That is weird. I checked it after @Doctor_Faustus posted and it was gone, but now it appears it’s back up.
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I have not read the article, but the headline here is truly bullshit…
Every administration appoints their own cabinet. This headline makes it sound like he’s getting rid of Trump’s people rather than staffing his administration with his own people. WTF? It doesn’t matter if the cabinet secretaries were Trump loyalists or actually decent bureaucrats who worked in a non-partisan way - THEY’D STILL BE LEAVING BECAUSE THEIR ADMINISTRATION IS DONE!
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At the same time, a far less visible transition was taking place: the quiet dismissal of holdovers from the Trump administration, who have been asked to clean out their offices immediately, whatever the eventual legal consequences.Well, I'm three paragraphs in, and I don't know that it got better.If there has been a single defining feature of the first week of the Biden administration, it has been the blistering pace at which the new president has put his mark on what President Donald J. Trump dismissed as the hostile “Deep State” and tried so hard to dismantle.
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Gee. I wonder if there is a reason for that? Maybe it’s because the previous president literally attempted to overturn the election and even foment an insurrection, NYT?
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Yeah, the redditors are the only ones propelled by greed and boredom in this scenario. 
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Wow, a concern trolley for the ages. No, I’m not going to link to it, but Josh does.
So Far So Good
By Josh Marshall | January 28, 2021 11:38 a.m.
For a decade Democrats have been living within an evolving debate, obsession, recriminations and general chair-kicking about the lessons of the Obama years. They can be put simply: Democrats engaging in good faith negotiations with Republicans, operating within existing legislative norms, and getting played every time. Everyone in politics is capable of concocting self-serving narratives. But this one is largely true. From 2009 to 2015, when Republicans finally took control of the Senate, the model was clear: bargain Dems down (usually with some bipartisan ‘gang’), run out the clock and then don’t actually support the whittled down compromise after all that. An added bonus for Republicans: running down the clock was usually enough for the public mood to turn sour. So when they bailed out there was no cost. When it came time to act the public had often turned against action. It all came to a head in 2016 when Justice Antonin Scalia died and Mitch McConnell simply refused to entertain any nominations at all. Impossible. Unthinkable. And it happened and that was that. The price McConnell paid was a stolen Supreme Court seat.
I don’t have to tell you this story. You’ve lived through this story. But the cycle of recrimination and lesson-learning has been percolating for years, with a mix of determination (to act differently) and uncertainty (about whether anything would change) contesting the space in a tense equilibrium.
We’re starting to see some of the results. We’re one week into the Biden presidency and he is moving quickly, with calls for national unity, yes, but what seems like an unwillingness to be distracted or derailed. We see this first in the avalanche of executive orders, ones that are making major changes on the merits but equally meant to signal mastery of the federal government in short order. Biden signaled this on day one when he quickly fired the General Counsel of the NLRB after he refused to resign. Given the events since the election his team seemed to realize the importance of moving rapidly to remake the executive branch and leave little question who was in charge.
I was particularly interested to see this update from Jake Sherman at Punchbowl, the new DC insider sheet. According to Sherman GOP moderates like Murkowski, Collins and Portman are growing ‘frustrated’ and ‘angry’ that Democrats don’t seem interested in a lengthy negotiation but are ready to move quickly to the ‘reconciliation’ process where only 50 votes are required.
This is a good sign. It’s worth noting that even notionally what the Republicans in this bipartisan group seem to be willing to support is a bill no more than a third the size of the White House proposal, something in the neighborhood of $500 to $600 billion. Substance aside, it goes without saying that were Biden to agree to a package of that scale, when it was possible to push through something close to the size of his proposal, he would likely spur a party revolt that would doom his presidency. The whole idea is silly. And in practice that would still likely only garner a handful of GOP most at most. So it’s meaningless.
The Times was out overnight with an editorial tut-tutting Biden’s rush of executive actions. The clotted and convoluted logic captured, unintentionally, the Times’ difficulty finding a footing in what amounts to a new reality. Democrats seem much less inclined to take this kind of elite opinion setting exercise seriously, which is good.
We can have cautious optimism that Democrats have internalized these lessons and are approaching things in a fundamentally different way.
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NYT kept reporter who was known to have made made racist comments on staff instead of firing him, and it all went downhill from there…
His colleague, who had reports of sexual harassment at a previous job, resigned on the same day:
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This was the top thing in my morning briefing:
In a public health emergency, absolutism is a very tempting response: People should cease all behavior that creates additional risk.
That instinct led to calls for gay men to stop having sex during the AIDS crisis. It has also spurred campaigns for teen abstinence, to reduce sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancies. And to fight obesity, people have been drawn to fads like the elimination of trans fats or carbohydrates.
These days, there is a new absolutist health fad: the discouragement — or even prohibition — of any behavior that seems to increase the risk of coronavirus infection, even minutely.
People continue to scream at joggers, walkers and cyclists who are not wearing masks. The University of California, Berkeley, this week banned outdoor exercise, masked or not, saying, “The risk is real.” The University of Massachusetts Amherst has banned outdoor walks. It encouraged students to get exercise by “accessing food and participating in twice-weekly Covid testing.”
A related trend is “hygiene theater,” as Derek Thompson of The Atlantic described it: The New York City subway system closes every night, for example, so that workers can perform a deep cleaning.
There are two big questions to ask about these actions: How much are they doing to reduce the spread of the virus? And do they have any downside?
I read the briefing almost every morning, and have never, ever seen similar treatment of all the covidiots busting into businesses insisting they must be allowed to enter unmasked. About the danger of this approach. 
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The most important skill for a bully is knowing who will and who won’t fight back if you push them around.
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let’s see. why might that be…
More than 430 coronavirus cases have been reported at the western Massachusetts school in the past week alone, including students and faculty
basically, if i understand it correctly, it’s a ten day directive to quarantine in place because they are worried a large percentage of the freshman population is already infected
oh, but you know. quarantine is basically just security theater. /s
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I’m just noticing the graphic: jet fighters, women in skirts! Liberty had come to Saudi Arabia!
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there needs to be a rating method for how many times those in the commentariat actually get things right. people who act like authorities and yet… their track record is just so wrong.
there would be something to writing in a way that’s thought provoking without claiming that correctness - though i have yet to see many pundits try that tact
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WTF? The Arab Springs were bottom-up (real) populist movements. Even sweeping reforms (ha, as if!) from the top would be something completely different.
At best, using that term is sloppy and lazy.
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I’m sorry, did someone say “Thomas Friedman”?
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Thirty years late; trillion dollars short.
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From an organization DEI presentation, great stuff.
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