Kansas City Seems To Be Having a Year of Racism Awareness

I just keep getting more surprised about racism in Kansas City. Certainly not that it's here but that we keep getting revelations about it all here in town. For a first example, there was, of course, this.

Kansas City Star apologizes for decades of racist coverage

That was a nearly earth shaking evaluation right there, totally unforeseen.

Then, after that, our own Nelson-Atkins Museum announced, because of the Star's public self-evaluation, they might well do the same thing. That is, they were certainly self-evaluating but might--GASP--CHANGE THEIR NAME??

Might a name change be in store for Nelson-Atkins museum

The Nelson-Atkins Museum to consider removing Nelson's name

Keeping in mind, of course, the city of Kansas City, Missouri took the name of very famous and very racist JC Nichols off the fountain on the Country Club Plaza he created, in Mill Creek Park. That was surprising and refreshing enough, eh?

And now, today, there is this from our Kansas City Star.

I was a Black fire captain for KCFD. Racism there is real, and it risks public safety

The man, the now former Captain makes what are to me stunning claims. It's not just that there's racism in the organization, the Kansas City Fire Department. It goes far worse than that. He says Black firefighters don’t get training on the equipment needed to keep Kansas City safe. It's a fascinating, even, I would say, important article to read as it gives some history in the city of the systemic racism there. What concerns me is that not enough citizens of the city, especially white people, will read--and absorb--the entire article.

Again, it's just stunning to the point of outrageous. These men and women are there to protect us all from fire and fires and he's saying they aren't as fully, completely trained as the white firefighters? In the same jobs? That's nearly unbelievable, at least to those of us on the outside of the organization. It's unforgivable.

So we're still learning about ourselves, Kansas City.

Can we handle it?

More to the point, can we change?

And soon as possible?

Additional links:

I was surprised but pleased of fellow citizen Steve Kraske for so singularly and publicly taking on a big load of the racism in the city a few years ago, when he lead the charge, nearly singlehandedly, to get the JC Nichols Fountain renamed.

Steve Kraske: Kansas City should confront racist past

Steve Kraske: I’m still talking about J.C. Nichols, racism

Mahomes vs That Other Guy

Want to see a great comparison, one week before the big game?

More stats:

PFF Fantasy Football

@PFF_Fantasy

Patrick Mahomes in the playoffs since 2018:

92.0 PFF Grade (1st)

2,054 PASS YDS (1st)

17 PASS TDs (1st)

Patrick Mahomes has thrown 33 TDs to Travis Kelce since 2018 (playoffs included) Most by a duo in the NFL

Let's do this!

Go Magic!

Go Patrick!!

GO CHIEFS!!!

Only Thing Better Than Trump Impeached Is Josh Hawley

I love how Josh Hawley is now all over the place. Here's two, very well deserved.

Now if we can just get him to do the right thing and resign.

Speaking of Trump:

5 members of legal team depart ahead of Senate impeachment

How do you not love that? 1 Week to go before his impeachment trial and his entire team of 5 defense lawyers quit.  And the only thing better than that is the reason why.

Robert Reich

@RBReich

Trump can’t find lawyers for his Senate trial because he demands they push his false claim that he won the election, thereby becoming accessories to his continuing effort to incite insurrection.

And then there it gets even better.

As Trump's legal team respectfully resigns, his supporters join Dems in blaming him for Capitol riot

Finally today, there is this from the New York Times.

Legal Pressure on Trump Increases With Judge’s Order in Fraud Inquiry

The order, answering a demand for documents by New York’s attorney general, rejected a bid to shield the records with attorney-client privilege.

I tell you, folks, it's a beautiful day.

Still More Bizarre Is Coming Out About Trump and His Political Party

Between the Republicans themselves and their extreme Right Wing and then the QAnon people, I can barely keep up. And with Trump out of the White House, I thought the bizarre stories of him were behind us but no, there's still more. Did you see this?

Russia has been cultivating Trump as an asset for 40 years, former KGB spy says

Just a bit from the article:

• The KGB cultivated Trump as an asset for 40 years, a former operative told The Guardian.
• Yuri Shvets told The Guardian that the KGB had identified Trump as a potential asset in the 1980s.
• Shvets said it was stunning when Trump took out an ad repeating anti-Western talking points after a trip to Moscow.

Seriously, that last one must have had the Russians deliriously happy at the time, that they could get this famous reality TV host to parrot their criticisms of HIS OWN NATION??  And then to get him planted at the head of that nation?  As PRESIDENT??  Their wildest dreams surely came true.

