Inauguration of John F. Kennedy
Today is the final day before the Trump 2.0 begins. I have no idea what is going to happen, but I’m sure it will be ugly and deeply embarrassing to our country.
Our so-called “president” will be a convicted felon, a rapist, a grifter, a fraudster, a common criminal.
So far, I don’t see any sign that Democrats will put up a serious challenge to what is coming. I hope I’m wrong.
Tomorrow Trump will be sworn in, and the inauguration is going to be very odd. At the last minute, he decided to hold the ceremony indoors in the Capital rotunda and cancel the parade, supposedly because the weather will be “dangerously cold.” I’m sorry, but 20 degrees is not “dangerous” weather. The more likely reason for the change is that Trump feared a small turnout.
Raw Story:
Donald Trump drastically scaled back plans for his inauguration as hotel occupancies stalled just days ahead of his return to the White House.
The president-elect was infamously touchy about the crowd size at his first inauguration in 2017, and hotel occupancy rates in Washington, D.C., are hovering just above 70 percent with three days until he takes the oath of office again and bitterly cold temperatures forecast for Monday, so Trump announced that he would instead move the ceremony indoors to the U.S. Capitol….
“It is my obligation to protect the People of our Country but, before we even begin, we have to think of the Inauguration itself,” Trump added. “The weather forecast for Washington, D.C., with the windchill factor, could take temperatures into severe record lows. There is an Arctic blast sweeping the Country. I don’t want to see people hurt, or injured, in any way. It is dangerous conditions for the tens of thousands of Law Enforcement, First Responders, Police K9s and even horses, and hundreds of thousands of supporters that will be outside for many hours on the 20th (In any event, if you decide to come, dress warmly!). Therefore, I have ordered the Inauguration Address, in addition to prayers and other speeches, to be delivered in the United States Capitol Rotunda, as was used by Ronald Reagan in 1985, also because of very cold weather.” [….]
“The various Dignitaries and Guests will be brought into the Capitol,” Trump posted. “This will be a very beautiful experience for all, and especially for the large TV audience! We will open Capital One Arena on Monday for LIVE viewing of this Historic event, and to host the Presidential Parade. I will join the crowd at Capital One [Arena], after my Swearing In. All other events will remain the same, including the Victory Rally at Capital One Arena, on Sunday at 3 P.M. (Doors open at 1 P.M.—Please arrive early!), and all three Inaugural Balls on Monday evening. Everyone will be safe, everyone will be happy, and we will, together, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
Also from Raw Story, on January 13:
Hotel bookings are way down ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration next week, and applications for protest permits are also off pace compared to the last time he took office.
The president-elect’s first inauguration sparked furious protests that led to violence and arrests in January 2017. This year the National Park Service has fielded far fewer requests for permits and law enforcement officials don’t anticipate trouble managing any crowds that do converge to oppose the incoming president, reported the Washington Post….
Hotel occupancy rates for next Sunday hovered at about 70 percent as of last week, according to Smith Travel Research. That’s compared to 95 percent the night before Trump’s first inauguration eight years ago and 97.2 percent for Barack Obama’s first inauguration in 2009. That rate plunged to 78 percent for his second inauguration in 2013.
Trump’s inaugural committee has raised a record $170 million to go toward a parade, swearing-in ceremony, a “victory rally” at Capital One Arena on Sunday and a national prayer service Tuesday at Washington National Cathedral. Information about other events are “forthcoming,” according to the inauguration website.
John F. Kennedy inauguration
Now all that is scaled back. I suppose it will mean that Trump gets to keep all that money. The MAGATs who elected him spent big bucks to come to DC and see their cult leader’s big moment. Now they’ve lost all that money and all they have are their tickets to the inauguration as souvenirs, but Trump couldn’t care less about them. They’ve served their purpose and now they can be discarded.
Jeff Tiedrich at “everyone is entitled to my own opinion”: elderly Florida resident too frail to be outdoors in the cold.
at noon on January 20, 1961, as John F. Kennedy prepared to take the oath of office, the temperature hovered around 22°F. the wind-chill made it seem more like 7°F. did JFK whine that it was too chilly, and insist on going inside? no, he did not. he stood there in the cold, and ask not what your country’d the shit out of his inauguration. he fucking nailed it.
Jimmy Carter shrugged off the 28°F temps at his inauguration. same deal with Bill Clinton — the Big Dog wasn’t about to let 28°F temps spoil his day.
Little Donny Convict, however, is a dotard of a different stripe. the frail old fuck took one look at tomorrow’s forecast of 23°F temps and pulled the plug on the whole enchilada.
In a statement posted to his Truth Social social media platform, Trump said that he does not “want to see people hurt, or injured, in any way” amid the freezing temperatures.
