The Biden - Harris Era.

[MDlaxfan76]

Totally agree. It is 100% glaringly hypocritical.

But so is complaining about ethics, visibility and transparency for 4 years, and now suddenly saying "Nothing to see here!" and "Just trust us!"

Biden hasn't even gotten his business cards made....what is there to see?

He and Hugo stole the election!

[foreverlax]

It's hilarious hearing the talking heads crying about Biden bringing in former BHO staff....would you rather have folks from the Clinton administration?

[Brooklyn]

this is what's ahead for the Biden administration thanks to the stupidity of the tRUMP regime:

[Farfromgeneva]

Clarly someone hasn't been reading Parler.

[dislaxxic]

Focus is on who may be picked for the very critical Attorney General job

...with Sally Yates a strong contender. How fitting would THAT be?

Several qualified black candidates are also emerging...think Don the Con loses sleep over who will get the job??

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[dislaxxic]

Morning Joe just reminded everyone that the Republican-led SENATE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE passed criminal referrals on Don Trump Junior and Jared Kushner (and others) to the DoJ...

What was that about pre-emptive pardons??

Biden Attorney General may be VERY busy!

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[Typical Lax Dad]

Totally agree. It is 100% glaringly hypocritical.

But so is complaining about ethics, visibility and transparency for 4 years, and now suddenly saying "Nothing to see here!" and "Just trust us!"

So that there is no misunderstanding.....I ain’t questioning anything Biden and his administration does. I don’t care and the bar has already been set with Team Trump.

[youthathletics]

Totally agree. It is 100% glaringly hypocritical.

But so is complaining about ethics, visibility and transparency for 4 years, and now suddenly saying "Nothing to see here!" and "Just trust us!"

So that there is no misunderstanding.....I ain’t questioning anything Biden and his administration does. I don’t care and the bar has already been set with Team Trump.

You sound like a 10 year old.....but Mommy, johhny did it, why cant I?.

[Typical Lax Dad]

Totally agree. It is 100% glaringly hypocritical.

But so is complaining about ethics, visibility and transparency for 4 years, and now suddenly saying "Nothing to see here!" and "Just trust us!"

So that there is no misunderstanding.....I ain’t questioning anything Biden and his administration does. I don’t care and the bar has already been set with Team Trump.

You sound like a 10 year old.....but Mommy, johhny did it, why cant I?.

Read the tape. Just re-iterating what I have been saying for months. I don’t care......but “mommy Fauci said I didn’t need a mask back in February”!!

[MDlaxfan76]

I'll say it slightly differently.
The Trump crew has set the bar so low that I'll be fine with the usual level of issues in most R or D Administrations.

I'll be fine with prosecutions of any serious issues.

I won't be fine with immensely hypocritical attacks on the Biden Admin for "tan suit" level issues from the same a-holes who've been excusing Trump and crew's mendacity and corruption and dishonesty at every turn.

[dislaxxic]

I won't be fine with immensely hypocritical attacks on the Biden Admin for "tan suit" level issues from the same a-holes who've been excusing Trump and crew's mendacity and corruption and dishonesty at every turn.

BINGO.

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[RedFromMI]

I won't be fine with immensely hypocritical attacks on the Biden Admin for "tan suit" level issues from the same a-holes who've been excusing Trump and crew's mendacity and corruption and dishonesty at every turn.

BINGO.

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Or their false horror at the tweets of Neera Tanden (when head of the Center for American Progress) as being to partisan and mean to Rs. The double standards will be a defining characteristic of the new political era for the Repubs.

This pretty much sums it up (from my Twitter feed):

GOP: Mandatory mask-wearing is tyranny

Also GOP: Let's declare martial law and suspend the Constitution

[youthathletics]

Totally agree. It is 100% glaringly hypocritical.

But so is complaining about ethics, visibility and transparency for 4 years, and now suddenly saying "Nothing to see here!" and "Just trust us!"

So that there is no misunderstanding.....I ain’t questioning anything Biden and his administration does. I don’t care and the bar has already been set with Team Trump.

You sound like a 10 year old.....but Mommy, johhny did it, why cant I?.

Read the tape. Just re-iterating what I have been saying for months. I don’t care......but “mommy Fauci said I didn’t need a mask back in February”!!

Proves my point.....science is not settled, or Fauci was dishonest. Which one is it?

[Typical Lax Dad]

Totally agree. It is 100% glaringly hypocritical.

But so is complaining about ethics, visibility and transparency for 4 years, and now suddenly saying "Nothing to see here!" and "Just trust us!"

So that there is no misunderstanding.....I ain’t questioning anything Biden and his administration does. I don’t care and the bar has already been set with Team Trump.

