Somehow we weathered and witnessed
A nation that isn’t broken
but simply unfinished
There is always light
if only we’re brave enough to see it
if only we’re brave enough to be it.
— Amanda Gorman
A Tweet by Ayanna Pressley @AyannaPressley Your Congresswoman. Proudly representing the MA 7th. Here to break concrete ceilings & shake the table. Personal account. She/hers. Retweeted by Rashida Tlaib @RashidaTlaib Unbossed Congresswoman #Michigan13th. Detroiter, Palestinian American, Muslima.

I know literally nobody for whom Joe Biden was their #1 choice when the 2020 race began, and in fact others might have been (or someday be) better Presidents, but he might be the perfect person to be President *now.* A Tweet by Peter Sagal @petersagal Host of @WaitWait on @NPR. Author of “The Incomplete Book of Running,”

Elections have consequences. Biden within hours of takin the oath of office was able to: revoke Muslim ban, rejoin Paris Climate Agreement, extend federal eviction moratorium, rescind Census orders to exclude non-citizens, preserve/fortify DACA and much more. It’s a new day. A Tweet by Ilhan Omar @IlhanMN Mom, Refugee, Intersectional Feminist, 2017 Top Angler of the Governor’s Fishing Opener and Congresswoman for #MN05. Join me. Minneapolisilhanomar.com

In a Washington DC locked down by National Guard troops, behind high fences crowned with razor wire, Joe Biden became the 46th President of the United States.

Wow! That seemed so incredibly unlikely way back in 1988 when he first ran and lost in the Democratic primary, against Jesse Jackson, Gary Hart, Al Gore, Richard Gephardt, Paul Simon, and Michael Dukakis. It seemed just slightly less likely when he ran in 2008 and lost to Barrack Obama. Even way back in 1965, it couldn’t have seemed very likely when Joe Biden, on their first date, told Neilia Hunter he would be president. Even as late as a year ago, it seemed very unlikely when he came in fourth in the Iowa primary, but Biden persevered. He is tenacious. That tenacity, coupled with his deeply felt compassion and real love for the United States, makes him, I think, the best guy for the rough job that lies ahead.

During the primaries, Joe Biden was at the bottom of my wish list, but, today, I am feeling very optimistic. Thrilled, even. The day’s passion and Biden’s love for country brought me to tears several times, starting, actually, the night before the Inauguration with the remembrance ceremony for the Covid-19 Dead.

For a long time, I’ve been saying – I think saying, thinking, anyway – that we need a Roosevelt type president. Somebody who came from within the establishment but is not so lost in the bubble that they don’t understand the world outside Washington. To quote myself from 2013, As much as Obama – and Clinton – wanted to make a change when they became President, they found themselves in a world that they knew of more than knew and, even if they were critical when running, it is a world they admired and wanted to fit in. True, it was a world they thought they knew, but only from the outside, it is not a world they inhabited. It is a world they have been conditioned – for lack of a better word – to fit into. It is also a world, in which it was very easy to be intimidated when they actually got there. That will not be President Biden’s problem and, like Roosevelt – both Roosevelts, really – he promises to be willing to buck inside the beltway group-think.

I was concerned that Biden was too old and too stuck in his ways to meet the colossal number of problems facing the country. The first hint that Biden is up to the job, came at the Democratic Convention in August and it continued with the Biden Inauguration on Wednesday. Both were conducted in the strange environment of a National Lockdown and both met the challenge. It is telling, to my way of thinking, that both were met with a dexterity from the Biden Campaign/Administration that showed a willingness to adapt to reality rather than try to deny it. Both were innovated and fresh and it showed that Biden is willing to innovate and listen to younger and more expert voices. What came across to me, strangely, watching our Capitol under military lockdown with razor wire on the top of new fences, is how this new Administration feels more feminine, in the best of ways, open, empathic, and compassionate. As importantly, the new President, Joe Biden, seems like a genuinely warm guy who has been tested by some very rough times. These are indeed rough times and I think that Joe Biden is what the country wants and needs right now.

These GOP lawmakers trying to backtrack like “I was NOT voting to overturn the election with a lie I fed my white supremacist base, I was simply amplifying concerns that challenge the legitimacy of Black electorates in Philadelphia and Detroit and Latino electorates in Arizona” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez @AOCUS Representative, NY-14 (BX & Queens). In a modern, moral, & wealthy society, no American should be too poor to live. % People-Funded, no lobbyist. She/her.Bronx + Queens, NYC ocasiocortez.com

Still trying to wrap my head around the fact that a bunch of people who think Bill Gates is going to inject them with a chip stormed the US Capitol with their cell phones’ location data enabled. Daniel Foster @DanFoster TypePrincipal at Roderigue Hortalez & Co. Multi award-winning chili chef.

