The Planning Department: The Biden team arrived at the White House this week only to find that the Trump administration had no real federal plan for vaccinating hundreds of millions of Americans against the coronavirus. The Trump people merely shipped vaccines to the states and told them to handle it, resulting in 50 different vaccination campaigns.

  Biden yesterday pledged a “full-scale wartime effort” to vaccinate 100 million Americans in his first 100 days in office. “History is going to measure whether we are up to the task,” he said.

  So far, only 15.1 million people have been vaccinated as Covid-19 escalates. More than 10,000 Americans have died in the last three days.

  The new administration evidently came prepared to be handed failure by the Trump administration. They released a 200-page plan outlining the kind of federal response Trump refused to do.

  Biden said,  “For the past year we couldn’t rely on the federal government to act with the urgency and focus and coordination that we needed, and we have seen the tragic cost of that failure.”

  Having a plan is not the same as executing it. Biden said, “The brutal truth is it’s going to take months before we can get the majority of Americans vaccinated.” The supply of vaccine sis not likely to improve significantly until April.

Free Speech: The revered Dr. Anthony Fauci relaxed a bit yesterday and said he was happy to be free of the Trump administration.

  “Obviously I don’t want to be going back over history, but it was very clear that there were things that were said — be it regarding things like hydroxychloroquine and other things like that — that really was uncomfortable because they were not based on scientific fact,” Fauci said at a White House press briefing.

  Not to mention the President’s suggestion about drinking bleach to cure Covid-19. “It was really something that you didn’t feel that you could actually say something and there wouldn’t be any repercussions about it,” Fauci said. “The idea that you can get up here and talk about what you know, what the evidence, what the science is, and know that’s it — let the science speak. It is somewhat of a liberating feeling.”

The Voice of the Turtle: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell wants the Democrats to delay the impeachment trial of former President Trump until next month. McConnell always has a card up his sleeve.

  If the Democrats don’t agree to delay the trial, McConnell might clog the works for President Biden’s cabinet appointments that require Senate confirmation. He might also be holding out for a Democratic promise not to kill the practice of  filibuster, which requires 60 votes to break, thereby retaining Republican power in an evenly split body. 

  Speaking of the impeachment. McConnell said  former president’s defense team needed “a modest and reasonable amount of additional time” to prepare for trial.

  While McConnell has said Trump committed an impeachable offense, he’s under pressure not to vote for conviction. 

Wingnuts Unscrewed: Followers of QAnon and such right wing groups as the Proud Boys are scratching their heads over Donald Trump’s failure to remain in the White House.

  The NY Times reports that members of the Proud Boys in internet messages say Trump is a “shill” and “extraordinarily weak.” They’re calling for supporters to stop going to rallies and protests held for Trump or the Republican Party.

  The Times quotes Arieh Kovler, a political consultant and independent researcher in Israel, saying “When Trump told them that if he left office, America would fall into an abyss, they believed him Now that he has left office, they believe he has both surrendered and failed to do his patriotic duty.”

  Heads are also exploding among believers in the QAnon conspiracy because their predicted “storm” in which Trump would take down the deep state and expose a child sex-trafficking ring within the government never happened. They thought Trump was going to declare martial law and take over the government.

  Some have abandoned the faith, but others have taken up the theory that Joe Biden was their savior all along.

The Bulletin Board: Japanese government officials quietly believe the upcoming Tokyo Summer Olympics will need to be canceled because of the pandemic, the Times of London reports. — President Biden has quickly swept out Trump appointees at Voice of America Radio, two of whom were immediately escorted from the building. 

The Obit Page: Joseph Scheidler, a militant anti-abortion activist who used to retrieve aborted fetuses from the trash behind Chicago clinics and display them on city sidewalks, has died at age 93.

  Modeling his campaign on the Civil rights movement of the 1960s, Scheidler staged sit-ins at clinics and picketed the homes of doctors who performed abortions. But he was noted for his sidewalk displays of graphic photos and real fetuses. His tactic was to turn people against abortion by making them revolted.

Child Rearing: A man accused of  beating a police officer with a hockey stick during the Capitol insurrection. Michael Joseph Foy, of Michigan is charged with forcibly assaulting a federal officer. A man identified by authorities as Foy can be seen on video swinging a hockey stick on the Capitol steps and beating a police officer with it.

  Foy was identified in part by a posting his father put on Facebook saying, “He was raised better.” 

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