Jim Class Zeroes

Ohio GOP Rep. Jim Jordan will apparently not be running for the Senate seat held by the retiring GOP Sen. Rob Portman. With Jordan out, the seat doesn't have a frontrunner, but it also means that the Dems don't quite has a big a clown to run against.

That is if they can find anyone...

Jordan would have likely been considered a frontrunner in the GOP primary had he run for Senate. But in a statement Thursday, a spokesperson for his campaign said he would stay in the House rather than launch a Senate bid. His decision was first reported by the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Jordan's decision has major implications for the race. As a prominent Trump ally and frequent guest on conservative news channels, Jordan would have been formidable in a Republican primary and could have kept other conservatives out of the race, though he was considered unlikely to entirely clear the field of contenders.

The remaining field of possible candidates is crowded and without an obvious frontrunner. Josh Mandel, the former state treasurer who lost the 2012 Senate race, is considering a bid and is expected to run. Jane Timken, the state GOP chair, is also considering running, and several members of the House delegation in the state are weighing their options.

Lt. Gov. Jon Husted and former Rep. Pat Tiberi both announced they would not run. But other statewide officials, including Secretary of State Frank LaRose, are potential candidates as well.

Republicans are favored to retain the seat in a state that has shifted rightward in the past decade: Trump carried it by 8 percentage points in November. But a crowded and potentially messy primary gives Democrats an opening they would not have had if Portman were running for a third term.

Jordan, who was first elected to Congress in 2006, was on the fringes of the House GOP conference for much of his tenure in the chamber, particularly given his fraught relationship with former House Speaker John Boehner, a fellow Ohioan. Jordan became more prominent in the Trump era, and was one of the founders and the first chair of the House Freedom Caucus, a hard-line group of conservatives who ultimately became close Trump allies after he won the presidency.

 

Frankly, Jordan passing on the seat doesn't change the calculus much. Ohio Dems are in even worse shape than Kentucky Dems, and the one Democrat who could win is already in the US Senate: Sherrod Brown.

 

Unless he gets cloned, or somebody steps up, this seat is as good as the GOP's for another six years.

StupidiNews!

• Iconic stage and screen force Cicely Tyson has passed at age 96, Tyson's career spanned eight decades from the 1950's to the 2020's, her memoir "Just As I Am" was published on Tuesday.
• Pakistan's Supreme Court has ordered the release of the British-born militant who masterminded the Daniel Pearl kidnap and murder plot, the US wants the militant extradited to face justice.
• At least six are dead after a nitrogen leak at a poultry plant in Georgia, eight more have been hospitalized from respiratory ailments and tissue damage from liquid nitrogen exposure.
• Both House and Senate Democrats say they will hold hearings on this week's mass short-selling squeeze by an army of day-traders looking to go after billion-dollar hedge funds.
• General Motors says it will have 40% of US vehicle models as EVs by 2025, 100% of its models with no tailpipe emissions by 2035, and carbon neutral vehicles by 2040.
  

Last Call For Retribution Execution, Con't

Florida GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz came to Wyoming of all places to go after GOP "traitor" Rep. Liz Cheney, taking his Trump-fueled terrorism beef to her home turf, demanding her resignation from the Republican leadership in the House, and promising to send Washington a "message". This is completely responsible rhetoric in the wake of the January 6th Trumpist terrorist attack on the US Capitol, but apparently Matt Gaetz had to travel 2000 miles from his home state just to be an asshole and to incite more violence.

Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida railed against GOP Rep. Liz Cheney at the Wyoming state capitol on Thursday, stirring hundreds of Trump supporters and counter protesters after she voted to impeach the former President. 

The Republican party is now out of power and grappling with its future, and some elected officials like Gaetz are positioning themselves as the bearer of Trump's brand by attacking other Republicans like Cheney, who are hoping to move past it. Republican leaders have warned that the internecine fight hurts the party but Gaetz has decided to put himself at the center of it. 

"We are in a battle for the soul of the Republican party, and I intend to win it," said Gaetz on Thursday. "You can help me break a corrupt system. You can send a representative who actually represents you, and you can send Liz Cheney home -- back home to Washington, DC." 

