Joltin' Joe Biden

[Vrede too]

Wow, a President with dignity and class.

There's a word for that.......

Oh yeah, presidential.

And a hilarious press secretary who is neither an idiot nor a liar.

[GoCubsGo]

Wow, a President with dignity and class.

There's a word for that.......

Oh yeah, presidential.

And a hilarious press secretary who is neither an idiot nor a liar.

She's been terrific.

[Vrede too]

Here are all the executive orders President Joe Biden has signed so far

Dayyum, Joe's first month is looking a lot like Obama's last year. Maybe he learned that patience and caution just look like weakness.

Huckabee: Biden 'making Barack Obama look like Ronald Reagan'

Great minds?

... When you take over from a four year shit rain it's no use looking for blame. Get shit done. Jettison mass quantities of shit.

Laudable intent, but Obama had unrealistic hopes for bipartisanship.

There isn't going to be any "unity" as long as Repugs oppose something just because Dems want it. But for some semblance of it, the President (any President) should say something like this to the minority - "Guys, I'm the President, and my party has control of Congress. I don't expect you to totally support everything we propose, and frankly we're not going to back away from the essence of our proposals just because you have objections. But we are interested in your input and in finding some ways to make our proposals more acceptable to you. So if you accept that our legislation is going to happen, and participate in good faith, you've got a good chance of getting some of your ideas incorporated. If you set up to only obstruct, you won't."

Biden breaks with Obama, as well as Trump, on everything from Afghanistan to spending

Just about everyone expected President Biden to break with “the former guy,” his derisive term for Donald Trump, whose work the 46th president began dismantling from the very first moments of his administration. Far more surprising has been Biden’s break with the 44th president and his former boss: Barack Obama.

First with the coronavirus relief bill and now with the announcement that the U.S. will withdraw completely from Afghanistan by Sept. 11, Biden is charting his own course, making clear that his administration will not follow the “Obama 3.0” plotline some had predicted for him....

It appears, however, that Biden was serious. His approach has been marked by an obvious rejection of the daily chaos of the Trump years but also, more subtly, by a no-less-decisive rejection of Obama’s proceduralism. His aggressive approach to governing has put Republicans on the back foot, while delighting progressives who didn’t think that the 78-year-old former Delaware senator had a wholly original act in the works.

“I must say that what Biden has done so far is a rather pleasant surprise to me,” said the progressive icon and MIT linguist Noam Chomsky in a recent interview. That’s the same Chomsky who in 2016 lamented that Obama was leaving the White House with “not a very impressive record,” even as he acknowledged that Republican intransigence contributed much to that lack of progress. (Obama himself has written that he believes racism among GOP voters made it difficult for him to deal directly with congressional Republicans. When it came time to negotiate with Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell, he would often dispatch Biden.)

... For now, he is enjoying high approval ratings and courting comparisons to Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, who oversaw extraordinary expansions of the federal government’s role in Americans’ lives during their respective presidencies. That’s a stark turnabout from the way Biden was viewed by some during the Democratic primaries: that is, as something of a has-been and a moderate unsuited for a time of immoderation.

Guilty as charged.

“Why is he so popular? I have no idea,” one progressive activist told NPR during the Democratic primaries. “He’s like a corporate Democrat from Delaware, which is like the corporate headquarters of everything.” Not two years later, that same purportedly corporate Democrat is looking to raise the marginal corporate tax rate in order to pay for a $2.3 trillion infrastructure package.

"Biden’s coronavirus relief package is $100 billion bigger than the ($1.8 trillion) financial relief" that was proposed when Obama took office, an amount that was slashed in half before passage.

... “Shots and checks” has become a kind of motto of the Biden administration, shorthand for the federal government doing real things for real people.

... Even as Biden’s Cabinet members continue to tout the American Rescue Plan, they are at the same time busy selling the $2.3 trillion infrastructure package known as the American Jobs Plan. That package will be followed by another, perhaps equally as large, called the American Families Plan, which is intended to address what the administration calls “human infrastructure.”

... And for his part, Obama praised Biden’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan as “the right decision” in a Wednesday tweet.

Biden was never seen as an intellectual equal to Obama; he is the first president since Ronald Reagan to not have an Ivy League degree. He is also, much more than any of his immediate predecessors, a creature of Washington. That has made him realistic about what he can and cannot do now that he is president, where he must hew to precedent and where he can go his own way.

There's a long way to go, but so far I like most of Joe's joltin'.

[GoCubsGo]

Biden going out of his way to visit the Carters and probably saying goodbye.

Nice.

[Vrede too]

Biden going out of his way to visit the Carters and probably saying goodbye.

Nice.

"probably saying goodbye" - Other than being 96 and 93 years old, do you know something about Jimmy and Rosalynn's health that I don't?

[GoCubsGo]

Biden going out of his way to visit the Carters and probably saying goodbye.

Nice.

"probably saying goodbye" - Other than being 96 and 93 years old, do you know something about Jimmy and Rosalynn's health that I don't?

Figured 96 and 93 were enough, it's not like he's in the hood often.

[GoCubsGo]

I didn't really watch Biden last night.

Why isn't this news?

[Vrede too]

"probably saying goodbye" - Other than being 96 and 93 years old, do you know something about Jimmy and Rosalynn's health that I don't?

Figured 96 and 93 were enough, it's not like he's in the hood often.

They'll never die, they'll just shrink away.

Confusing photo of Bidens meeting Carters baffles social media: ‘It looks fake, but it’s 100 per cent real’

Filing under "why we don't use the ultrawide lens indoors"

... Certain users made lighthearted references to The Hobbit, asking if the photograph had been taken in “the shire”.

