Report Card Day

to go backwards a year. You know, twenty twenty one started out on eb Ben in Note with the insurrection, and I want us to remember how we felt after it was certified that Joe Biden was indeed elected by eighty one million Americans to lead our nation. You know, coming off of the heels of four years under Donald Trump. I know that many of you felt battered, bruised, just deflated, right, And for me, it was the first time. And I'm

going to be really, you know, really honest. There have been very bad moments in America over my lifetime, as I'm sure over yours. It was funny because you know, I have been mentioning to some of my friends who are younger than me, you know, how are they feeling, Like, how are they managing, you know, during this time and their life. You know, nine to eleven happened when I

was a child. Right then we had the bubble burst, my family lost their homes, you know, kind of going through these categorically horrible times, tumultuous times in our short history.

If you're a person or you have kids that are in their twenties, what they know a lot of like what their lifetime has kind of been wrapped around, has been a lot of tragedy, right, has been a lot of bad things, whether it be terrorist attacks, wars, you know, school shootings being the norm, particularly if you are in your twenties or or or millennial. You don't know anything other than that. And so I want to take us back through our feeling. Joe Biden and is elected. I'm

feeling pretty fucking good. I'm thinking that we've toppled authoritarianism. We've toppled this misogynistic, racist piece of garbage, this thief, this crook, this liar. Right people stood out in line for hours. They put up sixty six court cases, sixty six court cases Giuliani would parade into the courts, each and every one of them, whether they were Republican appointed judges or Democratic judges, kick them out of the courtroom.

And we're saying, yes, I'm feeling now the Republicans are going to probably issue their autopsy and figure out how to detach themselves from Donald Trump. And as we're heading into inauguration showing the strength of our nation in the face of those that would try and overthrow our government. The lasting impression that we have of the steps of the Capital and the Capitol Building is Inauguration Day, which had increased security. If you remember around Washington, DC, I

mean there were damn near walls. The wall that Trump said China that was not China. Mexico was going to pay for. We paid for and it wasn't. The wall between the United States and Mexico was between the White House and the people. So the feelings, right, there were so many feels going into inauguration twenty twenty one. Joe Biden gives a raucous speech where he says that we saw dark days, but you know there is light ahead. He gives a raw ross speech. We get to see

Michelle Obama looking absolutely fabulous. That nothing to do with my report card. I'm just just conjuring back an amazing memory that plumb outfit my god, monochromatic, I mean the hair. So we felt a year ago that we were on the ment, that it was going to take a lot of work and trials, but that we were going to get there, and we were going to do so together because we would have realized as a country that what we just experienced, what we all had just collectively witnessed,

is not who we are. The funny thing though, about saying that this is not who we are, or that we believed that we still shared after four years under Donald Trump, this shared value of democracy, the shared belief right that we are governed by the rule of law, that is, we the people that get to decide who represents us in our voice, that we believe all collectively about the constitution, right that these laws we all have

decided and pledged allegiance to that guidance. So when Joe Biden during inauguration is providing his speech, his vision, his picture of America, coming off of this years of feeling depleted, deflated, and this desperation for a grown up to be in the room, somebody to be at the helm that cared right, that cared about all of us. You know, it's funny because I say that often the best thing that ever happened to Bush, right to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney,

is Donald Trump. Because there were times during the Trump adustration that I actually longed for there to be a Bush because there's one thing. The man was a liar, brought us into wars that cost people's lives and tens of millions of dollars. But I never actually believed that he wasn't a patriot. I didn't believe that he wanted ill on the public, that he wished for it, that he applauded it, that he was excited by it. But

that's exactly who Donald Trump showed himself to be. So when you see Joe Biden on those steps of the Capitol building that not days before had been covered with thousands of people in their Maga hats, with their angry faces, their rage, right the building of the guillotine, and now you see this man, you think to yourself, we've won.

The people are victorious. Well, folks, I don't know about you, but three hundred and sixty five days later, I don't have that same energy, I don't have that same belief. I don't feel victorious because if this, if this feeling, this sense of deep anxiety, this sense of fear about just watching in front of our eyes our country crumble, and thinking right foolishly that we believe that democracy was just the way things were, you know, kind of like breathing.

