I say YES. YOU say NO....Numero Tre! Enjoy!
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I'll set up a Zoom and post the link tomorrow morning.
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Heather Cox Richardson:
February 19, 2021 (Friday)
Speaking virtually today to the Munich Security Conference, the world's largest gathering to discuss international security policy, President Biden promised that "America is back." He assured the world that the U.S. will work with our European partners. We are, he said, committed to NATO, which the previous president tried to undermine, and we will honor Article 5 of that compact, which says that an attack on any one NATO ally will be considered an attack on all of them. He noted that the only time this article has ever been invoked was after the 9/11 attacks on the United States.
Biden noted that "the past few years have strained and tested our transatlantic relationship, but the United States is determined… to reengage with Europe, to consult with you, to earn back our position of trusted leadership." He said we must work together to address the coronavirus pandemic, the global economic crisis, and the climate crisis.
Then he cut to the core of what is at stake.
Democracy is under assault around the world, he said. "We are in the midst of a fundamental debate about the future and direction of our world. We're at an inflection point between those who argue that, given all the challenges we face — from the fourth industrial revolution to a global pandemic — that autocracy is the best way forward, they argue, and those who understand that democracy is essential — essential to meeting those challenges."
"… [D]emocracy will and must prevail. We must demonstrate that democracies can still deliver for our people in this changed world. That, in my view, is our galvanizing mission."
*** It shows. Democrats are setting out to demonstrate that democracy works. While Republicans have become the party of obstruction, starving the government while turning the nation over to business leaders in the belief that the market will most effectively order society, Biden is advancing government policies that are hugely popular among Democrats and Republicans both. Timothy Egan of the New York Times today compared Biden to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who oversaw the creation of a government that regulated business, provided a basic social safety net, and promoted infrastructure.
More than 72% percent of Americans like Biden's American Rescue Plan, the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package. Sixty-one percent want a $15 federal minimum wage, which is currently in the American Rescue Plan. Sixty-three percent want the U.S. to be in the Paris climate agreement (which we officially rejoined today), and 83% want undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children, the so-called Dreamers, to have a path to citizenship. Biden promised 100 million vaccines in his first 100 days; we should actually hit that goal by late March— a month early-- even if the pace stays where it is.
Biden is making a clear contrast between his approach and that of his predecessor. Speaking at a Pfizer vaccine plant in Michigan today, he said: ""My predecessor -- as my mother would say, God love him -- failed to order enough vaccines, failed to mobilize the effort to administer the shots, failed to set up vaccine centers. That changed the moment we took office."
Sixty-one percent of Americans say they are optimistic about the next four years.
*** Not just Biden, but other Democrats are also working to show that our government can reflect the community values of our people. Yesterday, when Texas Senator Ted Cruz (R) was being roasted for taking his family on a vacation to Cancun when his constituents were suffering without heat, power, and supplies, former Representative Beto O'Rourke (D), who ran against Cruz in 2018 and lost, was running a phone bank to connect hundreds of thousands of older Texans with services.
New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat who is often demonized by Republicans, also worked to demonstrate unity and government working for the people: she launched a fundraiser on social media and raised $2 million for the red state of Texas.
In contrast to Democrats and Independents, who are optimistic about the future, 65% of Republicans say they are pessimistic about it, and they seem determined to stop Biden in his tracks. They seem to be planning on regaining power by stopping people from voting, thus abandoning democracy altogether.
Republican state legislatures across the country are using the former president's big lie to insist that they must change voting laws to stop voter fraud. The idea behind the attack on the Capitol on January 6 was that Democrats had stolen the election from the Republican incumbent. This was a lie, disproven in courts, recounts, and state legislatures, but it is now the excuse for suppressing the popular vote. This week, the Republican State Leadership Committee announced it was creating a commission to examine election laws "to restore the American people's confidence in the integrity of their free and fair elections" by "making it easier to vote and harder to cheat."
Republican state lawmakers are attacking the expanded access to voting put in place in 2020, especially mail-in voting. Although there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud in 2020, and repeated studies have shown voter fraud is vanishingly rare, 33 states are considering more than 165 bills to restrict voting, more than four times the number from last year. These bills are intended to stop mail-in voting, increase voter ID requirements, make it harder to register to vote, and expand purges of voter rolls.
