Another 40 to be signed in the next week

As an avid genealogist this resonated with me: Jon Ossof, new senator from Georgia, tweeted (with pictures):

Today, as I was sworn in, I held in my jacket pocket copies of the ships’ manifests recorded at Ellis Island when my Great Grandfather Israel arrived in 1911 and my Great Grandmother Annie arrived in 1913. A century later, their great grandson was elected to the U.S. Senate.

Kerry Eleveld of Daily Kos reported President Biden (I and lots of other people love saying that) signed a stack of Executive Orders yesterday and today. Many of them undoing EOs of the nasty guy. One of them was a sweeping order proclaiming LGBTQ people should have equal treatment under the law in employment, housing, and education. This builds on the Supreme Court ruling from last year that declared the term “sex” in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 also means sexual orientation and gender identity. This overturns orders from the nasty guy which tried to oppress LGBTQ people every way possible. Mark Sumner of Kos listed seventeen actions – Stop building the wall on the southern border. Rejoin the World Health Organization. Rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement. Cancel the Keystone XL pipeline. End the Muslim travel ban. Defend the “Dreamers” program. Create an executive branch ethics doctrine. And several more. And another 40 to be signed in the next week. Disappointed, though not at all surprised: Sumner reported that in spite of the nasty guy’s claims there were no policy or plans for the vaccine distribution. So the Biden administration is starting from “square one” to create and implement a plan. Fortunately, the Biden team knew that as they took office yesterday. At the start of each new Congress (this is the 117th) the Senate passes an organizing resolution to set the rules on how the Senate will function. Moscow Mitch is being his usual obstructionist self when the Democrats try to do anything. He’s demanding the resolution contain a promise that the Democrats will not end the filibuster. With the filibuster and a thin Dem majority every bit of legislation would need ten GOP votes to end debate. Without it the simple majority (with VP Harris as tiebreaker) can get stuff done. Joan McCarter of Kos reported that several Democratic senators have rather pithy replies to Mitch. McCarter described a way the Democrats could force through ending the filibuster in this organizing resolution if Mitch keeps obstructing. Leah McElrath had a reply to Mitch’s tweet trying to assert minority rights.

Cry harder you traitorous, hypocritical sack of gelatinous lies encased in human skin. (Trying to go forward into 2021 with fewer F bombs, because, you know, unity and all that.)

Senator Ted Cruz of Texas didn’t like that Biden rejoined the Paris Climate Agreement:

By rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement, President Biden indicates he’s more interested in the views of the citizens of Paris than in the jobs of the citizens of Pittsburgh. This agreement will do little to affect the climate and will harm the livelihoods of Americans.

Greta Thunberg, the one-teen force of climate advocacy, fired back:

So happy that USA has finally rejoined the Pittsburgh Agreement. Welcome back!

Mark Lippman of the Kos community, who included both tweets, added:

Yes, he’s worried about the citizens of Pittsburgh two weeks after he tried to disenfranchise 6.9 million voters in the state of Pennsylvania by throwing out their electoral votes.

After the great success on January 6 the insurrectionists planned a round 2 for Sunday the 17th. David Neiwert of Kos reported on the attendance of the Washington Million Militia March: nobody. They had also proclaimed they would try to storm various statehouses, prompting Michigan and several others to erect fences and board up windows. Neiwert reported on attendance at some of those capitols: Columbus: maybe a dozen (but we have nothing to do with that insurrection in Washington). Lansing: “a smattering.” Salem: protesters outnumbered 3-1 by the media covering them. Olympia: deserted. Trenton: one. Neiwert wrote:

The decidedly low energy for these events is reflective of the disarray that has descended on American radical-right circles ever since the January 6 riots. As Alexander Reid Ross described at Daily Beast, alt-right white supremacists have engaged in extensive bickering over the mess, accusing each other of being federal informants and traitors to the cause, as well as con artists.

Kerry Eleveld reported what’s going on with the QAnon conspiracy folks.

Here's what QAnon-ers expected to happen, according to NBC News reporter Ben Collins: Trump would use the Emergency Broadcasting System to announce the The Storm had arrived; Democrats would be rounded up and arrested; and Trump would be declared president. Q supporters had apparently bought CB radios for the blackout. "I don't think this is supposed to happen?" wrote one follower. "How long does it take the fed to run up the stairs and arrest him?" Apparently, a very very long time—otherwise known as never. No emergency announcement from Trump. No mass arrests. Just the continuation of American democracy as regularly scheduled every four years at 12:01 PM on Jan. 20. ... At the end of the day, a conspiracy theory that was so certain of its ability to predict the future, left its followers deeply disillusioned.

Be sparing with your schadenfreude. This isn’t over yet. Gwen Snyder tweeted (with screen captures):

The terror Nazis are on @telegram literally telling us their strategy to radicalize QAnon and MAGA, now.

Max Berger tweeted:

You ever think about how the last two Republican presidents left office in the midst of a global crisis they didn't prepare for and an economic collapse they did too little to fix? Weird coincidence! … Republicans said they wanted to shrink government until it was "small enough to drown in the bathtub." It worked: that's why our government wasn't prepared to respond to Katrina, the financial crisis of 2007-2008, or the Coronavirus "hoax" that killed 400,000 people.

The reason why Republicans want to shrink government is so it can’t help people. Because then it would help those people. And they can’t have that. Now for some fun stuff. Kai Ryssdal of the NPR program Marketplace reported many times about Janet Yellen when she was chair of the Federal Reserve. She is now nominated to be Secretary of the Treasury. Since Alexander Hamilton was the first Sec. of the Treasury and got his own musical, Ryssdal wanted a way to honor the first female Sec. of the Treasury. Not knowing Lin-Manuel Miranda (who wrote the rap based musical) Ryssdal asked rapper Dessa to come up with something. Ryssdal is delighted with the result. Listen here to Ryssdal’s conversation with Dessa and the rap she came up with. Jimmy Kimmel tweeted a video (under 2 minutes) of the reaction of various federal monuments hearing the news that the nasty guy was gone and Biden is president.