It would normally be extremely upsetting, too, to the fellow members of his political party but they just COMPLETELY DENY IT. Just deny it all. That way you can tell yourself it never happened. And then accuse Democratic Socialists like AOC and Bernie Sanders and the like of being Communists. 

I tell you, I can't believe where we are.

Republicans and Right Wingers actually attacked our own nation's Capitol and no one is really being held accountable for it. Some of the actual trespassers have been charged but that's it. Nothing else.

With that attack on the Capitol, so many of us were sure even the Republicans would hold Trump accountable, for the nation's sake but no. Certainly not. This took place yesterday, for God's sake.

House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy visited Trump in Florida to seek his favor, showing how the party is still beholden to him

Additional proof:

Forget about a GOP crack-up: Republicans rally around a defeated Trump because they understand power

Meanwhile, there is this:

‘The Enemy Is Within’: Pelosi Says Lawmakers Have ‘Threatened Violence’ Against Other Members

As further proof, there's this guy.

GOP Rep. Andy Harris Tries To Bring Gun Into House Chamber

GOP congressman tries to bring a GUN onto the floor of the House but is turned away by police after he set off metal detectors put in place following MAGA riot

Then, one Republican taking a gun into Congress and the Capitol, no, certainly not.

Another GOP Lawmaker Attempted To Bring A Gun Into House

Then, from Texas we have this pretty incredible development.

Kyle Biedermann, Texas State Rep Who Marched to Capitol, Introduces Bill to Secede From Union

Here's a guy who was part of the attack on our nation's Capitol and now he goes back home and proposes his state leaves our union, leaves the United States.

How are both of those not treason, separately?

How is this guy getting any support from his political party on the local, state or national level?  How is that possible?

Into what ultra-bizarro world has Donald J Trump and his political party dumped us all?

How do we get it all to stop?

Republicans and Their Right Wing Are Just Getting More Threatening -- And Frightening

Republicans and Right Wingers just seem to be getting more extreme, more bizarre, even more threatening, nearly day by day. All Americans need to know this. A brief synopsis from yesterday, Heather Cox Richardson

January 27, 2021

The contours of politics today look much like they did yesterday. President Biden is forging ahead through executive actions — today pausing oil and gas leases while switching the government to electric vehicles — while the two factions in the Republican Party claw for supremacy.

Dead center of both of these political fights is the future of this country. Will Trump and his supporters seize control of the government — by means legal or illegal — or will the country steer itself back to the norms and values of democracy?

The dangers of Trumpism are becoming clearer each day. Today, for the first time, the Department of Homeland Security issued a national terrorism bulletin that warned of violence from domestic extremists angry over “perceived grievances fueled by false narratives” and emboldened by the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. The bulletin expires at the end of April.

Law enforcement has moved National Guard troops to Washington, D.C., in part to guard against violence on March 4, a day that QAnon supporters who still believe Trump is part of an elaborate trick to reclaim the nation from the Democrats think will be the day on which the former president is finally sworn in for his second term. (March 4 was the nation’s original inauguration date; it changed under Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1937.)

In testimony yesterday, the acting chief of the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington told the House Appropriations Committee that at least 65 officers filed reports of injury after the January 6 attack. The chair of the Capitol Police officers’ union, Gus Papathanasiou, put the number closer to 140. “I have officers who were not issued helmets prior to the attack who have sustained brain injuries. One officer has two cracked ribs and two smashed spinal discs. One officer is going to lose his eye, and another was stabbed with a metal fence stake,” he said. One officer died of injuries sustained on January 6. Two officers have since taken their own lives.

Meanwhile, a video emerged today of the new Republican representative from Georgia, Marjorie Taylor Greene, harassing David Hogg, who survived the mass shooting at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on Valentine’s Day 2018. Greene followed Hogg down the street in Washington, D.C., in March 2019, with an accomplice filming as she badgered him, called him a crisis actor paid by George Soros, told him she was armed, demanded he talk to her, and called him a coward. He walked on, without engaging her.

The video emerged the day after reporters discovered old Facebook activity on Greene’s page in which she responded positively to a commenter talking of hanging former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama and another talking of killing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

While Representative Jimmy Gomez (D-CA) has called for Greene’s expulsion from Congress, leading Republicans in the House responded to the Facebook news simply by saying they condemned violent rhetoric on both sides. Today, Republican House leadership assigned her to the Education and Labor Committee.

