The National Mall lit up with a display of thousands of U.S. flags ahead of the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden pic.twitter.com/9EZq1TIzV7
— Reuters (@Reuters) January 19, 2021
No better start to a grand party than a drumline, unless it includes a brass band and maybe some bagpipes…
The inaugural committee announces that the University of Delaware Drumline and the Howard University Drumline — the alma maters of President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris — will escort them to the White House and help kick off the "Parade Across America."
— Geoff Bennett (@GeoffRBennett) January 18, 2021
.@BidenInaugural lit 56 pillars of light (representing the 56 states & territories) to illuminate their “Field of Flags” display on the National Mall. The display includes nearly 200,000 U.S. flags meant to represent the American people not able to travel to the inauguration. pic.twitter.com/4w4Oa7iI9t
— Molly Nagle (@MollyNagle3) January 19, 2021
Joe Biden will give his inaugural address at perhaps the most difficult starting point for a president since FDR told the nation that “we have nothing to fear but fear itself.” Aides say Biden wants to use the speech to “call Americans to unity.” https://t.co/rZhxh6WDpJ
— The Associated Press (@AP) January 18, 2021
…[W]ith the coronavirus raging, unemployment claims soaring and partisan divisions sharpening, Biden faces a fraught moment as he prepares to deliver a speech that aides say he wants to use to “call Americans to unity.”
“The situation he faces is absolutely brutal,” said Cody Keenan, who served as a chief speechwriter for Obama and assisted with his two inaugural addresses. He added that Biden in many ways is ”the perfect president for the moment, because he is not hyperbolic, he’s not a bomb thrower, he’s surrounded himself with policy wonks who already have all these plans. I think what we are going to hear him talk about is ‘Here’s where we are, here’s what we have to get done.’ I think that’s going to go a long way just to making people feel better.”…
The inaugural address is as much a celebration of the peaceful handover of power as it is a set piece for a new or reelected president to lay out a vision for the nation. In recent memory, inaugural addresses have followed a predictable structure: The nation has challenges but there is hope to solve the problems if the president’s agenda is embraced…
Sounds extremely on-point for the current circumstances!
japa21
Under 29 hours.
debbie
I watched the flag set-up a bunch of times yesterday.
satby
I took tomorrow off so I could pop the cork on the champagne I have chilling and play this as I watch the traitor fly off in the morning.
Ok, maybe coffee for that and save the champagne for Joe and Kamala’s swearing in. Either way, there will be day drinking.
Matt McIrvin
Burns me up that after starting his administration by lying about his own inaugural crowds, Trump has made it so Biden can’t even have a crowd. His sabotage casts a pall over everything.
Already seeing the complaints about how this is a “waste of taxpayer money” though of course it’s not paid for with taxpayer money.
Nicole
Oh my God, I cannot believe the last four years are finally almost over.
The day the election was called for Biden and we went outside and people were dancing and cheering in the streets, and the local restaurant handed out free shots and someone was blasting “Celebration” from their apartment above the street- that was a good day. Tomorrow will be a good day, too.
Van Buren
Can’t wait to hear what Chuck Todd thinks about the speech!
Baud
Weather in DC tomorrow is supposed to be chilly buy sunny. Should be a nice day.
JPL
@satby: I’d join you but I purchased a small bottle of Prosecco, in order to make two mimosas. I’ll probably still nap most of the afternoon.
prostratedragon
@Van Buren: It’s what I live for!
RandomMonster
Take comfort in the fact that Trump’s sad, flaccid sendoff will have maximum contrast with Biden’s star-studded, professionally produced event.
OzarkHillbilly
I’m in the hospital for a minor procedure tomorrow. It’s scheduled for 11:30. So when they knock me out trump will still be president but when I wake up…
I probably won’t be able to appreciate it. I hate those drugs.
Baud
SFAW
@Nicole:
I was pondering (so to speak) how I will handle not having the Traitor-/Murderer-/Grifter-/Liar-in-Chief “to kick around any more,” and realized I’ll be so relieved not to be constantly on edge over his latest insanities.
Unfortunately, the GOPoRT (Grand Old Party of Racists and Traitors) will still be around, doubtless harshing my mellow (almost) every day. But Trump gone is a start.
SFAW
@Van Buren:
You are one sick bastid.
ETA:
@prostratedragon:
That goes double for you!
prostratedragon
@OzarkHillbilly: Good luck with it. I had one Election Day to remove an annoyance.