“It is dangerous conditions for the tens of thousands of law enforcement, first responders, police K9s and even horses” as well as “hundreds of thousands” of supporters.
ohhhh, it’s too cold. oh, boo fucking hoo. cry me a river with this ‘dangerous conditions’ nonsense. maybe Florida Man should have holed up in his golf motel instead of running for president. he doesn’t seem up to the rigors of the job.
how fucking hilarious is it that this self-styled “tough guy” who sells AI-generated pics of himself tarted up as Superman falls to pieces and hide out the second the thermometer drops?
you want to talk about cold? yesterday, Kansas City Chiefs and Houston Texans played a football game. it was 25°F in Kansas City — but Arrowhead Stadium was packed to the rafters. no one complained about how dangerous the conditions were.
but sure, tell me again how Donny the Great Humanitarian cares about the safety of the cultists. it’s such a great story. but where was this concern a year ago, when he made the faithful wait for hours outside in -17°F temps in Iowa?
Jimmy Carter and Rosalynn Carter walk in the Inaugural parade.
But Trump will still surround himself with autocrats from around the world.
Matt Laslo Nicolae Viorel Butler at Raw Story:
In a historic first, President-elect Donald Trump is bucking centuries of American tradition by welcoming an array of foreign leaders to his second inauguration.
The parade is about as far-right as they come, including many who — whether in policy or bombast — have been compared to Trump himself….
Below is a partial list of the Trump-like leaders coming to kiss the ring….
Trumplike European leaders
Nigel Farage — Brexit salesman. He is known for his anti-EU and anti-immigrant stances and accused of inciting xenophobia throughout his Brexit campaign.
Giorgia Meloni — Italy’s first female prime minister. Leader of the Brothers of Italy, a far-right party with post-fascist roots. Advocate for strict immigration controls and preservation of Italy’s ‘Christian’ identity. She’s alarmed critics for declaring herself a defender of “God, homeland and family,” echoing nationalist slogans from the past (think Mussolini).
Rewriting Nazi atrocities
Tino Chrupalla — Co-leader of Alternative for Germany Party (AfD). Known for nationalist and Eurosceptic stances. Advocate for ending Russian sanctions and Trump fanboy. In a televised debate, Chrupalla once drew outrage for questioning Germany’s responsibility for World War II atrocities.
Mateusz Morawiecki — Former Polish prime minister. Member of the right-wing Law and Justice Party (PiS). A staunch conservative who regularly deploys anti-LGBTQ and anti-EU rhetoric. Once claimed Poland shouldn’t be blamed for Nazi atrocities during World War II.
Persecuting ethnic minorities now en vogue
Tom Van Grieken — Leader of Belgium’s far-right Vlaams Belang Party, which advocates for Flemish independence and stringent immigration policies. Has labeled refugees “fortune seekers” and likened multiculturalism to “the destruction of Europe.”
André Ventura — Leader of Portugal’s right-wing populist Chega Party. Anti-migrant and anti-Roma, a minority community of asylum seekers fleeing persecution back in India. Controversially called Roma communities a “state-sponsored gang” and proposed DNA testing for welfare applicants to prove their identity.
Xenophobia in the House (Senate too)!
Éric Zemmour — French far-right commentator, author and politician. Anti-immigrant, Eurosceptic. He claims France’s decline is due to immigration and liberal policies in his book, The French Suicide. Sparked outrage for accusing Muslim asylum seekers of being focused on the “colonization” of France.
Santiago Abascal — Leader of Spain’s far-right Vox Party. A vocal critic of multiculturalism and immigration. Calls for building Trump-like walls along Spain’s borders to deter migrants. Calls Islam a “threat to European civilization.” Once claimed feminists were part of “gender totalitarianism” at a political rally.
Mixing religion and politics
Javier Milei — Newly elected president of Argentina. A Trump-like populist. Called Pope Francis a “communist” and “representative of the evil left.”
Election denier’s request to attend inauguration denied
Jair Bolsonaro — Former President of Brazil. Bombastic right-wing populist. Facing charges for allegedly trying to overturn Brazil’s 2022 election. He had his passport confiscated, and on Thursday, the Brazilian Supreme Court denied his request to travel to Washington for Trump’s second inaugural.
No Orban? No Putin?
What does Trump have planned for day 1? Reportedly, there will be ICE raids on undocumented immigrants in blue cities. According to the Wall Street Journal, Chicago will be first.
Nick Miroff and Maria Sacchetti at The Washington Post: Trump officials haven’t decided on post-inauguration Chicago raids, Homan says.
President-elect Donald Trump’s handpicked “border czar” Tom Homan said in an interview Saturday that the incoming administration is reconsidering whether to launch immigration raids in Chicago next week after preliminary details leaked out in news reports.
ICE has been planning a large operation in the Chicago area for next week that would start after Inauguration Day and would bring in additional officers to ramp up arrests, according to two current federal officials and a former official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal law enforcement planning.