Republican lawmakers seem to be siding with Trump’s supporters, turning against the 10 House Republicans who voted for Trump’s impeachment. In the House, Trump supporters are trying to throw Liz Cheney (R-WY) out of her spot in the party’s leadership, and the former president’s new political action committee is ginning up anger against her as it urges primary challengers to jump into the race in 2022.

Increasingly, Republican lawmakers are pushing to let Trump off the hook on impeachment. In the Senate yesterday, Rand Paul (R-KY) insisted that a former president could not be tried on an impeachment charge, and 45 Republicans agreed with him. This is not necessarily a signal of how the eventual Senate vote will go, but Paul said it was: he insisted this was a sign that Trump would not be convicted. Republican lawmakers seem to be coming down on Trump’s side as polls show that while most Americans are horrified by the attack on the Capitol and blame Trump for it, most Republicans — 78% — don’t blame him. Republican lawmakers are accusing Democrats of divisiveness in their move to hold the president accountable.

Some Republicans are, though, alarmed at the idea that a president might get away with inciting an insurrection that endangered our elected representatives and our government itself — remember the next three people in line for the presidency were in the Capitol when the rioters stormed it — and which came perilously close to making good on threats against individuals, including then-vice president Mike Pence.

Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) dismissed the idea that the country could have unity without addressing the causes of the current anger. “I say, first of all, have you gone out publicly and said that there was not widespread voter fraud and that Joe Biden is the legitimate president of the United States? If you said that, then I’m happy to listen to you talk about other things that might inflame anger and divisiveness,” he explained to Dennis Romboy of Deseret News. “But if you haven’t said that, that’s really what’s at the source of the anger right now.”

Also notable is the firm stance of Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), who has bucked his party to speak out against the former president’s attacks on the election and incitement of the rioters. “I’ve felt very isolated in my party,” Kinzinger told Ellen McCarthy of the Washington Post.

While the Republican Party’s apparent embrace of Trump and all he now stands for is grabbing headlines, Biden and his administration officials are taking on the radicalization of his opponents in a new and promising way. They are demonstrating an approach to sidelining Trumpism by shifting the focus off the exhausting drama of the former president and his supporters and onto a functioning government that is working for ordinary Americans.

When a reporter today asked White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki if the administration had any comment on Greene, Psaki made it clear the administration was not going to give any oxygen to her or those like her. “We don’t, and I am not going to speak further about her, I think, in this briefing room,” Psaki said.

While Biden is starving the Republicans of oxygen, he is also working to address the conditions that have fed desperate conspiracy theories and divisions. In America, such societal breakdown is associated with periods in which ordinary people face economic hardship. Biden is moving quickly on a range of issues that are popular among ordinary voters of both parties, including addressing the country’s extreme inequality. After all, one of the complaints that drew voters to an outsider in 2016 was the belief that government no longer worked for the people and needed to be shaken up.

Today’s executive order on addressing climate change talks at length about creating “good-paying union jobs” and “tapping into the talent, grit, and innovation of American workers.” It calls for the government to buy zero-emission vehicles made in the U.S., and to rebuild federal infrastructure, creating construction, manufacturing, engineering, and skilled-trades jobs. Job creation and infrastructure development were both promises the previous president made in 2016 that boosted his support but which never really came to pass. If Biden can actually deliver on them, he could reclaim those Trump voters for the Democrats, as well as addressing climate change and our failing infrastructure.

Biden’s people are also making sure we see a White House that is addressing issues that created concern in the past administration. They are upholding old norms — holding daily press briefings, for example — honoring science, restoring government websites, and treating members of the media with respect.

They seem to be trying to remind us how our democracy is supposed to work.

God help us, folks. God help the United States of America. We thought Trump was bad.  Of course, we knew it. What we didn't know was that he was just getting them started.

One Week In

 One week into this new Joe Biden Presidential Administration. This is where we are. Already.