Baud
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone ???
rikyrah
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
rikyrah
Baud
rikyrah
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
But will he give in to the temptation- the very real temptation to close by saying at the end:
SFAW
@prostratedragon:
As did the country, although I’d characterize him as more than an “annoyance.” More like “an existential threat to the USA.” [No, I’m not talking about Ozark, wise guy.]
rikyrah
germy
rikyrah
The free market is deciding.?
OzarkHillbilly
In other news: Local woman makes the big time! Sullivan Woman Charged In Riot At US Capitol
With friends like these…
My only question is, who went with her? Generally speaking, 20 yr old girls do not travel across the country by themselves.
SFAW
@rikyrah:
It will only “haunt” Pompeo with rational voters. With RWMFs and various Rethugs? Feature, not bug.
rikyrah
Naw Son, you aren’t walking away from Dolt45 that easily ?
rikyrah
??
SFAW
@OzarkHillbilly:
Good luck! I hope everything goes smoothly, and that you’re far away from any COVID-positive persons.
Baud
Amy K. is everywhere. She’s running the inaugural committee too.
Punchy
Is Pittbull expected to play at the National Maul?
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
Hope it goes well and the anesthesia wears off quickly.
Baud
Fox will not be reformed.
SFAW
@rikyrah:
The Truth and Retribution Commission will have more work than they can accomplish in two years.
geg6
@Baud:
That’s our Secretary of Health here in PA! Yay for Dr. Levine! She’s great and has endured sooooooo much through this pandemic, with the GOP and other cretins threatening her at every turn.
OzarkHillbilly
Damn, and here I was about to thank you for the compliment.
SFAW
@Punchy:
NotMax either approves that remark, or is pissed he didn’t get there first.
JPL
@Baud: Prepare for 24/7 coverage of caravans making their way north to the border with little money left to defend it, because of the deficit.
MJS
@Baud: Not a good time for PA to be losing its Secretary of Health, but a very good choice on Biden’s part.
Baud
It’s rare to know in advance the exact date and time that a cancer will be gone.
debbie
@rikyrah:
Yeah, but at least it is being said out loud.
SFAW
@OzarkHillbilly:
If it will make you feel better: I consider you an existential threat to Misery. You gotta work on your game if you want to expand it beyond the Misery borders, however.
rikyrah
OzarkHillbilly
@rikyrah: Cites facts not in evidence. We are still trying to ascertain whether or not trump is in fact a person.
rikyrah
rikyrah
debbie
@rikyrah:
He’s got less than zero chance of moving beyond that rabid base. He’s done and he ought to realize that.
rikyrah
rikyrah
?????
rikyrah
rikyrah
rikyrah
Baud
sab
@rikyrah: Quite an accomplishment following Rex Tillerson.
rikyrah
rikyrah
rikyrah
Opinion: My niece Kamala Harris will unite America with the values her mother instilled in her https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/kamala-harris-family-biden-inauguration-b1789314.html
prostratedragon
@SFAW: Yeah, I had choices, and when Nov. 3 was offered as a proximate date I thought, “Now this is perfect.” Endoscopy, i.e. something bothering my gut, but fortunately noncancerous and therefore not as evil as Some.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Can’t wait to see Nancy and Kamala behind Joe at the first State of the Union speech.
It’ll probably have to be next year because of COVID though.
RandomMonster
@rikyrah: “Throw a punch for the children” would be a great tshirt.
germy
@JPL:
You’re right:
rikyrah
germy
zhena gogolia
@Baud:
Go Joe!!!
rikyrah
???
Dorothy A. Winsor
@debbie: And Pompeo lacks the charism and TV “star” shine to hold the base the same way. Not that he won’t try.
rikyrah
Spanky
The thing about Wednesday’s forecast for around noon is while temps hit 40, there’s also a wind in the teens gusting into the 30s. That’ll be fun.
Tenterhooks
@satby:
I plan to take the day off too to focus on the festivities. I am sooooo psyched and can’t wait. Laid in some California bubbly to toast Joe and Kamala (and us) at noon after the swearing-in.
I haven’t watched much teevee and am going to soak in the sights. Too bad travel to DC is ruled out….
SFAW
@prostratedragon:
Glad to see that
Baud
@rikyrah:
Friends with benefits?
Jeffro
@rikyrah: Oh, they’re going to try. We won’t let them.
JMG
I think that after Biden and Harris are sworn in I’m going to celebrate with a nap. When significant stress is lifted from my mind, I usually react by feeling very sleepy.
Punchy
@JPL: and when they run out of actual caravan stories,, they’ll just roll tape of soccer moms in Dodge Caravans. The base is far too stupid to understand the difference.