>>> But, even as Republicans are trying to curtail voting, Democrats are trying to expand it. Lawmakers in 37 states have introduced 541 bills to expand mail-in voting, expand early voting, promote voter registration, and restore the right to vote for those who have lost it. At the national level, the first measure Democrats introduced into Congress this year was the "For the People Act," which embraces the policies in the state bills and also reforms campaign financing, requires candidates to disclose the previous ten years of their tax returns, and ends gerrymandering.
The current struggle over our government and our democracy is in the news in another way today, too. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia announced that a grand jury had indicted six more people for "conspiring to obstruct the United States Congress's certification of the result of the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election, among other charges." They join three others already charged for trying to "corruptly obstruct, influence, or impede an official proceeding."
In his speech, Biden emphasized not just the importance of democracy, but also how much work it is to keep it. "Democracy doesn't happen by accident," he said. "We have to defend it, fight for it, strengthen it, renew it. We have to prove that our model isn't a relic of our history; it's the single best way to revitalize the promise of our future."
He did indeed sound like FDR when he concluded: "if we work together with our democratic partners, with strength and confidence, I know that we'll meet every challenge and outpace every challenger."
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I love how Biden referred to 45 as “my predecessor". Also, Biden often gives a shout out to some phrase his mom used. Love that, as well as how he adds God in to the discussion in subtle, oh-so-appropriate ways. Yes, I definitely see how he can be compared to FDR (Biden, not God.)
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February 20, 11:30 Central Time
Zoom Meetinghttps://us04web.zoom.us/j/74109039176?pwd=eE1oUnVycGMzSnZPSkF3QTdwR1J0UT09
Meeting ID: 741 0903 9176
Passcode: PPGeD60 -
Have to take the car to the garage for repairs and hope like heck to be back in time.
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I won't make it. Still no propane, so no furnace, using small electric heater to keep living room at 58, computer is in another room. Back when my fingers are warmer!
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Great and fun meeting, Ruth & Kathi! Just the three of us--quality if not quantity. Thanks, Ruth, for setting it up. Jackie, hope the shop did right by your car--next week, third time's the charm?
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Thinking of you Beaverntx!
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That is what I was going to say!!! Thank you Ruth!!!!!!
Now that I am literate in phone zoom, I will be there every week Sandy,it was quality time! I loved every minute.
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Jealous of you zoomers today. We were slow getting home from the garage -- car is still being checked out so don't have an answer as yet. First day that it was actually possible to really move it. Our lane was plowed and some of our driveway was as well. Good times are coming.
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As was said way, way back in my day. " Ya got a point there judge ".
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I'm afraid I was under a down comforter shivering in bed -- had my second shot yesterday and the immune response is kicking in (and kicking my butt) today... One of these days I really will make it!
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Would love to send this to a whole lot of Reps. who would not allow themselves to get it anyway. They would only latch onto the legitimate presidency bit.
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Yeslama, I had shot #1 Thursday and spent most of Friday sleeping and being cold! 😴😴🥶🥶😴😴
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Glad you ladies had a good Zoom meeting!
Interesting to hear of you reaction to the vaccine, Ruth, since you had Covid.
Well, Joe’s been in office one month today. Excerpts from an article (following) are interesting and one makes a point about Biden that I just mentioned to dh this morning (after the conversation, my phone spying on me made sure this article popped up). But the strategy is to underpromise and overdeliver. Biden is much smarter than many want to give him credit for. We still have a ways to go to erase Trump, but there’s been some progress.
Biden's 1st month was about erasing the mark of 'former guy'
WASHINGTON (AP) — When Joe Biden walked into the Oval Office for the first time as president a month ago, his pens were ready. Already.
Lining a fine wooden box, they bore the presidential seal and an imprint of his signature, a micro-mission accomplished in advance of his swearing-in.
Four years ago, pens were just one more little drama in Donald Trump's White House. The gold-plated signature pens he favored had to be placed on rush order in his opening days. Over time, he came to favor Sharpies over the government-issued pens.
On matters far more profound than a pen, Biden is out to demonstrate that the days of a seat-of-the-pants presidency are over.
He wants to show that the inflationary cycle of outrage can be contained. That things can get done by the book. That the new guy can erase the legacy of the "former guy," as Biden has called Trump.
