2020 Election Results Part 9: Biden Wins Again And Continues Building An Administration

[smittykins]

20 hours ago, Black Aliss said:

I've seen a few references to "Senile Joe and his ho" (because alliteration, I guess) most recently from a commenter on GHaw's FB page. Definitely red-lines the irony meter.

A few weeks ago, someone was selling “Joe And The Hoe”(complete with red hammer and sickle)bumper stickers on FB Marketplace.

[Black Aliss]

2 hours ago, smittykins said:

A few weeks ago, someone was selling “Joe And The Hoe”(complete with red hammer and sickle)bumper stickers on FB Marketplace.

I have the same reaction to that as when the Trump-spawn started harping about Hunter Biden. Like, are you really going to go there?

[fraurosena]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

A good one from Dana Milbank: "We’ve finally identified the source of fraud in the 2020 election. It’s Ron Johnson."

Quote

Finally, significant fraud has been identified in the 2020 election. It is being perpetrated by Sen. Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin.

President Trump lost the election. He lost the recounts. He lost the vote certifications, by Republican and Democratic officials alike. He lost 59 of 60 court cases. He lost the electoral college vote. His own attorney general said “we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome.”

But Johnson forges ahead with his fraudulent attempt to undermine the election — and the credibility of elections in the United States generally.

Though passively admitting “the conclusion has collectively been reached” that any fraud was too small to reverse President-elect Joe Biden’s win, Johnson then spent nearly four hours in a hearing Wednesday trying to suggest otherwise.

“There was fraud in this election,” Johnson said. “I don’t have any doubt about that.” He went on at length about alleged “irregularities,” including “violations of election laws,” “fraudulent votes and ballot stuffing,” and “corruption of voting machines and software.” He insisted that “many of these irregularities raise legitimate concerns.”

Johnson, you may recall, used his chairmanship of the Senate Homeland Security Committee last month to promote the long-discredited quackery that hydroxychloroquine cures the coronavirus. He used Wednesday’s hearing, mercifully his last as chairman, to mention “the Russian collusion hoax,” “censorship” of conservatives, “financial entanglements of the Biden family,” Hillary Clinton and the Steele dossier.

Other Republicans on the panel echoed the election-fraud alarm.

“The election in many ways was stolen,” announced Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.).

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) said his constituents think the election outcome is no “different than what Maduro is doing” in Venezuela’s dictatorship. (Trump won Florida.)

Sen. Josh Hawley (Mo.) said his constituents felt “disenfranchised” and that “the election had been rigged.” (Trump won Missouri.)

Johnson, though, lost all restraint. He accused the ranking Democrat, Sen. Gary Peters (Mich.), of leaking “a false intelligence product” about his attacks on Hunter Biden echoing Russian disinformation.

When Peters tried to respond, Johnson interrupted: “You lied! … Outright lie! … I told you to stop lying!”

Peters replied, civilly, “Mr. Chairman, this is not about airing your grievances. I don't know what rabbit hole you're running down.”

Johnson gaveled down his colleague.

Perhaps it was inevitable things would come to this. The Trump presidency began with “alternative facts.” It’s ending with Trump aide Stephen Miller fantasizing about “alternate" electors replacing the real ones. And Trump’s congressional cheerleaders have taken up residence in an alternate reality.

Johnson kept announcing that his attempt to discredit democracy is perfectly healthy for democracy. “I don’t see anything dangerous about evaluating information,” he said. “Nothing dangerous about that, whatsoever.” And: “This is not a dangerous hearing; this is an incredibly important and crucial hearing.” And: “This hearing is not dangerous. What would be dangerous is not discussing this.”

Protest too much?

Christopher Krebs, the former head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency — whom Trump sacked after the Department of Homeland Security called this election “the most secure in American history” — urged his fellow Republicans to stop the disinformation, which has led to death threats against him and elections officials around the country.

“This is not the America I recognize, and it’s got to stop,” he testified. “I would appreciate more support from my own party, the Republican Party, to call this stuff out and end it.”

If that weren’t clear enough, Krebs added this: “Democracy in general is fragile. … If a party fails to participate in the process and instead undermines the process, we risk losing that democracy.”

But Johnson kept undermining.

He had Ken Starr there to pronounce a “clear violation of the law.”

He had Francis Ryan, a Trump ally from Pennsylvania, there to call the election “fraught with inconsistencies and irregularities,” the safeguards “underminded” (sic).

Johnson had James Troupis, a Trump lawyer in his Wisconsin case, testify about votes “clearly invalid under the law.”