Dorothy A. Winsor
We’re meeting some neighbors outside to drink a champagne toast tomorrow at noon Central Time. That lets us watch the Inauguration and make sure it really happens. I have no idea what the weather will be except it will be cold
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
So I skimmed the laughable 1776 Commission Report, and it looks like every bullshit history text that misled me about events, ideas and trends during grade school during the 60s and early 70s. Further, it looks to be written on a 5th grade level, perfect for inclusion as an “official” document in Christian private schools, the Texas state curriculum, etc.
It’ll take on an authoritative tone, not unlike that of that nut Skousen’s “Communist Goals” that got read into the Congressional Record.
The only things missing were a gigantic section about the evils of carpetbaggers and moving depictions of devout Confederate officers kneeling in prayer next to horses.
prostratedragon
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Windy and 35, kind of like DC. I miss winter.
Baud
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Progress!
germy
RR Mikey
@Matt McIrvin: – and you know that at some point in time, the anus mouthed orange shitgibbon will say, in that soft, annoying voice he uses, “nobody came, nobody came…I had a milyeeon people at my inauguration…noboby came for his….” Bastard…
OzarkHillbilly
@prostratedragon: @SFAW: I don’t get cancer, cancer gets me!
Jeffro
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: I think Jamelle Bouie said it best: the whole thing is “just a gigantic troll and was not even worth engaging with in any serious way”
Also, apparently a quarter of it is plaigiarized. Shocking! (NOT)
prostratedragon
Couldn’t find Howard, but here’s UM to set the mood:
Immanentize
@OzarkHillbilly: Good luck tomorrow. Enjoy your procedure!
OzarkHillbilly
Headline of the day? Gwyneth Paltrow’s ‘vagina’ candle reportedly explodes in UK woman’s home.
Betty Cracker
An infuriating (to me, anyway) excerpt from the AP article linked above:
First, an obligatory “fuck you” to that lying POS Ari Fleischer, who should never presume to advise anyone else about anything, ever. Here’s the thing: we didn’t have a peaceful transfer of power, so we can’t celebrate that this year. We were DENIED a peaceful transfer of power by a violent mob that Donald Trump wound up and sent down Pennsylvania Avenue.
Therefore, the “nod” suggested by Fleischer would be dishonest if the speech didn’t also acknowledge that it’s taking place at a crime scene and that unity and democracy are only possible when we can agree on fundamental facts, like who won the fucking election, and there is accountability for fascist coup attempts. Biden seems to get that; his “big lie” comments are on point. This can all be acknowledged along with a call to unity AND accountability.
OzarkHillbilly
The Victim of Tyranny and Oppression Starter Pack.
Immanentize
@prostratedragon: That Michigan drumlin is way too white.
Immanentize
I love drumlines. I was in band in Highschool and for some reason, great drumlines choke me up. Souza marches too.
RandomMonster
@Betty Cracker: What you said.
zhena gogolia
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
I think you and I went to the same high school.
Gin & Tonic
@OzarkHillbilly: A headline I will *not* click on.
zhena gogolia
@germy:
haha, love you, Jill!
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Jeffro:
Including from Wikipedia….
zhena gogolia
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
But interestingly, I did an informal poll of friends the other day, and all of them who went to public high schools, not just in MO, LA, and NC, but also Brooklyn, got the “carpetbaggers” and “Lost Cause” version of the Civil War and Reconstruction. It seems to have been a national thing.
Gin & Tonic
At some duty-free shop in late summer of 2016, I bought an expensive bottle of whisky for toasting Hillary Clinton’s inevitable victory over that clown Trump. Well, um…
It has sat unopened. I’m thinking noon tomorrow may not be an ideal time for opening it, but later in the day is very likely.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@zhena gogolia:
To it’s credit, my social justice adjacent blue collar Catholic high school insisted on better text material for historical events, so it undid my elementary school misunderstandings (undoubtedly related to the Texas stranglehold on public school textbook publishing).
citizen dave (aka mad citizen)
Good morning jackals! I’m your Citizen Dave and I welcome you to Tommy’s Holiday Camp! (Sorry, having a Who flashback). It’s been 4 years and 1 month for me in this wonderful place. Aside from a couple of music groups/sites (usernames), I’d never chosen a “nym” before and had to think fast. The 1975 movie Network must have stuck with me, because in Dec. 2016 at my core I was a “mad citizen”, so I became that. (Howard Beale speech below).
But, it’s time to no longer be mad, and I thought one small positive thing would be to not make everyone read the word “mad” every time I post something. So, I’ve transitioned to simply “citizen dave” as of today–no longer constantly mad, at least. It is time to celebrate! 27 hours to go!
