeachment trial.

Trump has told people that the third-party threat gives him leverage to prevent Republican senators from voting to convict him during the Senate trial next month, people in his orbit told the Washington Post.

Since President Joe Biden took office, Trump has been ensconced at Mar-a-Lago, remaining publicly cryptic about his plans except to tell a reporter on Friday: 'We'll do something, but not just yet.'

But behind closed doors, Trump is already drafting an enemies list of Republicans who opposed his baseless claims of election fraud, instructing aids to prepare primary challenges against them, sources told the Post.

The list is said to include the House's number three Republican, Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who broke party ranks and voted to impeach Trump over his role in the January 6 Capitol riot. Rep. Tom Rice, a South Carolina Republican, is on the list for the same reason.

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp is also reportedly on the list after provoking Trump's fury for refusing to back his challenge to the state's election results, which were certified for Biden.

Senator Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican who has signaled that she is open to voting to convict Trump, is also said to be a Patriot Party primary target. Kemp and Murkowski are both up for re-election in 2022.

Trump advisers say they plan to recruit opposing primary candidates and commission polling as soon as next week in districts of targeted lawmakers.

To fund his splinter party, Trump has more than $70 million in campaign cash on hand, the sources said.

Though the Trump campaign was essentially tapped out on Election Day, the campaign and several allied groups raised $207 million between November 3 and November 23, fundraising on his push to challenged the election results.

The number is certainly higher by now, but hard numbers won't be disclosed to the Federal Election Commission until January 31.

So yes, we're essentially looking at jury tampering in Trump's upcoming Senate trial. No wonder Republican senators are hoping that they have the numbers to dismiss the trial completely with an assist from vulnerable red state Dems facing tough 2022 challenges, something that Chuck Schumer better have already dealt with.

We'll see how it works out, but expect Trump to be back o your TV screen very soon, as the media will go back to covering him more than Joe Biden, because Trump sells.

Rand Paul's Race To The Bottom, Con't

 GOP Sen. Rand Paul is a prat, as Zandardad will be the first to tell you.

Not for the first time this week, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul took his criticisms of newly inaugurated President Joe Biden to Fox News.

Speaking with conservative personality Sean Hannity Friday night, the Republican congressman repeated his claim that Biden's goal of increasing the national minimum wage to $15 would cause 4 million people to lose their jobs.

"And the people who lose their jobs first when you hike up the minimum wage are Black teenagers," Paul said. "So, you know, 'why does Joe Biden hate Black teenagers' should be the question. Why does Joe Biden want to destroy all these jobs?"

Paul's claim about job loss is a distortion of the Congressional Budget Office's median estimate, according to FactCheck.org at the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania.

Paul said Friday "even the government says that nearly 4 million people will lose their jobs" after the minimum wage hike, but the claim is a reference to the high end of the budget office's range of potential outcomes, according to FactCheck.org. The low end of the range was “about zero” jobs lost.

To support his claims, Paul's office sent the fact checking site a link to a July 2019 report from the budget office that did not say more than doubling the federal minimum wage would definitely result in about 4 million fewer people working.

 

To recap the spectacularly racist argument:

 

1. Black teenagers are primarily minimum wage workers, which is wrong. 42% of all American workers, three out of seven, make less than $15 an hour.
   
2. Raising the minimum wage would cost millions of jobs, again, wrong, for the reasons' listed above in the story.
3. Since one and two are both wrong, three, which is "job loss from raising the minimum wage would disproportionately cost Black folks jobs" is wrong, and even if it was higher, that highlights the problem of racist employers firing their Black workers.
4. Therefore, "Joe Biden is a racist" is stupid and wrong.

 

I'm not sure if Paul thinks Black Kentuckians are really stupid enough to fall for this, because if he's actually right, the racism against Black minimum wage employees is a structural racist reality that needs to be torn down immediately.

So in a way, I'm glad that Sen. Paul agrees that capitalism is racist.

Thanks for playing.

 

Sunday Long Read: Hank Was Hammered

With the passing of legendary home run king Hank Aaron late last week our Sunday Long Read looks back at the 25th anniversary of his historic homer in Fulton County Stadium in a Lee Walburn 1999 story.

He is easier to love as a legend than he was as Henry Louis Aaron, No. 44. Or so it seems. He’s just as black as he ever was. He still speaks his mind, unafraid to jar someone’s consciousness, even stoke the fires of anger. But even when, as a result, he receives a letter of disagreement, most of them don’t open with Dear Nigger, anymore.

