“It doesn’t matter who you voted for, where you stood before Election Day,” Mr. Biden said in short remarks in Delaware after meeting with members of a newly formed Covid-19 advisory board. “It doesn’t matter your party, your point of view. We can save tens of thousands of lives if everyone would just wear a mask for the next few months.”
He added: “Not Democratic or Republican lives — American lives.” [..]
In unveiling his Covid task force, Mr. Biden named Dr. Rick Bright, a former top vaccine official in the Trump administration who submitted a whistle-blower complaint to Congress, as a member of a Covid-19 panel to advise him during the transition, officials announced Monday morning. [..]
Mr. Biden had already revealed the three co-chairs of the panel: Dr. Vivek Murthy, a surgeon general under former President Barack Obama, who has been a key Biden adviser for months and is expected to take a major public role; David Kessler, a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration for the first President George Bush and President Bill Clinton; and Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, a professor of public health at Yale University.
On Monday, officials said the 13-member panel would also include Dr. Zeke Emanuel, the chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania and the brother of Rahm Emanuel, an Obama administration adviser; Dr. Luciana Borio, a vice president at In-Q-Tel; Dr. Atul Gawande, a professor of surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Dr. Celine Gounder, a clinical assistant professor at the N.Y.U. Grossman School of Medicine; Dr. Julie Morita, the executive vice president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; Dr. Michael Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota; Loyce Pace, the executive director and president of Global Health Council; Dr. Robert Rodriguez and Dr. Eric Goosby, both professors at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine.
If the results hold up, that level of protection would put it on par with highly effective childhood vaccines for diseases such as measles. No serious safety concerns have been observed, the company said.
Pfizer plans to ask the Food and Drug Administration for emergency authorization of the two-dose vaccine later this month, after it has collected the recommended two months of safety data. By the end of the year it will have manufactured enough doses to immunize 15 to 20 million people, company executives have said. [..]
Independent scientists have cautioned against hyping early results before long-term safety and efficacy data has been collected. And no one knows how long the vaccine’s protection might last. Still, the development makes Pfizer the first company to announce positive results from a late-stage vaccine trial, vaulting it to the front of a frenzied global race that began in January and has unfolded at record-breaking speed.
Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news media and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Pondering the Pundits”.
This election was an emergency. Black Americans rescued the nation and its ideals — once again.
It’s fitting that votes from Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, cities with large Black populations and rich traditions of African American history and culture, put Joe Biden and Kamala D. Harris over the top Saturday, making them the president- and vice president-elect. Once again, Black Americans have redeemed the soul of the nation. You’re welcome. [..]
Once again, Black voters proved themselves to be both coldly pragmatic and politically savvy. The urgent task was to prevent the reelection of a president who ignored science and encouraged racial animus, who responded to the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Rayshard Brooks by refusing to acknowledge the existence of systemic racism and instead demanded a vision of “law and order” that gave Black communities neither.
We all have a role to play in persuading this administration to have more courage, go further and live up to its promises
Yes, this election victory may be time to pause and sigh with relief, but it’s no finish line. It’s only the starting line for the next round of work. If people who worked so hard to win, go home, and go to sleep, the Biden administration will accomplish little, and the right will have its usual opportunity to get back what it lost. We can’t allow that.
The clear and pressing danger is a repeat of the last few election cycles in which, when Democrats won, too many people who’d been the backbone of the resistance relaxed and assumed the government would do the right thing. They didn’t bother to participate much because they thought power rests in elected officials rather than the electorate. The fierce effort to push Donald Trump out of power, the unprecedented scale of this summer’s Black Lives Matter demonstrations, and the many forms of resistance that took place when Trump won should remind us that it is not so. [..]
We all have a role to play in persuading this administration to have more courage, go farther, live up to its promises, all the while being louder than the corporations and conservatives who want the opposite. If there’s one admirable quality about Biden, it’s his malleability – his positions have grown far more progressive, notably on climate. That malleability puts responsibility on the electorate to lead and shape this administration into what we want it to be. That is our duty now.
For millions of Americans – a majority, by almost 5m popular votes – it’s a time for celebration and relief. Trump’s cruelty, vindictiveness, non-stop lies, corruption, rejection of science, chaotic incompetence and gross narcissism brought out the worst in America. He tested the limits of American decency and democracy. He is the closest we have come to a dictator.
