"In another January, on New Year's Day 1863, Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.  When he put pen to paper, the president said, and I quote, 'if my name ever goes down into history it will be for this act, and my whole soul is in it.' My whole soul is in it. Today, on this January day, my whole soul is in this. Bringing America together, uniting our people, uniting our nation. And I ask every American to join me in this cause." And with that, Joe Biden gave one of the best inaugural addresses ever under some of the most difficult circumstances; addressing the need for unity, to end our uncivil war, and above all to reclaim the value of truth. We have returned from American descent to American decency. Joe Biden took the oath to defend America against enemies foreign and domestic, and this president actually means it. Goodbye treason, hello reason. From American Carnage, to American Care Age. Today, we finally took time for mourning in America. Biden held a moment of silence for our 400,000 fellow Americans who have died from a virus the last president called a hoax. Empathy and humanity are returning to the Oval Office. Joe Biden's Secret Service name should be Phew. He has shattered the Aviator glass ceiling and he will end the relentless barrage of lies that soiled the nation. (How awesome would it be if the new press secretary came out and said, "Today's inaugural crowd was the smallest in history. Period.") As the son of Holocaust survivors, the parent of brown kids, and an aquantaince of Kamala Harris, I'm pretty sure this is the greatest political day of my life. But there is, alas, another side of the story. Biden called for unity on the steps of a crime scene. And it was a sickening, awful shame that two weeks after betraying the country, Cruz, Hawley, and all the rest of the traitors who voted against the electoral certification got to share the backdrop with Biden. The 46th president declared: "We've learned again that democracy is precious. Democracy is fragile. And at this hour, my friends, democracy has prevailed." For the past four years we've learned that democracy is a job. And there's still much work to be done.

+ NYT: Joe Biden's Long Road to the Presidency.

"Vice President Kamala Harris represented the march of history when she was sworn in on Wednesday by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. As a Californian of Jamaican and Indian descent, she is the first woman and the first woman of color to hold the nation's second-highest office." And now that the ceremonial aspects are over, Harris will have a lot of work to do as a very active Vice President and the tie breaking vote in a divided America. NYT: For Kamala Harris, an Influential Voice and a Decisive Vote.

+ Harris was escorted at the inauguration by heroic Capitol Police officer Eugene Goodman. A Black man escorting a Black woman Vice President through the halls just attacked by people carrying confederate flags to an inauguration for a president who specifically called out white supremacy. Yup, that'll work.

My kids used to want to be epidemiologists. Now they want to be poets. Wow, National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman was absolutely flawless and on point. "We've seen a force that would shatter our nation rather than share it, Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy. And this effort very nearly succeeded. But while democracy can be periodically delayed, It can never be permanently defeated."

+ "Day by day, Gorman chipped away at the poem. She was about halfway through, she says, when on Jan. 6, an angry mob of pro-Trump extremists staged an insurrection on the Capitol." LA Poet Amanda Gorman Seeks Right Words For Inauguration. (Update: She found them.)

+ LA Times: How a 22-year-old L.A. native became Biden's inauguration poet. "The first lady, Jill Biden, is a fan of her work and convinced the inaugural committee that Gorman would be a perfect fit." (The new First Lady brought us Amanda Gorman. The last First Lady brought us Be Best.)

+ Some of know Amanda better as a board member at 826 National! I'm on the board of the great 826 Valencia, and all day we've been bragging about our various connections to Amanda. How's this for a contrast between today and the past four years... WE ARE NAME DROPPING A POET!!!

Donald Trump went out like he came in. An unAmerican, narcissistic, childish loser. He served up one more helping of international shame as he skipped the inauguration on the way to Mar a Lago, where he's promised to find the real killers of democracy. It would have been more fitting if he and Melania had left in a White Ford Bronco. Before boarding the aircraft, Trump said, "So just a goodbye. We love you. We will be back in some form." (Hopefully in an orange jumpsuit.) As a last pathetic attempt to garner attention, the WSJ reports that Trump Has Discussed Starting a New Political Party. (It should be called the Defendants.)

+ On the way out, Trump pardoned Steve Bannon and a host of other scumbags. But he also pardoned a few people who actually deserved it. (See, and you said he'd never pivot!)

Susan B. Glasser in The New Yorker: Obituary for a Failed Presidency. "In the end, Trump was everything his haters feared—a chaos candidate, in the prescient words of one of his 2016 rivals, who became a chaos President. An American demagogue, he embraced division and racial discord, railed against a 'deep state' within his own government, praised autocrats and attacked allies, politicized the administration of justice, monetized the Presidency for himself and his children, and presided over a tumultuous, turnover-ridden Administration via impulsive tweets. He leaves office, Gallup reported this week, with the lowest average approval ratings in the history of the modern Presidency. Defeated by Joe Biden in the 2020 election by seven million votes, Trump became the first incumbent seeking reëlection to see his party lose the White House, Senate, and the House of Representatives since Herbert Hoover, in 1932. A liar on an unprecedented scale, Trump made more than thirty thousand false statements in the course of his Presidency, according to the Washington Post, culminating in perhaps the biggest lie of all: that he won an election that he decisively lost." (Other than that, and the 400,000 deaths, he had his good moments. The Trump era is dead. May its memory be a warning.)

+ Trump ended with 30,573 lies. Joe Biden's current total: 0.

"Although Trump will eventually exit political life, the seditionists will not. They will remain, nursing their grievances, feverishly posting on social media, angrily listening to Tucker Carlson—the Fox News host has just told them that the federal troops in Washington, D.C., are 'not there for your safety' but because Democrats want to send a 'message about power'—and energetically running for office. A member of the West Virginia state legislature filmed himself in the mob breaking into the Capitol on January 6: 'We're taking this country back whether you like it or not,' he told his Facebook followers. A New Mexico county commissioner came home from the riots; bragged about his participation; and, according to authorities, told a public meeting that he planned to go back to D.C., but this time carrying firearms." Anne Applebaum in The Atlantic: Millions of Americans sympathize with the Capitol insurrection. Everyone else must figure out how to live alongside them.

+ WaPo: Top Fox News managers depart amid Murdoch's concerns over controversial Arizona election night projection. (Translation: Murdoch's lesson is that the network should have been even worse. If you work there, for eff's sake, quit. It is not a news organization. It is an antiAmerican shitshow that costs thousands of American lives during the past year.)

"One hopes that after four years of brown children in cages; of attempts to invalidate the will of Black voters in Philadelphia, Atlanta, and Detroit; of hearing Trump tell congresswomen of color to go back where they came from; of claims that Joe Biden would turn Minnesota into 'a refugee camp'; of his constant invocations of "the Chinese virus," we can now safely conclude that Trump believes in a world where white people are—or should be—on top. It is still deeply challenging for so many people to accept the reality of what has happened—that a country has been captured by the worst of its history, while millions of Americans cheered this on." Ta-Nehisi Coates: Donald Trump Is Out. Are We Ready to Talk About How He Got In?

Here are the performances from the day: Lady Gaga with the anthem. JLo with This Land is Your Land. And Garth Brooks with Amazing Grace. We were a few millions votes away from being stuck with Kid Rock and Ted Nugent.

Here are some photos of the day from Buzzfeed and CNN. And a reminder of just how weird the scene really was from InFocus: An Inauguration Like No Other.

There was no bottom over the past four years. So to mark its ending, I have no bottom today. But with any luck, the top will be lot more pleasant, and a lot more boring, over the next few years. We now return to our regularly scheduled programming. Happy (official) New Year, everyone.