I’ve never liked the “I’m taking my country back” phrase, employed by the right more than the left. The engaged people get mad. We’re mad on our side, too. We voted. We won. I hope everyone who voted stays engaged and becomes even more engaged as citizens on all levels.
Howard Beale speech in Network: “I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work, or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel’s worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter, punks are running wild in the street, and there’s nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there’s no end to it! We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be! We know things are bad — worse than bad. They’re crazy. It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don’t go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is: ‘Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won’t say anything. Just leave us alone.’ Well, I’m not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get MAD! I don’t want you to protest, I don’t want you to riot, I don’t want you to write to your congressman, because I wouldn’t know what to tell you to write. I don’t know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first, you’ve got to get mad! [shouting] You’ve got to say: ‘I’m a human being, goddammit! My life has value!’ So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out, and yell: I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE! I want you to get up right now. Sit up. Go to your windows. Open them and stick your head out and yell: ‘I’m as mad as hell and I’m not gonna take this anymore!’ Things have got to change. But first, you’ve gotta get mad!…You’ve got to say: I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE! Then we’ll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis! But first, get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!”
Soprano2
@OzarkHillbilly: I’m honestly surprised that there haven’t yet been multiple arrests of people from the Ozarks. I’m sure some people from here went, since Trump’s support is so strong down here. It still boggles my mind to see how they thought there would be no consequences for what they did.
sab
@zhena gogolia: We all had the Texas school books, everywhere in America.
My brilliant older sister went to a fancy elite boarding school. She had a year of French class where they taught American history from French textbooks. Very different from what she learned in the regular American history taught from American textbooks.
SiubhanDuinne
Twenty-seven hours. It’s happening, you guys.
catclub
@SFAW: I think Pompeo is the 2024 GOP frontrunner, Trump excepted.
zhena gogolia
@citizen dave (aka mad citizen):
Yeah, the NYT has a cover article about “smoldering rage” this morning. I was hoping it was going to be about OUR SMOLDERING RAGE, but no, it’s once again the hurt fee-fees of the PEOPLE WHO WANTED TO OVERTURN OUR ELECTION.
Skepticat
I’m still have high anxiety about the potential for violence at and around the inauguration. I always plan for the worst and hope for the best, but the current craziness and the insurrection have made me think I might not be worried enough. I’m certainly hoping for a pleasant surprise.
sab
It wasn’t until college that I learned that the reason the British burned Washington in the War of 1812 is that we had burned Toronto and most of the towns in the Ontario peninsula in February the year before.
Elizabelle
@OzarkHillbilly: Good luck, Ozark. Report back on the other side; celebrate President Joe with us!
Immanentize
@sab: Coventry, Dresden
Princess
@Jeffro: Good luck because the press will be abetting them every single step. Bill Barr is already laundering his reputation, on Axios yesterday and today in ITV. It will work too. A nation that forgot his role in Iran Contra will forget his role with Trump. And same for all the rest. Betting on amnesia is a safe bet.
sab
My natural gas generator just started its weekly test run. It is very loud. Shadow the Meankitty’s eyes almost popped out of her head. Starscream the tuxedo just moaned and rolled over in his sleep.
Soprano2
I got that, too – public school late 1960’s thru 1970’s. Didn’t know Reconstruction wasn’t a bad thing until I had a college history course. I shudder now when I remember some of the “history” I was taught in school.
Punchy
@zhena gogolia: I literally cannot read “carpetbagger” without immediately thinking of this…..
SiubhanDuinne
@OzarkHillbilly:
I’ll be thinking of you, OH. Good luck with the surgery, and come out of it ready to PAR-TAY!!
burnspbesq
@SFAW:
FTFY.
JPL
@zhena gogolia: F.K it.. No matter how hard they try, The NYPost will still be the paper for the wingers.
A friend often mentions how sad it is to see the NYPost become so right wing. Rupert ruins everything though.
sab
@Immanentize: I think I knew about Dresden from Vonnegut in high school.
Princess
@sab: Given the way the news people compared the insurrection to 1812, my guess is that most Americans still don’t know that 1812 was a war in which they were the aggressors and then they lost.
Another Scott
@sab: You mean they didn’t hate us for our Freedom???!
Cheers,
Scott.
JPL
@OzarkHillbilly: Thinking of you and I hope you bounce back quickly. Those little imps need their grandpa to chase after them.
sab
@Immanentize: I think I had learned about Dresden from Vonnegut in when I was in high school. Certainly didn’t learn it from our curriculum.