Yes, definitely. He must be easier to love now. Or so it seems. Back then, back even on the night he hit his 715th home run in 1974, the night he broke Babe Ruth’s sacrosanct record for home runs, why, the lordly commissioner of baseball attended a dinner in Cleveland as if nothing special was happening in Atlanta. The year before, when he slammed his 3,000th hit and donated the ball to the Hall of Fame, the shrine just stored it in a back room instead of putting it on display.

It’s easier—let’s say acceptable—to adore him now. In the early days of the Braves in Atlanta, he wasn’t even the most popular player on his own team. But just a few years ago a poll of young people revealed him to be second in popularity only to Michael Jordan as an American athlete. The 715th homer has been voted the greatest moment in baseball history. Hank Aaron Drive runs past the Braves’ stadium, past the statue of Henry Louis Aaron in the plaza. Just two months ago, it cost the rich and famous a $500-a-plate charitable donation to eat dinner in honor of Aaron’s 65th birthday. President Clinton was there. This year Major League Baseball is dedicating the entire season, the 25th anniversary of The Homer, to Hank Aaron. And on his birthday, Major League Baseball announced the creation of the Hank Aaron Award, to be presented each year to baseball’s best hitter.

Ah, all that feels so good. Anniversary tributes and monuments are such nice ways to salve our consciences. These latter-day love fests are like giant erasers. Just erase the bad stuff from your memories, Hank, and we’ll do the same. Come on, Hank. Think about it.

Think about it. Think about it. Think about it …

The kid was carrying a little duffel bag and wearing a leather jacket when he knocked on the clubhouse door at the Milwaukee Braves spring training camp in Bradenton, Fla., in 1953. Joe Taylor, the clubhouse attendant, opened the door and after telling the kid to stay right where he was, went looking for the manager, Charlie Grimm. “There’s a black boy out there who wants in,” Taylor said to Grimm. “Says his name is Aaron.” Grimm ran his finger down a list and said, “He’s on the roster, let him in.” Grimm took an immediate liking to the kid. He nicknamed him “Stepin Fetchit,” the stage name of a shuffling, grinning Negro comedian, and the press obligingly quoted the boss man in the newspapers. Stepin Fetchit! Whoa, slap yo’ knee!

Twenty-one years later, at 9:03 p.m. on a Monday in April of 1974, I look at my watch, as I had each time Henry Aaron came to bat that year, having the idea of benchmarking the exact moment of sports history. After checking my watch, I look back at the field as Henry Aaron leaves the on-deck circle at Atlanta Stadium and approaches home plate in a routine that seemed never to vary: two bats in his left hand, the blue batting helmet with the swoop of white from bill to crest in his right. Dropping one bat to the ground for the batboy to retrieve, he balances the 34-ounce Louisville Slugger against a thigh and uses both hands to place the helmet on his head. With characteristic economy of motion that some critics have consistently, maddeningly mistaken for nonchalance, he settles comfortably in the batter’s box, hands held high and away from his body.

The Dodgers’ pitcher, Al Downing, has already walked Aaron once without a swing. This time the first pitch bounces in the dirt. There are two Braves on base and the Dodgers lead 3-1, so Downing decides to gamble with a fastball rather than risk loading the bases with another base on balls. A split second after the decision there is a cracking sound as sharp as a rifle report and stunningly, in a moment to be recollected years later as a blurred mosaic in my mind, Henry Aaron becomes the greatest home run hitter in major league history.

As he circles the bases with the same casual gait he’s used 714 times before, nearly 54,000 of us rise from our seats like a giant ocean wave churned by a sudden gust of wind. But in that muzzy mosaic of memory I cannot honestly rid myself of the feeling that we were cheering the event more than the man.

I did not know—we did not know—then, that we admired him but did not love him, and just how much he needed—no, deserved—that love. Another 24 years passed before I, at last, understood. On September 8 of last year I was watching television when Mark McGwire hit his 62nd home run, breaking Roger Maris’ single-season record. Oh, how America loved McGwire that night. He blew kisses to heaven and you could almost sense that God was blowing one back. McGwire leapt into the stands to hug the family of the man whose record he had broken. They wept and embraced him. The pudgy, cherubic son of Mark McGwire was enveloped by his father’s blacksmith arms, and on television, with all the country dabbing moisture from their eyes, they shared a scene for the ages.