Cheney, the No. 3 House Republican, was one of only 10 Republicans to vote to impeach former President Donald Trump for "incitement of insurrection" following the deadly riot at the Capitol on January 6. In a statement at the time, Cheney blamed the violence -- including the death of five people -- directly on Trump, saying he "summoned," "assembled" and "lit the flame of this attack." 

"There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution," Cheney said. 

But Cheney's decision has sparked a retaliation in Wyoming, which Trump won in 2020 with nearly 70% of the vote, the most of any state in the country. 

A GOP state senator, Anthony Bouchard, has announced a 2022 campaign against the congresswoman. The Wyoming Republican state party said "there has not been a time during our tenure when we have seen this type of an outcry from our fellow Republicans, with the anger and frustration being palpable in the comments we have received." 

And over 55,000 people have apparently signed onto a Change.org petition started by Wyoming resident Shelley Horn to "recall" Cheney. Horn told CNN she doesn't consider herself a political person -- she said she "usually" makes tutus and minds "my businesses" -- but couldn't stomach her congresswoman's decision. 

"You just can't go, 'Oh well, I need to vote with my conscience.' No! Vote for what your people put you in there to do," Horn told CNN. "You're a Republican, you're supposed to back your party regardless." 

Dr. Taylor Haynes, a Trump supporter who lost in the state's 2018 gubernatorial Republican primary, told CNN, "In my view, she's done in Wyoming."

 

Apparently the GOP war of sedition against the United States will pick up as soon as the GOP Civil War concludes...

No matter who wins, America loses.

The Chuck And Nancy Show

Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer are moving ahead with plans for the big COVID-19 relief package having sufficiently learned the lesson that given the opportunity to block, delay, obfuscate or deny something that helps the American people, the GOP will take advantage of it as much as they can, and Dems have finally learned that only ruthless, bare-knuckle hardball will beat Republicans.

In separate remarks Thursday, the top two congressional Democrats said time is of the utmost importance as the virus continues to maintain its deadly — and potentially economically disastrous — grip on the U.S.

“We want it to be bipartisan always but we can’t surrender if they’re not going to be doing that,” Pelosi told reporters at her weekly press conference. “We cannot not have it happen, we have to act.”

Schumer said earlier Thursday morning that “only big bold action is called for,” given the slowdown in the economy. President Joe Biden has pitched a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan that would also raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, a package that most Republicans have already rejected.

Centrist lawmakers in both chambers have maintained that a bipartisan deal is possible if congressional leadership will make space for one to be negotiated. But senior Democrats are increasingly dismissive of the possibility.

Republicans complained that Democrats were looking to short-circuit Biden’s bipartisan approach too soon.

“That would be a big mistake this early on. And I think they ought to attempt to try to do it the other way,” said Senate Minority Whip John Thune.

If they can keep party unity, Democrats can approve coronavirus legislation without GOP support via budget reconciliation. And Schumer gave some of his strongest indications yet that this could happen soon, starting with passage of a budget resolution that unlocks reconciliation’s power.

“The Senate, as early as next week, will begin the process of considering a very strong Covid relief bill. Our preference is to make this important work bipartisan, to include input, ideas and revisions from our Republican colleagues,” Schumer said. “But if our Republican colleagues decide to oppose this urgent and necessary legislation, we will have to move forward without them.”

After Mitch dicked them around for the last eight years, I'm glad that Democrats aren't caving. They know full well that they single reason they have power is because people voted for their campaign agenda, especially in Georgia, Arizona, and Colorado where they gained seats.

Dems have to deliver, and they're finally ready to do it.

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

If you thought FOX News incendiary device and "he of the perpetually fish-slapped visage" Tucker Carlson wasn't already a white supremacist seditionist, that was before Joe Biden was sworn in, which has apparently pushed Carlson over yet another edge hurtling toward fomenting mass violence against the American government. His opening Biden hate rant Wednesday night was something else, even by his abysmal standards:

Rather than answer our questions or improve our lives, you're bringing in people with guns to remind us that you are in charge, and dissent is illegal. That's a big change. You may have thought you were a decent American in good standing.

Ten years ago, nobody in this country would have called your views extreme. They weren't extreme then. You don't think they're extreme now. You've always considered yourself a pretty moderate person. Live your life and get along with others. That's not possible now, because the rules have changed.

You are now a dangerous insurgent. You are no different from a bloodthirsty Pashtun in Helmand Province, or an ISIS terrorist in Erbil. You're part of a guerrilla insurgency.

