a weblog of whereabouts & interests, since 2010
‘While it was different for everyone, we all lost something, a collective suffering, a collective sacrifice. A year filled with the loss of life and the loss of living for all of us’.
– President Joe Biden, in a nation-wide address today, on the one-year anniversary of the outbreak of the pandemic
The $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan bill is about to be voted on for the final time (tomorrow, in the House). Then it will be signed into law by President Biden.
Direct payments will be sent to 150 million households ($1,400 per person), $300/ month unemployment benefits will be extended through September, additional monthly assistance will be paid to families with children, and it will provide funding for vaccine distribution & for state and local governments, and also boost subsidies for healthcare.
In the Senate, Democrats passed the American Rescue Plan through a procedure known as ‘reconciliation’, which enables certain budget bills to pass with a simple majority, rather than the 60 votes necessary for a regular bill. (The Senate can only pass three bills a year through this process, and there are strict limits as to what can be in them).
If I have it right, not a single Republican has voted for the bill so far. Their anti-democratic, anti-everything, Party of Perceived Grievances should dissolve. You’re fired, all of you.
One of the latest animal figures I had ordered from Schleich happens to be a poodle. I am naming the white pooch ‘Snowflake’ .. and no, not because of the recent snow here in Seattle.
Texas Senator Ted Cruz took his family to sunny Cancun in Mexico on Wednesday night (to the Ritz Carlton Hotel, no less), leaving behind millions of his constituents in freezing homes with no electricity and no water.
That was bad enough, and Cruz returned the very next morning after a media firestorm erupted. It got even worse. It turned out that their family poodle, named Snowflake, was left behind in the freezing house.
‘The new dawn blooms as we free it,
There is always light.
Only if we are brave enough to see it.
There is always light –
Only if we are brave enough to be it.’
— National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman (22), delivering a poem at President Biden’s inauguration
It’s been a wonderful day here in the United States.
We now have President Joe Biden and Madam Vice-President Kamala Harris.
Before they were both sworn in, Lady Gaga sang The Star-Spangled Banner in her Schiaparelli scarlet & black couture, and wearing the largest golden peace dove brooch I had ever seen.
She made me cry (but Garth Brooks did not).
Fast forward some 57 years, and in that time the United States had inaugurated its first black president — twice.
In 2016, though, the archaic electoral college system, and vast social media disinformation campaigns, resulted in the first white supremacist president to be elected.
In 2021, that Capitol building in the distance would be overrun by violent white supremacists, seeking to overturn the free & fair* election results of 2020.
So now there is a vast amount of work to do, to eradicate a pandemic of lies about the election, along with the pandemic of the Covid-19 virus.
*A generous characterization? .. given the voter suppression, the non-stop gaslighting of voters by the sitting president and his allies, and the damage done to the US Postal service, in order to interfere with mail-in ballots and mail-in votes.
The long, grassy National Mall in Washington DC is home to the Lincoln Memorial and the equally iconic Washington Monument. It fills up with people during the inauguration of a newly elected American president. That will not happen this year with Biden’s inauguration on Wednesday.
The Capitol building, and a large area around it, is patrolled and filled to the hilt with National Guardsmen, US Capitol Police, Washington DC police, the Secret Service – you name it.
I guess it is all a fitting end to the unmitigated disaster that was the Trump presidency. The FBI published dozens of ‘FBI Seeking Information’ posters with pictures of the Jan 6. attackers. Several characters been marked ‘ARRESTED’ (dude with feet on Nancy Pelosi’s desk; dude with horns & furs, and megaphone; ‘Baked Alaska’, a right-wing social media personality that live-streamed the scene from inside the Capitol with more than 5,100 viewers watching).
Trump is said to entertain the pardoning of at least 100 more criminals, in the final hours of his presidency. One wonders if any of those already arrested by the FBI, will get a pardon. I would hazard a guess and say they will not.
And there it is.
It’s Monday night, and the Instigator-in-Chief is still in the White House.
The Article of Impeachment document has been published.
The latest is that the House will call for a vote on the Article of Impeachment by Wednesday night.
It is starting to look as if Trump is going to be impeached for a second time, with 12 days left in his term.
The rats have started to jump ship. Education Secretary Betsy De Vos, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, Deputy National Security Adviser Matt Pottinger and others have resigned, possibly to avoid getting drawn into supporting Trump’s removal from office with the 25th Amendment. First step to do this is for VP Mike Pence and for a majority of the cabinet, to provide a written declaration to the Senate .. but Pence is not going to do it. (25th Amendment removal requires 2/3 majorities in both the House and in the Senate).
