From a woman in her 50s who has spent nearly her entire life in government-funded jobs:
I put an American flag on our front porch. Today’s the first day in years I’ve been proud to be an American.
My response:
“proud to be an American” implies that it is somehow better to be an American than to be something else. Virtually any other country on the planet should be objectively superior as an ID due to having zero Trump voters. Why is it an accomplishment (and therefore the subject of pride) to be “American” rather than to be Nigerian, Laotian, Norwegian, or Bolivian?
From a guy whose paycheck is derived from federal taxpayer funds:
A Maskachusetts suburbanite’s feed:
An MIT graduate’s feed:
Weeping with joy, with relief, with hope.
Three from a Harvard graduate’s feed:
His summary: “This is like my childhood in the USSR. When the new general secretary got appointed, there were tears of joy and dancing in the streets. When can we start asking when children will be let out of cages and reunited with their parents?”
Readers: What are your favorite public expressions of support for America’s new rulers?
An inauguration meme sent by a friend:
Related:
- “Surgeon General Jerome Adams says Biden transition asked him to resign” (The Hill), regarding a Black guy who lost his job to an immigrant, just as predicted in “Effects of Immigration on African-American Employment and Incarceration” (NBER): “For white men, an immigration boost of 10 percent caused their employment rate to fall just 0.7 percentage points; for black men, it fell 2.4 percentage points. That same immigration rise was also correlated with a rise in incarceration rates. For white men, a 10 percent rise in immigration appeared to cause a 0.1 percentage point increase in the incarceration rate for white men. But for black men, it meant a nearly 1 percentage-point rise.”
Borjas proven right (yet) again…
Here is an informative discussion with Russ Roberts of EconTalk fame: https://www.econtalk.org/george-borjas-on-immigration-and-we-wanted-workers/
If you’re a rapper who lied on federal paperwork to purchase firearms that later wound up at a crime scene (but you did a lot of good work for children) or an art dealer/collector accused of running an off-shore gambling operation (and lived in Trump Tower) it was a magical day!
https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/Trump-extends-clemency-to-sports-gamblers-and-a-15884718.php
“The 23-year-old rapper, whose legal name is Bill K. Kapri and who was born Dieuson Octave, has a history of other arrests and legal problems. He was sentenced in 2019 to 46 months in prison on federal weapons charges after he admitted to lying on background-check forms while twice buying multiple firearms. According to prosecutors, two of those guns turned up at crime scenes and one, which bore Black’s fingerprints and contained a live round, had been used to fire at a “rival rap artist.”
“Trump also pardoned an art dealer and collector named Hillel Nahmad, who in 2013 pleaded guilty to a federal charge that he financed the operation of a high-stakes sports-gambling business. Nahmad, who owns six apartments on the 51st floor of Trump Tower in New York, served four months of a 12-month sentence.”
disappointed that Jill Biden, Ed.D., was announced as Dr. Jill Biden. Her preference, no doubt. Will writing guides have to be changed?
Had perfect teeth after the inauguration. It’s a miracle.
Biden’s first day on the job, and already 3,000 people have died from covid. This monster must be impeached!
A national poll yesterday put Joe’s popularity at 47%, but overnight the counting was stopped in NM, WI, VA, GA, MI, and AZ. They resumed counting at 4am, and today its 163%.
Monumental day in the USA history.
The USA got its 1st Chinese President and Pakistani woman vice-president!
Congratulations!
It’s just nothing but praise and praise and praise. I never knew there were so many evangelical Democrats in America. This is the biggest religious conversion the United States has ever witnessed, and everyone is worshipping at the Altar of the New Government.
I haven’t seen anything like this since Robert Tilton.
Representative samples from my FB friends:
“What a hopeful day. I’m looking forward to the country being United and the needs of the people being addressed. God bless America!!!!”
“I missed a lot of the inauguration, but heard Amanda Gorman’s poem and was just wowwed by her words and presentation. This young woman is going places! ❤️ Take a look and listen.”
“Amanda Gorman for President!” > Big city law firm lawyer.
“Deetum Deetum Gluck Gluck – That was a love song in tongues.” – Bob Tilton
Europeanist Biden has friends who have nothing but praise, and praise and praise.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/20/europe/global-reaction-joe-biden-inauguration-intl/index.html
It looks like America is back to having unelected EU diplomats, the Chinese, the Russians and the Iranians loving us again!
“This is like my childhood in the USSR. When the new general secretary got appointed, there were tears of joy and dancing in the streets”
It is an amusing statement in more respects than one. In particular, it is literally true and false at the same time !
The bar is set pretty low for Biden since his immediate predecessor is responsible for the deaths of >400,000 Americans.
It’s a good thing people can stop dying now.
My hopes are not high at this point given how bad we’ve let the situation become and the extent to which we’ve completely exhausted anyone’s willingness to comply with lockdowns or quarantine orders given the extremely poor performance we’ve had so far. I’m planning to move to Taiwan on a Gold Card. I’ve been pissed off since last March that I have to file tax returns with the California, New York, New Jersey, and the federal government and these governments are all totally worthless. The riots in nearly every major city and the half-assed attempt to overthrow the government were just icing on the cake.
The US is an indolent society where fewer and fewer people want to work for a living and more and more people want to sit on their ass collecting stimmies and enhanced unemployment benefits (I recognize that a lot of people are out of work due to COVID but I don’t understand why the unemployment benefits should be so generous that employers can’t hire people). Unfortunately, it seems that no amount of money printing, weed smoking, or Netflix watching will produce civil order or get COVID under control.
Time Magazine is already talking about Biden’s “Legacy” on “Day One” – not “the task ahead of him” or “the great challenge he confronts beginning today” but his “Legacy.” That was fast!
Starting with a fake image on the cover to get everyone’s imagination going, they make the Oval Office look like a BLM protest had gone through the place!
https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/TIM210201_Biden.Oval_.Cover_.jpg?w=800&quality=85
And then quote the new President:
“And we must reject the culture in which facts themselves are manipulated and even manufactured.”
They quote an associate professor of disinformation who says Trumpers are unreachable (and hence, why should they be allowed to vote again?):
“The people who already believe that the election was stolen and that Joe Biden isn’t a legitimate President, I don’t know if there’s anything we can say to them,” says Whitney Phillips, an associate professor of communications and disinformation at Syracuse University. “That would require these believers to completely reconfigure their sense of self and their identity.”
And then say Ted Cruz was wrong:
“The faith of the voters demanded it, explained Senator Ted Cruz as he claimed (inaccurately) that 39% of the nation thinks the election was rigged. “You may not agree with that assessment,” Cruz said, “but it’s nonetheless a reality for nearly half the country.”
So I don’t know what to make of it, precisely. Time Magazine has moved Biden’s Legacy up to Day One, used a fake image to implore people not to manufacture facts, and made ontological spaghetti out of everything except condemning Trump and his followers. At least everyone important believes the government has to provide for people’s needs.
“Unity is policy,” says Nelini Stamp, director of strategy and partnerships for the Working Families Party. “If you satisfy people’s economic needs and the racial inequities, there will still be divides, but it would go much further toward unity than just words.”