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babylonsister

babylonsister's Journal
babylonsister's Journal
January 21, 2021

Adam Schiff on the Inauguration...

https://www.facebook.com/AdamSchiffCA/


I just got home from the inauguration of President Joe Biden, and wanted to share some thoughts with you about the day:

Today was the day we’ve been waiting for, hoping for, praying for — the day Donald Trump finally left office. The day we had a new president, an ethical president, a decent president, a president devoted to bringing us tougher, not splitting us apart. It’s Inauguration Day in America.

President Joe Biden has now officially been sworn in as the 46th President of the United States. And Donald J. Trump is a bad memory.

It’s a new day, and a new chapter for our country. Starting today, we can begin to build back better and repair the immense damage done to our country, our citizens and our democracy.

The past four years of the Trump presidency have been nothing short of disastrous, damaging, indeed traumatizing.

The catalogue of abuses over the last four years is long and ugly, and includes when he imposed a discriminatory Muslim travel ban, removed the U.S. from the Paris climate accord, separated families at the border, tried to sabotage our health care system, attacked reproductive choice and LGBTQ protections, encouraged white supremacists and hate groups, brutally mistreated peaceful protestors, demonized the free press, undermined our elections, pushed countless lies and conspiracy theories, and utterly failed to address the COVID-19 pandemic, which has now taken more than 400,000 American lives. (This list is not exhaustive, sadly.)

And all of his lies culminated in one Big Lie — the falsehood spread by Donald Trump that he won the election. It was on that basis that he spent months attacking the very underpinnings of our democracy, and ultimately inciting an angry mob in Washington, DC to go to the Capitol and try to stop the peaceful transition of power.
We all saw what happened next.

We’ve got our work cut out for us, but as I listened to President Biden today, I felt hope. Hope for an end to the pandemic. Hope for an economic recovery that lifts up every American. Hope for health care that is universal. Hope for our planet.

With President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in the White House, as well as Democrat majorities in both the House and Senate we have the power to clean up this mess, tackle the pandemic, and make long-awaited progress for our communities and country. We have been given a great responsibility, and we have to act.

Just think about what we can achieve together over these next four years: a rapid distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, stronger pandemic relief for workers and businesses, restoration of the Voting Rights Act, a $15 federal minimum wage, universal health care coverage, bold action on climate change, student debt relief, criminal justice reform, and protections to defend and build back our democracy and ensure a president like Donald Trump can never abuse this office again.

I’m ready to get to work. And I hope you are too. Because we need you.


Today is a bright, hopeful day for our democracy and country. And you helped make it possible. Donating, volunteering, organizing, voting. It all made a difference and led us here. Together, we made it clear: right still matters, truth still matters, and decency still matters.

Today, we celebrate. Tomorrow, we get back to work. Let’s go.

— Adam
January 21, 2021

It's okay to feel hope

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22240597/joe-biden-inauguration-president-2021-hope


It’s okay to feel hope
Joe Biden’s inaugural address showed America how to move on after four years of Donald Trump.
By Zack Beauchamp@zackbeauchampzack@vox.com Jan 20, 2021, 2:30pm EST


Joe Biden became the president of the United States amid a series of overlapping crises. More than 400,000 Americans are dead from Covid-19. The current economic downturn is the worst since the Great Depression. There is an ongoing, serious threat of far-right violence after the attack on the Capitol. And there’s a Republican Party that seems unwilling to work with Biden on fixing any of it.

None of that has changed now that Biden has officially assumed the presidency. And yet, watching Biden’s inaugural and listening to his first address, it’s hard not to feel a real measure of hope.

“Today, we celebrate not the triumph of a candidate but a cause: the cause of democracy,” Biden said. In a typical inauguration, these words would be pro forma. This year, in the wake of the storming of the Capitol, they felt profound.

“Politics doesn’t have to be a raging fire, destroying everything in its path. Every disagreement doesn’t have to be a cause for total war. And we must reject the culture in which facts themselves are manipulated and even manufactured,” the new president declared. He was painting a picture of the America we want: not the one we have, but maybe one we could, one day.

Biden’s call for a better country was paired with a clear-eyed recognition of what exactly it was that got us in such a bad way in the first place: not mere political disagreement, but a resurgence of illiberal forces that have haunted America since its founding — and, at times, triumphed over democratic ideals.

“Our history has been a constant struggle between the American ideal that we are all created equal and the harsh, ugly reality that racism, nativism, fear, demonization have long torn us apart. The battle is perennial, and victory is never assured,” Biden said.

snip//

The Trump era gave us plenty of reason to believe that the worst and most cynical possibility was also the most likely. Yet millions of Americans mobilized throughout that, defending causes ranging from women’s bodily autonomy to health care access to freedom from police violence.