Spanky
@sab: Yep, although it was called York at the time.
Matt McIrvin
@zhena gogolia: I got an interestingly ambiguous version in 1980s Northern Virginia. The textbook was an infamous product of the Dunning School that had been somewhat softened for a post-civil-rights-movement era, but it still had all this stuff about the nasty carpetbaggers and how off-puttingly extreme the abolitionists were. But the teacher was this proud Mainer who tried to stamp out Lost Cause mythology where he could. …But the students included a lot of obvious Confederate sympathizers. So, yeah, it was a land of contrasts.
OzarkHillbilly
@Gin & Tonic: Yeah, I didn’t read the article either, not enough brain bleach in the world.
Dorothy A. Winsor
We went to the building gym for our early morning appointment. On our way back, Mr DAW stopped at the cafe, as usual, to dig the channel changer out of its hiding place and change the TV from Fox to CNN.
The folks we’re toasting with tomorrow are like a secret cabal of Democrats in our very R building. They all change the channel when they can.
sab
@Another Scott: When I was a kid in Florida they actually taught us that Canadians were jealous and wanted to be American. My grandmother had Canadian first cousins so I knew that was nonsense.
zhena gogolia
@JPL:
It was the New York Times!
zhena gogolia
@Punchy:
Ooh, that looks good. I’ll watch it when I can take a break.
Amir Khalid
@catclub:
Come 2024, Trump will be flat broke, in jail, dead, or — إن شاء الله — all three.
OzarkHillbilly
White privilege is a powerful drug.
Matt McIrvin
@sab: A note about Dresden and Vonnegut: while his account was largely based on personal experience, the numbers he gives to argue that Dresden got hit worse than Hiroshima were based on discredited work by Holocaust denier David Irving. So some caution is warranted there.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@catclub:
He’s got that fat, swaggering blowhard thing that GOPers seem to love down to T.
Geminid
@catclub: Pompeo was Congressman from Wichita, Kansas, home of Koch Industries. So I think he’ll have plenty of money behind him. He’ll be one of the front runners for sure.. Chris Christy could be another one, although the trump cultists won’t like him. I just hope the nomination contest is acrimonious, protracted, and divisive. This year’s statewide Virginia races might give a snapshot of where the party is going post-trump.
Spanky
@Princess: I don’t think you can rightly say we lost. England was just sick of war at that point (mainly with Napoleon), and just sorta lost interest.
sab
@Princess: I thought it was a tie for everyone except Native Americans. That is what opened up Ohio for settlement. They couldn’t even teach us that in Ohio history because they couldn’t say that we had done bad things to them. They did say that the Indians started it.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@rikyrah: Facebook wasn’t really Trump’s thing. It was Twitter were Trump could just order is his caddy to spam out one sentence troll tweets until he got a reaction that enabled this nonsense. Facebook posts are to much work for Trump’s lazy ass.
Gin & Tonic
@Amir Khalid: In the US, they don’t typically keep dead people in prison. Not for very long, anyway.
mali muso
@satby: I will also be taking the day to celebrate. Day drinking will be happening to be sure. :)
Kind of thinking to order some takeout from the local Indian place for lunch and Jamaican for dinner. Gotta celebrate our new VP’s heritage!
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@zhena gogolia: Yes, that version was taught at least through the 1980s, maybe into the 2000s. A good antidote is to read Ron Chernow’s biography of Ulysses S. Grant, who was considered one of the very worst Presidents when I was a child in the 1970s and ’80s, solely on the strength of “Lost Cause” revisionist history.
Grant is now considered one of our better Presidents. He tried very hard to reform the South and his post-Presidency set a model for unofficial international diplomacy. I actually think there’s an argument that he’s top 10 and maybe should be ranked higher than Teddy Roosevelt.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@rikyrah: Oh, that’s another prediction that came true; that Trump would break threw the polling floor Nixon established.
artem1s
@Matt McIrvin:
unlike the golf carts at MAL that Grifter45 billed the Secret Service for.
Spanky
@Matt McIrvin: Irving wasn’t the first. Germany inflated the numbers from the get-go.
Wikipedia:
Baud
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Have you considered invading the management office to effectuate a coup? You can always make a plea for unity if it doesn’t work out.
Another Scott
@sab: J and I vacationed in Quebec one summer in the Before Times and saw some of the war sites. It was interesting to see the guides gently explain to us stupid Americans that no we weren’t the blameless virtuous gentle souls at the time…
J was annoyed by the waiters there who frequently tried to correct her excellent (French) French.