 

And at this point, the next implied sentence, "So if they are going to treat you as a domestic terrorist, maybe you should use terrorist tactics, methods, and weapons", is loud enough for even the dead to hear. It's certainly loud enough for Republicans in the Senate to hear, blocking the nomination of Alejandro Mayorkas as Homeland Security Secretary.

Senate Republicans plan to object to any efforts to quickly confirm Alejandro Mayorkas as secretary of Homeland Security, further delaying his confirmation as the department grapples with the Covid-19 pandemic, national security concerns and President Joe Biden's ambitious immigration plans. 

In confirming the GOP's plans to filibuster, Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas told reporters Wednesday on Capitol Hill that "there's a number of problems" with Mayorkas' nomination. 

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has pushed to have Mayorkas confirmed quickly, but Cornyn and other Senate Republicans argue that Mayorkas hasn't been properly vetted on immigration issues and are calling for an additional hearing into his nomination. The Senate has scheduled a procedural vote to break the filibuster at 1:45 p.m. ET Thursday. 

After the Senate breaks the filibuster -- which requires 51 votes -- the final confirmation vote will be Monday evening. 

The use of the filibuster -- to stall nominations or legislation -- has long been a favored tool of the minority party, something Schumer did often when trying to derail and delay the Republican agenda under then-President Donald Trump. In recent days, continued use of the filibuster on legislation became a central sticking point over a resolution that would allow the 50-50 Senate to officially organize, but the stall tactic is unlikely to be gutted further in this Congress because of resistance from some moderate Democrats. 

The Senate Homeland Security Committee held an extensive hearing into Mayorkas' qualifications to lead the department last week and voted Tuesday to move Mayorkas' nomination forward.

 

Republicans are really, really going out of their way to delay Mayorkas getting into his role as DHS Secretary, almost like they are trying to buy time to stop the truth from coming out about January 6th, and giving their followers additional time to possibly disrupt things further...

 

But that's just paranoia talking.

 

Right? 

StupidiNews

• Federal agents are still looking for the suspect that planted pipe bombs outside both the RNC and DNC HQs in Washington DC the night before the January 6th terrorist attack.
• Russia has agreed to the Biden administration's efforts to extend the START nuclear treaty another five years, a major diplomatic win for new Secretary of State Tony Blinken.
  
• The family of Da'Shawn Tye, an unarmed Black man shot by a white Cincinnati store owner in November, has asked the Justice Department to open a federal civil rights probe into the shooting.
• Joe Biden kept up a flurry of executive orders with several signed on Wednesday designed to fight climate change, environmental racism, and to create new green jobs for Americans.
• Apple now says there are one billion operational iPhones working on Earth as product sales continue to boom in fiscal 2021.
  

Last Call For Trading Places, 2021 Edition

Internet-based "pump-and-dump" stock schemes are nothing new. A big investor buys huge amounts of a penny stock and cashes out with a volume big enough to crash the stock price again, leaving all the other investors who bought the stock expecting it to go up with huge margin calls instead. This time though it's the small day-traders who are doing it, and their victims are massive hedge funds expecting continued economic catastrophe as COVID-19 rages on through our Trump-shattered economy.

GameStop is a struggling, kind of boring, mid-size retailer stuck in a legacy business — selling physical video games. But it’s also pretty much the only company anyone on Wall Street is talking about right now after its stock rose 160% in a matter of hours on Monday morning to an all-time high of $159. (By day’s end, GameStop’s price had been cut by more than half, but that still left it up more than 300% this year and almost 3,000% from its 52-week low. And it was up another 15% at Tuesday’s open.)

It isn’t GameStop’s precipitous rise, impressive as that’s been, that has everyone fascinated. Instead, it’s what is fueling that rise: concentrated buying by thousands upon thousands of small individual investors who are using sites like Reddit and Robinhood to drive up what are now being called “meme stocks.” GameStop is the best-known of these meme stocks, simply because its gains have become so outrageous. But it was preceded last year by Hertz and Kodak, which, despite having struggling businesses, saw their stock prices soar when they became Reddit darlings. And now stocks like AMC, Nokia, and Blackberry (which is, yes, still in business) have also caught Redditors’ fancy.

