Lots of fizzled protests out there.

Police were on high alert in state capitals around the U.S. Sunday, after warnings that pro-Trump extremists might attempt to storm legislatures similar to the assault on the U.S. Capitol last week. But at many statehouses and capitols, security and the media outnumbered protesters.

One, Trump wasn’t there. Two, getting arrested probably doesn’t look so attractive any more. Three…ohIdon’tknow, whohastheenergy.

In Denver, the Colorado Capitol’s lower windows were covered in anticipation of possible unrest — but hardly anyone showed up on Sunday. “I’m really surprised. I figured there’d be more than this,” a supporter of President Trump told Colorado Public Radio.

Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown.

In Lansing, where protesters swarmed Michigan’s

Two weeks ago today a lot of us were not expecting what happened. Today…

Mark Leggiero is the one lone Trump supporter out in front of the NYS Capitol. He says he expected a few thousand ppl here and is disappointed. He said he drove 45 minutes for a peaceful protest pic.twitter.com/hDtCLYFpLq

— Morgan McKay (@morganfmckay) January 20, 2021

… Read the rest

It’s a day to rejoice, it’s a day to breathe a massive sigh of relief, it’s a day even to celebrate. It’s not a day to congratulate ourselves. That day is a long way off.

Like this.

This is among the most powerful images of this historic day

On the same steps where a mob of insurrectionists invited by Trump attacked the government, a peaceful transition.

The old and the new VP couples even laughing together.

America. pic.twitter.com/0lO1Xyxh4g

— Norm Eisen (#TryingTrump out now!) (@NormEisen) January 20, 2021

I admire Norm Eisen, but I reject that punchline “America.” It would be pretty to think so, but no. We remember what happened there just two weeks ago, and we know … Read the rest

Ok this made me laugh:

In a subdued, discursive speech on a windy tarmac, Trump made glancing references to his accomplishments in office but seemed bitter at his loss.

“I hope they don’t raise your taxes, but if they do, I told you so,” he said.

Aides had prepared a speech for the President that included references to the incoming administration and more gracious language about a peaceful transition, according to a person familiar with the matter.

But Trump discarded the speech, and teleprompters were removed from the stage before he arrived at Joint Base Andrews.

“What’s all this more gracious shit, fuck that, being more gracious is for pussies, fire the pussies who wrote this.”… Read the rest

President Biden is now officially the 46th president* of the United States of America.

*Only 45 people have been president, Grover Cleveland counts as both 22nd and 24th.

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) January 20, 2021

Is anyone else literally laughing & weeping with relief? #BidenHarrisInauguration

— Joanna Cherry KC (@joannaccherry) January 20, 2021

https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/1351935607577038849

We did it. President Joe Biden–a man of decency, integrity, empathy, and compassion. A man who will indeed protect and defend the Constitution. Finally.

— Mary L. Trump (@MaryLTrump) January 20, 2021

… Read the rest

It’s done.

Joe Biden has been sworn in as president, bringing an end to four years of Donald Trump’s leadership in Washington.

Biden was sworn in by supreme court chief justice John Roberts, and his wife, Dr Jill Biden, held the Bible as he took the oath.

It’s over it’s over it’s over it’s over.… Read the rest

He’s been dumped out on Florida and that’s his last trip on the big important plane yaboosucks.

As former presidents arrived at the Capitol for Joe Biden’s inauguration, Air Force One touched down in Florida.

Donald Trump did not go back to the press cabin to talk to reporters during his trip down to Florida, according to the White House pool.

Trump will be the first president in more than 150 years to not attend the inauguration ceremony of his successor. His vice-president, Mike Pence, is in attendance.

It’s great that he’s breaking precedent by sulking this way; it makes him look so wise and balanced and not at all warped by conceit and entitlement and narcissism hahahahahahaha

People were … Read the rest

It seems Trump managed to do one decent thing in the final hours, by using most of those pardons on people who were serving excessive sentences. But of course he also pardoned Bannon.

The vast majority of the pardons and commutations on Trump’s list were doled out to individuals whose cases have been championed by criminal justice reform advocates, including people serving lengthy sentences for low-level offenses.

Here’s an idea: let’s stop dealing out long prison sentences for low-level offenses.

Over the course of Tuesday, Trump continued to contemplate pardons that aides believed were settled, including for his former strategist. The President continued to go back and forth on it into Tuesday night, sources told CNN.

Then he did the … Read the rest

Pliny says sure Trump should get the intel briefings.… Read the rest

The 1776 Report is about the teaching of history but not one of the people on the 1776 Commission is a historian.

Larry P. Arn, Chair, is “an educator.” Vice Chair Carol Swain taught political science and law at Vanderbilt. Brooke Rollins is a lawyer. Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist. Phil Bryant is a former governor of Mississippi. John Gibbs worked for HUD. Scott McNealy is a businessman. Ned Ryan is the CEO of American Majority. Charlie Kirk is a conservative talk show host. And so on. It’s a passel of conservatives, a few of them academics, a few of those in fields adjacent to history, but no actual historians except possibly Hanson who along with being a … Read the rest

Trump’s people organized that rally, the one that led to the terrorist attack on Congress.