You don't really concentrate on it or think about it unless you're in deep meditation or you're working out, or you're running for something and you lose breath. Right, It's just something that goes until it's gone on, right, And that's the same thing about our democracy is that we didn't think about it. We weren't educated to think about it, to think about democracy being something that you need to be vigilant of, something that is sacred, that needs protection, right,

and that at times will need expansion. Because the idea that we had two hundred and seventy something years ago, that the Founding Fathers had about democracy while they were holding enslaved Africans, is different than the democracy that we understand now. But here's the thing. We didn't pay attention. And I thought that by the election of Biden I know that many people, kind of like myself, wanted to

go go back to doing anything else. Now politics is my job, but there are a variety of things that I could talk about other than the federal government, other than right preserving our democracy. So my hope was that we'd have inauguration, we would have some grown ups in charge of COVID, so we would get this vaccine together, the rollout would go well, the communication would be out of the gate, because what we had learned right over the last four years is how fast misinformation spreads and

that it is a cancer on our democracy. So the thing that has always been the achilles heel of the Democratic Party would in fact be what guides us, which would be our messaging. Well, that's not exactly what happened, right, And I'm going to look at some standouts for me that will have me provide my overall grade for this administration in their first year. And it's difficult because I told all of you during the course of Trump's years

and heading into the election, you need to vote. You got to register, you got to get your people, you got to talk to them, you got to drive them to the polls. You got to do whatever it is you got to donate, you know, do whatever it is that you can have control over. Do it. So when I say with a heavy heart that this administration to me is currently failing, I don't say it to be glib.

I don't say it with joy because unlike Republicans, their failure, this administration's failure is the country's failure, is democracy's failure. We're not getting another shot, and I don't believe through the actions of this administration that they get that. I think that the way that both the Administration and the Senate is operating is as if they have all the time in the world. Is as if oh America, white America has just been under some type of radicalized extremist hypnotism.

But the more, you know, we talk and say nothing and actually do nothing, the more they'll come around. Because you see, the assumption was that once Trump was voted out in his first term, that, like I said, Republicans would offer up their autopsy and they would go running from that man. But they didn't. They doubled and they tripled down on him. They anointed him as the leader

of their party. They've turned Marlago into a de facto shadow White House, as far as their concerned, because seventy one percent of Republicans polled believe that Donald Trump is actually the winner of the twenty twenty election. Now we can't all just say, well, they're dumb, Oh they all you know, they're all under educated, because no they're not. Because that's the lie. That's what we like to tell ourselves, because we like to believe right that education right or

lack thereof. Then can part and parcel us away from the Trumper right versus the rest of us. But no, the Trumper is everyone from the multi billionaire right to the lone person on the totem pole right to the factory worker that's being denied healthcare but doesn't even want the healthcare because the Republicans told them that they shouldn't want it, so they vote against their own best interest.

It is all of those people, right. But when we minimize it and we say, oh, it's just those you know, people in the rust belt, the flyover states, those that you know, the factory jobs are gone and so they're hanging on to their white rage. No it's not just them. It's the CEOs in the c suites. It's the you know, the very very wealthy owners of the NFL teams, nine I think or ten of which are major Trump owners. Right,

So we don't. It doesn't assuage our fears or frustration or anger when we lie about who these people actually are. But the point being that the belief that I was holding onto the faith right, the hope, was that once we got over the hump, got people vaccinated after living in such distress that just a trip to the grocery store could send you to your deathbed, that we would see some relief, that we would see the country begin

to make a turn for the better. Well, I mean, as we all can see, that was just wishful thinking. These people have doubled down on a fucking virus like they are putting their own children and themselves in harm's way because Donald Trump told them to. And there is nothing right. There is nothing that you're going to do to change those people's minds. So what about the fifty million people that were eligible to vote but didn't. But here we are a year later, sixty two point nine

percent of the population is vaccinated. Sixty two point nine We are the lowest vaccination country in the developed world. The only person that is worse than the United States is the Republican Party's country of origin at this point in time. Russia. Never in my lifetime, outside of fucking Olympic gymnastics, has Russia, right, has Russia being a little bit better than the United States. But here we are,

and we can't just blame it on Trump. And this is where it's going to get really uncomfortable, folks, because I'm big on blaming a lot of things on Trump, because a lot of things are his fucking fault, right, But can we blame the inability of this administration to get their messaging together, to figure out how to use the Republican web of deceit to actually activate right those that are upheld in society, whether it be celebrity or thought leaders or people that we are endeared to to

be spreading the message. Just how Steve Bannon has said, go state to state, We're going village to village. We're taken over this bitch, just as he has said that, why didn't Democrats take that same approach? Why was it months of delays in communities of color to get them access to vaccinations that are still COVID nineteen is still killing black and brown people at a faster rate than any other group. So you know, it isn't fair for us to say that, oh well, they inherited so much,

so we need to give them more time. When folks, we don't have more time. We are running out of time. And if you ask me, they wasted a lot of their first year, right. You know, it was first we needed to stop the bleeding of COVID nineteen and get vaccines out, get shots and arms. They bungled that messaging. They bungled getting it out. Okay, by summertime they had may had a course correction, and you know, by the time that we got to the fall, it was supposed

to be going better. Sixty two point nine has been the number stuck on my television screen, not budging. We now the United States has had peaked surpassed twenty twenty hospitalization numbers. How is that possible when in twenty twenty one, thank god for science, we were gifted with not one, not two, but three four different vaccines from four different companies. But we have reached a peak in terms of our hospitalization That makes twenty twenty look like it was child's play.

