President Joe Biden has now spent his first 10 days in office. All told, it's been fairly boring. Which is exactly what millions of Americans voted him into office to achieve. Journalists everywhere are writing absolute paeans to boredom. Throughout the land, a joyous cry is raised: "Let boredom ring!" Well, OK, that may be overstating it a tiny bit. But not by much.

Central to this newfound delight in ennui, of course, is the vast and echoing silence emanating from Mar-A-Lago. Still cut off from all his social media accounts, and perhaps legally wary of saying anything before his Senate impeachment trial, Donald Trump has been gloriously and wonderfully quiet. This continues the longest streak of silence from him in at least five years (if not "ever").

Consider what Biden's first week in office would have been like if Trump had been taking dozens of potshots at him from the sidelines, each and every day. The one thing Trump is an absolute (if not "stable") genius at is manipulating the news media and inserting his own idiocy into subjects where it was never welcome to begin with. He's a master at it. He knows that the more outrageous whatever he tweeted out was, the higher the chance that it would be all anyone in the political media would be talking about by the time the evening news rolled around.

And now there has been none of it, for weeks. And, on Twitter at least, there will never be any more of it, ever again, forever. O blissful and joyous silence!

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President Joe Biden has been in office a little over a week, and so far he has exceeded expectations. Now, to be fair, these are still the earliest of days. Biden is still enjoying his "honeymoon" period with the public, with the press, and (largely) with Congress. That will fade, undoubtedly. Also, Donald Trump left so many egregious messes lying around that cleaning up the worst of them was pretty low-hanging fruit indeed. But, so far, Biden has not disappointed in a big way once.

None of his cabinet choices raised any huge alarm with even the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, and they've been getting steadily confirmed with huge bipartisan votes. There will be a few later on that will be more contentious, no doubt, but so far Biden's track record on putting together his administration is a pretty admirable one.

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This really shouldn't be all that extraordinary, but sadly it is. The Department of Homeland Security just issued a warning about the possibility of right-wing violence and/or terrorism. Here are the pertinent facts:

The Department of Homeland Security issued a warning Wednesday to alert the public about a growing risk of attacks by "ideologically-motivated violent extremists" agitated about President Biden's inauguration and "perceived grievances fueled by false narratives."

DHS periodically issues such advisories through its National Terrorism Advisory System, but the warnings have typically been generated by elevated concerns about attacks by foreign governments or radical groups, not domestic extremists.

In a statement, the department said the purpose of the new bulletin was to warn the public about a "heightened threat environment" across the United States "that is likely to persist over the coming weeks."

. . .

"DHS does not have any information to indicate a specific, credible plot; however, violent riots have continued in recent days and we remain concerned that individuals frustrated with the exercise of governmental authority and the presidential transition, as well as other perceived grievances and ideological causes fueled by false narratives, could continue to mobilize a broad range of ideologically-motivated actors to incite or commit violence," the statement read.

The most recent bulletins DHS has issued -- both this month -- warned the public about an elevated threat from Iran. No other bulletin in recent years has been issued to alert Americans about violence by domestic extremists.

"Throughout 2020, Domestic Violent Extremists (DVEs) targeted individuals with opposing views engaged in First Amendment-protected, nonviolent protest activity," the bulletin states.... "DHS is concerned these same drivers to violence will remain through early 2021 and some DVEs may be emboldened by the January 6, 2021 breach of the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. to target elected officials and government facilities."

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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer won his first big political battle against Minority Leader Mitch McConnell last night. McConnell, in a fit of petulance, had dug in his heels and was refusing to agree to the new Senate rules proposed by Schumer which will dictate the chamber's power structure for the next two years. This is normally a routine vote, even with an evenly-balanced 50-50 Senate -- there wasn't much drama the last time this happened, when Tom Daschle and Trent Lott worked out an agreement. Essentially, Senate committees will be evenly divided between Democratic seats and Republican seats, but Democrats will still control what gets out of committee and (more importantly) what makes it to the Senate floor for a vote. After all, even though the Senate is evenly-divided, Vice President Kamala Harris is the deciding vote for the Democrats. But that's been true since last Wednesday, and yet McConnell blocked the new rules until today, which had left Republicans still chairing all the committees -- even though they're now in the minority.