Asked Johnson: “Biden won our state by about 20,000 votes?”

“Correct,” Troupis replied.

Asked Johnson: “And you’re talking about over 200,000 … if the law would have been followed, probably shouldn’t have been counted?”

“Correct,” Troupis replied.

Johnson also had in Jesse Binnall, a lawyer for Trump in Nevada, who gesticulated madly and alleged that 1,500 dead people and 4,000 non-citizens voted, part of “130,000 unique instances of voter fraud.”

Johnson asked Binnall to explain why the Nevada Supreme Court rejected his claims. “They never took a good, hard list (sic) at the hard evidence,” the lawyer complained.

Or maybe he had no case?

The Republicans displayed a distinct lack of self-awareness as they wondered aloud why most Trump voters believe there was fraud. “We have a problem, a very serious problem,” Johnson said. “We have to work together to fix it, to restore the confidence.”

Shorter version: You’ll have to clean up this mess I made.

 

[Botkinetti]

They sound like squabbling little boys at a preschool demanding a toy and coming up with more and more outlandish reasons why they deserve it. It is bizarre and child like behaviour.

[Giraffe]

I haven’t seen this bit of irony mentioned yet. Dr Biden (who earned a phd in education) is more qualified to make educational decisions than the current US secretary of education, Betsy Devos who has a bachelor’s in business. 
 

Also, if Dr Biden were a man she’d be commended for her phd “in EDUCATION, even!” People would be salivating to have someone with her education in the white house!

[Alisamer]

13 hours ago, Black Aliss said:

I have the same reaction to that as when the Trump-spawn started harping about Hunter Biden. Like, are you really going to go there?

Um... I'm pretty sure those  “Joe And The Hoe” stickers weren't referring to Dr. Biden. That's a pretty racially-charged word that rarely gets attached to older white women. 

I absolutely agree about the Trump-spawn going after Hunter Biden. Every time I hear someone mention his drug addiction issues I want to hold up one of those photos of Don Jr. high out of his mind appearing on Fox News. 

I also keep saying "Good thing Hunter Biden isn't the one who was elected, isn't it?" because they act like he's the one going to be running the country. I guess due to the example set by Jared and Ivanka?

[Black Aliss]

1 hour ago, Alisamer said:

Um... I'm pretty sure those  “Joe And The Hoe” stickers weren't referring to Dr. Biden. That's a pretty racially-charged word that rarely gets attached to older white women. 

Oh, good point! That had not even occurred to me. Now I'm even more upset.

Quote

Sen.-elect Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) suggested this week that he supports a potential challenge to the electoral vote count when the House and Senate convene next month to formally affirm Biden’s victory.

Of course, the senator-elect from Alabama who doesn't even know what the three branches of government (“You know, the House, the Senate, and the executive.”) are would think this!

Alabamans get defensive when people describe the state as redneck and/or backward, but electing ignoramuses such as Tuberville only perpetuates that stereotype.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/12/17/joe-biden-trump-transition-live-updates/#link-PEAKZ2I3DRCMPN5CNSAVFBSJ7I

[AmazonGrace]

Deb Haaland is going to be Secretary of Interior.

Biden is building a pretty diverse cabinet.

The EPA director is going to be a black man for the first time (sorry I forgot his name, wasn't anyone I've heard of before).

 

He thanks "career public servants". The White House is keeping mum huh?

[SPHASH]

I wish Biden wouldn't pick so many from Congress for his cabinet.  Not that they are not qualified but decreasing the majority the Dems have makes me nervous.

[clueliss]

came to posts this:

 

And Michael Regan of North Carolina is the EPA nominee.

 

[church_of_dog]

1 minute ago, clueliss said:

came to posts this:

 

This IS huge and outweighs nearly everything else to me!  Right up there with the first female VP.  I am thrilled!

Dept of Interior encompasses the Native American agencies such as Bureau of Indian Affairs, and also (among many other agencies) includes the Bureau of Land Management which is where the bulk of the US's general domain lands eventually went after they were first stolen from the tribes and then the best lands given to settlers or made into National Parks, National Forests, etc.

There have been lawsuits unresolved after decades, about restitution not properly made to tribes or funds misappropriated.  Hopefully Haaland ushers in an era of resolution and respect.  I'm too smart to hold my breath on that, but cannot help but see this as a very good sign.

[Maggie Mae]

22 minutes ago, church_of_dog said:

This IS huge and outweighs nearly everything else to me!  Right up there with the first female VP.  I am thrilled!