1. We can now ignore Twitter
2. The White House briefing room is not an Orwellian nightmare of lies
3. We are now confronting white domestic terrorism
4. We are not paying for golf trips
5. There are no presidential relatives in government
6. The tenor of hearings is sober and serious
7. Qualified and knowledgeable nominees have been selected for senior spots
8. We have a first lady who engages with the public
9. We have not heard a word from presidential children
10. We are now tough on Russian human rights abuses
11. We get normal readouts of sane conversations between the president and foreign leaders
12. The White House philosophy is to underpromise and overdeliver, not the other way around
13. Manners are in, bullying is out
14. You feel calmer after hearing the president
15. Fact-checkers are not overworked
16. Quality entertainers want to perform for the White House
17. We have seen the president’s tax records
18. The president is able to articulate policy details, coherently even
19. The worst the press can come up with is the president’s watch
20. We have a White House staff that looks like America
21. We have a national covid-19 plan
22. Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony S. Fauci is liberated, sounds happy and even looks younger
23. Fauci, not the president, briefs on the science of covid-19 and efficacy of vaccines
24. Masks and social distancing in the White House
25. The White House has policy initiatives and proposals, not merely leaving it all to Congress
26. The administration is committed to releasing information, not covering it up, on the slaughter of journalist Jamal Khashoggi
27. The Muslim ban is gone
28. It is the Republicans not the Democrats who are in disarray
29. The national security adviser has not been fired for lying to the FBI
30. No Soviet-style fawning over the president by his subordinates
31. The president takes daily, in-person intelligence briefings
32. The president does not care about Air Force One colors
33. We have a president familiar with the Constitution
34. Real cable news outlets get high ratings, others not so much
35. President Andrew Jackson is out of the Oval Office, Benjamin Franklin is in
36. Voice of America is back in the hands of actual journalists
37. We get memes about Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), not crowd size
38. We are back in the Paris climate accord and the World Health Organization
39. Instead of running it like a business, the new administration will try running government competently
40. We have a president who doesn’t think military service is for “suckers” and who doesn’t send his “love” to people assaulting law enforcement
41. The secretary of treasury nominee has her own Hamilton lyrics
42. Amanda Gorman is a household name
43. More than two-thirds of Americans approve of the White House covid-19 approach.
44. No more work-free “executive time” in the presidential living quarters
45. We have a churchgoing president “who has spent a lifetime steeped in Christian rituals and practices.”
47. The vice president’s spouse does not teach at a school that bars LGBTQ students
48. The White House takes the Hatch Act seriously
49. The administration wants as many people as possible to vote
50. The president will talk more to our allies than to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Not perfect, certainly. But it's good. It's very good. It's a huge, huge improvement.

Good on you, America. 

No, great on you.

Quote of the Day -- Justice/Impeachment Edition

Let's be clear on this impeachment of now former President Trump. This is from historian Michael Beschloss:

“This is the only president in American history who incited an insurrection against Congress that could have resulted in assassinations and hostage-taking and, conceivably, the cancellation of a free presidential election and the fracturing of a democracy, That’s a fact, and it won’t change in 50 years. It’s very hard to think of a scenario under which someone might imagine some wonderful thing that Donald Trump did that will outshine that. He did, literally, the worst thing that an American president could ever do.”

Oh, yeah. For the country. For the nation. For the people. For what's right. For our laws. For accountability. And so it's clear that this nor nothing like it ever, ever happens again.

Impeach.

Two Quotes of the Day -- On Socialism and Capitalism

"The good things at which socialism aims can only be achieved where industry is highly developed and has sunk deep into the habits of the nation. In England or America, socialism, if it could be achieved without prolonged war and industrial dislocation, could bring a very considerable degree of material well-being to the whole population, by exacting only four or five hours of daily labour from every adult citizen. And it would not need to be a centralized bureaucratic system, because the workers, from long practice, have come to understand the industries in which they are employed, and would be thoroughly competent to manage them themselves. 

A gradual approach to these benefits is possible without a catastrophic abolition of the capitalist system, and therefore without the very grave dangers to industrialism and the whole fabric of civilization which are involved in a universal class-war. But these benefits cannot be secured in a country as yet almost un-industrial, however much it may be nominally communistic, because in such a country the total produce of labour is not very much more than is needed for subsistence, and there are not, in the general body of the population, the habits, the skill or the knowledge required for a democratic control of the processes of industrial production."

― Bertrand Russell, The Prospects of Industrial Civilization (1959), Part I, Ch. I: Causes of the Present Chaos, p. 26

"It is now highly feasible to take care of everybody on Earth at a 'higher standard of living than any have ever known.' It no longer has to be you or me. Selfishness is unnecessary and henceforth unrationalizable as mandated by survival."

--R Buckminster Fuller, 1963

Both men were and are correct. We just aren't so bright as to put it all into place and have ti work for us all, for humankind.