In the early 70s, the leftist United Federated Forces of the Symbionese Liberation Army were the most wanted group gang – organization may be too grandiose – bad guys in the United States. They were led by a Black man who called himself Field Marshal Cinque and who had escaped from prison and they supported themselves by robbing banks. Partially by accident, the authorities, which eventually included the FBI, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, the LAPD, the California Highway Patrol, and the Los Angeles Fire Department trapped the SLA in a house in Los Angeles. Five thousand rounds later, the surrounded terrorists were dead. The system worked and they were no longer a threat to the body politic. Today is different.

Today, the most wanted terrorists, the rioters who took over the Capitol, are not outsiders, they are almost overwhelmingly white and they are from the right. Many of them are police officers and quite a few are prosperous small business owners. They will not be surrounded in a house and shot down but they will still have to be separated from the general population and jailed if we are going to stop worrying about them. That might not be easy. They are embedded insurgents and separating them from the general population will be hard. Yes, many of the insurgents have been arrested but most are out of jail without bail. White juries do not like jailing white cops or White small business owners.

BTW, several BTWs actually, some of the insurrectionists are rich enough to have taken private planes to the Capitol to demonstrate about how mistreated they are.

BTW, I keep reading that many Republican Congresspeople say they only voted against the election because their lives had been threatened and they were afraid (one dude, who did vote to certify, even bought body armor). I’m sure it is true that they are afraid and they know their fellow travelers better than I do, but I still find it fascinating that their defense for lying about the election is that they are cowards. Congresspeople, Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ortigia Cortez get threatened almost every day and, every day, they get up and do what they think is the right thing. After years of complaining about being harassed, and being called snowflakes for it, it is becoming increasingly obvious that the bravest people in our country are minority women.

If you don’t believe that, you may be confusing a violent temperament and macho with bravery. Contrary to what we are told both subtly and overtly, white men are way more violent than anybody else. As our military switches its focus from conventional warfare – think grunts in Vietnam, tanks on the Polish Plain, or the overwhelming firepower we brought to both Iraq wars – to unconventional war fought with advisors and drones, Special Forces become more important. Special Forces are almost always professionals, the people who like war or think they like war, who want to be there, and they are overwhelmingly white. Let that sink in, White men make up a huge percentage of our most violent and honored units, the Seals, Delta Force, almost any Marine.

BTW, another way to look at the seriousness of the mob attack is to look at how the military has reacted, According to the Pentagon, there are currently 2,500 service members in Iraq, 2,500 in Afghanistan, about 25,000 in Washington DC.

It seems to me that there are people in America who would rather not have Democracy than see Black people join in.

Lastly, on a positive note, Marrit Garland, Biden’s nominee for Attorney General, has a great background in fighting Domestic Terrorism. He was the lead government attorney on the Oklahoma bombing case, the Unabomber case, and the Atlanta Olympics bombings.

Anyone claiming: -govt has defeated the insurrection -we have a functioning constitutional democracy -this will be resolved with the inauguration of Joe Biden -Jan 20 is an expiration date for when the govt will be required to address the threat of Trump is WRONG A Tweet by @BreeNewsomeartist – grassroots organizer – free black woman – scaled 30ft flagpole & removed sc confederate flag in protest on june 27, 2015 – Isaiah 54:17North Carolina, USA whentheyseeusvote.com

REPUBLICANS: “We are going to tear this country apart, by an armed militia if necessary.” [Republicans fail at this attempt] DEMOCRATS: “You will pay the consequences.” REPUBLICANS: “Whaaa whaaa! We need ‘unity’ after what we just did! Why are you tearing this country apart?” A Tweet by Mrs. Betty Bowers @BettyBowers TITHE: https://paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=JFPPTRFFKBSGJ&source=url…http://patreon.com/MrsBettyBowers Am*******************@***il.com A Country Not in Bible cameo.com/mrsbettybowers

I like to think that I have a pretty good idea of what is happening but I did not foresee the breach and desecration of the Capitol by rioters a week, or so, ago, and it bothers me. At first, I thought I missed it because I was blinded by my Male White Filter (MWF)- I mean, these people are like me and I wouldn’t do that- and I’m sure that’s a factor (a friend asked me if I would have thought a Black Lives Matter crowd would do that and the answer is “No, I wouldn’t have.” Thinking about it, it just didn’t occur to me that anybody would do that. What I didn’t see coming was an act of such utter futility and stupidity. To me, it seems obvious that stopping the count of Electoral College votes is not going to result in Donald Trump remaining as president.