I agree! This is one of the picks I've been waiting for and I think she's a fantastic choice. 1/5th of the United States (almost all in the Western States) is Federal Land. It's a lot to manage, and she has experience as Chair of the Subcommittee on National Parks. 

I hope she gets ANWR shut back down, not only is it protected land, but it's sacred to the Gwich'in people. And I don't know how, but fixes the mess that Trump made in the Tongass. 

ETA; And the fact that she comes from New Mexico is helpful, as she's experienced the attitudes and challenges of trying to balance the fears of people who worry about their jobs as we transition to more renewable sources. Much better than the last handful of choices. 

[Cartmann99]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Can you feel your blood pressure going down? Thank Joe Biden."

Quote

You know what's truly remarkable and promising about the incoming Biden-Harris administration? It's so normal.

Soothingly normal. Reassuringly normal. Lowering-everybody's-blood-pressure normal. And after Inauguration Day, we have reason to hope, even boringly normal for days or weeks at a time.

Don't get me wrong. I believe President-elect Joe Biden has the potential to be an enormously consequential president, if only because the massive challenges he faces — the still-raging covid-19 pandemic, the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, the long-overdue reckoning with systemic racism, the need for bold and immediate action on climate change — create the opportunity for transformative change.

And I believe Vice President-elect Kamala D. Harris will play a groundbreaking role as Biden's partner, pushing an administration whose principals have such long experience in Washington to look toward the future rather than the past.

But just look at Biden's nominees thus far. Republicans, under pressure from the party base to demonstrate some performative resistance to the new team, have found only two appointments to even feign concern about.

They complain that Neera Tanden, named to head the Office of Management and Budget, has a history of posting mean tweets, including about GOP senators. Wait until someone shows them what President Trump has tweeted about colleagues such as Sen. Mitt Romney (Utah) and, recently, even Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.).

And they warn that Lloyd Austin, a retired general, will need a waiver to be confirmed as secretary of defense. But they know they will be hard-pressed to explain why the first African American named to lead the Pentagon should be denied a waiver identical to the one given to Jim Mattis four years ago.

And yet, nobody is complaining that Tanden, Austin or any of Biden's other nominees are less than eminently qualified to do the jobs Biden proposes to give them. Janet L. Yellen, Biden's pick for treasury secretary, has already run the Federal Reserve. Linda Thomas-Greenfield is literally one of the nation's most experienced diplomats. Biden tapped her as ambassador to the United Nations. And he chose Tom Vilsack — for heaven's sake, a man who has already spent so much time as secretary of agriculture that they should really think about naming the headquarters building after him — to do the job again.

Biden's agenda is progressive, but most of the nominees he's announced lean toward the party's moderate wing. That should be no surprise: After all, so does Biden. There will be conflict, sometimes pitched, between center-left and further-left within the Democratic Party, both in Congress and at the White House. But that's familiar; it's how Democrats always are, and probably always will be. It's normal.

Biden's team shares an aversion to public histrionics. Pete Buttigieg describing Chicago's O'Hare Airport as "romantic" is the most controversial thing any of them have said all week — and yes, I include incoming White House deputy chief of staff Jen O'Malley Dillon's colorful description of congressional Republicans in that calculation.

It's hard to remember after living with Trump's madness for four years, but filling the Cabinet with experience and competence is the way things are supposed to work. Presidents don't put U.S. foreign policy in the hands of an oil-company executive who never before worked in government or diplomacy. They don't choose a defense secretary because they are under the impression that his nickname is "Mad Dog."

Think about it. Whether he leaves voluntarily or is dragged from the premises kicking and screaming, Trump will vacate the White House no later than Jan. 20 at noon. At that point, the insanity level of our nation's public life will settle back to within its usual range.

Incoming White House press secretary Jen Psaki will not begin her tenure by haranguing the press corps with laughably false claims about the size of Biden's inaugural crowds. When she gives briefings, she will surely spin facts to paint the Biden administration in the best light, but she won't invent "alternative facts," more accurately described as bald-faced lies.

When Biden holds his first Cabinet meeting, attendees will not be required to abase themselves with over-the-top praise for their Dear Leader. When the new president's national security team briefs him on looming threats, Biden will actually pay attention.

And the nation's agenda will not be set by Fox News hosts. Or MSNBC hosts, for that matter. If there are presidential tweets, they will be few — and sane. Doomscrolling will be a thing of the past.

There will be times when we can go a whole day, even a whole week, without thinking about what the president is saying or doing. It may be an adjustment. But normality is way underrated.

 

[Audrey2]

2 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Can you feel your blood pressure going down? Thank Joe Biden."