;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
artem1s
@SFAW:
Not for them. May they wear the stick of his rot forever.
Amir Khalid
@Gin & Tonic:
I’ll accept died in jail as a substitute.
natem
@Betty Cracker: Speaking of pieces of shit during the W administration, I bring you…
None other than the Chimp Himself!
citizen dave (aka mad citizen)
@Dorothy A. Winsor: This makes me happy. I saw a headline about CNN beating Fox in the evening ratings.
Immanentize
@sab: Yes. That is a great novel. We firebombed Dresden, not really a military target in the waning days of the war because (it is said), the Germans bombed the civilian city of Coventry in England during the blitz as a last attempt to break the English.
sab
@Immanentize: Thanks for clarifying the connection. I had not known that.
NotMax
A look back at the final days of a different era, which from certain vantage points seems as distant as the Mesozoic.
;)
Sloane Ranger
@rikyrah: I hadn’t picked this up. Do we have names?
O. Felix Culpa
@zhena gogolia: I got the carpetbagger version of American history too. In New Jersey.
Immanentize
@NotMax: very funny. I love the old PC monitors flickering on the desks.
satby
@OzarkHillbilly: Good luck and when you’re able check in and celebrate with us. Or at least give us a blech so we know you’re ok.
satby
@Amir Khalid: inshalla!
OzarkHillbilly
This is good: Pink seesaws across US-Mexico border named Design of the Year 2020
prostratedragon
@Immanentize: If Chicago is typical, too many urban public schools have defunded programs like band in general elementary and high schools, which has way reduced the number of Black kids who get early musical instrument training. I did notice that UM had several Asian drummers in that line.
jonas
…no doubt being made by people who had no problem with the government paying Trump’s own businesses for over a year’s equivalent of golfing time. Not to mention that we’re just now starting to get to the bottom of all the hinky stuff that was going on with Trump’s own inaugural committee and fundraising.
There will probably still be ongoing investigations ten years from now into the corruption of the past four years. Unwinding this shit will be a generational task.
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud:
I think I saw, though, that he’s addressing a joint Session of Congress sometime in February. Not, technically, a SOTU, but both the VP and Speaker will be seated behind him, and that will be a moment for the ages.
Matt McIrvin
@jonas: Unless today’s expected spree of pardons just shuts it all down.
germy
And Major is handsome, too.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: There’s a Grant museum in Galena, IL, that’s very interesting. It gave me new appreciation for him.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Baud: We can scream “stop the steal” all we want, but our neighbors would mostly says, “What? Speak up!”
satby
@NotMax: Both Clintons are pretty good sports considering how rotten they’ve been treated.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Another Scott: One of Mr DAW’s colleagues was stationed in France for a while. His kids went to the regular high school, where among other classes, they had to take English. It annoyed them that the teacher marked them down for US spelling.
Nicole
@OzarkHillbilly:
Best wishes for a smooth procedure tomorrow! I have trouble with anesthesia, too (the gas makes me really nauseated), so I send best wishes you wake feeling like you’ve just had a long nap and oh look, hi, President Biden!
Dorothy A. Winsor
I blogged about my ten favorite 2020 reads. I suspect they’re not to the taste of most readers here. But that’s your loss!
Uncle Cosmo
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Is there some reason you consistently misspell “through” as “threw”? I’ve seen it way too often in your posts to believe it’s random.
germy
Dominion threatens MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell with lawsuit over ‘false and conspiratorial’ claims
I’m glad to see this. He’s a clown, but he’s been a dangerous clown for some time now. His money is his superpower. Didn’t he bail out Rittenhouse?
satby
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Some of those do appeal to me. Thanks for the recs.
sab
@Dorothy A. Winsor: A classmate of mine in high school had a brother who emigrated to Norway during the Vietnam war. Their mother was Norwegian. He thought he would at least be able to teach English, but they didn’t think he spoke English. He spoke some dialect of it.
sab
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Thanks. Some of those I would like to read.
rikyrah
@debbie:
Made me ????
Nicole
@zhena gogolia:
I remember my high school textbook (public school, Pennsylvania, 1980s) had a side box presenting arguments for why the Civil War was NOT about slavery. And yeah, a whole chapter devoted to “Carpetbaggers and Scallywags.”
Lotta American Exceptionalism in those textbooks, I recall.
NotMax
Looks as if the sunshine will reappear here just about concurrent with noon in the east on Wednesday. Been windy, chilly and gray here for 48 hours – major winter rainstorm. Road closures due to flooding, landslides and downed trees. Some locales have reported 10 or more inches of rain since this storm rolled in on Sunday; 4 inches (more or less) thus far in the immediate neighborhood.