As this new administration begins, such Americans can move from defense to offense. They can look down the slope, scanning for paths that might reach a beautiful pasture.
January 20, 2021

Sean Hannity attacks President Biden for not having COVID pandemic under control

Ridiculous! He's got nothin'.

https://www.mediamatters.org/sean-hannity/sean-hannity-attacks-president-biden-not-having-covid-pandemic-under-control

Sean Hannity attacks President Biden for not having COVID pandemic under control
Hannity: “They’re minimizing, I noticed, on getting COVID under control … I thought he was going to do this on day one”
Written by Media Matters Staff
Published 01/20/21 4:35 PM EST



SEAN HANNITY (HOST): They're minimizing, I noticed, on getting COVID under control. "It's going to take a lot of time, a lot of time. Our team is eager." I thought he was going to do this on day one. "We're eager though to get the agencies and into the White House to gain a better assessment about where things really stand on managing the pandemic." Trump left you multiple vaccines. You're in much better shape.
January 20, 2021

Charles P. Pierce: Donald Trump's Departure Was a Perfect Visual for His Entire Life

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a35267049/trump-departure-air-force-one/

Donald Trump's Departure Was a Perfect Visual for His Entire Life
If there were ever a mural dedicated to the man's public career, it would be of dogs playing poker around a golden commode.
By Charles P. Pierce
Jan 20, 2021

snip//

Here is what the outgoing president* did with his last day in the office he so dishonored: He pardoned or granted clemency to 143 people, including Steve Bannon, the architect of chaos and disaster, and Elliott Broidy, who pled guilty to violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act and was separately investigated for his activity around the president*'s one—and, god help us, only—inauguration. He apparently pardoned every crooked pol back to 1789. (Kwame Kilpatrick? Duke Cunningham?) It is entirely possible he pardoned Aaron Burr. I haven't checked the list that closely.

On the policy front, he revoked a rule so that his former henchpeople immediately could begin their careers as lobbyists instead of five years from now—a cosmetic provision that he passed during his Drain The Swamp phase, which was as much of a shuck as anything else he did. And he made it easier to discriminate against gay people, and women, and religious minorities. (He made it possible for homeless shelters to turn away gay teenagers. The cruelty remained the point right until the end.) As Air Force One took flight in its current role as a getaway vehicle, to the strains of "YMCA" and "My Way," he is said to have left a letter for President-Elect Joe Biden, which is supposed to have been the last change of tone in which we're supposed to believe.

His departure, complete with the Village People and Ol' Blue Eyes, was a perfect visual for the man's entire life. This is one rocky motherfcker. His buildings are tacky. His living quarters are tacky. He is the glass grapes on the table. He is the Velvet Elvis Man. If there were ever a mural dedicated to his public career, it would be of dogs playing poker around a golden commode. He brought that ineffable instinct for repulsive kitsch into everything he touched—including, alas, the presidency of the United States. It's not his most dangerous flaw, God knows. But it was one that America, which has the damndest time distinguishing kitsch from class, most responded to about the notion of this grifting arriviste as President of the United States.

I go back to 2015, to one day at the Iowa State Fair. There was a platform about halfway up the midway at which the prospective candidates in the following year's election would come and speak. This guaranteed that a crowd would gather in the middle of the midway, and it became well nigh impossible to get your bacon pecan pie on a stick. Earlier, Donald Trump had asked the fair officials if he could land his helicopter at the fairgrounds. They turned him down, so he used a nearby ballfield as his aerodrome, and he began to offer people helicopter rides which, naturally, overflew the midway. Whenever the helicopter passed over, the eyes of the crowd went to the sky. This happened every 30 minutes or so, and it completely distracted the fairgoers from Scott Walker or Marco Rubio or whoever it was that was speaking. I should have made more of that at the time. These were people who, eyes skyward, worshipped the idea of The Good Life that Trump has been presenting to the American public since the days in which he was a tabloid joke in New York City. He was why their eyes went to the sky. I should have made more of that at the time.

So the last image of this plague-ridden farce of a presidency* is of cheap general-business music left behind in the wake of an ascending 747. And the eyes of an exhausted nation following it into the sky, a country full of marks who are only now realizing that they bought gilt and not gold, and that all their castles were made of sand.
January 20, 2021

Donald Trump tells supporters 'We'll be back,' then ends presidency to Village People hit YMCA

So bizarre.

Donald Trump tells supporters ‘We’ll be back,’ then ends presidency to Village People hit YMCA
Jimmy McCloskey
Wednesday 20 Jan 2021 1:57 pm


Donald Trump concluded his final speech as president by telling supporters ‘We will be back,’ before exiting the stage to the Village People classic YMCA. Speaking at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on Wednesday, the outgoing President of the United States said: ‘Goodbye, we love you, we will be back in some form.’