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The Washington political press corps have returned to some semblance of normalcy. One of the things this means is that President Joe Biden is getting scrutiny and criticism for the actual reality on the ground versus what he had promised. This follows a four-year period of being so cowed by Trump's firehose of lies and bluster that the press corps mostly didn't even bother, other than a few half-hearted attempts here and there.

Proving this bias is pretty easy. Let's look at how the coverage of the vaccine rollout has gone. At the end of December, there were indeed many stories about how incredibly far behind their projections the Trump team had fallen -- but these rarely, if ever, told the full story of this disappointment. Team Trump had initially promised to vaccinate 100 million people by the end of the calendar year. They said this only a few months ago, mind you. Then, out of the blue, this target was cut to 40 million, and then cut again to 20 million. No explanation was given, and the media largely just yawned.

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Three momentous things happened last week which so overshadowed everything else in the political world that we're just going to ignore everything else up front, here.

First, Donald Trump slouched off to his golf resort in Florida a few hours early, for purely petty reasons -- he wanted the flight to still officially be "Air Force One" (a designation that only exists when the current president of the United States is on the plane), and he also didn't want to have to ask President Joe Biden for the routine favor of one last flight home on the big plane. So he flew while he was still president, after staging a pathetic goodbye rally at Joint Base Andrews (home base of the two planes that serve as Air Force One and Two). He forced the military into giving him one last 21-howitzer salute, and then flew south for the winter. And, hopefully, forever.

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I woke up this morning feeling good. The big reason was that for the first time in a long time I knew I wouldn't discover in the morning news that the president of the United States had done, said, or tweeted something overnight that was embarrassing, cringe-worthy, mean-spirited, or just downright evil. I knew nobody in the federal government would have been fired at 3:00 in the morning via Twitter. I knew no foreign country would be seriously annoyed at America for no reason other than one man-child's insufferable ego.

That's all a really good feeling to wake up to, I have to say, and I look forward to having that same confident feeling every single morning for the next four years. As do tens of millions of others, I'm sure.

President Joe Biden is getting rave reviews for his inaugural speech, which he fully deserves. The speech was nothing more than an extension of the campaign he ran on, a call to heal the soul of America, and a plea for a rise to unity rather than continuing our political "uncivil war." Biden's first job approval polling will, no doubt, reflect this by charting a number higher than Donald Trump managed in his entire four years in office. The American people are pretty obviously ready to see some unity in Washington.

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It is morning in America again.

Ronald Reagan famously made a lot of political hay out of that slogan. The phrase worked so well because Americans generally favor optimism and a bright future over the gloomier alternatives. All modern presidential candidates since Reagan have struck optimistic themes while campaigning. Except one.

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On April 20 of 2017, I remember talking to a friend who was already absolutely exhausted by all of Donald Trump's antics. I remember the date because I responded with: "It's been exactly three months since he took office. That means one-fourth of one year, or only one-sixteenth of his whole term." This was met with groans, even though I was really just trying to caution: "Pace yourself."

We have now almost (as I sit down to write this, there are exactly 18 hours to go) made it through the other 15/16ths of Trump's term. And everybody is now far beyond just being exhausted by it all.

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The mainstream media is finally using the correct terms to describe Donald Trump's efforts to overthrow an American election. The outbreak of insurrection at the U.S. Capitol apparently was enough for them to start calling a lie a lie. And not just a lie, but (as many journalists are now admitting) a Big Lie.

The term is capitalized because it is a historical reference. Adolf Hitler coined the term in Mein Kampf, and Joseph Goebbels perfected its use in Nazi Germany. The idea is a simple one (although this quote attributed to Goebbels may never have actually been said by him): "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it." Trump's current Big Lie, of course, is that he won the election "in a landslide" and somehow it was stolen away from him by a conspiracy of pretty much everybody. But because Trump's Big Lie led to such a horrific and violent attack on democracy, journalists are now calling it by its rightful name.

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