In a coincidence of scheduling, McGwire’s St. Louis Cardinals were playing the Chicago Cubs. Sammy Sosa, the Cub right fielder, was almost lock step with McGwire in a dual quest to break Maris’ record. He rushed in from right field to embrace his opponent and to blow his own kisses and to thump his heart in a symbol of unity—Sammy Sosa, dark as midnight, and Mark McGwire, red hair and freckles dotting the landscape of his pale white skin. Sociologically, it had everything that America wants to believe about itself.

Hank Aaron was also watching television that night. One day not long ago he and I sat in his office overlooking: Turner Field, a stadium many think should bear his name. We talked about our feelings as we sat in separate living rooms watching the same event. As public relations director of the Braves from 1966 to 1972, I had seen hundreds of Hank’s homers, including historically significant numbers 500, 700, 714 and 715, his first all-star homer in Detroit and even his landmark 3,000th hit. As I watched McGwire almost explode with joy, I understood the difference between then and now, and I thought, What a shame it couldn’t have been that way for Hank.

As we sat in his office, Hank took a deep breath and his eyes rolled back in memory. He almost echoed my own thoughts. “You know, as I watched, I was really excited for the fans, for baseball and for McGwire. And I said to myself, if just a little bit of that had happened for me, how glorifying that would have been.” But what really got to him as he watched was the boy hugging his father. He averted his eyes for a moment, as if some spectral memory was dragging heavy chains past the plate glass windows overlooking left field. “It’s too bad my kids couldn’t have enjoyed it like that,” he said.

 

I remember McGwire getting all the love for 62 that day, watching with my dad at my parents' home. But Hank Aaron was hated, and America has failed him for decades. Even now, racists are denigrating his life saying Joe Biden killed him with the Covid-19 vaccine.

I'm glad he got to see Obama and Biden elected at least. He deserved far better.

Giving Mitch Some Cover

Kentucky Republicans spared GOP Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell an embarrassing defeat on Saturday that would have called for him to ensure Donald Trump was not convicted in his Senate trial. Even Donald Trump isn't more powerful than the Turtle is his own backyard.

The Republican Party of Kentucky's State Central Committee rejected a resolution Saturday that would have urged Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to fully support former President Donald Trump and condemn his second impeachment.

The committee met Saturday to consider the proposal after the Republican Party of Nelson County announced more than 30 GOP county chairs and vice chairs had called for a meeting to consider the resolution aimed at the commonwealth's longtime senator.

Republican Party of Kentucky Chairman Mac Brown called the resolution out of order, and the majority of the committee agreed, a member told The Courier Journal after the meeting. The final vote agreeing the resolution should be deemed out of order was 134-49, the member said.

The party released a statement following the meeting, which it said had been called for by 28 members of the body.

"As a political party, we're in a unique position to bring all sides of our organization together to have conversations about the direction we are going in and what we expect from our elected officials," the statement said. The central committee "met in a special meeting called by a small group of individuals. In the end it is our intention to return our focus to bringing civility to the party and continue having larger conversations about how we can attract more voters and grow our party."

 

But Mitch isn't out of the woods quite yet.

Republican Party of Nelson County Chair Don Thrasher, who led the resolution effort, said the chairs who supported it will now bring a motion asking for McConnell's resignation, which he said is in the purview of the rules.

The committee has over 350 members, including the chairs and vice chairs of county-level Republican parties as well as elected officials who are part of the GOP (including McConnell himself), according to an RPK employee.

McConnell — who is widely credited with helping transform the commonwealth into a Republican stronghold over the past 30 years — still has stalwart supporters among the state GOP who trust his judgment, as the committee's decision Saturday made clear.

Trump has been accused of inciting an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 that led to the deaths of a police officer and four other people.

It also forced McConnell and other members of Congress to evacuate and temporarily halt their certification of President Joe Biden's electoral win — a victory Trump repeatedly and falsely claimed was illegitimate and should not be accepted, including in a speech he gave to supporters in Washington not long before the riot began.

McConnell was one of Trump's chief defenders during the former president's first impeachment and the ensuing trial, but this time he has taken a different approach. That upset some Kentucky Republicans, prompting Saturday's meeting.