Members of President Donald Trump’s failed presidential campaign played key roles in orchestrating the Washington rally that spawned a deadly assault on the U.S. Capitol, according to an Associated Press review of records, undercutting claims the event was the brainchild of the president’s grassroots supporters.

A pro-Trump nonprofit group called Women for America First hosted the “Save America Rally” on Jan. 6 at the Ellipse, an oval-shaped, federally owned patch of land near the White House. But an attachment to the National Park Service public gathering permit granted to the group lists more than half a dozen people in staff positions for the event

So, yes, I’m going to have to read at least some of that ridiculous rah rah us! report, to see exactly how bad it is. And yes I’m going to have to inflict it on you.

The declared purpose of the President’s Advisory 1776 Commission is to “enable a rising generation to understand the history and principles of the founding of the United States in 1776 and to strive to form a more perfect Union.” This requires a restoration of American education, which can only be grounded on a history of those principles that is “accurate, honest, unifying, inspiring, and ennobling.” And a rediscovery of our shared identity rooted in our founding principles is the path to a renewed

The Trump administration’s “1776 Report” has historians running out of red ink.

“It’s a hack job. It’s not a work of history,” American Historical Association executive director James Grossman told The Washington Post. “It’s a work of contentious politics designed to stoke culture wars.”

…The 45-page report is largely an attack on decades of historical scholarship, particularly when it comes to the nation’s 400-year-old legacy of slavery, and most of those listed as authors lack any credentials as historians. While claiming to present a nonpartisan history, it compares progressivism to fascism and claims the civil rights movement devolved into “preferential” identity politics “not unlike those advanced by [slavery defender John C.] Calhoun and his followers.”

“I don’t know where

I didn’t realize that former presidents get intelligence briefings.

Adam Schiff says Trump should be the exception, which seems only prudent.

House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff said Sunday that President Donald Trump should be barred from daily intelligence briefings immediately — and remain cut off from briefings once President-elect Joe Biden is sworn in.

…

Schiff’s comments come a day after Susan Gordon, Trump’s former principal deputy director of national intelligence, penned an op-ed in The Washington Post arguing that Trump must not be briefed on intelligence after Jan. 20.

…

Former presidents typically receive routine intelligence briefings and access to classified information after they have left office.

Schiff added that he thinks U.S. allies withheld information from the

At least he’s miserable.

The President has been in a foul mood for several days and has lost interest in the performative parts of the presidency he once relished, a source he’s spoken with in recent days told CNN.

While he’s eagerly anticipating his military-style send-off from Joint Base Andrews on Inauguration morning — one of the few items that have cheered him up recently — there were already signs the crowd may be smaller than he’d hoped. And a slate of actual celebrities lined up for Biden’s inauguration has disappointed a president who tried and often failed to secure A-list support for his own presidency.

It’s so typical that he doesn’t get how pathetic and feeble he’s going to … Read the rest

Speaking of “can you think of one good quality in Trump?” –

Ainsley Earhardt: "They'll criticize President Trump but no one can argue, he is a worker. He doesn't drink alcohol, he stays up late at night, he watches every show, he's working — he got to work immediately." pic.twitter.com/1FcS8gCW5f

— Bobby Lewis (@revrrlewis) January 19, 2021

Objection!

No. Not drinking and staying up late do not add up to being “a worker.” Trump was very productive on Twitter, too, but that also doesn’t count as “work,” especially given the quality and content of his tweets. And what really doesn’t count as work – what counts as a pathetic infantile waste of time – is “watching every show.” The giant … Read the rest

Smug bullying white guy trashes multiculturalism the day after Martin Luther King day and the day before the white guy’s status vanishes like a puff of smoke.

Woke-ism, multiculturalism, all the -isms — they're not who America is. They distort our glorious founding and what this country is all about. Our enemies stoke these divisions because they know they make us weaker. pic.twitter.com/Mu97xCgxfS

— Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) January 19, 2021

Also – “our enemies stoke these divisions,” he says, in the very act of stoking his own divisions.

24 hours + 30 minutes.… Read the rest

Daily Kos reports:

This [is] a quick heads-up on the “1776 report”, which was released today by the White House, of all days, on MLK Day. It’s another attempt to re-write and white-wash history and prop up the modern white supremacist movement.

The report was written by the “1776 Commission”, a rag-tag group of mostly white and conservative “historians”; it states that criticism of the Founding Fathers’ slave ownership ‘has done enormous damage’ and has had a ‘devastating effect on our civic unity and social fabric’. The report claims that the nation’s founders detested slavery even though many of them owned enslaved people.

So what’s the idea here? That praise of the “founding fathers'” slave ownership would do tremendous … Read the rest

39 hours 23 minutes.… Read the rest

JL at the Glinner Update on the theft of the McIver Baths:

The McIver Ladies Baths is in the beautiful Sydney suburb of Coogee. It was built in 1886 and has been for the exclusive use of women and children ever since. Screened from view by its cliff-foot location, the pool provides the perfect place for women to swim and sunbathe in peace and safety, free from male interest and male eyes.

Make no mistake, that’s an issue when it comes to swimming.

Recently the Randwick and Coogee Ladies Swimming Association (R&CLSA), which manages the pool, decided that access would be extended to (genuine) transwomen, ie those who’ve undergone sex-reassignment surgery. The information on the website was updated accordingly.