Today is Tuesday, February 1, 2022. It is also Lunar New Year 2022 and it is the year of the tiger. In China, I learned, the festival lasts for 15 days. The tiger embodies courage and bravery, so the New Year could symbolize resilience and strength – two qualities we will all need as we make our way through the pandemic.

Another observance we mark today is the beginning of Black History Month. Today marks the first day of this month-long observation, where we honor the contributions and sacrifices of African Americans who have helped shape the nation. An article on this celebration appeared in my online edition of NPR in an article written by Jonathan Franklin entitled “Here’s the story behind Black History Month – and why it’s celebrated in February.”

In the article, the “father of Black history,” Carter G. Woodson, is credited with setting out in 1926 to designate a time to promote and educate people about Black history and culture. As originally envisioned by Woodson, Black history would be celebrated for just a week during the second week of February. The idea eventually grew in acceptance, and by the late 1960s, Negro History Week had evolved into what is known as Black History Month.

The U.S. president who first recognized Black History Month was President Gerald R. Ford who acknowledged the celebration during the country’s 1976 bicentennial. Ford called upon Americans to “seize the opportunity to honor the two-often neglected accomplishments of Black Americans in every area of endeavor in our history.”

The month of February was chosen because the second week of the month coincides with the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. So both influential figures in the Black experience were born in the second week of February, even though Douglass’s exact date of birth wasn’t recorded, though he came to celebrate it on Valentine’s Day. Thus Woodson created Negro History Week initially as a way of “commemorating the black past.”

There is a new theme every year during this month-long recognition. This year’s theme is, appropriately, Black Health and Wellness, as the United States continues to combat the coronavirus pandemic.

Tomorrow is Groundhog Day, which could augur either six weeks more of winter or an early spring. Let’s see if the new mayor will participate in the usual festivities tomorrow without dropping the poor animal like the previous mayor did on one infamous occasion.

More damning evidence against the twice-impeached president appeared today in an article in The New York Times by Alan Feur, Maggie Haberman, Michael S. Schmidt, and Luke Broadwater entitled “Trump Sought Ways to Seize Vote Machines.” This is just another bit of proof that the former Liar-in-Chief knew what was going on about the events preceding the sacking of the Capitol on January 6.

The events depicted in the article occurred six weeks after Election Day when then-president Dumpf, realizing his hold on power was slipping, subsequently directed his lackey, Rudy Giuliani, to make a call to the Department of Homeland Security asking if they could legally seize control of voting machines. So without getting his hands soiled with the stain of illegality, Dumpf had his loyal deputy call the department’s deputy secretary who later informed him that he lacked the authority to audit or impound the machines.

“The new accounts show that Mr. Trump was more directly involved than previously known in exploring proposals to use his national security agencies to seize voting machines as he grasped unsuccessfully for evidence of fraud that would help him reverse his defeat in the 2020 election, according to people familiar with the episodes.”

Two other agencies that were initially recruited to do Dumpf’s dirty work were the Pentagon and the Justice Department under the leadership of then-“personal attorney” to Dumpf, Attorney General William P. Barr, who actually shot down the idea in an Oval Office meeting with the clueless president.

If Dumpf had his way of seizing voting machines used in a lawful election, who knows what uncharted territory this country would have been thrust into if this scheme were ever implemented since it has been proven that there was no basis for thinking that there was widespread voting fraud.

The article points to one shadowy figure, Phil Waldron, a retired Army colonel, as playing a key role in planting the seed of voter fraud in the mind of Dumpf and his merry circle of pranksters that included Giuliani, Michael T. Flynn, the former disgraced national security adviser, nutcase lawyer Sidney Powell, and others.

According to persons familiar with the accounts, shortly after the election, Mr. Waldron began telling associates that he found irregularities in voting results that he felt were suggestive of fraud. He then came up with the brilliant idea of having a federal agency like the military or the Department of Homeland Security confiscate the machines to preserve evidence.

This retired Army colonel first proposed the notion of the Pentagon’s involvement to Dumpf’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, whom he says he served with in the Defense Intelligence Agency.

I can’t understand why Dumpf and his associates would believe the rantings of this owner of a bar and distillery outside Austin, Texas, who was previously best known for having circulated a 38-page PowerPoint presentation to lawmakers and White House aides that was filled with extreme plans to overturn the election. The guy seems like such a nutcase, but many other former Dumpf allies have been exposed as delusional partisans in the long run anyway.

The article details the proceedings of a December 18, 2020, Oval Office meeting with Dumpf, Flynn, and Powell, in which the president was presented with a copy of the draft executive order authorizing the military to oversee the seizure of machines. After reading the report, Dumpf sent for his consigliere, Giuliani who, to his credit, advised his Orange-haired boss that the military could only be used if there was clear-cut evidence of foreign interference in the election. Powell, the firebrand lawyer who had spent the last month filing baseless lawsuits claiming that China and other countries had hacked into voting machines, said that she had such evidence of interference in the election, but this time, Giuliani pushed back on using the military. The wanna-be autocrat heeded his pal’s advice this time.

Shortly after this meeting, Waldron amended the draft executive order, suggesting now that if the Defense Department could not be called upon to oversee the seizure of machines, then the Department of Homeland Security could. This idea was also abandoned when Giuliani made another call to Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, the acting deputy secretary at the Department of Homeland Security who immediately told his caller that his agency could not take part in the absurd plan.

The only person to be commended here, if you can even say that, in this swirling mass of madness is the ex-mayor of New York who believed that using the military was beyond the pale. Predicting what would happen if those plans were actually enacted, Giuliani foretold that Dumpf would be impeached, which he was – but not for this scheme, as we all know.

As I was typing the particulars of this explosive story, I listened to Rachel Maddow opening her 9 o’clock MSNBC show with the aforementioned news item in which she interviewed one of the writers of the page 1 article, Michael S. Schmidt. Schmidt mentions that the investigative piece squarely implicates Dumpf in actively overturning the election, along with his minions. Do you agree? Don’t you think this country has enough evidence against the ex-demagogue to now charge him with specific crimes before he sics his mob of violent supporters on those brazen individuals attempting to prosecute him for these crimes? So when is he being charged, you may ask? I wonder too.

Just writing about this new development in the of Trumpland is exhausting.

So I will say have a nice Groundhog Day tomorrow. Do you think the little animal will see his shadow or not? Punxsutawney Phil is raring to go early tomorrow. It’s a good day to watch Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, don’t you think?

Stay safe and be well. Let’s have an early spring, everyone.