“It was nice of the Biden’s to visit the Shire and say hello to the Carter’s hopefully the One ring is still safe,” one user joked....

[GoCubsGo]

"probably saying goodbye" - Other than being 96 and 93 years old, do you know something about Jimmy and Rosalynn's health that I don't?

That is freakishly funny.

[Vrede too]

"probably saying goodbye" - Other than being 96 and 93 years old, do you know something about Jimmy and Rosalynn's health that I don't?

...

That is freakishly funny.

Newest viral kitsch - Carter living room miniatures.

[Vrede too]

Confusing photo of Bidens meeting Carters baffles social media: ‘It looks fake, but it’s 100 per cent real’

That is freakishly funny.

Fallon: "Honey, I Shrunk the Carters"

[Vrede too]

'Watch out for the cicadas': Biden swats bug before departing on 1st overseas trip

What good is the Secret Service? It could have been a North Korean drone.

[Vrede too]

Attorney General Merrick Garland orders halt to federal executions

... “The Department of Justice must ensure that everyone in the federal criminal justice system is not only afforded the rights guaranteed by the Constitution and laws of the United States, but is also treated fairly and humanely,” Garland said in a memorandum. “That obligation has special force in capital cases.”

Garland's action comes after the Justice Department in 2019 ordered a revival of federal executions by lethal injection, using a powerful one-drug protocol.

The change paved the way for 13 executions between July 2020 and January 2021.

"In the last two years, the department made a series of changes to capital case policies and procedures and carried out the first federal executions in nearly two decades between July 2020 and January 2021," according to the department. "That included adopting a new protocol for administering lethal injections at the federal Bureau of Prisons, using the drug pentobarbital."

Garland has directed Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco to lead the review....

Gonna be difficult to find that 45SHOLE was correct and federal killings are peachy.

[GoCubsGo]

It's kind of incredible that a President's thread has a three week gap between posts and the post is about the Attorney General.

I like it.

[Vrede too]

It's kind of incredible that a President's thread has a three week gap between posts and the post is about the Attorney General.

I like it.

6 weeks.
It only too 4.5 years but Infrastructure Week is finally here.

[GoCubsGo]

It's kind of incredible that a President's thread has a three week gap between posts and the post is about the Attorney General.

I like it.

6 weeks.
It only too 4.5 years but Infrastructure Week is finally here.

My kind of President!

[Vrede too]

... It only too 4.5 years but Infrastructure Week is finally here.

My kind of President!

McConnell among 19 Republicans to vote for infrastructure bill. Here are the Republicans who helped it over the finish line

AL - 2 Nay
FL - 2 Nay
SC - 1 Nay, 1 Yea
TN - 2 Nay
NC - 2 Yea

Hah, my Repugs are ever so slightly less repugnant than your Repugs.

[neoplacebo]

Your shit's better than my shit. Hagerty and Blackburn should both be in prison if there were any justice. They're despicable. I hope they die soon.

[Ulysses]

Both my senators voted yea, as well as all the dem reps. Don't know about the R reps, there aren't enough to count, other than that turd Kevin McCarthy. And as I'm sure you know, California is really more like two or more states, politically. Generally speaking here in the northern half, more left wing than the more conservative southern half. The mountain areas are kind of a mixed bag. And of course, the biggest city, LA, is mostly Dem. Used to be mostly R. Times have changed for the better.

[Vrede too]

This could have gone in one of our CV-19 threads, but we haven't had a lot to praise Joe for lately.

Sweeping new vaccine mandates for 100 million Americans

... The expansive rules mandate that all employers with more than 100 workers require them to be vaccinated or test for the virus weekly, affecting about 80 million Americans. And the roughly 17 million workers at health facilities that receive federal Medicare or Medicaid also will have to be fully vaccinated.

Biden is also signing an executive order to require vaccination for employees of the executive branch and contractors who do business with the federal government — with no option to test out. That covers several million more workers....

Biden was also to announce that the federal government will work to increase the supply of virus tests, and that the White House has secured concessions from retailers including Walmart, Amazon, and Kroger to sell at-home testing kits at cost beginning this week.

The administration is also to send additional federal support to assist schools in safely operating, including additional funding for testing. And Biden will call for large entertainment venues and arenas to require vaccinations or proof of a negative test for entry.

The requirement for large companies to mandate vaccinations or weekly testing for employees will be enacted through a forthcoming rule from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration that carries penalties of $14,000 per violation, an administration official said. The White House did not immediately say when it would take effect, but said workers would have sufficient time to get vaccinated.

The rule would also require that large companies provide paid time off for vaccination.

Meanwhile, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will extend a vaccination requirement issued earlier this summer — for nursing home staff — to other healthcare settings including hospitals, home-health agencies and dialysis centers.

Separately, the Department of Health and Human Services will require vaccinations in Head Start Programs, as well as schools run by the Department of Defense and Bureau of Indian Education, affecting about 300,000 employees.

Biden's order for executive branch workers and contractors includes exceptions for workers seeking religious or medical exemptions from vaccination, according to Psaki. Federal workers and contractors will have 75 days to get fully vaccinated. Workers who don't comply will be referred to their agencies' human resources departments for counseling and discipline, to include potential termination.

“We would like to be a model” to other organizations and business around country, Psaki said of the federal workforce. The AP-NORC poll found 55% of Americans in favor of requiring government workers to be fully vaccinated, compared with 21% opposed....

You go, Joe!