Stephen Colbert discusses what is going on with the vaccination program as well as developments with the QAnon conspiracy and their great hopes for a grand climax at the inauguration. He has an idea for something that QAnoners can do now that is as absorbing but not as destructive.
Seth Meyers also makes fun of Cruz’s pathetic attempts to ingratiate himself with Pittsburgh after he had tried to throw out all of Pennsylvania’s votes.
Ted Cruz, pandering as always to the nativist base of Trumpers in the hope that they will flock to him in a future presidential bid, thought he had come up with something clever.
By rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement, President Biden indicates he’s more interested in the views of the citizens of Paris than in the jobs of the citizens of Pittsburgh. This agreement will do little to affect the climate and will harm the livelihoods of Americans.
— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) January 20, 2021
I am fascinated by cults and the people who join them. And the mother of all political cults is QAnon. As many people know by now, this was a Trump-supporting cult that believed that the Democratic party and other prominent people were part of some global conspiracy of pedophiles and that Trump was a genius strategist who was carefully planning to, in a dramatic denouement, expose them all and arrest and execute them. There are a lot more layers to this cult’s beliefs and I am just giving the highlights.
Naturally they did not accept that Trump had lost the election and thought that he would be able to reverse the outcome. As the day of Biden’s inauguration came close, excitement built up among them and they seemed to expect that just as he was about to be sworn in, federal agents would run down the steps and arrest him and all the other dignitaries and execute them, and that Trump would emerge as their victorious leader. Yes, really. (The people are watching w-a-a-a-y too many action/fantasy films.)
[Read more…]
The US is constantly criticizing other countries and lecturing them on how they should behave, as if the US is some kind of moral exemplar. Most countries do not respond in kind because of the US’s economic and military power but with China increasingly challenging the US in both those areas, they are in a position to respond. But the Chinese government tends to be cautious in its approach and temperate in its language even as it pursues hardline policies, an iron-fist-in-a-velvet-glove approach that has helped it gain influence in the world.
So it was a surprise, to me at least, to see them imposing sweeping sanctions on high-level Trump officials accompanied by harsh language, delivered even as Joe Biden was being sworn in.
[Read more…]
As I have said so many times before, the US is a one-party state. The party is a pro-war, pro-oligarchy party with two factions that are labeled Democrat and Republican that differ on mostly social issues. But having said that, it would be a mistake to assume that there is no difference between the two and that elections do not matter. There is a world of difference from Trump being elected in November and Joe Biden winning, as we can see by what happened immediately after Biden was sworn in when he unveiled a whole raft of executive orders and legislative proposals that set in motion polices that all headed in a positive direction.
[Read more…]
Trump left the White House without the pomp he had hoped for.
The outgoing president, who has broken with tradition by refusing to attend his successor’s inauguration, took a government helicopter from the White House at 8.18am, leaving what has been his home for four tumultuous years, and headed for Joint Base Andrews, a military facility in Maryland.
Trump had demanded that aides prepare an ostentatious ceremony at the base, accompanied by a sprawling audience, but two weeks after Trump incited a riot at the US Capitol, he got neither. The soon-to-be former president arrived at the military base just before 8.30am, and was met with a flat sendoff marked by a sparse crowd.
[Read more…]
I timed this post for noon on January 20th to celebrate the end of the Donald Trump presidency.
There will be many things that the Biden-Harris administration will do in the days to come that will enrage me but I want to savor this sweet moment for just a little while.
Roy Zimmerman also serenades Trump off with a parody of ‘My Girl’.
UPDATE: Bette Midler gives her own sendoff.
Bye, Donald!
Ever since the election, we have seen the process of people who once were joined at the hip to Trump start the process of creating space between them as they try to remove the stain of the association. It is a process that Trump will find very familiar because it is his signature move, invariably saying of people who have become a liability to him that he hardly knew them, even though strong evidence exists of a close relationship. This process has now extended to those Republicans in Congress who, sensing that Trump’s star is on the wane, have also begun the process of distancing themselves from the man they once slavishly followed.
[Read more…]
Once he leaves office, Trump will be in a bind. His cult followers love his bellicose rhetoric that targeted and threatened all the people he deemed his enemies. But without the protection that comes with being president, he is much more vulnerable to the consequences of his reckless speech and even he must realize that he cannot continue to speak that way. His short speech decrying violence after the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol was viewed as being forced on him by advisors who warned him that he faced trouble for inciting a riot, especially if another one occurred before the inauguration.
But some of his cult members feel betrayed by what they see as him backing off and not being sufficiently supportive of them.
[Read more…]