 

I do have one disagreement with this piece. I won't feel my blood pressure going down until Trump is out of the White House. I'm so nervous about the way he and his followers continue to insist that he won and I do not trust them to not have more awful tricks up their sleeve.

[AmazonGrace]

 

Another BS story 

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

Edited December 18, 2020 by AmazonGrace

[AmazonGrace]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Every day it becomes clearer that the BTs do need to leave the US and form Trumplandia, where they can be ruled by an absolute monarch.

 

[Emma]

Biden and pentagon

Been reading a bit more about it. 
The delay in starting the transition has been causing problems. It is a break so pentagon can get caught up and will resume after the holidays.

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I think Biden is going to run into this more than he expects. His old "friends" have drunk thousands of gallons of the orange koolaid, spiked heavily with bleach. "Once friends, Biden calls Lindsey Graham ‘a personal disappointment’ for not recognizing election win"

Quote

When Stephen Colbert asked Joe Biden on Thursday whether he could patch up his once-close friendship with Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), the president-elect’s expression turned somber.

Graham, a close ally of President Trump, has declined to acknowledge Biden’s election victory and was accused of pressuring Georgia to discard mail-in ballots in a state that went for the Democrat.

Biden, who has made his willingness to work with Republicans a key campaign promise, declined to say whether their relationship was salvageable.

“Lindsey’s been a personal disappointment because I was a personal friend of his,” Biden told the CBS host.

The late-night appearance comes as the president-elect faces the task of working with Senate Republicans who remain fiercely loyal to Trump in the last weeks of his term, which coincide with two crucial Senate runoff elections in Georgia for control of the chamber. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) acknowledgment this week that Biden is the president-elect was met with derision from Trump and his allies, some of whom called for McConnell to retire, accusing him of giving up on the president.

But Biden again expressed optimism on Colbert’s show that he could work with GOP leadership once Trump’s term ends next month.

“Once this president is no longer in office, I think you’re going to see his impact on the body politic fade, and a lot of these Republicans are going to feel they have much more room to run and cooperate,” Biden said.

The across-the-aisle bond that once existed between the president-elect and the South Carolina senator has been well-documented, with Graham once calling Biden “as good a man as God ever created.”

Despite their political differences, the pair traveled and dined together as members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Biden jokingly offered Graham his support in 2013 for reelection, saying he would “campaign for him or against him, whichever will help the most.” When Graham got emotional recounting a phone call he had with Biden following the death of his son Beau Biden in 2015, the senator concluded, “If you can’t admire Joe Biden as a person, then you got a problem.”

But the friendship fractured during Trump’s presidency as Graham became one of the closest allies of a president he originally disdained as a candidate. Then, Graham led the efforts to make Biden’s son Hunter Biden a focus of Trump’s impeachment proceedings, pushing for probes of the Biden family and Hunter’s business dealings in Ukraine.

Joe Biden soon lashed out at Graham, telling CNN last year that his former friend was “about to go down in a way that I think he’s going to regret his whole life.”

Just this week, Graham pushed for a special counsel to probe the business of Hunter Biden, who is under federal investigation. The president-elect again defended his son on Thursday, saying, “I’m not concerned about any accusations that have been made against him.”

While many Republican senators have finally recognized Biden as president-elect, Graham stopped short, maintaining that Trump still had a “very, very narrow path” after the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit to overturn the election results in four states Trump lost.

“I don’t see how it gets there from here, given what the Supreme Court did,” Graham said Monday. “But having said that, I think we’ll let those legal challenges play out.”

Graham’s spokespeople did not immediately return The Washington Post’s request for comment early Friday.

Colbert also asked the president-elect and Jill Biden, who joined him for the interview, to respond to a viral op-ed about the incoming first lady that many critics slammed as “misogynistic.”

A recent Wall Street Journal op-ed that addressed Jill Biden as “kiddo” and called for her to drop the honorific “Dr.” from her name because she’s not a medical doctor sparked swift backlash. The Journal later doubled down on the piece, blaming “cancel culture” for the attacks, and extending a rancorous debate, reported The Post’s Katie Shepherd and Kim Bellware. The dispute saw Fox News host Tucker Carlson repeatedly mock the future first lady’s honorific title this week.

Jill Biden called the op-ed “such a surprise” in the interview with Colbert.

“It was really the tone of it — he called me ‘kiddo,’ ” she said of the op-ed’s author, Joseph Epstein. “One of the things I’m most proud of is my doctorate. I worked so hard for it.” The community college professor earned her doctorate in education from the University of Delaware.

 

[AmazonGrace]