So now to Impeachment 101 again.
It only requires a majority vote in the House to impeach. (The Democrats are in the majority, check).
Three House members already have a draft with one article for insurrection. (Trump encouraged & egged on the rioters of Wednesday; 5 people died, including a US Capitol Police officer).
Nancy Pelosi seems to be ready to have a vote on Monday.
Impeachment in the House is followed by a Senate trial. Conviction & removal requires 2/3 of the Senate, though. Neither the 25th Amendment nor impeachment automatically disqualifies Trump from running in 2024, but a clause in the 14th Amendment Section III can be written into the impeachment, to bar Trump from ever running again.
Whatever happens: Trump is not going to run again for president.
His Twitter account was permanently suspended today (for inciting violence), leaving himself & his 88 million followers in the dark.
He is likely going to be prosecuted for tax fraud and money laundering by New York State. He pardoned criminals, but he will not be able to pardon himself out of crimes that he would be found guilty of by the state of New York.
‘It was like an attempted coup wrapped inside a violent riot wrapped inside some cosmetic protests on the outside’.
– Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, several days after the events of Jan 6.
It was a hell of a news day here in the United States.
It started out well enough, with news that the Democratic contenders for Senator were projected to win their races in Georgia.
At the same time, in Washington DC, hundreds of rioters had gathered by the US Capitol, and then many broke into the hallowed US Capitol building while Congress was counting the certified electoral votes.
Members of Congress had to be rushed away to safety, and could only come back several hours later to proceed with the counting. (They were still at it by midnight DC time).
The rioters took the nameplate off of Pelosi’s office door, shattered a mirror in her office and left a threatening note, and just trashed the US Capitol in general.
A female Trump supporter was shot dead in the Capitol. (Late tonight it was reported that four people had died in and around the Capitol).
So far, only 52 arrests have been made (there were many more than 52 invaders in the Capitol & many crimes committed today).
Three suspicious devices with pipe components and wires were found and were removed.
Trump issued a pathetic video (his staff had to prod him), reiterating his lie ‘the election was stolen’ and to the rioters that ‘we love you’ and that they need to go home.
Three of his violence-inciting tweets were removed and his Twitter account was locked for 12 hours on Wednesday night.
We have 14 days to go to January 20. Is Trump plotting his next attack? asked cable news anchor Rachel Maddow.
I cannot wait (rubbing my hands together) for Jan. 20, when the Trump family and their enablers will be evicted from the White House.
Before that, though, tomorrow Tuesday, there is the two Georgia 2020 Senate race run-off elections tomorrow. Each of the Democrats has a slim lead in the polls. (There was Trump’s subversive phone call on Saturday to Georgia Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, urging him to overturn the certified Presidential election results in Georgia. By now Trump should have been impeached 6 or 7 times already).
Then on Wednesday, Trump lap dog and VP Mike Pence has to preside over a joint session of Congress. Sealed certificates from each state, that contain a record of their certified electoral votes, will be opened. A dozen or so Republican Senators and a 100+ Republican House members are reportedly going to contest the certified results.
What will Pence do?
Hooray! We get to erase 2020, annus horribilis that it was, and go into 2021.
There are no guarantees that 2021 will be better —but we do have vaccines now, to fight the pandemic with.
The Biden administration will soon start to pick up the pieces from the last four years. At least there was some economic help from the government this year, with more to come (the $600 checks, $300 per week unemployment benefits extended through mid-March).
By sunset (4.18 pm), my neighbors’ Christmas lights across the street are already switched on.
Each of these Tuesdays, I sweep up the last bit of the leaves on my front lawn (to put in the yard waste bin for pickup).
P.S. There’s a ‘Biden for President’ sign on the white picket fence on the right.
All 538 electors voted Monday in the Electoral College*, and it’s now official: Joe Biden 306, Trump 232.
*From CBS news: Electors are not necessarily bound by law to vote according to the state’s results, and there were 10 “faithless electors” in 2016. But most states have laws that nullify the votes of “faithless electors,” and the Supreme Court ruled in July that states can punish them. FairVote found that since the founding of the Electoral College, there have been 167 faithless electors.
Rudy Giuliani (76) finds himself in hospital today after testing positive for Covid-19. Giuliani is Trump’s lawyer. I don’t believe he has ever worn a mask in public.
Already a national laughing stock for his embarrassing cameo in the ‘Borat Subsequent Movie’ film, he has not let that stop him from making evermore outlandish, baseless claims about election fraud.
It’s hard to keep track of the hordes of Trump administration officials and staffers that have contracted Covid-19, but the New York Times comes to the rescue (see below).