It’s easy to see the meme-stock boom as just a speculative bubble, and evidence of how the current stock market has lost touch with reality. Speculative bubbles in so-called “story stocks” are, after all, familiar things on Wall Street. In the late 1950s, uranium stocks soared, followed a few years later by bowling stocks, and then RV stocks. (In 1969, a company called Skyline Homes saw its shares rise twentyfold.) And we all know what happened to internet stocks in the late ’90s. But in fact, what’s happening with meme stocks is very different from those previous crazes.

In a classic speculative craze, investors may take cues from each other — the fact that everyone is buying internet stocks makes you think it’s smart to buy internet stocks — but they’re not working together to make stock prices rise.

With meme stocks, on the other hand, that’s exactly what’s happening: The small investors on the r/Wallstreetbets subreddit (which has 2 million subscribers) and other sites are taking part in a conscious collective effort to drive the prices of these stocks up. No one is in charge of this effort, though, of course, some voices are louder than others. But it is a self-organized campaign with people using the message boards to communicate with each other, encourage each other, and reassure each other (thus the many posts on r/Wallstreetbets admonishing fellow “autists” — their self-mocking term for each other — to not lose their nerve and to keep holding GameStop’s stock). Thus threads with titles “We are the captains now,” “Have no fear, GME gang. We are consolidating in preparation for tomorrow’s moon landing,” and “GME — it never has to end.”

In other words, what’s happening with GameStop looks less like a speculative bubble and more like a contemporary, internet-mediated version of the “bull raids” that were characteristic of the stock market in the early 20th century, when organized pools of investors would combine to drive stock prices up.

Perhaps more interestingly, it also looks a lot like what happened during the 2016 presidential election. Over the course of that campaign, a loosely organized community of alt-right meme lords and their followers, centered on sites like 4chan and Reddit, adeptly used social media to elevate Donald Trump’s candidacy while barraging Hillary Clinton with an endless flow of memes targeting her supposed inauthenticity and corruption. What they did, in effect, was exploit the opportunities created by social media to disrupt the normal workings of the political system, at least in part for the lolz. The traders on r/Wallstreetbets — which describes itself, tellingly, as “Like 4chan found a Bloomberg Terminal” — are trying to do the same thing to Wall Street. 

 

Yep, that's right. The memelords of the day-trading set have declared war on Wall Street, and there's enough capital, expertise, and timing experience when combined to cause some major hedge fund managers some real nightmares, simply by having enough leverage when banded together to flip the script on shorted stocks. 

It's probably not going to end well, but maybe this will finally bring about some badly needed Wall Street reform, not that the Biden administration doesn't already have a crapton to do.

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

The FBI is changing tactics on the Capitol insurrection suspects, moving to build federal conspiracy and sedition cases that carry sentences of decades in prison.

Authorities are sifting through reams of evidence—including more than 200,000 digital tips gathered from social media, members of the public, confidential informants, local news and surveillance footage, according to court filings and people involved in the cases. In recent days, investigators also have started receiving nonpublic evidence gathered from more than 500 grand jury subpoenas and search warrants, officials said, bolstering efforts to gain a clearer picture of what happened on Jan. 6.

Prosecutors already have charged more than 150 people with federal crimes related to participating in the riot, and officials said Tuesday they expected the flood of cases to slow as authorities turn to what was happening behind the scenes.

“We are going to reach a plateau in the very near future,” the acting U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., Michael Sherwin, said, adding that investigators are increasingly focusing on “possible coordination among militia groups” and people from different states who “had a plan to travel here before the sixth and engage in criminal conduct.”

The sprawling investigation includes FBI agents who normally handle a range of other matters, including securities fraud, public corruption, drugs, and gangs, court filings show.

FBI field offices from Arizona to New York have fanned out to make arrests, search homes and interview witnesses, family members and associates. Homeland security agents and local law enforcement have also taken part in the investigation, according to the filings and people involved.

Current and former law-enforcement officials said the effort was comparable with some of the largest investigations in the FBI’s recent history, such as the Oklahoma City bombing and the Boston Marathon attack. The result has been a rapid-fire series of criminal complaints, arrest and search warrants, with grand jury indictments and more arrests, including those involving additional assaults on police officers, expected later this week.

