OMG - Inauguration Day
What I'm reading today....
When I was growing up, my mother had the TV tuned in to watch every inauguration event from beginning to end. She loved the pageantry, the tradition, the parade, the ballgowns — everything. She would bring out her needlepointing and be glued to the television all day - a total anomaly for her.
To be honest, I only remember snippets of various inaugurations, since I would have rather been watching cartoons or anything else. I do remember Robert Frost’s white hair waving in the frigid wind at JFK’s inauguration. I also remember Jimmy and Roslyn Carter getting out of their car and walking in the parade. And I remember (and frankly took for granted) the PEACEFUL transfer of power from Ford to Carter to Reagan and from Bush 41 to Clinton. As painful as it must have been to those defeated one-term presidents, they had the grace, courage and honor to uphold the democratic traditions of our country — unlike our soon to be Felon-in-Chief, who blatantly exhibited poor sportsmanship by modeling for the next generation how to be an amoral sore loser.
In 2021, I really wanted to make sure and witness the horror of the Sore-Loser-In-Chief’s term finally finishing, so I watched the Biden Inauguration from beginning to end. I actually cried - I was so happy. We had gotten past the terror and incompetency of 45’s term; of January 6, 2021 and had finally moved on. The #SoreLoser was in the dog house — even lapdog Kevin McCarthy said, “I’ve had it with this guy.”
That was then… this is now. We have Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy (and all the other spineless 2021 GOP Senators) to thank for the situation we find ourselves in today. The moment, that I have been dreading, has finally arrived. It was great to have the serenity of a relatively normal person in the White House, while it lasted.
Today it’s over. The corruption and chaos begin again. Oy veh.
Today my TV will be on mute tuned in to anything other than the inauguration events. Apparently, that will help make #FOTUS’s ratings look lower. (Although, it really doesn’t matter, since he’ll lie about the ratings anyway. That’s who he is…a liar, a grifter, and a loser.) #GodHelpUs
I’m playing bridge.
What I’m reading today….
Word of the day: Recrudescence
Who Said This: Inaugural Speech Edition
“We must be willing, individually and as a nation, to accept whatever sacrifices may be required of us. A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both…”
What Will You Be Doing on Jan. 20?
The Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service is a defining moment each year when Americans across the country step up to make our communities more equitable and take action to build the Beloved Community of Dr. King's dream.
Goodbye, Good Governance. Hello, Insane Promises.
Whatever happened to judging people on character, competence, or both? And why on earth choose someone who has neither? Are voters still, a decade into the MAGA era, judging candidates on how persuasively they make inane promises (I’ll end the Ukraine war in one day; I’ll singlehandedly reduce food prices) or float insane ideas (let’s buy Greenland; let’s annex Canada)? How does any of that compete with a larger, stronger NATO, more clean energy jobs and semiconductor manufacturing, and a real commitment to roads, bridges, ports, airports, the electric grid, and rural broadband?
Thomas Jefferson's first inaugural address - 1801: But every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists.
A History of Election Disputes in North Carolina
The Griffin-Riggs dispute is emblematic of broader national debates over election integrity, voter access, and the role of courts in resolving electoral conflicts. North Carolina's history of election disputes demonstrates that these issues are not new but rather part of a long-standing struggle to balance fairness, representation, and the rule of law. As the state continues to navigate these challenges, its experiences offer valuable lessons for the rest of the country.
Heather Cox Richardson - Letters from an American - January 19
I came to believe that heroism is neither being perfect, nor doing something spectacular. In fact, it’s just the opposite: it’s regular, flawed human beings choosing to put others before themselves, even at great cost, even if no one will ever know, even as they realize the walls might be closing in around them.
Theodore Roosevelt's second inaugural address - 1905: Much has been given us, and much will rightfully be expected from us. We have duties to others and duties to ourselves; and we can shirk neither.
