Don’t Count Sherrod Brown Out
Plus: Get Ready for AI-Driven Skill Democratization
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DANIEL MCGRAW: Don’t Count Sherrod Brown Out.
IN MID-DECEMBER, WITH STRAINED NEGOTIATIONS over foreign aid and sham impeachment debates souring the holiday mood in Congress, Senator Sherrod Brown took time out of his schedule to do something not urgent but important: help honor Larry Doby, the legendary baseballer who broke the color barrier in the American League three months after Jackie Robinson did in the National League, with a posthumous Congressional Gold Medal.
During the ceremony at the Capitol, the senior senator from Ohio focused his remarks on Doby’s perseverance: “For Robinson and Doby, and the many who followed, the hard part wasn’t just getting to the majors. It was proving every day that they deserved to wear the same jersey and be on the same field as did their white teammates and their opponents.” Even though Doby’s legacy is often overshadowed by Robinson’s, Brown said, “His presence on the field changed baseball.”
LINDA CHAVEZ: Trump’s Birthright Citizenship Canard
FACING QUESTIONS ABOUT WHETHER the 14th Amendment disqualifies him from running for president, Donald Trump suggested earlier this week that the one who should be worried about disqualification is Nikki Haley. Dredging up one of his favorite canards, Trump promoted the theory that Haley is not a “natural born citizen” and, thus, is ineligible under the Constitution from becoming either president or vice president. For years, Trump falsely accused Barack Obama of failing the natural born citizen test as well, alleging he was born in Kenya. But Obama’s birth certificate, released in 2011, confirmed that he was born in Hawaii. Trump’s accusation this time isn’t about where Haley was born (in Bamberg, South Carolina) but about whether children born to non-citizen immigrants can be considered natural born citizens. The issue has far-reaching implications and affects far more than who is eligible to be president.
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BRENT ORRELL: Get Ready for AI-Driven Skill Democratization.
FOR DECADES, AUTOMATION HAS BEEN a rough road for middle-skill workers. These jobs used to provide plentiful, family-supporting employment opportunities for those with only a high school education or even less. Robotics and, to a lesser extent, trade dramatically reduced the number of middle-skill jobs leading to what economists called a “polarized” labor market: many high-skilled and low-skilled jobs but relatively few that require a middle level of skill. The big question for economists now is how the job market will react to the approaching wave of AI-driven automation. Will AI continue to raise the premium on education and skills while moving those with middling skills down the wage scale?
CATHY YOUNG: ‘Nineteen Eighty-four’ With a Female Face.
FICTION THAT REIMAGINES CLASSICS from a different point of view—fan fiction, essentially, albeit somewhat more respectable than what that term usually denotes—has a long pedigree. You could make the case for Paradise Lost being the great-great-granddaddy of the genre. Notable modern examples include Tom Stoppard’s play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which focuses on Hamlet’s hapless school chums; Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, which rehabilitates the attic-dwelling mad wife from Jane Eyre; and Gregory Maguire’s Wicked, in which the witch from The Wizard of Oz gets a name and a story. Now, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four, that greatest of twentieth-century political dystopias, joins the ranks of classics retold with Julia by Sandra Newman, published late last year. It’s an imaginative and well-written, if not always satisfying, complement to its source.
🚨OVERTIME🚨
Happy Friday! Are you prepared for the holiday weekend? Maybe snow? Maybe? My most trusted weatherman in recent years has been my old TWS editor, Richard Starr. If my wife wants snow: I get the goods from him, and the update from him is: the models are trending bad if you were hoping for snow.
In local news… My county accidentally gave Donald Trump 2,000 votes he didn’t earn in 2020.
Trump is losing cases… Even you aren’t paying attention to (or me!)
How Charlie Kirk Plans to Discredit Martin Luther King Jr… and the Civil Rights Act.
Did Cleveland deserve to become a laughingstock… Because of Balloon Fest? (Yes.) Interestingly, it gave Treb Heining his start. But seriously, watch this and tell me Cleveland wasn’t trying to overcompensate for a bad rap. (Making it worse!)
Imagine finding this… When renovating. Would you open it? Or sell it?
Texas: Don’t mess with our border! While our governor asks why you’re not enforcing the laws we’re interfering with. What a racket.
The Biden Admin… Goes for its first death sentence.
Rudy’s lawyer discovers… Federalism. In court. In front of a judge.
Go directly to South Carolina? Ron DeSantis doesn’t even want to pretend to campaign in New Hampshire, let alone actually continue to do it.
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