Homan said he did not know why Chicago “became a focus of attention” and said the incoming administration’s enforcement goals are much broader than one city.
“ICE will start arresting public safety threats and national security threats on day one,” he said. “We’ll be arresting people across the country, uninhibited by any prior administration guidelines. Why Chicago was mentioned specifically, I don’t know.”
“This is nationwide thing,” he added. “We’re not sweeping neighborhoods. We have a targeted enforcement plan.”
The seesawing reports of possible raids in Chicago can stir up fears that advance the administration’s broader enforcement goals, even if operations are postponed or shifted to other cities. Homan and other Trump aides say they want immigrants living in the United States illegally to once more fear arrest and choose to leave the country on their own, or “self-deport.”
According to the conservative Boston Herald, Trump administration set to conduct ICE raids in Boston after Chicago, New York.
Sources told the Herald on Saturday that the U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement will conduct its first raid under the Trump administration in Chicago on Tuesday. New York and Miami will follow soon after, according to multiple news reports.
Boston and other Massachusetts sanctuary cities are expected to be a top-five target for the Trump administration to conduct mass arrests of illegal immigrants, sources said, depending on how the rollout progresses.
Trump has promised tackling illegal immigration will be a top priority when he regains office on Monday, pledging to oversee the largest deportation effort in U.S. history.
“There’s going to be a big raid all across the country,” incoming border czar Tom Homan said on Fox News Friday night. “Chicago is just one of many places.”
“ICE is finally going to go out and do their job,” he added. “We’re going to take the handcuffs off ICE and let them go arrest criminal aliens. That’s what’s going to happen.”
Politico reports that some National Guard troops are anxious about what they will be asked to do: National Guard troops worry Trump will deploy them for mass deportations.
National Guard members fear landing in the center of a political tussle between red state governors and blue state attorneys general over Donald Trump’s expected crackdown on undocumented immigrants.
The large-scale deportation effort could begin as soon as Monday with Republican governors vowing to deploy the Guard if Trump asks and officials in Democratic states readying quick legal pushback. Some of the 435,000 troops worry they’ll get pulled into a legally murky mission rooting out people in communities where they have day jobs such as sheriffs, cops or firefighters.
Bill Clinton taking the oath of office.
“Our North Star is how lawful is it?” said Rob Bonta, California’s attorney general, in an interview about the incoming president deploying the Guard. “If they are operating lawfully, there’s nothing for us to do, and the president is allowed to do that. If he’s acting unlawfully, as he did many times under Trump 1.0, we sued him over 120 times.”
Trump has said he would bring in the military to help with mass deportations, but he has not specified whether he means state-based National Guard members or active duty troops.
“I don’t want to be seen as a Gestapo,” said one former senior military official who is in close contact with current Guard members and was granted anonymity to speak about a legally precarious situation. “It’s important that everybody understands who they are and what they’re doing.”
But the confusion within the Guard hasn’t stopped Republican governors from pledging quick support to Trump’s immigration plans. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee said earlier this month he would use the National Guard to assist with deportations if asked by the incoming U.S. administration….
But certain legal guardrails exist. Red states can activate the National Guard to help with immigration enforcement — possibly to assist federal agents — but blue states with control of their own Guard could simply refuse to go along.
Trump has a range of options. He could leave the National Guard under state control but give troops federal funding to tackle the deportation mission, although that would allow individual governors to retain authority over their troops. Trump also could call the Guard up to active-duty status, which would give him greater ability to control troops in blue states and order them across state lines.
Read more at the Politico link.
Trump will also have to deal with the TikTok situation right away.
The New York Times: TikTok Goes Dark in the U.S.
“Sorry, TikTok isn’t available right now,” the message read.
Hours before a federal law banning TikTok from the United States took effect on Sunday, the Chinese-owned social media app went dark, and U.S. users could no longer access videos on the platform. Instead, the app greeted them with a message that said “a law banning TikTok has been enacted.”
“We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution,” the message said. “Please stay tuned!”
In addition, TikTok’s sister app, Lemon8, stopped working and showed U.S. users a message saying that it “isn’t available right now.” Both TikTok and Lemon8 are owned by ByteDance, a Chinese internet giant. CapCut, a popular video-editing app from ByteDance, was also unavailable.
Apple said it had removed TikTok and other ByteDance apps, including Lemon8, from its app store, and users said that Google’s U.S. app store had also removed TikTok. Searching for the apps on Apple’s app store on Sunday yielded a new message: “TikTok and other ByteDance apps are not available in the country or region you’re in.”
TikTok became unavailable after the Supreme Court decision on Friday upholding the law, which calls for ByteDance to sell the app by Sunday or otherwise face a ban. The law was passed overwhelmingly by Congress last year and signed by President Biden. TikTok, which has faced national security concerns for its Chinese ties, had believed it could win its legal challenge to the law, but failed.