Fareed’s Global Briefing: Lessons for the US Under Trump 2.0, Courtesy of Brazil
“There are many reasons why political institutions in Brazil were able to respond to democratic threats with greater resolve and efficiency than their counterparts in the United States. But one explanation towers above the rest: the need to protect democracy is felt much more deeply. In the United States, a broad swath of voters and politicians appear unconcerned by the threat that a caudillista [strongman-like] leader poses to democracy. But in Brazil there is a keen sense of what it means for a country to lose its democracy. Between 1964 and 1985, the country endured a military dictatorship. The collective memory of that brutal regime has made it difficult for Bolsonaro to stage a political comeback. It has motivated politicians and lawmakers to make it an urgent priority to uphold and strengthen democratic institutions and norms. Just as important, if not more so, has been the robust civic response to Bolsonaro’s democratic threats and the possibility of his comeback. It stands in striking contrast to the tepid interest of the American public, during the 2024 election campaign, about the threat to democracy posed by Trump’s return to power.” ~ Omar G. Encarnación
Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address - 1865: With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
‘Lady McBiden’: Alexandra Pelosi Blasts the First Lady
Since Pelosi helped engineer the parliamentary coup on Biden last summer, the president has refused to speak to her in any significant way, effectively ending his relationship with his pre-Baby Boom contemporary, the woman he once called “my Catholic sister.”
The opening week of the administration is likely to leave our heads spinning as Trump surges out of the gate with a series of sweeping executive orders reversing Biden’s own orders and pushing into new territory on immigration (including an attempt to close the southern border on public health grounds), government rules (specifically, the elimination of DEI considerations from all hiring and promotion at the federal level), and other policy areas.
Biden Had the World’s Most Powerful Perch—and Rarely Used It
As Tom Malinowski, the former congressman from New Jersey, put it: Biden “believed in our values but not our power. Whereas Trump believes in our power, but not our values.”
History Will Judge the Complicit
It was Graham who made excuses for Trump’s abuse of power. It was Graham—a JAG Corps lawyer—who downplayed the evidence that the president had attempted to manipulate foreign courts and blackmail a foreign leader into launching a phony investigation into a political rival. It was Graham who abandoned his own stated support for bipartisanship and instead pushed for a hyperpartisan Senate Judiciary Committee investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden’s son. It was Graham who played golf with Trump, who made excuses for him on television, who supported the president even as he slowly destroyed the American alliances—with Europeans, with the Kurds—that Graham had defended all his life. By contrast, it was Romney who, in February, became the only Republican senator to break ranks with his colleagues, voting to impeach the president. “Corrupting an election to keep oneself in office,” he said, is “perhaps the most abusive and destructive violation of one’s oath of office that I can imagine.” One man proved willing to betray ideas and ideals that he had once stood for. The other refused. Why?
John F. Kennedy's inaugural address - 1961: Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country.
His entire raison d’être was to keep Trump—and Trumpism—from returning to the Oval Office. “If Trump wasn’t running, I’m not sure I’d be running,” the president told donors a year ago this week. “We cannot let him win.” Twelve months and one belated switcheroo atop the ticket later, Democrats are staring at four more years of Trump and a generation of Republican politics shaped in his image—a reality that nominating and electing Biden in 2020 was supposed to prevent. Instead, so much of what they feared would happen had Trump won a second term in 2020 threatens to come to pass: A GOP president with authoritarian instincts, more knowledgeable in the position and unconstrained by a quest for reelection, moving forward with alacrity on a conservative populist agenda without regard for the norms and strictures of constitutional governance.
After years of people yelling at me in books, think pieces, and tweets (lol) to “break up with my phone,” “delete your social media accounts,” and “fuck Mark Zuckerberg,” turns out the thing that I needed was a whole conglomeration of quiet arguments and technological shifts that made my phone and the social media accounts on it feel less precious. Put differently, I haven’t come to value it less; instead, it’s become less valuable.
Bill Clinton's first inaugural address - 1993: There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.
Quote of the day:
“Never, never be afraid to do what's right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake. Society's punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way.” ~ Martin Luther King Jr.