You sound like a 10 year old.....but Mommy, johhny did it, why cant I?.

Read the tape. Just re-iterating what I have been saying for months. I don’t care......but “mommy Fauci said I didn’t need a mask back in February”!!

Proves my point.....science is not settled, or Fauci was dishonest. Which one is it?

There is a third option. I will let you figure it out.

[a fan]

Totally agree. It is 100% glaringly hypocritical.

But so is complaining about ethics, visibility and transparency for 4 years, and now suddenly saying "Nothing to see here!" and "Just trust us!"

So that there is no misunderstanding.....I ain’t questioning anything Biden and his administration does. I don’t care and the bar has already been set with Team Trump.

You sound like a 10 year old.....but Mommy, johhny did it, why cant I?.

You have no one to blame but yourselves. If you used the phrase TDS, or let Trump's behavior slide...

....you were told what was coming when a little D arrived. You were told that when the shoe was on the other foot, and that you had told millions of your fellow Americans that all manner of corruption and unethical behavior was not just ok.....you told these Americans that this behavior was AWESOME. For. four. years.

So you don't get to complain, sorry. And the only hypocrites are those who suddenly want ethics in governance---when you didn't just ignore what Trump did...you MOCKED anyone who dared call out his behavior.

I warned you this was coming. You all didn't listen. So here they are, using the bar that YOU chose to set. Happy?

[MDlaxfan76]

Totally agree. It is 100% glaringly hypocritical.

But so is complaining about ethics, visibility and transparency for 4 years, and now suddenly saying "Nothing to see here!" and "Just trust us!"

So that there is no misunderstanding.....I ain’t questioning anything Biden and his administration does. I don’t care and the bar has already been set with Team Trump.

You sound like a 10 year old.....but Mommy, johhny did it, why cant I?.

Read the tape. Just re-iterating what I have been saying for months. I don’t care......but “mommy Fauci said I didn’t need a mask back in February”!!

Proves my point.....science is not settled, or Fauci was dishonest. Which one is it?

There is a third option. I will let you figure it out.

Only possible if one actually wants to assume the leading US scientist on pandemics is honest and doing the best he can...assume the opposite, you can't figure it out...

[MDlaxfan76]

Totally agree. It is 100% glaringly hypocritical.

But so is complaining about ethics, visibility and transparency for 4 years, and now suddenly saying "Nothing to see here!" and "Just trust us!"

So that there is no misunderstanding.....I ain’t questioning anything Biden and his administration does. I don’t care and the bar has already been set with Team Trump.

You sound like a 10 year old.....but Mommy, johhny did it, why cant I?.

You have no one to blame but yourselves. If you used the phrase TDS, or let Trump's behavior slide...

....you were told what was coming when a little D arrived. You were told that when the shoe was on the other foot, and that you had told millions of your fellow Americans that all manner of corruption and unethical behavior was not just ok.....you told these Americans that this behavior was AWESOME. For. four. years.

So you don't get to complain, sorry. And the only hypocrites are those who suddenly want ethics in governance---when you didn't just ignore what Trump did...you MOCKED anyone who dared call out his behavior.

I warned you this was coming. You all didn't listen. So here they are, using the bar that YOU chose to set. Happy?

Let's be clear, they're still excusing the Trump crew's behavior.
To the bitter end, no matter what the cost.

I didn't think the bar could go lower, but excusing calls to suspend the Constitution and declare martial law? Yup...

[seacoaster]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/05/opin ... Editorials

"Joe Biden won the presidency because, at a moment when so many Americans were exhausted by the chaos and nastiness of the Trump era, he promised stability, decency and healing. At the heart of his candidacy was the vow to be “a president for all Americans” as he labored “to restore the soul of the nation.”

“The presidency itself is not a partisan institution,” Mr. Biden stressed the day after the election. “It’s the one office in this nation that represents everyone, and it demands a duty of care for all Americans. That is precisely what I will do.”

This is a soothing bit of uplift. But in a nation so starkly polarized, what does it even mean? While a record 81 million people voted for Mr. Biden, some 74 million voted to give President Trump four more years in office. Forget shared values: Americans cannot agree on a shared reality. Too many of us live in echo chambers, consuming information tailored to support our existing biases. Partisan warfare impels people to deny the legitimacy, even the humanity, of those with different viewpoints. What hope does any president have of bridging this gulf?

Mr. Biden might consider a three-pronged approach. Call it the Decency Agenda. The first element is turning down the heat of the culture wars as they intersect with politics. Too often, proxy fights create more outrage than progress.

The second part involves finding shared ground on policy that can push the country forward, even as it works to address its entrenched inequities and divisions. Could it at last be time for a serious “infrastructure week”?