Trump added: ‘Have a good life, we will see you soon.’ YMCA then began to play as he prepared to board Air Force One with wife Melania, his children, in-laws and grandchildren. The 70s disco classic became Trump’s theme tune during his 2020 election campaign – although he did not perform his trademark side-shuffle dance as it began to play on Wednesday.

more...

https://metro.co.uk/2021/01/20/trump-tells-fans-well-be-back-ends-last-speech-with-disco-hit-ymca-13935990/

January 20, 2021

Presidential Historian Calls Trump's Presidency A 'Near-Death Experience' For American Democracy

Posted on Tue, Jan 19th, 2021 by Sean Colarossi
Presidential Historian Calls Trump’s Presidency A ‘Near-Death Experience’ For American Democracy


Presidential historian Michael Beschloss said on Tuesday night that even though Joe Biden will be sworn in as president tomorrow, the American people shouldn’t forget about the “near-death experience” that Donald Trump just put the country though.

Beschloss said that Biden is right to focus his inauguration on “unity and reconciliation,” but that it’s also important to remember just how close Trump came to toppling U.S. democracy.

“We have been through four years of a daily, hourly assault on our democracy, a president who hates democracy, has a lust for power, and topped it all off on the 6th of January by trying to take down our Congress, overturn a free presidential election, and take down our democracy,” Beschloss said.

“That was a near-death experience,” he added.


https://twitter.com/i/status/1351711274191773703

Beschloss said:

I think it will be more meaningful because it takes account of the moment. If we tried to imitate a normal inauguration with a big crowd, pretending that there was not a pandemic, or if we tried to take chances with security of pretending that there was not a domestic terrorist attack on the Capitol and the Congress on the 6th of January, that would be counterfeit. So if we’re going to have a ceremony of unity and reconciliation, which I am sure tomorrow will be, you have to have one that’s a little bit in tune with the moment. We Americans, just as our friend Valerie was just saying, we have been through four years of a daily, hourly assault on our democracy, a president who hates democracy, has a lust for power, and topped it all off on the 6th of January by trying to take down our Congress, overturn a free presidential election, and take down our democracy. That was a near-death experience. We can’t just pretend that this is just a day like any other.


more...

https://www.politicususa.com/2021/01/19/presidential-historian-calls-trumps-presidency-a-near-death-experience-for-american-democracy.html
January 20, 2021

Yolanda Adams singing "Hallelujah" for President Biden



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January 20, 2021

Biden to extend eviction moratorium, student loan forbearance


Biden to extend eviction moratorium, student loan forbearance
By Niv Elis - 01/20/21 05:00 AM EST

snip//

Biden will call on the Centers for Disease Control to extend an evictions foreclosure set to expire on Jan. 31 until the end of February.

President Trump first issued the CDC moratorium in September, and Congress extended it last month. The moratorium has faced some legal hurdles, and housing advocates say it has some serious flaws, including the level of proactive action required by tenants. But it remains one of the few shields in place for people facing eviction.

Biden is also set to direct several agencies that cover mortgages, including the Departments of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Housing and Urban Development, and the the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) to extend their own bans on evictions from properties their agencies back. They will also be asked to continue accepting forbearance applications for mortgage-holders.

On student loans, Biden will extend the Education Department's forbearance policy until September 30th, meaning borrowers can continue to put off paying both principal and interest on direct federal loans.


more...

https://thehill.com/policy/finance/534938-biden-to-extend-eviction-moratorium-student-loan-forbearance
January 20, 2021

Leonard Pitts: After the longest four years, America is going to have a president again -- a real one

https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/leonard-pitts-jr/article248610300.html


Leonard Pitts Jr
After the longest four years, America is going to have a president again — a real one | Opinion
By Leonard Pitts Jr.
January 19, 2021 04:51 PM, Updated January 19, 2021 05:03 PM


snip//

Think Franklin Roosevelt telling us “the only thing we have to fear.”

Think John Kennedy admonishing us to “ask not.”

Think Ronald Reagan calling us to “a shining city upon a hill” and George H.W. Bush showing us “a thousand points of light.”

Think Lincoln appealing to “the better angels of our nature.”

Maybe, after you’ve heard it often enough, you take for granted that this is just What Presidents Do. Maybe you stop hearing it altogether. Maybe it becomes cliche.

Then one sudden day, it’s gone, all the high-flown language grounded, all the ideals replaced by whatever is the opposite of ideals, replaced by that which is coarse, mean, transactional, cynical, narcissistic and untrue. And that’s all you get. No entreaties to higher ground. No paeans to higher purpose. That’s it for four years. Four long, unpresidented years.

snip//

Presidents matter. Apparently, we needed a reminder. Sadly, we got one.

No one can say what Biden’s tenure will bring: prosperity, war, scandal or achievement. All we can say with certainty as this decent man takes office is that, at long last, America no longer lives in an unpresidented time.

And right now, just for this moment, that’s more than enough.

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