 

I don't expect that resolution to pass either, but it's going to take some smoothing over to fix. Mitch may be able to survive for now, but if Trump actually is convicted, McConnell will get the blame.

Last Call For Clipping The Hawkeye

Democrats are already considering the question of Iowa's first in the Midwest caucus status heading into this time three years from now, and after the disaster that was the 2020 Iowa contest, a lot of Dems are finally ready to pull the plug on featuring a state that simply doesn't represent the Democratic party as a whole anymore.

While it's only 2021, a major question facing Democrats this year and next will be what to do about the presidential nominating calendar and whether Iowa, in particular, should retain its prized place at the front of the calendar in 2024.

Iowa's decades-long lock on the nominating process has been under threat since last year's disastrous caucus, when results were delayed for days due in part to a faulty smartphone app that was supposed to make things easier for precinct captains when they reported results. Ultimately, the Associated Press never declared a winner in the contest due to problems with the vote count, which was administered by the Iowa Democratic Party.

Iowa's voters are also older, more rural and more white than many other states and it's seen as increasingly out of step with the Democratic mainstream, which increasingly relies on voters of color and young people for its support.

President Biden's newly-installed pick to lead the Democratic National Committee, Jaime Harrison of South Carolina, will get a chance to shake up the calendar by appointing members to the party's rules and bylaws committee. Unlike past presidents, Biden didn't win in Iowa (he came in fourth, after former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren) and owes no political debt to the complex caucus process.

"I think on its merits that the Iowa caucus falls short of the values that we espouse as Democrats," Julian Castro said. Castro served as Housing and Urban Development Secretary for former President Barack Obama and ran for president himself in 2020.

Castro, who dropped out of the race before the Iowa caucuses, made the argument during the campaign that 2020 should be the last year Iowa goes first and that a primary election run by the state makes much more sense than a caucus run by the party.

"You have one person, one vote instead of an archaic formula to figure out who wins the whole thing," Castro said.

While Castro says that former President Obama's 2008 win in Iowa that helped propel him to the White House was wonderful, it was an exception when it comes to promoting the candidacies of diverse candidates.

"The diversity of Iowa and New Hampshire simply don't reflect the diversity of either our country or the Democratic Party," said Castro.

Expect a lengthy debate about the nominating calendar, says DNC member Clay Middleton from South Carolina.

"President Biden is going to have a say in this too" Middleton, who is close friends with Harrison. "Who better than Joe Biden to provide his assessment having run for president a few times and not winning Iowa?"

Harrison, who unsuccessfully ran for Senate last year, comes from another one of the early states - and the one that provided the crucial victory that kept Biden's candidacy alive. Many South Carolina Democrats are also Black, as is Harrison, a vital constituency inside the party.

One idea would be to have all the early states go closer together, says Wendy Davis, a DNC member from Georgia.

"If you look at those the first four states: Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada," said Davis. "Put together they actually are a good picture of America, right? And the diversity that is in America."

 

We'll see how this works out, but this is going to be Jaime Harrison's first real test as DNC chair. Fixing the Iowa (and New Hampshire!) problem is a major one, especially when the party is already majority-minority in a majority of states that Biden won.

The Beagle That Beat Mitch McConnell

Raphael Warnock won in Georgia thanks to some of the best positive political ads in recent memory, and the most effective ones co-starred a beagle named Alvin.

The dog had a lot of work to do.

He was co-starring in a political ad that had to showcase the candidate’s good-natured warmth. But the ad also needed to deflect an onslaught of racialized attacks without engaging them directly, and to convey to white voters in Georgia that the Black pastor who led Ebenezer Baptist Church could represent them, too.

Of course, Alvin the beagle couldn’t have known any of that when he went for a walk with the Rev. Raphael Warnock last fall as a film crew captured their time together in a neighborhood outside Atlanta.

Tugging a puffer-vest-clad Mr. Warnock for an idealized suburban stroll — bright sunshine, picket fencing, an American flag — Alvin would appear in several of Mr. Warnock’s commercials pushing back against his Republican opponent in the recent Georgia Senate runoffs.

In perhaps the best known spot, Mr. Warnock, a Democrat, deposits a plastic baggie of Alvin’s droppings in the trash, likening it to his rival’s increasingly caustic ads. The beagle barks in agreement, and as Mr. Warnock declares that “we” — he and Alvin — approve of the message, the dog takes a healthy lick of his goatee.