Biden has been purging Trumpism however he can in an opening stretch that is wholly unlike the turmoil and trouble of his predecessor's first month.
The first time the nation saw Biden in the Oval Office, hours after he was sworn in, he sat behind the Resolute Desk with a mask on his face.
Trump, of course, had eschewed masks. Not only that, but he had made their use a culture war totem and political cudgel even as thousands of Americans were dying each day from a virus that properly worn masks can ward off.
Though Biden wore a mask in the campaign, seeing it on the face of the new president at the desk in the famed Oval Office made for a different message. Biden wished to make a sharp break with his predecessor while his administration came to own the deep and intractable crises that awaited him.
The strategy had been in the works since before the election and began with Biden at the desk signing a flurry of executive orders. The intent was clear: to unwind the heart of Trump's agenda on immigration, the pandemic and more while also rejoining international alliances and trying to assure historic allies that the United States could be relied upon once again.
"The subtext under every one of the images we are seeing from the White House is the banner: 'Under new management'," says Robert Gibbs, who was press secretary for President Barack Obama.
"Whether showing it overtly or subtly, the message they are trying to deliver, without engaging the former president, is to make sure everyone understands that things were going to operate differently now and that hopefully the results would be different, too."
....Biden's first month has been comparatively drama-free, with many of his Cabinet picks approved and no evident convulsions among his staff other than the departure of a White House press officer who made a profane threat to a journalist.
Much of what Biden has set out to do has been to mark a change from Trump in both style and substance.
The Democrat framed his first month as one to start to "heal the soul" of the nation, repair the presidency and restore the White House as a symbol of stability and credibility.
He has acted to lower Washington's partisan rancor, disengaging almost completely from the Trump impeachment spectacle that consumed the capital for much of the month and not watching it live on TV. Yet his early efforts to work with Republicans on COVID-19 relief have stalled.
Gone are the predawn tweets that rattled Washington with impromptu policy announcements and incendiary rhetoric. Gone are the extended, off-the-cuff, combative exchanges with the "enemy of the people" mainstream press.
Gone are rosy projections about the virus, with ill-fated promises that the nation is "rounding the corner" on the pandemic.
In contrast with his predecessor, Biden has leveled with the public about the pandemic and the resulting economic devastation, acknowledging that things would get worse before they got better.
"You had the former guy saying that, well, you know, we're just going to open things up, and that's all we need to do," Biden told his first town-hall meeting as president, this past week. "We said, no, you've got to deal with the disease before you deal with getting the economy going."
........A pattern emerged: The president and his team would deliberately set expectations low — particularly on vaccinations and school reopening — then try to land a political win by beating that timetable..
At his town hall event in Wisconsin, Biden repeatedly talked about how he doesn't want to talk about the former guy.
"I'm tired of talking about Donald Trump, don't want to talk about him anymore," he said. "For four years, all that's been in the news is Trump. The next four years, I want to make sure all the news is the American people."
......to the extent Biden can, he is doing what Obama foresaw during the 2020 campaign if the Democrat won. Biden and running mate Kamala Harris would make it possible to ignore the Washington circus again, Obama told a rally, and give Americans some predictability whether they like Biden's course or not.
"You're not going to have to think about them every single day," Obama said. "It just won't be so exhausting. You'll be able to go about your lives."
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Divine: I like the whole article but it is the last small paragraph that grabs me the most. Obama said of Biden and Harris -- should the election favor them, that they would not be exhausting because we wouldn't have to hear from the everyday. We would ( just like it was for me with Obama ) be able to just go about our lives. No outrageous tweets, no governing by tweet -- no one even getting fired by tweet. Just the smooth operation of the man in charge keeping care of our lives on a determined basis and not needing boastful braggadocio type tweets and headlines at all times of the day or night -- just getting it done and moving onto the next thing.
No more panic sighs full of trepidations. I've yearned for it so much and now that it is here it feels so right. I don't even have to come here several times a day to try and relieve my angst. That is almost a miracle.
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And Ron DeSantis goes first:
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Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself,
and know that everything in life has purpose.
There are no mistakes, no coincidences,
all events are blessings given to us to learn from.
- Elisabeth Kubler-Ross0 -
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Sometimes the satire hits awfully close to home.
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