What exactly happened is going to take a while to unravel but there are good reasons to think the Capitol guards were undermanned on purpose and backup was purposely delayed in getting there. There does seem to be some rudimentary planning but, disrupting the Electoral College in front of a massive Mainstream News presence without securing the area and local communications is not really a well-thought-out game plan. The plan – such as it was – seemed to be to break-in and take prisoners thereby stopping the Electoral College vote. If no prisoners were available because they had been evacuated, the default plan – I guess – was to mill around, breaking and stealing things, until escorted out. No effort to control the media, no thought about locking down the country and securing Washington with troops, not much thought about anything really. It is such an amateur bungled job that it is easy to write off as not that big a deal.

That is exactly what some Republicans are trying to spin now, “let it go, it is time to start healing”, but it is a big deal and the White Supremacists are showing no sign of going away – “Not gonna lie … aside from my kids, this was, indeed, the best day of my life. And it’s not over yet.” Tweet by #CoupAttempt participant & former(?) sheriff’s lt. Roxanne Mathai – and President Trump is showing the opposite of remorse, saying “The impeachment hoax is a continuation of the greatest and most vicious witch hunt in the history of our country and is causing tremendous anger and division and pain, far greater than most people will ever understand, which is very dangerous for the U.S.A., especially at this very tender time.” 

I do not see that the House of Representatives has any choice other than another impeachment of Donald Trump as they are doing at this very minute.

 Pro-Trump mob storms Capitol in day of violence, disrupting electoral count. New York Times

We’re not asking you to shoot them like you shoot us, we’re asking you to NOT shoot us like you don’t shoot them…Davontae Harris @wichkid|More than an athlete |Illinois State Grad |Wichitakid.com

If any doubt what the phrase “banality of evil” means, watch @HawleyMO slither through life. Tweet by stuart stevens @stuartpstevensI worked in 5 R. presidential campaigns. This is my account of how the R Party became Trump. Not a book i thought I’d write but a book I felt I had to write.bit.ly/itwasallalie

Let me start by saying that I’m eighty years old and I’m glad I stuck around long enough to see this. For anybody interested in politics, this is a horror show; a fascinating horror show that I wouldn’t have wanted to miss, however. I expected that somewhere around 1,000 to 2,000 people would show up for the Trump protests and sort of shuffle around, maybe get thuggishly violent around the edges, wave their flags, and go home, still pissed. I didn’t expect President Trump to show up to egg them on. I didn’t expect them to meet an almost total lack of resistance as they waltzed into the capital (although I should have expected the intrusion and lack of resistance after what happened in Michigan in April). I didn’t expect the…the…? what? what do you call someone who tries a coup that is so badly bungled? Insurrectionists? This certainly didn’t rise to the level of an insurrection, not even a coup, really. In the end, just a small group of thugs breaking windows, trashing offices – really trashing offices in some cases- and taking selfies.

It’s Thursday now, and I still trying to get a sembalance of sense out of this but all I have are random thoughts.

Eighteen of these buffoons were arrested, although I’m sure there will be more, still, only eighteen people were arrested and they actually entered the Capitol and ransacked it. One old lady was even helped down the stairs by helpful Capitol Police officers. If you don’t understand White Privilege, the way these white lawbreakers were treated is a perfect display of White Privilege in action.

Congress was clearly shaken – Majority Leader McConnel was visibly shaking as he gave a short speech once order was reestablished – and most of them were not in a mood to continue pretending they thought the Arizonan or Pennsylvanian Electoral votes were problematic. Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley being notable exceptions (both of whom clerked for Chief Justices early in their careers so they clearly should know better).

Now that Joe Biden’s win has been confirmed by Congress and Trump says he agrees to a transfer of power, all shouldn,t be forgiven. I hope the fallout from the failed coup will include a lot of jail time for the perpetrators and censure, at least, for the members of Congress that encouraged them. I think this has been Trump’s Waterloo and he will be removed from office, or effectively neutralized, before Biden and Harris’ Inauguration on January 20th but, the longer it takes, the less likely anything will happen. No matter what, this will be a wild ride and I’m glad I’m around to see it.