Democracy has had a reprieve, a stay of execution. We have another chance to preserve it, and restore what’s good about America.
It will not be easy. The social fabric is deeply torn. Joe Biden will inherit a pandemic far worse than it would have been had Trump not played it down and refused to take responsibility for containing it, and an economic crisis exacting an unnecessary toll.
The worst legacy of Trump’s term of office is a bitterly divided America.
Biden’s long-standing relationships on Capitol Hill could be invaluable when it comes to addressing the urgent problem of the coronavirus pandemic and getting badly needed aid to Americans who are suffering.
As ugly as this election has been, a win is a win: Come Jan. 20, Joe Biden will be our 46th president.
But former vice president Biden will enter office with a specific set of challenges: a deeply polarized and intensely passionate electorate; a Senate that appears likely to remain in Republican control, with a majority leader, Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who will be as determined to thwart Biden’s agenda as he was Barack Obama’s; a graceless predecessor who is trying to foment unrest by hurling baseless charges that the election was “stolen.”
No one will be surprised if Donald Trump refuses to even show up for Biden’s inauguration. The bigger question is whether his Republican enablers are capable of turning their attention to the interests of the country as it turns the page. [..]
In the way Biden ran his campaign, and in the measured statements he has made since the polls closed, he has shown that he recognizes what he is up against, and just as important, that he understands what the country needs most right now is a healer who is willing to tell it the truth.
Joe Biden represents a move back to normalcy, but progressives will push for change.
Barack Obama — his policies and his posture — just won a third term.
Joe Biden will be president because of his close association with Barack Obama, because he espoused many of the same centrist policies and positioning and because of public nostalgia for the normalcy and decency the Obama years provided.
Biden is a restoration president-elect, elected to right the ship and save the system. He is not so much a change agent as a reversion agent. He is elected to Make America Able to Sleep Again.
He doesn’t see his mission as shaking things up, but calming things down.
But, just as was the case with Obama, many of the people who made Biden’s win possible are far to the left of him. As Biden told a Miami television station last month: “I’m the guy that ran against socialists, OK. I’m the guy that’s the moderate. Remember, you guys were all talking, you’d interview me and say, ‘Well, you’re a moderate, how can you win the nomination?’ It’s who I am.” But progressives are not likely to be as silent now as they were during the Obama years.
John Oliver discusses the long week of US presidential election results, including Donald Trump’s various attempts to make the election appear illegitimate, and a historic win for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
The Doctor and Amy take Vincent Van Gogh – who struggled to sell a single painting in his own lifetime – to a Paris art Gallery in the year 2010.
Amy: I thought I’d brighten things up to thank you for saving me last night.
Vincent: Ah
Amy: I thought you might like , you know, possibly to perhaps.. paint, them, or something? Might be a thought.
Vincent: Yes, well, they’re not my favorite flower.
Amy: You don’t like sunflowers?
Vincent: No, it’s not that I don’t like them. I find them complex. Always somewhere between living and dying. Half-human as they turn to the sun. A little disgusting. But you know, they are a challenge.
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
Germans dance on top of Berlin Wall as communism crumbles in Eastern Europe; Nazis target Jews during ‘Kristallnacht’; A massive blackout hits the Northeast; Poet Dylan Thomas and Actor Art Carney die. (
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
Citizenship is a tough occupation which obliges the citizen to make his own informed opinion and stand by it.
Trebek made history in 2014 by hosting his 6,829th “Jeopardy!” episode — the most by a presenter of any single TV game show. But despite the 35 years he spent on “Jeopardy!,” the syndicated quiz show where answers are presented in the form of a question, Trebek wasn’t exactly an overnight success.
Born in Sudbury, Canada, he studied philosophy before becoming a journalist, working as a reporter for the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.
In 1966, while still in his mid-20s, he switched from journalism to hosting game shows, starting with a quiz show titled “Reach for the Top,” and followed a few years later by another, “Jackpot.”
It wasn’t until 1984 that Trebek landed what turned out to be his big break, when producer-host Merv Griffin chose him to emcee a revival of “Jeopardy!,” which was paired with another hit game show, “Wheel of Fortune.”