Matt McIrvin
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
He hasn’t. Nixon’s job approval was in the mid-twenties when he resigned. Averaged over all the polls, Trump isn’t even polling as badly as Jimmy Carter did toward the end.
It’s possible that Trump’s job approval could fall some more in his final polls, but he’s out of time, so we’ll never know how low it could go. I suppose people will keep polling personal approval, if we care.
sab
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I was late too a thread a few days ago, when you said conservatives loathe San Francisco Republicans. Can you clarify why? Too nutz? Not nutz enough? RINO? Anti-RINO? My brother is a suburban SF Republican that I can’t even speak to any more, and I am wondering what happened to him.
germy
His trump impression was the best, but fortunately he’s got about a million other voices and impressions he can do.
Aleta
Janet Yellen’s hearing at Senate Finance Committee is live now. (Grassley just finished going on and on and on about what he believes and about R ‘accomplishments.’)
Matt McIrvin
@germy: Atamanuik did the bit about Trump screaming that he was robbed and having to be dragged out of the White House years ago.
germy
germy
This editorial cartoon:
germy
@Matt McIrvin:
He does a great Bernie impersonation. Also Gorka and Tweety the pundit.
sixthdoctor
@Gin & Tonic: I stupidly didn’t take off work tomorrow, but I may allow myself a couple of teensy sips of my bottle of excellent Ron Zacapa rum, one at noon and one in the morning when that black-hearted bastard gets on the plane to Florida.
burnspbesq
Just a reminder that today is Confederate Heroes Day in Texas.
Patrick and Paxton ordered up an entire week of shitty weather in honor of Joe and Kamala’s inauguration. Abbott was, as usual, nowhere to be seen. Allen West complained that the weather wasn’t shitty enough.
Matt McIrvin
@germy: And the tweet was immediately followed up by a bunch of people going “nuh uh that was Obama”.
TomatoQueen
My memory of what was taught in US Hist II is a little vague now, but there was a required textbook, which the History dept hated so the volumes were kept in the big classroom storage cabinet by the door. All of us wondered why we spent so much time on the causes of the war, and so little on the war itself, and our teacher said there was not enough time in the school year to do both, so we got causes, a battle or two, nothing in particular about Reconstruction that I remember except no Lost Cause fantasizing, and somehow we’re at the panic of 1876. This was the same course in which I learned about historical criticism (Hofstadter? Hofstedter? god what a bore for a 15 year old) the causes of WWI, and George Mortimer Pullman, who was a classroom figure of fun cos of there being Pullman everything–nothing about the Pullman porters, mind you, a suburban high school in 1970s Connecticut, as well-resourced as it was, wasn’t going to tell us everything we should’ve known, or indeed might not have been capable of such at the time. I always hesitate to mention it, because people become unnecessarily condescending, but Ken Burns taught me more about that period than I learned in high school, after I lived in Florida for ten years. Twenty years of living in Alexandria, VA, has taught me a bit more–there’s a bloody history in the bricks of Old Town.
PPCLI
@sab:
@Princess:
I remember learning in school that the Americans expected an easy victory because they wrongly expected the natives of Canada to join them and rise up in rebellion against the British.
The “They will greet us as liberators” delusion goes way back.
burnspbesq
Shit’s getting real. DOJ rolling out the charges that carry serious jail time.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/conspiracy-oath-keeper-arrest-capitol-riot/2021/01/19/fb84877a-5a4f-11eb-8bcf-3877871c819d_story.html?fbclid=IwAR1h8aRwLDnr5SlB0XmcgpcBHrbQc2uMPRu7obsbAUobIESIu7CP6nTy5ds
gvg
I went to school in 70’s Florida and I do not recall even hearing about the lost cause stuff. the Civil was was about slavery with some economics that were also related to slavery. Reconstruction did get some bad press for corruption and also not being followed through on. I did pick up the idea that it is a universal human trait to resent outsiders telling your what to do which means all the colonial type wars we fought (Vietnam for example) had built in difficulty. I knew Iraq war was not going to result in flowers for example. I wonder why I got lucky. I know I did read a lot of history on my own but the Civil War never really interested me so I don’t know. My parents watched the news and commented to me all through the late 60’s and 70’s explaining things like civil rights…maybe I kind of already knew and possibly my fellow students did too.
sab
@gvg: Where in Florida? We were central east coast and my sister says it was definitely not insanely Confederate. She remembers the focus being on the Spanish heritage. I was in elementary school so we didn’t get much history. But we were in the sixties, not the seventies.