The third element involves accountability. Not a truth commission mounted out of spite, or justice sought in the spirit of vengeance. But some way to get answers about what happened during the Trump administration, coupled with an attempt to restore some guardrails that proved insufficient to restrain Mr. Trump’s worst impulses.

In the coming weeks, we’ll have more to say about parts two and three of such an agenda.

It’s too simplistic to say that the way to tamp down America’s raging culture wars is for the incoming president to do the precise opposite of the departing one. But, in key respects, that prescription isn’t far-off. This is not so much about policy, although putting together an agenda with broad appeal and bipartisan support will be a big part of Mr. Biden’s challenge. This is about something more elemental — the president-elect’s conception of leadership.

Mr. Trump has approached the presidency, as he does everything, as a zero-sum proposition: To win, someone else must lose. Grounded in the politics of division, Trumpism is about attitude. The more antagonistic, the better. The president’s re-election campaign wanted to “make liberals cry again.”

This kind of leadership poisons the body politic, a little more each day. Presidents are role models. Their words and comportment influence their supporters and, more generally, set the tone for the national discourse. Mr. Trump has not merely normalized cruelty and boorishness; he has given it the imprimatur of the Oval Office.

One of Mr. Biden’s most basic jobs will be to model a different leadership — to reclaim what it means to be presidential in a way that restores dignity and humanity to the office. Some of what this requires is straightforward: Don’t demean political opponents or fellow world leaders. Don’t insult members of your own administration. Don’t accuse people who merely disagree with you of treason. Don’t have a Twitter tantrum every time your feelings get bruised. Or, maybe, stay off Twitter altogether.

More specifically, Mr. Biden will need to restore and reinforce some guardrails and norms that Mr. Trump tore down, in the recognition that not even presidents are above the law. He has already made his tax returns public, a welcome step back toward accountability. Going forward, he will need to make clear that key institutions — the Department of Justice, the intelligence community and the military, for starters — will be free from partisan meddling. His administration’s inspectors general must be treated as guardians, not turncoats, and they may need to be granted additional protections. He will need to acknowledge that oversight of the executive branch is a legitimate function of Congress, not something to be dismissed out of hand.

Speaking to the concerns of Mr. Trump’s supporters, without condemnation or condescension, will be crucial to Mr. Biden’s unification efforts. It helps that the new president has an unpolished, regular-guy appeal and a knack for connecting on a personal level that keeps him from seeming like a snooty elitist. His Catholic faith is important to him, which will resonate in many enclaves. In pursuing his governing agenda, disagreements will arise over deeply held beliefs, and the arguments are bound to get heated. But, unlike his predecessor, Mr. Biden knows the difference between opponents and enemies.

Mr. Trump has stoked cultural conflict — by, for instance, declaring war on N.F.L. players who kneel during the national anthem. Mr. Biden presumably will find better uses of his time and energy. Not every culture-war skirmish merits presidential involvement, and many would be better managed without it. QAnon may be a disturbing sign of the times, but it does not yet rise to the level of a presidential talking point. Neither do the “thin blue line” flags that are a sign of police solidarity and, depending on whom you ask, white supremacy.

With the coronavirus holding center stage, even core culture-war issues — abortion, L.G.B.T.Q. rights, religious freedom, assault weapons — may wind up relegated to the political background. There will be movement on all of these issues outside of Mr. Biden’s control, either in Congress or the courts. But he need not celebrate or mourn each of these developments as an existential victory or defeat. Not because they aren’t important, but precisely because they incite such passion and fury. All of these questions will be contested long after Mr. Biden’s term in office is over. These long-simmering challenges will still be there, waiting, when the acute trauma of the pandemic has passed and the nation begins its recovery.

Mr. Biden has the temperament and the tools to moderate rather than maximize conflict. When the death of George Floyd this spring sparked nationwide protests over racial injustice and police brutality, forcing those issues to the forefront of the presidential race, Mr. Trump sought to inflame tensions. Who can forget his Twitter invocation of the civil rights-era phrase, “When the looting starts, the shooting starts”?

Mr. Biden took a different approach. He acknowledged America’s entrenched racism and stressed his support for police reform, even as he rightfully rejected the edgier calls to “defund the police.” He reached out to the victims of and the families impacted by police violence, offering comfort and understanding, and he sympathized with the frustration and anger of the protesters. But he also condemned the pockets of violent rioting that accompanied some protests. His goal was not to downplay the problem but to lower the temperature on a crisis that threatened to consume the nation.

Nowhere has the bleed of culture wars into politics been deadlier than in what should have been a wholly apolitical matter: the handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Historians will puzzle over the idea that mask-wearing in service of protecting all citizens was considered by many to be a mark of oppression. Imagine if supporters of free trade or the Green New Deal decided to shun wearing seatbelts, as a political statement.