I’ll leave with two things, a Tweet from Bill McKibben and a video I saw last night but would have lost if Aston Pereira hadn’t sent it to me.

I can’t quite figure out how to say this, but 24 hours later it feels like there’s something potentially healthy about what happened yesterday. The festering wound is out in the open now. The pus reeks, but at least it’s open to the air. It’s harder to gaslight people in daytime.

The “Surrender Caucus” within the Republican Party will go down in infamy as weak and ineffective “guardians” of our Nation, who were willing to accept the certification of fraudulent presidential numbers! This claim about election fraud is disputed Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump 45th President of the United States of America Washington, DC Vote.DonaldJTrump.com

All 10 living ex-defense secretaries: The election is over. Trying to use the military to dispute the result would be dangerous. The Washington Post @washingtonpost Democracy Dies in Darkness. Washington, DC washingtonpost.com

Adding my voice to others calling on pro-democracy Americans to stay off the streets of DC this week as Trump and his allies attempt to mobilize provocative demonstrations against the election results. Please do not take the bait and become part of the problem. We’ve already won. Evan McMullin @EvanMcMullin Executive Director of @StandUpRepublic. Former: CIA ops officer, GOP policy director, independent presidential candidate. pr***@*************ic.comSalt Lake City standuprepublic.com

I will be there. Historic day! Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump 45th President of the United States of America Washington, DC Vote.DonaldJTrump.com

I was talking to a friend yesterday and she is worried about January 6th and the damage that will be done to the remnants of our democracy. It is scary but I also think that the press in blowing this out of proportion. I don’t think we are talking about a huge turnout here and, I think, there is an excellent chance Trump will not show. I know he said he would be there but the number of things, such as a replacement health plan for ObamaCare or One Trillion dollars in infrastructure improvements, that both Donald Trump and President Trump have said he would do in the future and didn’t must number over several hundred.

At the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017, there were somewhere between 50 and 250 – depending on whose numbers you trust – white supremacists including members of the alt-right, neo-Confederates, neo-fascists, white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and Klansmen. That doesn’t mean they aren’t dangerous, one asshole who killed a counter protester and wounded 39 more is now spending like in jail without possibility of parole (and, so far, President Trump hasn’t pardoned him). If ten times that many people show up, that is still not very many.

I may be wrong, there are a lot of very angry people out there and they are being stirred up by Trump but I don’t think they are the real danger, I think the irresponsible Republican party leaders who are trying to join the cause are the real problem. I hope they are held accountable. In the meantime, I would like to end with one of my favorite General Ulysses S. Grant quotes.

After the second night at Goliad, Benjamin and I started to make the remainder of the journey alone. We reached Corpus Christi just in time to avoid “absence without leave.” We met no one not even an Indian–during the remainder of our journey, except at San Patricio. A new settlement had been started there in our absence of three weeks, induced possibly by the fact that there were houses already built, while the proximity of troops gave protection against the Indians. On the evening of the first day out from Goliad, we heard the most unearthly howling of wolves, directly in our front. The prairie grass was tall and we could not see the beasts, but the sound indicated that they were near. To my ear, it appeared that there must have been enough of them to devour our party, horses and all, at a single meal. The part of Ohio that I hailed from was not thickly settled, but wolves had been driven out long before I left. Benjamin was from Indiana, still less populated, where the wolf yet roamed over the prairies. He understood the nature of the animal and the capacity of a few to make believe there was an unlimited number of them. He kept on towards the noise, unmoved. I followed in his trail, lacking moral courage to turn back and join our sick companion. I have no doubt that if Benjamin had proposed returning to Goliad, I would not only have “seconded the motion” but have suggested that it was very hard-hearted in us to leave Augur sick there in the first place; but Benjamin did not propose turning back. When he did speak it was to ask: “Grant, how many wolves do you think there are in that pack?” Knowing where he was from, and suspecting that he thought I would over-estimate the number, I determined to show my acquaintance with the animal by putting the estimate below what possibly could be correct and answered: “Oh, about twenty,” very indifferently and rode on.

In a minute we were close upon them, and before they saw us. There were just TWO of them. Seated upon their haunches, with their mouths close together, they had made all the noise we had been hearing for the past ten minutes. I have often thought of this incident since when I have heard the noise of a few disappointed politicians who had deserted their associates. There are always more of them before they are counted.