AliceBlue
@germy: HELLO Young Joe Biden!
sab
@PPCLI: Kind of like the South thought the Brits would jump in in the Civil War, and instead they bought their cotton in Egypt.
karen marie
Except it’s not.
Calling it such excuses the Republican party’s violent insurrection.
SFAW
@burnspbesq:
Por que no los dos?
Matt McIrvin
@Princess: In the United States, the War of 1812 is taught as a war between the US and the British Empire over such issues as freedom of the seas, in which the British were the aggressors and the US won.
In Canada, the War of 1812 is taught as a war between the United States and Canada, in which the US tried to conquer Canada and lost.
Barry
@Spanky: ” I don’t think you can rightly say we lost. England was just sick of war at that point (mainly with Napoleon), and just sorta lost interest.”
IMHO, the USA realized that we would now get the undivided attention of the British Empire. Ending the war then was a mutually agreeable project.
cain
Ah yes, our conservative friends have suddenly found their dicks and now waving it of behalf of tax payers everywhere. Having said nothing for the sheer amount of tax payer waste throughout the four years. We should show them the costs of all that secret service so he can go golfing, or the cost staying in someone’s basement because the first family doesn’t want them to use the bathrooms.
This lament must be destroyed by shouting these people down every time. Morons.
catclub
Napoleon thought that about invading Spain to overthrow Catholic Royalism, too. Instead, we get the word ‘guerilla’.
MisterForkbeard
@cain: The taxpayer money complains I’ve seen are all around the national guard presence. “Why doesn’t Biden just have a secret inauguration, if he really cared about waste!” etc.
Except that the guards aren’t there to protect or celebrate Biden. They’re present because Republicans are threatening to throw riots and destroy the Capitol again after a failed coup attempt. If they’re worried about a price tag, it’s on THEM, not us.
StringOnAStick
All it took to get me to read something other than the TX approved “history” was an excellent young history teacher in high school. Once I graduated I somehow picked up a copy of Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee and had my eyes seriously opened about “approved history” as taught in schools, on TV, in movies.
I have a 42 yo friend raised in TX who was angry when I told her the Alamo was about trying to keep TX as a slave owning area; she still believed what she was taught while a kid there. I hope she’s done some deeper reading but we no longer live anywhere near them so I can hope that I piqued her curiosity.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Barry:
In 1812, all the Empire could count on were tactical victories that would wear down the public appetite for war – they were in no way an existential threat, which is why the Star Spangled Banner sucks as a national anthem.
I still prefer the Battle Hymn of the Republic.
J R in WV
@Immanentize:
Me too, Sousaphone player, graduated from HS in great shape thanks to marching with 55 pounds of silver plated brass AND playing a giant horn at the same time.
J R in WV
@sab:
Mine too, early afternoon every Tuesday. They installed it on Tuesday… so glad to have it. We live way out on the edge of the electrical grid, and lose power pretty often.
patroclus
@Matt McIrvin: And in the U.K., the War of 1812 is regarded as a minor theater in the Napoleonic Wars which they won (twice) and in which they negotiated the cessation of hostilities with the U.S. and resumed trade with the Treaty of Ghent.
patroclus
@StringOnAStick: Well, I’ve done further reading on the subject of the Texas Revolutionary War and there was a lot more at stake than slavery – perhaps you should do some further reading as well. Maybe it could include Sam Houston’s time living with Native Americans and marrying a Native and his attitude towards Natives generally; the empresarios’ original deal with the new “liberal” Mexican state which guaranteed them a degree of autonomy, the Nationalist coup by Santa Anna, his punitive wars of extermination, the plans to de-autonomize Texas and combine it with Coauhila as a new state, the sending of Austin as a negotiator and his 1-year long imprisonment, the quartering of Mexican soldiers in homes, the expropriation of assets, the new taxes, the treatment by the Mexicans of Natives and meztizos and, of course, the massacres without quarter at Goliad and San Antonio. If you truly believe it was only about preserving slavery, I think you should read deeper.
JAFD
Pierre Bertin has written a multi-volume history of ‘the War of 1812’ from the Canadian viewpoint.
TLDR = the USAn’s and Brits fought to a draw, the Native Americans lost, and the Canadians won – wuch of what is uniquely Canadian resulted from the conflict.
So, here’s to “Peace, Prosperity and Good Government!”
dww44
@OzarkHillbilly:Besr wishes to you tomorrow. I too am wary of going under anesthesia. May you awake to a new era of hope and possibilities. Be sure to let us know how it goes.