Gosh, just like in that Blues Brothers movie! 
Never heard of her, but she gave me goose pimples. She was great. I made a simultaneous translation in my head (professional habitude here) and she was so good, she was feasible, which is not always the case for poetry. There were some mighty images there, cooly delivered. Enough pathos but not kitsch or soapy. I loved the balance.
The White House looks cleaner and brighter already. Shining nicely in the low afternoon sunshine.
That his last act as President was avoiding unpleasantness, a classic, almost childlike sign of weakness, summed him up entirely. It’s the single most defining feature he has; he is weak.
I want every one of the Trump lackeys who enabled and coddled him stuck on an island and forced to fend for themselves. At the same time, I am realistic that many will escape any real accountability (as the rich and connected almost always do). This is the society we live in and Biden can’t change that himself.
But I do think that some will face some judgment, and Biden’s speech - wrapped in a comfy blanket of unity - did have a few steel barbs under the surface that indicate he is no naif. It’s clear that he has an aggressive agenda to wipe Trump’s follies away as fast as he can, and that’s a balm to me.
I don’t need fire-breathing Joe calling down retribution on his enemies. I need competent and action-oriented Joe making shit happen to make our lives better. Let others breathe fire.
I don’t doubt this guy knows his history, but a few hours after a speech might not be the best time to judge it, especially when anything more than grunting, racist tirades and a placement of an order for a hamberder would have seemed great after the last guy.
And the Democrats now have a Senate majority (with Harris’s vote) with the signing in of the two new Georgia Senator’s and Harris’s replacement Padilla
She got a laugh when she mentioned that Padilla’s appointment was due to the “resignation of Kamala Harris.”
Patrick leahy is now 3rd in line. Harris, pelosi, leahy.
A commentator on CNN just remarked, “It sounds like the start of a joke. A Black, a Latino, and a Jewish guy walk into the Senate…”
We need to be unified in demanding accountability. 
– what Biden needs to manage to pull off is the trick, which is going to be really difficult but which may have actually been made a bit easier by the illustration of the attack on the Capitol, of pulling the reasonably sane portion of the population together against the forces trying to tear the country down.
ETA: watching the parade now, somewhat belatedly; I expect it’s at least mostly already happened, but yes the PBS video could be started up from the beginning.
The joke I heard went,
“A Black, a Latino, and a Jewish guy walk into a bar. The bartender says, ‘Good afternoon, Senators.’”
Biden can let doj, senate, and house deal with the insurgency fallout. He can stay above it. There are good people in leadership to deal with the nitty gritty of following the darkness.
That was quite the stack of exec orders on the resolute desk.
I think his speech was great and whoever helped write did a great job. It hit on the virus, the division, the lies, the everything going on today.
I pray that people look at who Biden really is and give him a chance to re-unite this country. If Biden can do it, it’d make him an all time great.
I was surprised how great his speech was. So impressive.
I’ve discovered an advantage to doing it that way: when people start running, or somebody shouts in the background, I know it’s not anything I need to worry about.
(PBS isn’t giving any commentary, at least along with this video. I have sort of mixed feelings about that.)
The version I saw was:
A Black man and a Jew walk into a bar in Georgia. The bartender says, “What’ll you have, Senators?”
That’s a beautifully symbolic pic, thanks for posting. 
I expect what Biden means by unity does not match what Republicans mean by unity.
Virtual swearing in. Finally the White House is catching up with how hiring has been going in the covid world.
Biden gave a great speech. Obviously unity was the underlining theme but usually these speeches are less about particulars and more about generalities* but Biden did delve into some particulars. It explains why his speech in terms of number of words is the longest since Ronald Reagan in 1985 and before that you have to go back to Herbert Hoover.
*Trump also dealt in particulars but only because his speech was more of a campaign riff. In terms of words it was the shortest speech since Jimmy Carter in 1977 but in terms of time duration he paused an awful lot between sentences for crowd applause so it ran for almost 20 minutes.
I feel the same way. Let someone else be the bulldog who bites the GOP and doesn’t let go. Biden has other things to do.
On a different note, the above-the-fold foxnews.com was fairly celebratory today which was nice to see. I had to scroll down to the Hannity/Carlson cesspool in the basement to find an unflattering article about Biden or Democrats.
Current headlines (CNN):
“Just hours into the job, Biden signed orders to rejoin the Paris climate accord, mandate masks in federal buildings and rescind the Keystone pipeline permit”
“Harris swears in 3 new senators, flipping control of the Senate”
I can only hope that a whole bunch of MAGAts are having apoplectic fits right now, or possibly exploding-head syndrome.
But then there’s this:
“Canada’s Trudeau says he’s ‘disappointed’ by Biden’s Keystone XL decision”
You know what, Trudeau? Shut up and stop pandering to the wingnuts in Alberta. They hate you anyway. It’s about time this country moved into the 21st century, and away from having a major economic sector based on getting energy from burning shit.
I’m sorry, that’s not correct. The accepted usage is “disgraced former President (or ‘president’) Trump.”
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Notable that at that ceremony, within a few yards, stood the winners of every popular Presidential vote since 1992 (with the sole exception of the 2000 winner, who had sent a video to celebrate the day–see below). .
(my bolding in first quote)