If that is not a wake up call, because here's the thing, Republicans are able to use that because they will use anything and everything, the truth, a lie, it doesn't matter. But how is it that the Biden administration comes in and says that they're going to be the grown ups in the room, They're going to follow the science. And I've lost more faith of the CDC during the first year and the Biden administration than I had during

Trump's last year in office. The fumbled messages, the take off the mask, put the mask on, social distance, don't social distance, get vaccinated? Everything is okay? Oop, it's not. And like I say every week, there needs to be a level of nimbleness in terms of what it is that we take in from this administration and from the CDC and the World Health Organization because they are learning

in real time. But it is the rush, right. It is the rush to dangle the carrot in front of the people that are literally slapping it out of your out of their face, right, and the messaging to those people instead of those that are actually open to listening to you. It was the rush to say, oh yeah, rip your mask off, because you thought that that was going to be an incentive to get these people who never were wearing a mask in the first fucking place

to get vaccinated. How did that make sense? Because those of us that were doing the quote unquote ripe thing that we were following all of the guidelines, you made the rest of us look fucking dumb, only backtrack a couple of months later and say, oh shit, now we got Delta. Oh shit, now we got omicron. Look. I know that everybody is sick of COVID. I'm fucking sick

of COVID. I'm sick of being in the house, But I know that many people are still out there living their lives, which is why our hospital systems are on the fucking brink. The least I can do is stay my ass at home, right. But the least that this administration could have done was put together their fucking binders of plans that were that were about right communication and who we're talking to and why and every single day. You know, my co host on Democracy is brought up

a really good point. He said, you know, maybe it's corny, maybe it's not, but I really wish that Biden would be out doing these fireside chats every week. I wish that they would utilize the Vice president to be out there talking to people every single day, Instagram Live, Facebook Live, TikTok, whatever the fuck it is that you're doing, but doing it on a regular You know, you can say a lot, and there is a lot to be said about Governor Cuomo, right,

former governor of New York. But I tell you what I didn't miss during twenty twenty was one of his press conferences, because every day he was giving vital information and every day he was out there communicating to the people, so much so that every news station was stopping what they were covering any time that he walked in to

sit down to do a pressor. You tell me why the President of the United States is not doing that on a weekly basis, right, and then designating his vice president other cabinet members to be doing the same thing so that they are covering all of their bases every single fucking day of the week. The Governor of New York, right, was handling being at the epicenter of something we'd never seen before. So of course there were other things that he could have been doing, but he recognized the importance

of comforting people but also messaging every single day. If you know that you are working up against a misinformation machine, then tell me, Explain to me why you wouldn't prioritize being in people's fucking living rooms, in their pockets, on the train with them doing podcasts every day. Tell me why messaging and communication wouldn't be at the top of

every single thing it is that you're doing. So when it comes to the vaccine roll out and the messaging and communication around that, I give this administration for their year one a D plus. Let's move on now to

climate change. The climate crisis. Twenty twenty one on par with twenty twenty saw once again, once in a lifetime using air quotes, once in a lifetime, fire season, hurricane season, tornado season that wiped out tens of millions of dollars worth of poems, thousands and thousands and thousands of acres of forestry. The tornadoes which we saw just a couple of weeks ago, ravage entire towns. I mean, you saw tornado after tornado after tornado touched down, right, where are

those people getting the money to rebuild? You think? Do we think in America that FEMA is what like like a bottomless mimosa brunch, right, Like you just keep pouring in, You just keep pouring it pouring, it pouring in, and it's always going to flow. No, that's not how it works. And so when we think about all of these crises, if you have no shared value for humanity or the planet and you just don't give a fuck, right, which is the Republican Party, then you're just going to keep extracting.

You're gonna keep burning, You're gonna keep doing what it is that you're doing until there's nothing left. Right. I mean, this again reminds me of that brilliant scene. God and I sat there watching don't look up that brilliant scene and don't look up where they're about to blow up the comment that is headed towards Earth, and they got all the torpedoes, and you know, they're like, oh my god,

we're gonna save humanity, We're gonna save the planet. And then the billionaire walks in and pulls Meryl Streep to the side the president in the film and says, oh, but there is money to be made, right, So this is a really refined piece of rocks. So we gotta we can't just blow it up, you know, we we

gotta we gotta take it. You know, we could we could be trillionaires and literally capitalism kills us right abort the mission to save the planet in the hope that this billionaire is not only going to save us but also get rich doing it. And you know, I think about that when we look at climate change, it's like, if it's not a moral imperative for you, then it