The combination became a formidable block in the hour leading into prime time while earning Trebek five Daytime Emmy Awards for his role as host.
His longevity was reflected in a personal milestone, when he passed “The Price is Right’s” Bob Barker in the Guinness Book of Records as the person who had hosted the most game-show episodes.
In a 2014 interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Trebek downplayed that honor, saying, “I’m just enjoying what I’m doing, I’m happy to have a job. I like the show, I like the contestants and it pays well.”
Mr. Trebek became a US citizen in 1997. He is survived by his second wife, Jean Currivan Trebek and their two children, Emily and Matthew. Trebek’s first marriage, to Elaine Callel, ended in divorce.
I didn’t watch the 2016 SNL monologue till this morning. I had just seen the coverage. It’s different looking at the 2016 video with 2020 eyes. Here they are back to back.
Adolf Hitler makes his first attempt to seize power in Germany; Democrat John F. Kennedy wins the presidency; Ronald Reagan is elected governor of California; Bonnie Raitt is born; Led Zeppelin releases the album ”Led Zeppelin Four.”.
Normally I post a Banjo Tune, but I couldn’t find this Ek favorite on banjo. Maybe I’ll have to learn it.
In the closing hours of the 2020 election, Donald Trump is dishonestly casting his reelection bid as a crusade against the corrupt swamp that he helped expand and profited from, while Democrats are promising that if Trump is defeated, voters will finally be able to go back to brunch as the Washington establishment returns itself to power.
The former’s message is laughably dishonest, the latter’s message is profoundly cynical and potentially dangerous.
To state the obvious: Trump pretending to be an anti-establishment populist is patently absurd, and everyone knows it. He built his own private swamp in the middle of the corrupt marshland that is Washington, DC. He has used the presidency to enrich himself, his family, and his donors, while grossly mismanaging the response to a lethal pandemic.
…he has done almost nothing to help millions of people being pulverized by skyrocketing costs for health care, housing, and other basic necessities of life. Instead of triaging the economic and public health crises, he and his party have focused on packing the court with right-wing extremists and making it harder for Americans to vote him out of office.
In the process, they have transformed unethical voter suppression from a stealth scheme into a very public campaign tactic, normalizing anti-democratic fascism as just another accepted election strategy. And he is now all but threatening to stage a coup …
To counter Trump’s assault, the Democratic campaign this weekend returned to Flint, Michigan — the place the Obama administration left to suffer through a horrific toxic water crisis, exacerbated by Michigan’s then-Republican governor (who has since endorsed Biden).
During the event, Biden declared that during his last tour of duty as vice president, we “went through eight years without one single trace of scandal. Not one single trace of scandal. It’s going to be nice to return to that.”
Biden was joined in Flint by former president Barack Obama, who touted incremental change and preemptively downplayed expectations of economic transformation.
…He also promised that if Biden and Kamala Harris win the White House, “You’re not going to have to think about them every day. You’re not going to have to argue with your family about them every day. It won’t be so exhausting.”
This was the party’s flaccid message in the nation’s poorest city, a former General Motors manufacturing hub destroyed by deindustrialization and offshoring.
The same message was promoted this weekend in the Washington Post by corporate consultant Hillary Rosen, whose firm works for Biden. Rosen told the newspaper that Biden “is not somebody who is coming in to disrupt Washington. He’s coming in to heal Washington.”
This is a shrewdly concocted mix of revisionism and expectation management — and if Biden (hopefully) defeats Trump, it sets the stage for a repeat of the events that got us to this horrible moment in the first place.
…Obama helmed a presidency bankrolled by Wall Street donors that refused to prosecute a single banker who engineered a financial crisis that destroyed millions of lives.
He turned promises of significant health care reform into legislation that included a few positive consumer protections, but also enriched and strengthened the power of private insurance companies and dropped a promised public option.
He acknowledged the threat of climate change, but then publicly demanded credit from the fossil fuel industry for helping boost oil production during a climate apocalypse.
He pledged to walk picket lines if workers’ union rights were under attack, but then he promptly walked away from promised labor law reform.
And yes, Obama’s administration slow-walked the response to the environmental catastrophe in Flint, Michigan.
