Trump’s future problems with the media

His departure from Washington was a pretty pathetic affair. He was able to order up a 21-gun salute and a military band but that was about it in terms of the pomp that his narcissistic personality craves.

With the pomp and circumstance granted to a foreign leader visiting the nation’s capital, the taxpayer-funded ceremony treated Trump to a military band playing “Hail to the Chief” as deafening sounds from a 21-gun salute echoed across Joint Base Andrews, just outside Washington, DC. The manufactured nature of the festivities, ginned up to rival President Joe Biden’s inauguration, seemed more fitting for an ousted autocrat heading into exile.
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The vaccination plan, QAnon, nerd culture, and Pittsburgh

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.

Touche, AOC!

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.


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What now for QAnon?

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.)
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China strikes back at Trumpers

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.
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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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Nature red in tooth and claw

This video that was sent to me by a friend shows what a powerful predator the peregrine falcon is.

I am always impressed at nature photographers and filmmakers. The animals in their films seem to behave as if they are following a script and one wonders how the filmmakers were able to be at the right place at the right time.T hey must be spending an enormous amount of time in order to capture events like this.

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!