With very few votes still being counted, the New York Times and other news organizations now report that Biden has won Arizona and Georgia, and Trump has won North Carolina. Biden 306 electoral college votes, Trump 232.
Trump & his Trumpublicans have not conceded the election.
They need to — and NOW WOULD BE A GOOD TIME.
Professor of History at Yale, Timothy Snyder @TimothyDSnyder on Twitter, writes in a series of tweets:
1/20. Democracy is precious and exceptional.
2/20. Democracy is undone from within rather than from without.
3/20. The occasion to undo democracy is often an election.
4/20. The mechanism to undo democracy is usually a fake emergency, a claim that internal enemies have done something outrageous.
5/20. A tyrant cares about his person, not the Republic.
6/20. A tyrant fears prosecution and poverty after leaving office.
7/20. Donald Trump faces criminal investigations and owes a billion dollars to creditors.
8/20. Donald Trump has said all along that he would ignore the vote count.
9/20. What Donald Trump is attempting to do has a name: coup d’état. Poorly organized though it might seem, it is not bound to fail. It must be made to fail.
10/20. Coups are defeated quickly or not at all. While they take place we are meant to look away, as many of us are doing. When they are complete we are powerless.
11/20. American exceptionalism prevents us from seeing basic truths.
12/20. Biden voters are wrong to see a Biden administration as inevitable. Take responsibility, Democrats.
13/20. In an authoritarian situation, the election is only round one. You don’t win by winning round one.
14/20. Peaceful demonstrations after elections are necessary for transitions away from authoritarianism, as in Poland in 1989, Serbia in 1999, or Belarus right now.
15/20. It is up to civil society, organized citizens, to defend the vote and to peacefully defend democracy.
16/20. Dance after the wedding, not before. Take responsibility, Americans.
17/20. Republicans endorsing the claim of fraud endanger the Republic.
18/20. Calling an opponent’s victory fraudulent risks assassination, as in Poland in 1922.
19/20. Creating a myth of a “stab in the back” by internal enemies, as Republicans are helping Trump to do, justifies violence against other citizens, as in interwar Germany.
20/20. Persuading your voters that the other side cheated starts a downward spiral. Your voters will expect you to cheat next time. Take responsibility, Republicans.
Pennsylvania goes to Biden, as does Nevada. Done.
The White House reality show is cancelled. Come January, the criminals in there will be evicted, every one of them.
The two covers from German news magazine Der Spiegel say it best (one from 2017, and one from just now).
By the time I checked the electoral map first thing this morning, Biden had overtaken Trump in Pennsylvania (20 electoral votes). His lead widened throughout the day.
As of Friday night, there were still too many uncounted ballots and provisional ballots*, though, for the decision desks at the major networks (ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN) to call Pennsylvania for Biden. (Same for Arizona and Nevada).
*Ballots issued to voters on the spot, but for which each voter’s eligibility to vote still needed to be checked fully.
When will we know? Maybe on Saturday, maybe only by early next week. Pennsylvania OR Arizona + Nevada will get Biden to be President-elect.
There are many ‘parlor game’ questions to entertain in the wake of Trump’s un-American, pathetic and embarrassing (for himself, for the United States) TV appearance on Thursday. He claimed that he had ‘won’ Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia; accused the vote counters of fraud and ranted about legal and illegal votes. The major networks all immediately cut away from him, refusing to be part of his lies and propaganda.
– When will Trump TV (Fox News) call Pennsylvania for Biden? They called Arizona for Biden on Tuesday night!
– Will Trump even concede that he had lost (make a speech)? If he refuses to concede, we may have a constitutional crisis on our hands. Scary.
– Will the electoral college meeting on Dec. 14, have faithless electors (that vote against the election outcome in their state)? Also scary.
– Will Trump even invite Joe Biden to the White House, per the usual protocol?
Time will tell.
It’s 1 am on the East Coast, where the Pennsylvania* mail-in votes are still being counted.
*nickname The Keystone State.
Joe Biden is about to overtake Trump on the way to claim the 20 electoral votes from Pennsylvania that he needs for the win. (The mail-in votes overwhelmingly favor Biden).
Yes, Biden can still win Arizona and Nevada (17 total electoral votes), which will also get him to 270 for the win.
Biden wins Michigan. (Arizona is imminent .. was in fact already called for Biden by none other than Fox News, last night). Nevada is at 86% with Biden holding a slim lead.
Update 9.00 pm: No further update for the day from the NYT. Associated Press (usually very cautious) have awarded Arizona to Biden (253 goes to 264).
Oh! New single-day record for Covid-19 cases in the US: more than 100,000.