These kinds of scandals sowed deep disappointment, disaffection, and economic dislocation, which helped fuel the backlash energy that powered the Tea Party and eventually Trump’s presidential candidacy. And they happened because of the kind of disengagement Obama envisioned when he promised that if Biden and Harris win, “you’re not going to have to think about them every day.” In this vision, the new White House lets us all just go back to brunch.
…Obama’s Flint speech went further. Echoing a previous refrain from Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet, it was a call to resurrect Brunch Liberalism whereby large swaths of the American left disengage and defer in much the same way it did during the Obama administration, to disastrous effect.
Though it is now forgotten history, the history is clear: After years of mass protest and activism against the George W. Bush administration, many liberal activists, voters, and advocacy groups went to brunch after the 2008 election, fell in line and refused to pressure the new administration to do much of anything. Those that dared to speak out were often berated and shamed.
In touting a presidency we don’t have to think much about, Obama conjures the notion of a Democratic administration once again insulated from pressure from an electorate whose poorer populations are too busy trying to survive, and whose affluent liberals are thrilled to be back at Sunday morning brunch after watching an MSNBC host reassure them that everything is All Good.
…Democrats were originally thrown out of power in Washington and in state capitals, in part, because too many of them spent eight years protecting the gentry while promoting a “let them eat cake” message to a public that was opportunistically radicalized by false right-wing populists.
While planning a new administration from holdover sinecures in Washington, Democrats’ royal-court-in-exile should not now interpret a counterrevolution against Republicans’ mad king as some sort of mandate for stasis. They also should not interpret a Trump loss as popular pining for a return to corporate Democrats’ slightly kinder, gentler version of feudalism.
Yes, the mad king needs to go, but stasis is what brought him to power in the first place, and status quo politics is what would conjure an even more destructive mad king in the future.
…As we head into what is likely to be a tumultuous week, scholars and historians are right now warning that democracy all over the world is on the brink — and the only way to rescue it from autocracy is by generating more activism and civic engagement, not by telling everyone we will soon be able to run off to a mid-afternoon meal.
In America, the best way to prevent a new, more dangerous Trump is to refuse to see this election as an end point. It has to be the beginning of longer-term, fearless engagement that makes concrete demands of every public official — even those we like.
So no matter what happens — whether Trump wins or Biden wins — we should all be able to make one post-election commitment: we’re never going back to brunch, because if we do, our future is doomed. If we don’t, a better world may still be possible.
Highlighting an interesting—and to many, instructive—electoral trend that others have spotted in the days since 2020 voting ended earlier this week, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Saturday—just as jubilation spread nationwide among Democrats and progressives upon news that Joe Biden will be the next U.S. President—pointed out that every single congressional member this year who ran for reelection while supporting Medicare for All won (or was on their way to winning) their respective race.
Every single swing-seat House Democrat who endorsed #MedicareForAll won re-election or is on track to win re-election.
The tweet emerged as many across the corporate media landscape, including pundits and former high-level Democratic officials like Rahm Emanuel, unabashedly pushed a narrative that progressives calling for policies like a single-payer universal healthcare system or the Green New Deal are somehow a hindrance to electoral success. Ocasio-Cortez was not standing for it:
Anyone saying this after immigrant organizers delivered AZ, Black grassroots flipped Georgia, MI going blue w reality-bending 94% Detroit margin + @RashidaTlaib running up the margins in her district & Trump publicly challenging @IlhanMN in MN and losing isn’t a serious person. https://t.co/2FtJzqGki8
As Common Dreams reported Friday, while corporate-friendly Democrats have continued to go to bat for the for-profit healthcare system that lavishes billions of dollars each year on insurance companies, for-profit hospitals, and pharmaceutical giants, a new poll this week—put out by Fox News no less—shows that 72% of all U.S. voters would prefer a “government-run healthcare plan.” And the poll is far from an outlier, with numerous surveys in recent years showing this trend.
“Polls consistently show a majority of the U.S. electorate [is] considerably to the left of both party leaderships… on issue after issue—the environment, electoral reform, [and] Medicare for All,” said Jacobin’s Luke Savage in response that poll.
Despite what “corporate front groups and lazy pundits always say,” tweeted journalist Andrew Perez, “people absolutely do not like their private health insurance.”
When it comes to the 2020 election—even though Biden himself ran against Medicare for All—the following illustration, which includes Democratic incumbents and challengers, made the connection very clear when it came to races in the U.S. House of Representatives this cycle:
Support progressive policies like Medicare for All and win elections.