Officials said they expected little to change in the investigation as Biden appointees take over the Justice Department. “If the evidence is there, and we can identify someone, they’re going to be charged regardless of who is in the White House,” Mr. Sherwin said.

Five died amid the violence at the Capitol, including a U.S. Capitol Police officer and a 35-year-old military veteran who was shot by police. Three died while suffering medical emergencies.

Investigators’ next challenge will be taking a cascade of low-level criminal charges like unauthorized entry into the Capitol and using them as predicate offenses that allow agents and prosecutors to dig further in their attempt to build a broader case for conspiracy, law-enforcement officials said.

“The arrest is only the starting point,” said Richard M. Frankel, the former special agent in charge of the Newark, N.J., FBI field office. “Now they can go back and say, ‘Is this an organized effort to violate Congress, and do further criminal acts?’”

 

In other words, the terrorists are going to be facing the rest of their lives in federal prison, as it should be. There must be overwhelming and catastrophic consequences to these acts, and they have to end any notion that they will be allowed to happen again.

Because they were allowed to happen.

The commander of the D.C. National Guard said the Pentagon restricted his authority ahead of the riot at the U.S. Capitol, requiring higher-level sign-off to respond that cost time as the events that day spiraled out of control.

Local commanders typically have the power to take military action on their own to save lives or prevent significant property damage in an urgent situation when there isn’t enough time to obtain approval from headquarters.

But Maj. Gen. William J. Walker, the commanding general of the District of Columbia National Guard, said the Pentagon essentially took that power and other authorities away from him ahead of the short-lived insurrection on Jan. 6. That meant he couldn’t immediately roll out troops when he received a panicked phone call from the Capitol Police chief warning that rioters were about to enter the U.S. Capitol.

“All military commanders normally have immediate response authority to protect property, life, and in my case, federal functions — federal property and life,” Walker said in an interview. “But in this instance I did not have that authority.”

Walker and former Army secretary Ryan D. McCarthy, along with other top officials, briefed the House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday behind closed doors about the events, the beginning of what is likely to become a robust congressional inquiry into the preparations for a rally that devolved into a riot at the Capitol, resulting in five people dead and representing a significant security failure.

The military, which isn’t structured to be a first responder like law enforcement, took hours to arrive at the scene primarily because the Capitol Police and the District government hadn’t asked the D.C. Guard to prepare a contingency force for a riot. The Capitol Police chief also didn’t call Walker to tell him a request for Guard backup was imminent until about 25 minutes before rioters breached the Capitol.

But the restrictions the Pentagon placed on Walker also contributed to the delay. He needed to wait for approval from McCarthy and acting defense secretary Christopher C. Miller before dispatching troops, even though some 40 soldiers were on standby as a quick reaction force. That standby force had been assembled in case the few hundred Guard members deployed that day on the District’s streets to assist police with traffic control and crowd management needed help, Walker said.

The Pentagon required the highest-level approval for any moves beyond that narrow mission, in part because its leaders had been lambasted for actions the D.C. Guard took during last June’s racial justice protests, including helicopters that flew low over demonstrators in D.C. Top officials concluded those maneuvers resulted from “fragmentary orders” that hadn’t received high-level approval and were looking to prevent a repeat of that situation.

“After June, the authorities were pulled back up to the secretary of defense’s office,” McCarthy said in comments to The Washington Post. “Any time we would employ troops and guardsmen in the city, you had to go through a rigorous process. As you recall, there were events in the summer that got a lot of attention, and that was part of this.”

 

The people that made the terrorist attack on the US Capitol three weeks ago possible weren't all just the seditious terrorists.  They were US government officials working for Trump.

 

Homeland Security is taking al this seriously, seriously enough to issue a National Terrorist Advistory System warning.

 

Using a federal system designed to warn all Americans about terrorist threats to the U.S. homeland, the Department of Homeland Security has issued a warning that anger "fueled by false narratives," especially unfounded claims about the 2020 presidential election, could lead some inside the country to launch attacks in the coming weeks.

"Information suggests that some ideologically-motivated violent extremists with objections to the exercise of governmental authority and the presidential transition, as well as other perceived grievances fueled by false narratives, could continue to mobilize to incite or commit violence," according to a bulletin issued Wednesday through the DHS National Terrorist Advisory System -- or NTAS.