The pandemic is a public health emergency requiring precautions and sacrifices. Yet Americans are also weary of those sacrifices and depressed and frustrated by having their lives turned upside down. As president, Mr. Biden can express empathy with such exhaustion, while standing firm on the necessity of ongoing safety measures. He can continue to model good behavior, like mask-wearing and social distancing. He can decline to host potential super-spreader events in the Rose Garden. Other members of his administration can be directed to follow suit. A national mask mandate might not be feasible at this point, but calling on government workers to observe basic safety precautions is well within the president’s authority. If Americans see their leaders working to keep the public safe, they may be more willing to do their part.

If, as seems likely, the new president inherits a divided government, some of the more ambitious items on many of his supporters’ wish lists will have to be set aside for now. As a candidate, Mr. Biden won plaudits for his listening skills and for his outreach to former rivals. Once in office, he’ll need to keep the lines of communication wide open and ensure that his restive base does not feel taken for granted.

Pretty much every move Mr. Biden makes will disappoint some constituency. Such is the nature of the presidency. His persistent challenge will be to deal with all parties respectfully, bringing people into the conversation and making them feel heard. Even when his outreach efforts fail, they will send a message about how he views his job.

“Let’s give each other a chance,” Mr. Biden pleaded in his Nov. 7 victory speech. “It’s time to put away the harsh rhetoric. Lower the temperature, see each other again, listen to each other again. And to make progress, we have to stop treating our opponents as our enemies. They are not enemies. They are Americans.”

America’s divisions predate Mr. Trump, and they will outlast Mr. Biden. But there is progress to be made. And there is value in the very act of trying."

[dislaxxic]

Biden’s ambassador to the GOP

"Sen. Chris Coons' relationships with Republicans will be critical to advancing the new president's agenda."

Will Senator McConnell recognize that "elections has consequences" when it's not one of his party (Trumpist) winning a national election??

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[dislaxxic]

Josh Marshall at TPM:

Lock 'em up...or at least, dis-bar these numbnuts...

Let me share a few more thoughts on the topic of election crimes, and the fact that we are seeing numerous instances of things that are presented as farfetched strategies but are in fact crimes. As noted last week, if a public official pressures an election official to change the results of an election that is a crime. We’ve seen numerous instances of it, most recently from the President himself.

We enforce laws and punish crimes in a number of different ways and with a number of theories underlying the punishment. One reason is to publicly demarcate acceptable and unacceptable behavior. But a key goal is always deterrence. And election crimes are a domain of law in which deterrence is most salient.

These are not crimes of passion. The important ones are not committed by people whose lives are so disordered or tenuous that they’re not thinking of what happens in a week or a decade. These are crimes of strategy and advantage.

I’m not terribly optimistic that we’re going to see prosecutions for these acts. But there’s another area we can and should see action: that is against the lawyers who are trying to overturn the results of a free and fair election.

Members of the bar have all sorts of affirmative responsibilities to the courts and the public that are separate from criminal law. The standards are different. They are more expansive because they aren’t about your property or liberty. They’re about whether you get to practice law. We’ve seen numerous lawyers clog the courts with palpably frivolous claims. We’ve seen other lawyers make obliviously and willfully false claims in court. Perhaps even more damagingly, more culpably, we’ve seen lawyers spread damaging lies about the integrity of our electoral system which they refuse to repeat in court precisely because they know they are false and fear the sanction for lying in a judicial setting.

Some public organization or righteous billionaire should be funding efforts to pursue all of these lawyer-bad actors through legal ethics and bar sanction venues around the country. This isn’t a matter of pettiness or vengeance. There must be some punishment, some fear of punishment, to deter this kind of bad acting in the future. It is essential.

The crisis threatening the republic goes far deeper than bad acting lawyers. But a central threat to our public institutions is the lack of stigma which attaches to sowing public distrust in the electoral system or even trying to throw out or alter the results of election results you don’t like. We are all glad these efforts aren’t making much progress for this election. But the very attempt is an assault on our public institutions and our republic. For a democracy, willfully sowing doubt about integrity of an election is the equivalent of yelling fire in a crowded theater.

We attach a withering public stigma to anything tied to child sexual abuse. We should attach something similar to anyone who attacks the bedrock of our public institutions themselves. That may sound hyperbolic to some, even offensive. But what is more important than our basic freedoms, the basic promise to generations in the past and the future that the people will govern? Really nothing, I would argue. We need to build that stigma one step at a time, a moat around our civic freedoms. Making sure there’s a price for that kind of behavior is one of the first steps.

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