Campaign against progressive policies like Medicare for All and lose elections. pic.twitter.com/DZ7mUeE6Po
As astute political observers have been pointing out for years, the United States electorate remains very supportive of universal programs and other progressive policy ideas that their elected representatives—both Democrats and Republicans—have refused to embrace.
With an increasing focus on the need for radical and far-reaching changes to the world’s economic and energy systems in order to address the existential crisis of the climate emergency, voters across the political spectrum have showed—in poll after poll after poll—their support for such action to be taken.
And as Ocasio-Cortez added to her tweet about Medicare for All on Saturday: “We’re running numbers on [the Green New Deal]” next.
Pondering the Pundits: Sunday Preview Edition” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
On Sunday mornings we present a preview of the guests on the morning talk shows so you can choose which ones to watch or some do something more worth your time on a Sunday morning.
This Week with George Stephanopolis: The guests on Sunday’s “This Week” are: Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY); Gov. Kristi Noem (R-SD); Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE); and Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO).
The roundtable guests are: former Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ); former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D???); Matthew Dowd, ABC News Political Analyst; Yvette Simpson, Democracy for America CEO; and former Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-SD).
Face the Nation: Host Margaret Brennan’s guests are: Former host of Face the NationBob Schieffer; Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-LA); Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA); Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV); former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb MD; and David Becker,election law expert.
Meet the Press with Chuck Todd: The guests on this week’s “MTP” are: House Majority Whip Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC); Geoff Bennett, NBC News White House correspondent; and Kelly O’ DonnellNBC News White House and Capitol Hill correspondent.
The panel guests are: David WaSserman, House Editor for The Cook Political Report; Cornell Belcher, Democratic pollster; Peggy “Our Lady Of The Magic Dolphins” Noonan, Wall Street Journal columnist; and Andrea Mitchell, NBC News Senior Washington Correspondent and MSNBC host.
State of the Union with Jake Tapper: Mr. Tapper’s guests are: House Majority Whip Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC); Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT); Symone D. Sanders, senior advisor the President-Elect Joe Biden; Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY); Gov. Larry Hogan (R-MD); and Stacey Abrams, founder of Fair Fight Action.
While Donald Trump was on the golf course, Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral college votes were declared for former Vice President Joseph R. Biden and his running mate Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) putting the Democratic team over the 270 threshold. Mr. Biden will become the 46th President of the United States and Ms. Harris will be the first woman and person of color to be Vice President.
Joe Biden won the presidency by clinching Pennsylvania and its 20 electoral votes, after days of painstaking vote counting following record turnout across the country. The win in Pennsylvania, which the Associated Press called at 11:25am EST on Saturday with 99% of the votes counted, took Biden’s electoral college vote to 284, surpassing the 270 needed to win the White House.
The American people have replaced a real estate developer and reality TV star who had no political experience with a veteran of Washington who has spent more than 50 years in public life and twice ran unsuccessfully for president. Trump is now the first incumbent to lose re-election since 1992, when Bill Clinton defeated George H W Bush.
In a statement, Trump refused to concede to Biden and said his campaign would pursue unspecified legal challenges regarding the results.
With turnout projected to reach its highest point in a century, a fearful and anxious nation elected a candidate who promised to govern not as a Democrat but as an “American president” and vowed to be a unifying force after four years of upheaval.
The result also marked the historic rise of Kamala Harris, who will be the first woman and the first woman of color to serve as vice-president in American history.
The outcome threatened to send convulsions across the country, as Trump’s campaign made baseless claims of voter fraud and vowed to challenge the results.
Biden, 77, is set to become America’s oldest president. His triumph came more than 48 hours after polls closed on election day, as officials in key states worked furiously to tally ballots amid an unprecedented surge in mail-in voting due to the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 230,000 people and infected millions.
A father and husband who buried his first wife and his infant daughter in 1972 after they were killed in a car crash, and decades later buried his adult son after he died from brain cancer in 2015, Biden sought to empathize with Americans who lost loved ones to the coronavirus.
On a personal note, we here at Stars Hollow and Docudharma are mourning the loss of our dear son, brother, friend and confidant ek hornbeck but this win for America eases his loss just a little.
