Elections can make a difference, even in the US

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.
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Saying good riddance to Trump

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.
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The long national nightmare comes to an end

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!

The distancing from Trump starts to gain steam

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.
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The fracturing of the Trump cult

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.
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Travails of the news headline writer

Writing headlines for news items is an art and I am often impressed at how they manage to capture in a very few words the essence of the story. In the case of the death of a famous person, you have even less discretionary space because you have to give the person’s name and often their age, leaving very little room to describe what they were famous for. It gets even worse when they were famous for two things: one good and one bad. How do you balance the two? While the obituaries themselves are written well in advance of death, the headline may not be and you have very little time to come up with one.

So pity the poor person at the BBC assigned to write a headline for the death of Phil Spector. Spector had an immense impact as a pop music producer but also murdered a woman and died in prison.

The first headline was:

“Talented but flawed producer Phil Spector dies aged 81”

It was quickly realized that being a murderer required stronger language than ‘flawed’.

So the headline was quickly replaced with:

“Pop producer jailed for murder dies at 81.”

The BBC has apologized for the first headline as “Not meeting our editorial standards.”

Things have really got this bad

People may remember how in 1981 Egyptian president Anwar Sadat was killed, along with eleven others, by one of his own army officers while he was on a reviewing stand during a military parade. It appears that Trump has created such a terrible climate of hate among his cult members that the Pentagon has even considered the possibility that one or more members of the military called up for security duty at the inauguration may try to kill Joe Biden and they are trying to carefully vet them.
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Just go, already

If he wanted Trump, even after everything he has done to undermine the election, could have had a dignified farewell. All he had to do was agree to the minimal requirements of an outgoing president such as meet with the new president on the morning of the inauguration, accompany him to the ceremony, and then leave on the presidential helicopter to Florida or wherever.

But no, he continues to sulk. It looks like his current plan is to leave a few hours earlier. But at the same time he loves the pomp that came with his office and pretending to be a military tough guy so he wants to have a military-style send-off. But that is not working out too well.
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The Republican nightmare has come true: Bernie Sanders is Senate budget chair

As I mentioned before, winning the two Senate seats in Georgia will have huge consequences. Even though the Senate is now tied 50-50, having vice-president Kamala Harris having the tie-breaking vote means that the Democrats have a majority in the Senate and that means that they get to have majorities on all the committees and hold the chairs of them, which determines what measures get brought up for a vote on the Senate floor.

In particular, Bernie Sanders becomes chair of the powerful budget committee. This possibility has long been used by Republicans to argue that they should control the Senate.

Republican fears of Sanders taking over the committee go back to at least 2016 when Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, then Speaker of the GOP-controlled House, said ahead of that year’s election: ““If we lose the Senate, do you know who becomes chair of the Senate Budget Committee? A guy named Bernie Sanders. You ever heard of him?”

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