47 thoughts on “Inauguration Day in America”

  1. Keeping to his word, the snake slithered off to Florida. No marital law declaration. No pardoning himself or his kids. No executions of pedophile Democrats . . . Though he did leave a Huge deficit and debt increase. The Hugest ever. More huge the any other president.Report

  2. I was at work checking my morning headlines when I saw that Obama got the Nobel Peace Prize.

    I immediately barked out a laugh, confirmed that it was real, then stood up and ran over to a Team Blue No Matter What co-worker’s cube. “Did you hear that Obama got the Peace Prize?”, I asked him.

    He looked at me and sighed. “What’s the punchline?”

    “Check CNN.”

    And I wandered back to my cube.

    Later that day, in the lab, he tried to defend the idea of what was going on with that sort of thing. Like, he agreed that Obama didn’t deserve it *YET*, but the Nobel Peace People wanted to reward the idea of what Obama was and he supported the idea of Obama, even if the reality of Obama hadn’t yet had an opportunity to catch up to Obama’s Idea.

    Anyway, thought of that when I saw this:

    Report

    1. Do you think anyone looks at these things before they go out with even the slightest inkling of perspective? I don’t necessarily even mean skepticism, just a little voice that says ‘Am I 100% sure this is as obviously true as I think it is?’

      Edit, maybe even ‘Am I 100% sure this will not appear to confirm all of the worst things my critics say about me?’Report

      2. One thing I asked myself over the summer was “do these guys have a theory of mind?” when it came to the various instances of police brutality that we saw during the mostly peaceful protests against police brutality.

        The only conclusion that I was able to reach was “no, no they do not”.Report

      3. “Edit, maybe even ‘Am I 100% sure this will not appear to confirm all of the worst things my critics say about me?’”

        I think this is the better question.

        Maybe I’m being too generous, but I think this may be part of the modern trend of just declaring everything the best/worst/whatever-est ever. It’s stupid and annoying when people do it on social media. It’s worse when supposedly real journalists do it. Do they actually mean that Biden is one of the best? Or do they simply think he’s good and saying someone is “one of the best” is how we convey “I think they’re good” now? Doesn’t matter… whoever wrote it wrote it and now it’s out there, looking really dumb.Report

  3. Well, now that we don’t have to think about politics anymore, let’s check out the schedule for Turner Classic Movies for January 20th, 2021.

    Ah, starting at 6AM, Ode To Billy Joe (1976). Okay. Nice.
    Then Polo Joe (1936) at 8AM
    Then The Fabulous Joe (1947) at 10AM
    The Story of G. I. Joe (1945) at 10:45
    Joe Smith, American (1942) at 12:45 (HEY I’M STARTING TO SEE A THEME)
    A Guy Named Joe (1943) at 2
    Pal Joey (1957) at 4:15 (ah, Frank Sinatra…)
    Mighty Joe Young (1949) at 6:15.

    All of the Joe movies in the catalogue, I guess. Nice. Then what’s on?

    Murder She Said (1961) at 8.
    Murder at the Gallop (1963) at 10.
    Murder Most Foul (1964) at midnight.

    I’m sure that that wasn’t a deliberate choice.Report

  4. Maybe a dumb question, but does Harris getting sworn in first mean that she is VP and Trump is President for a few minutes?Report

    1. Yes. There’s also a little known provision of the constitution that says if the VP cannon balls into the fountain in front of the Library of Congress before the new POTUS is sworn in the VP takes the job instead.Report

    1. Report

        1. My Premier is now losing his stuff on live TV about it. Calling for a trade war against the United States in retaliation.

          The context being he rather foolish bought a 1.5 billion dollar stake in the project despite the strong likelihood that this would happen, in order to one up the Prime Minister he hates that bought a pipeline that’s going to get built and now he looks like a twit.Report

  6. “Democracy has prevailed” and Trump is no longer President. This was not as peaceful a transition of power as it should have been by a long shot. But we remained firm and he is gone.Report

  7. As i understand it Biden just proclaimed Atheism the law of the land and Gosh is dead. Took him long enough. Welp at least religion is illegal now suckers.Report

  8. I’m feelin pretty good about all my predictions last year. *sighs* Counterbalances how ludicrously wrong I was in ’16.Report

    1. So soon is soon? Weeks? Months?

      George promised me a President HRC this year and it seems that I’m not getting that. Just want to know when to check back with you on this one.Report

  10. I am very happy. For the past four years, I’ve had to look at the faces of Trump, Pence, Sessions, Barr, and whoever else when I walked into an immigration court or USCIS office. Now, I don’t have to do that. I get to look upon pictures of Biden, Harris, and Garland. Biden’s immigration legislation seeks to recognize that the United States is a nation of immigrants by changing the word alien to non-citizen. This might seem like a small thing but it is very big. Alien implies something or somebody who really shouldn’t be in a place. It is a hostile, awful word. Non-citizen has no such negative implications.Report

    1. There’s like four or five people that have built replica Oval Offices in their private homes (I.e not Presidential libraries or movie sets) including, I think, Dick MorrisReport

      1. That’s so weird.

        I can see having an oval office inspired office — take some of the architectural cues and build around that. Nothing wrong with saying “I’ve always liked the look of X or style Y”, but to replicate it all? Seals and furniture and whatnot? Weird.Report

  13. Politico has an article on the burrowing of Trump officials into civil service positions. This happens every admin but Tump might have taken it to new extremes. A big issue is that some of it seems to be self-owns by Trump’s lackeys. Biden can revoke the security clearance of someone like Ellis (general counsel for the NSA and former Nunes’ pal) easily and make him associate counsel for traffic tickets easily.

    https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/19/trump-loyalists-burrowing-biden-460238Report

    1. Let’s be fair. As long as it stays there it doesn’t really mean anything. If the local authorities and tax payers want to tolerate that then it’s up to them. What will be interesting is what happens in other places once the weather gets nice again, especially if vaccination is still moving at a snail’s pace.Report

        1. Remember the ‘don’t tase me bro’ incident? Probably kind of like that.

          Either that or some local business owner goes Bernie Goetz, is acquitted, and an alliance of citizens concerned about home values and the local chamber of commerce votes in leaders to re-fund the police.Report

    2. How many bad faith takes can we expect to see in this next four years? A poll….

      Jaybird, Black bloc and their supporters at Jacobin are about the least relevant political bodies you can imagine in the United States. Yet you seem to think they are super relevant.Report

      1. I’m actively interested in seeing what happens with enthusiastic mass gatherings in the coming months, Saul.

        Others, apparently, are as well.

        (I wonder if Marc would describe Biden’s response as “Muscular”.)Report

        1. For the record: I see this as an *OPPORTUNITY* for Biden.

          Seriously: This is something that he could totally hit out of the park.

          Every now and again, we start talking about the theoretical “gotcha” question and a good one to mention would be the Death Penalty question asked of Mike Dukakis in 1988. What makes the question so frustrating is that there are plenty of answers that you or I could come up with a great answer for Dukakis to give.

          Heck, it’s practically a softball question. “You bet I’d want the sonovabitch to die! I’d want to do it with my bare hands! But you know what? If it turned out that they found the wrong guy? I’d have killed the wrong guy because I was overcome with emotion instead of doing what I know is right. We, as a society, should oppose the death penalty… even if it feels like it’s the right thing, it’s not the right thing.”

          You know, something like that.

          This is an opportunity for Biden. I’m interested in seeing how this gets handled in the coming days.Report

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