Ordering Up: Joe Biden is moving into the White House this week with a satchel full of executive orders to get the country moving, fight the coronavirus, and undo the Trump Administration.

  The day he takes office, Biden plans to return the United States to the Paris climate accords and repeal the ban on US entry for citizens of some majority-Muslim countries. He plans to sign an order extending nationwide restrictions on evictions and foreclosures, and require that masks be worn on federal property.

  “President-elect Biden will take action — not just to reverse the gravest damages of the Trump administration — but also to start moving our country forward,” incoming White House chief of staff Ron Klain wrote in a memo released Saturday.

No Reserve: With the US perfectly on track to hit 400,000 coronavirus deaths by inauguration day, President-elect Joe Biden’s incoming chief of staff warns that it will be half a million by the end of February.

  Today it’s 397,600.

  “People who are contracting the virus today will start to get sick next month, will add to the death toll in late February, even March, so it’s going to take a while to turn this around,” Ron Klain said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” 

  In what will be a crisis-ridden start to his presidency, Biden will have to deal with a shortage of virus vaccines. The Trump administration announced that it is releasing its reserve stockpile of vaccines, but it turns out those shots were intended for people who need to get their second shot. There is no real reserve to release. Oregon’s Gov. Kate Brown said, “This is a deception on a national scale.”

Resigned to It: Resigning from government on principle is in vogue now that the Trump administration is down to its final days. 

  The chief communications officer for Colorado’s pistol-packin’ freshman Rep. Lauren Boebert resigned citing disappointment with her response to the Capitol insurrection.

  The communications director for Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who tried to block certification of the presidential election, also resigned last week.

  Bravely taking a stand as well is Secretary of Health Alex Azar, whose January 12^th letter of resignation to the President said, “I implore you to continue to condemn unequivocally any form of violence, to demand that no one attempt to disrupt the inaugural activities in Washington or elsewhere, and to continue to support unreservedly the peaceful and orderly transition of power on January 20, 2021.”

  Azar made his resignation effective Wednesday, January 20^th, the day he would have to leave office anyway.

Words Matter: The most commonly used word in news reports referring to the self-proclaimed “patriots” who overran the Capitol on January 6^th has been “mob,” according to the website Visual Capitalist.

  In some ways, words fail to describe January 6^th. It wasn’t quite a rebellion or revolution, and it certainly wasn’t merely a demonstration.

  Visual Capitalist translates news events and economic developments into graphic statistical presentations. According to them, CNN, The New York Times, Washington Post, and to a lesser degree, even Fox News referred to the mob as a mob. We too, refer to it as a mob.

  In the 180 reports reviewed by Visual Capitalist, the right wing Breitbart and Epoch Times never used the word “mob.”

  The NY Times, Washington Post, and BBC  tended to call the event itself a “siege” or “attack.” Epoch Times relied heavily on the less judgmental word “breach,” as did CNN on some occasions.

  As for what the news organizations called the participants, who smashed doors and windows, ransacked offices, occupied the House floor, and killed a police officer, the most popular designation from the more mainstream outlets has been “rioters.” Somewhat surprisingly, “insurrectionists” was rarely used. 

  Fox News, Breitbart, and Epoch Times also described the Capitol assailants merely as “protesters” as did, on at least five occasions, the BBC.

Russia, With Love: Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, arriving back in the country after being poisoned with a nerve agent, was arrested at the airport in Moscow.

  No one was surprised. Russian authorities have accused the 44-year-old Navalny of violating the terms of his suspended sentence from a 2014 embezzlement conviction. Navalny and the European Court of Human Rights have called that case a political prosecution.

 On the bright side, it keeps Navalny in the news. He has said that Russian agents working on President Vladimir Putin’s orders poisoned him with a nerve agent during a trip to Siberia in August. 

The Obit Page: Phil Spector, the brilliant record producer behind some of the biggest popular music hits of the 1960s and the instrumental choreography known as the “wall of sound” who was later sent to prison for murder, has died in the custody of the California prison system at age 81. He had Covid-19.

  Spector produced 13 Top 10 singles, many for the Motown “girl groups” including: “He’s a Rebel,” “Uptown,” “Then He Kissed Me” and “Da Doo Ron Ron” by the Crystals, and “Be My Baby” and “Walking in the Rain” by the Ronettes. He was married for a time to Ronnie Bennett, who was “Ronnie” of the Ronettes.  

  With the Righteous Brothers, “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling,” became the 20th century’s most-played song on radio and television. 

  Spector in his later years became a strange recluse fascinated with guns. Accidentally or intentionally, he killed Lana Clarkson, a nightclub hostess he took home after a night of drinking in 2003. She was found slumped in a chair in the foyer, dead of a gunshot to the head.

  As for his music, “The records are built like a Wagner opera,” Spector told The Evening Standard of London in 1964. “They start simply and they end with dynamic force, meaning and purpose. It’s in the mind, I dreamed it up. It’s like art movies.”

Go to the Video: New Yorker reporter Luke Mogelson followed the mob into the Capitol and Senate chambers. It’s a stunning. Watch it here.

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