“The entire ad screams that I am a Black candidate whom white people ought not be afraid of,” said Hakeem Jefferson, a professor of political science at Stanford, who studies race, stigma and politics in America.

On Wednesday Mr. Warnock became the first Black senator ever from Georgia, after Democrats swept both the state’s Senate seats in the runoffs. The twin victories delivered Democratic control of the chamber and an enormous boost to President Biden and his chances to enact his agenda.

While there is no singular factor responsible for victories this narrow — Mr. Warnock won by less than 100,000 votes out of roughly 4.5 million and the other new Democratic senator, Jon Ossoff, won by even less — there is bipartisan agreement that the beagle played an outsized role in cutting through the clutter in two contests that broke every Senate spending record.

“The puppy ad got people talking,” said Brian C. Robinson, a Georgia-based Republican strategist. “It made it harder to caricature him because they humanized him.”

By the end of the campaign, Warnock aides saw dog references popping up in their internal polling, supporters hoisting up their own puppies at campaign rallies in solidarity and beagle-themed homemade signs staked into front yards. They even started selling “Puppies 4 Warnock” merchandise.

All of which would probably come as a surprise to Alvin. After all, he wasn’t even Mr. Warnock’s dog.

 

Whether you're a dog person or not, Alvin helped Warnock win, and Warnock's win helped push Mitch McConnell into the leadership of the minority party in the Senate. The puppy poop ad was brilliant, frankly.

So the personable pastor and the precious pup went on to score a victory in the Senate and quite possibly saved the country from Mad Mitch.

Good dog!

Great senator!

The Coup-Coup Birds Come Home To Roost, Con't

Yes, Donald Trump tried to oust Acting AG Jeffrey Rosen in early January and install a loyalist who would hand him the Georgia election as part of his planned coup in the first week of January.

 

The Justice Department’s top leaders listened in stunned silence this month: One of their peers, they were told, had devised a plan with President Donald J. Trump to oust Jeffrey A. Rosen as acting attorney general and wield the department’s power to force Georgia state lawmakers to overturn its presidential election results.

The unassuming lawyer who worked on the plan, Jeffrey Clark, had been devising ways to cast doubt on the election results and to bolster Mr. Trump’s continuing legal battles and the pressure on Georgia politicians. Because Mr. Rosen had refused the president’s entreaties to carry out those plans, Mr. Trump was about to decide whether to fire Mr. Rosen and replace him with Mr. Clark.

The department officials, convened on a conference call, then asked each other: What will you do if Mr. Rosen is dismissed?

The answer was unanimous. They would resign.

Their informal pact ultimately helped persuade Mr. Trump to keep Mr. Rosen in place, calculating that a furor over mass resignations at the top of the Justice Department would eclipse any attention on his baseless accusations of voter fraud. Mr. Trump’s decision came only after Mr. Rosen and Mr. Clark made their competing cases to him in a bizarre White House meeting that two officials compared with an episode of Mr. Trump’s reality show “The Apprentice,” albeit one that could prompt a constitutional crisis.

The previously unknown chapter was the culmination of the president’s long-running effort to batter the Justice Department into advancing his personal agenda. He also pressed Mr. Rosen to appoint special counsels, including one who would look into Dominion Voting Systems, a maker of election equipment that Mr. Trump’s allies had falsely said was working with Venezuela to flip votes from Mr. Trump to Joseph R. Biden Jr.

This account of the department’s final days under Mr. Trump’s leadership is based on interviews with four former Trump administration officials who asked not to be named because of fear of retaliation.

Mr. Clark said that this account contained inaccuracies but did not specify, adding that he could not discuss any conversations with Mr. Trump or Justice Department lawyers. “Senior Justice Department lawyers, not uncommonly, provide legal advice to the White House as part of our duties,” he said. “All my official communications were consistent with law.”

Mr. Clark also noted that he was the lead signatory on a Justice Department request last month asking a federal judge to reject a lawsuit that sought to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the results of the election.

Mr. Trump declined to comment. An adviser said that Mr. Trump has consistently argued that the justice system should investigate “rampant election fraud that has plagued our system for years.”

 

To recap:

 

Donald Trump planned a coup.

 

That's it, that the entire story. Trump was only stopped because the entire Justice Department senior leadership would have resigned en masse. That's it.

The guard rail held this time.

This time.

The next time, well, who knows?