The system was last used to issue a public warning a year ago, when DHS issued a bulletin over potential retaliation by Iran for the U.S. assassination of Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani in Iraq days earlier. A year before that, DHS issued a bulletin through the same system to highlight the threat from foreign terrorist groups like ISIS or al-Qaida.

But over the past year, domestic terrorists "motivated by a range of issues motivated by a range of issues, including anger over COVID-19 restrictions, the 2020 election results, and police use of force have plotted and on occasion carried out attacks against government facilities," and "long-standing racial and ethnic tension -- including opposition to immigration -- has driven [domestic terrorist] attacks," the bulletin issued Wednesday said.

"DHS is concerned these same drivers to violence will remain through early 2021 and some [domestic terrorists] may be emboldened by the January 6, 2021 breach of the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. to target elected officials and government facilities," the bulletin added. 

 

In other words, DHS believes more domestic terrorist attacks from Trump supporters are coming.

 

So do I.

 

Be careful.

Giving Joe A Grade So Far

 My long-time friend Imani Gandy over at Rewire News has shared her thoughts on the first week of the Biden-Harris administration, and even though Imani and I greatly differed on who we wanted to be the Democratic candidate, like all of us, she came to the realization that we had to beat Trump, and Joe Biden was who we chose to do it.

 

And you know what? If Imani's now sold on Joe's slam-bang first week of progressive policy choices and actions, then everyone should be sold on it. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are the real deal.

“I want a Biden presidency like I want a brick to the face.”

That’s what I tweeted in May 2019, a few weeks after Biden announced his candidacy. To say I was unenthusiastic about a Biden presidency would be an understatement. Throughout the primary, I routinely urged Biden to drop out. I wanted a progressive president. Someone who would not only undo the damage that Trump wrought, but who would also be forward thinking. I was drawn to Elizabeth Warren’s nerdy energy. She was the person for the job, in my estimation.

But Joe Biden? No way.

“What’s so irritating is that it doesn’t seem like Joe Biden wants to be president. He just wants to have been president,” I tweeted in December 2019. And I believed it. His decision to jump into the race struck me as a self-aggrandizing and feckless attempt at relevance, considering he first ran for president in 1987, right around the time I was obsessing over Cary Elwes and Robin Wright in The Princess Bride.

Ultimately, I thought his candidacy was simply a reflection of vanity. He didn’t really want to put in the work that being president after Trump would require; the presidency was simply the last notch that he wanted to be able to etch onto his political bedpost.

But Biden became the nominee, and I resigned myself to voting for him. I was not happy. Nor was I optimistic. I assumed that he would just be a maintenance president. Someone to turn the clock back to 2016, but not necessarily someone who would move the country forward. And after he won the election, his chatter about the need for unity irritated me because I don’t want to unify with Trump supporters nor do I think I should have to.

Well, it’s been less than a week of the Biden-Harris administration, and I have to say, I have been pleasantly surprised. For a man who is 78 years old and has been in government since government was invented—who compromised with segregationists and fought for their cause by sponsoring a bill that, according to civil rights attorney and then-director of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund Jack Greenberg, would limit courts’ power to order busing as a way to desegregate schools—Biden has charged out of the gate swinging when it comes to the rights of people that the Trump administration either outright ignored or sadistically antagonized. He has done exactly what he should do to set the tone for this new administration, and if he keeps up this pace—and if progressives keep up the pressure—Biden has an opportunity to become a transformative president.

 

I agree completely. Biden wasn't my first choice either a year ago.  Now?

 

He's already shown that he's well on his way to being the person we need in the White House.

StupidiNews!

• No MLB players were inducted into this year's Baseball Hall of Fame class, closest was pitcher Kurt Schilling at 71.1% of the 75% needed from the Baseball Writers' Association of America.
• A Trump-appointed federal judge has blocked the Biden administration's halting of ICE deportations for 14 days after Texas AG Ken Paxton sued the federal government on Saturday.
• Senate Republicans failed to dismiss the impeachment trial of Donald Trump in a 55-45 vote, but the vote indicates there is not enough GOP support for a Trump conviction.
• The Biden administration says it plans to purchase another 200 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines and will rapidly increase the speed of delivery to states.
• Commercial space company SpaceX is now launching Starlink internet connection with laser links to cover polar regions without ground stations, the laser links will be standard next year.
  

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.