The blackout capped a chaotic stretch for TikTok, which had made last-minute pleas to both the Biden administration and President-elect Donald J. Trump for a way out of the law. Until Saturday night, no one — including the U.S. government — was entirely sure what would happen to it when the law took effect. The United States has never blocked an app used by tens of millions of Americans essentially overnight.
Amanda Marcotte at Salon: Why Trump’s new love of TikTok is dangerous.
Not too long ago, Donald Trump was a big fan of banning TikTok, the Chinese-owned social media app that went offline in the U.S. early Sunday under a controversial ban. On Friday, the Supreme Court upheld the law, passed by bipartisan majorities last April, largely due to concerns that the Chinese government used the platform to spy on Americans. President Joe Biden signed that law, but only four years after Trump, while still president, tried and failed to ban the app through executive order. TikTok allows “the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information — potentially allowing China to track the locations of Federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage,” Trump said in the 2020 order.
Barak Obama being sworn in.
There’s good reason to believe Trump’s personal reasons weren’t so noble. For one thing, he’s racist against Chinese people and apparently believes COVID-19 was somehow their fault, instead of seeing them as the first victims of a mutated virus. However, while U.S. intelligence services are frustratingly tight-lipped about the specific evidence, both common sense and the testimony of more trustworthy politicians who have seen the intel — including Biden — suggest that the accusation of foreign spying is almost certainly true. Nor is this a “free speech” issue. The right to speak out, even online, has not changed. The government’s authority here is to determine what foreign companies are allowed to operate within our borders, a nearly ironclad power.
Trump, meanwhile, has changed his tune about TikTok, but not because he disbelieves the intelligence reports or because he is a free trade absolutist. (Hardly that, as his love of tariffs demonstrates.) No, it’s because he’s learned in the past four years that TikTok is a shockingly efficient disseminator of disinformation, which is Trump’s main stock-in-trade. “I’m now a big star on TikTok,” he bragged in September, vowing to protect the site from being banned. He’s also buddied up with the chief executive of the American division of TikTok, Shou Chew, inviting him to join the murder’s row of tech billionaires attending the inauguration.
“It’s been a great platform for him and his campaign to get his America first message out,” Mike Waltz, an incoming national security advisor to Trump, said Thursday. “We will put measures in place to keep TikTok from going dark.” Chew then took to TikTok to publicly credit Trump with working to save the platform.
On Sunday, Tik Tok rewarded Trump for his support with blatant propaganda. The app went dark, as expected, but when users tried to open it, they got this message: “We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office.”
TikTok is good for Trump, and for one simple reason: It is a maelstrom of disinformation so gargantuan that even Elon Musk-controlled Twitter fails to compete. It’s a train wreck of B.S., from people claiming sunscreen and vaccines don’t work to bizarre videos claiming demons infect everything to old-fashioned authoritarian lies. The company claims to stand for “free speech,” but the Chinese government censors information that doesn’t serve its political goals. The algorithm is hidden from public view, but it’s easy to see it favors divisive, emotionally manipulative and misleading information. It ratchets up culture war tensions and stokes arguments while undermining people’s mental ability to focus on developing solutions. Hundreds of millions of people willingly plug into an app that feeds them the demoralizing propaganda authoritarians have been trying to shove down our throats forever. It’s a fascist’s dream.
Read the rest at Salon.
A few more stories to check out:
Anne Applebaum at The Atlantic: Trump Triggers a Crisis in Denmark—And Europe.
Reuters: Exclusive: German ambassador warns of Trump plan to redefine constitutional order, document shows.
Politico: Trump launches crypto meme coin, ballooning net worth ahead of inauguration.
The New York Times: As Polio Survivors Watch Kennedy Confirmation, All Eyes Are on McConnell.
David A. Graham at The Atlantic: The Tragedy of the Classified Documents Case.
That’s it for me today. Take care everyone; enjoy the final hours before the horror begins.
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The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
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CNN Live Updates: First hostages freed as long-awaited Gaza ceasefire takes force.
The first hostages freed from Gaza under a long-awaited ceasefire agreement are back in Israel. The news sparked jubilant scenes in Tel Aviv where large crowds gathered for news of their release.
• The three freed Israeli hostages – the first of 33 to be released over the next six weeks – are Romi Gonen, Doron Steinbrecher and Emily Damari. In exchange, 90 Palestinian prisoners and detainees will also be released.
• The Israeli military withdrew from several locations in southern and northern Gaza after the truce began earlier on Sunday, an Israeli military official told CNN.
• Displaced Gazans have started returning to their homes, while the aid trucks laden with much-needed supplies have crossed into Gaza. Here’s what we know about how the ceasefire deal will work.
Here’s the link: https://www.cnn.com/world/live-news/israel-hamas-ceasefire-war-palestine-01-19-25/index.html
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