Joe Biden introduced part of his team, and an audible sigh of relief was felt around the world. One after another we met intelligent, articulate experienced people, people who have backgrounds in government, people who have been there and done that. The group includes:
Antony Blinken- Secretary of State
Alejandro Mayorkas –Homeland Security
Avril Haines-Director National Intelligence
Linda Thomas Greenfield-Ambassador to UN
Jake Sullivan-National Security Advisor
John Kerry- “Climate Czar”
Not surprisingly, Biden has picked a team whose backgrounds are in line with the duties of the offices to which they have been assigned.
All this is in sharp contrast to the Trump team in which few if any had any experience in government, most had no affinity for the jobs into which they were thrust and the majority of whom were just too brain dead for any position above street sweeper. It all looks very much like function replacing folly.
Even more important, the whole presentation actually looked like a government activity unlike anything that was conducted by Trump’s clown show of the last four years.
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So the big question, the one everyone wants to get an answer to; what is the crazy would be emperor going to do now that almost everyone in the world has agreed that he got his ass kicked in the election? Of course, no one has the answer and even if those close to him did, they would lie about it.
One thing we can pretty much depend on is that he will never concede. He is not man enough for that.
So despite Trump continuing the false narrative that he was cheated out of the election he has to find a way out of the White House that will work in conjunction with his egomania. It’s not any kind of a done deal, but there is an escape clause and I believe that he will take it. I wouldn’t put any money on it because gamblers who take chances on psychopaths end up paupers. But if I had to bet, it would be that Trump takes his family to Mar-a-Largo for Christmas and never returns to the White House. Nothing will be said and questions will not be answered, but he will stay there until after the inauguration when maybe he will be able to figure out some kind of half assed return to the spotlight that will inevitably crash and burn, because that’s the level of Trumpian competence
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The stock market went through the roof this week, based partially on the possibility of the availability of a vaccine for the virus but mostly on the fact that the Biden team finally got the funds and access to information they needed to make the transition work. And after not showing his face since he lost the election, Trump made a one-minute appearance to take credit for the market’s sudden rise. How typical is that? I mean he’s already taking credit for the possibility of a working vaccine.
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Watched Joe Biden’s Thanksgiving speech to the nation. Inspirational! He spoke to the goals of the nation and to how we will grow and prosper by working together. He used the word “I” once in the entire speech. It was a return to the kind of talk we once expected to hear from our leaders.
It was a complete contrast to what is going on in Trumpworld where Rudy Giuliani addressed a group in Pennsylvania, lying about ballot numbers and making even more false claims about what happened in this election. Everyone with any morals or ethics has condemned Rudy and Trump for the lying scum they are.
We have lived with this kind of disgusting behavior from our president and his sycophants for the last four years and now it’s time for it to stop. It’s too damned bad that Trump is disappointed with the election result. It is wholly due to his own actions and lack of character. Now it’s time for a real president to lead this country, not the fake con man that has been in charge for the last four years.
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The Supreme Court just voted 5-4 to lift restrictions on the numbers of those who could attend religious services. Naturally, the deciding vote was cast by Amy Coney Barrett, the Catholic judge who is also a member of a religiously based cult.
The whole deal was a joke anyway. The Hasidic Jews may get a crowd for a wedding and the Evangelicals for the right preacher but except for Midnight Mass on Christmas eve, I haven’t seen a crowded Catholic Church in fifty years and three quarters of that Midnight Mass crowd are tourists, more interested in the show than they are the worship.
But more important than how the Court feels, is how religious leaders are dealing with the health and safety of their followers. I was raised and educated a Catholic and it was always drummed into me that the Church was just as responsible for its follower’s temporal well being as it was their religious well being.
Jamming hundreds of worshipers, shoulder to shoulder into a closed building just so they can fill the plate when it’s passed isn’t any sane person’s idea of a religious or a healthy experience. Hundreds of Hasidic Jews jamming into a temple for a wedding is the definition of brain dead irresponsibility. Look, we are all in the middle of an awful situation, one in which hundreds of thousands are sick, dying or dead. It behooves us to try to make intelligent, not just emotional decisions so we can survive.
The problem appears to be that under the leadership of that fat, lying child, we have become a nation of self-indulgent whiners who haven’t enough foresight or emotional stability to deal with the concept that just a little prevention may save uncounted lives.
At least, after four awful years, we have finally chosen a man to lead us who displays some sense of honesty, empathy, truthfulness and honor. Even as Biden moves to take command of the nation, the current disaster grovels in the White House, displaying the only character trait he has ever shown, selfishness.
Most families love and will miss each other if they can’t be together on the holidays but many of us have developed the ability to think, which will enable us to protect those loved ones even when it means not seeing them on a holiday, which might save them to be able to see each other for years to come. Or is that supposed love, just a selfish need for connection and one that allows us to put others in danger just to satisfy our own needs? Most of us have years of life ahead of us. Do we really want to sacrifice those years just because we can’t adult-up and skip one holiday?
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Neera Tanden was named head of OMB by Biden this weekend and John Cornyn led an attack by the GOP on her appointment because they see her as a deficit threat. I assume that concept to be GOP humor because considering the GOP spending in the last four years and previous, it bears no relationship to reality.
Considering the money they threw away in the last four years, Republicans have no right to complain about deficit sending and any of those that do, need to be run out of Washington on a rail. The GOP Senate spent more money and drove the National Debt higher than at any time since WWII. Their only piece of legislation in four years gave trillions to the already rich and killed the poor, even while it drove the deficit through the roof. The GOP is no longer the party of fiscal restraint. It’s the party of “give it all to the rich.” This is why we need Georgia. This is why we need to kick Moscow Mitch down the cellar steps. We need a financial team that understands how money should be spent.
And while we’re on that, Biden should take another look at his favorite for Secretary of Defense.