should be an economic one. Because we do not have a bottomless pit, a fucking money tree growing at the center of America that we can dish out billions to back to back historic storms and historic fires like. We don't have it. So what's going to end up happening is that these communities that get ravaged and the more and more that the temperatures change, and then all of a sudden, we're farmers and not you know, little farmers,

because we don't have that anymore. But big agriculture is not going to be able to guestimate when they are harvesting, when they are planting because the fucking climate will have changed. So then what is going to happen. We're going to have food shortage, right we already have supply chain issues that we're dealing with right now. For the first time in America, you're walking into grocery stores or pharmacies, and guess what the items that you're looking for, they on

on at the shelf. And it's not just because oh they in the back and nobody put them on shelves. Yet they're no I are in fucking sight, and you don't know when they're coming. Well, imagine that now happening. But with your food, right, with your milk, with your you know, nourishment. Imagine now, because this is what happened to me the other day. I love grapes. I'm a big fan. Love. Every time I go into the kitchen,

I pop at least two three in the mouth. Well, I am one of those people who, pre pandemic would just roll into the grocery store. I don't really look at prices. I recognize my privilege in that way. I go in and I get what I want. I decide when I'm going to cook at home, and then I go into the grocery store. Boom boom boom, put all the stuff in my cart, go to the checkout. They tell me what the bill is, I pay it, keep it moving. Very fortunate in that way. That is not

the light of a majority of Americans. The other day, however, I went to my local veggie market and I got to the checkout and I only had but a couple of things. I had, like a bushel of kale. I had some Brussels sprouts, some broccoli, and grapes forty five dollars. I look at the cashier, I said, why is this forty five dollars? I have literally four items, and she's like, oh, so sorry, but the grapes they're fifteen dollars. Fifteen fucking dollars.

I was on the phone with my sister as I was shopping, and I said, do we still grows shit in America? Why the fuck would I pay fifteen dollars four thing of grapes? And so we end up getting into a whole conversation about how wild this is, and she's like, I know, look at the prices of other things too. Go to the meat section, look at the price of meat. Go to this section, look at the

price of this. So all of a sudden, now I'm like coupon Clara walking around a grocery store in shock at the prices of some of the ship that is on the shelves, Like, whoa, I haven't seen those kind of prices except for when I'm traveling outside of the United States and people are trying to import the things that we make in the US to their country. And then you're seeing You're like, why is this can of

coke seven dollars? Right? That's where we are, and we're headed in that direction, and it's going to get worse. People are bitching about gas prices right from this time to last year. From right now to last year, you're looking at a little over a dollar increase. Well, when I'm looking at the produce, right, I'm looking at meats, and you're not just looking at a dollar increase. You're looking at like three four, five, six and up increase.

That is only going to get worse because our ability to be able to grow things right is going to lesson the season's right for food production are going to begin to shrink, which means that the prices are going to go up. But here we had within the infrastructure bill, the one that actually did get pass climate change policies in there, and guess who gutted it, King Cole Joe Mansion because you see, his son owns a multimillion dollar energy company which is really just a coal company in

coal country. And if we put any regulations that would have us, the rest of us breathe clearer air and you know, slow the pace of our climate crisis. Well, then Joe Mansion wouldn't be able to live on a yacht, right, His wife wouldn't be bringing in over six hundred thousand dollars a year, right, his son and his daughter like, they wouldn't be making millions. So who cares if the country half the country is either underwater or in flames

for a majority of the year. So long as he continues to make bank right, we let him do that, all in the sake of the Biden administration having a by Hartisan win. And then we blamed it on the progressives. Oh, they don't want to get anything done, except for the fact that progressive is the only thing that they have wanted to get done is actually Joe Biden's agenda. What Joe Mansion wants to get done is Joe Mansion's agenda.

The two are not the same. So when I'm offering now my grade for the Biden administration on climate change D plus barely passing, I mean, they did go visit these devastated areas, and they do talk tough about climate change. They just don't do shit. I mean, Joe Biden did go to you know, the g Summit, right, and we'll go to the Paris Accord, and we'll go to these places and take those wonderful pictures with leaders of the

quote unquote free world. But they won't actually do anything because it's not going to allow them to make money, right, They're not going to disrupt their bottom line just to what have clean air, have clean water? Not so much so this administration. You know, they get a D plus in climate change because they talk tough, but they don't do shit around it. And they keep telling us the problem is so big, right, but their solutions are so

fucking small. Next up, immigration reform. So during the Trump administration, we know that cruelty indeed was the point, right that the last administration didn't even see undocumented people as actually people. Right. We ripped children away from their mothers while they were breastfeeding. We put children in cages. And once again you see white Americans saying, this is not who we are. And then I think to myself, slavery, what are you talking about?

I think to myself, the Native Americans that were stolen from their homes and put in these residential schools where they were beaten, raped, and murdered. This country has has a very, very long history of taking children away from people of color, whether you are locking their parents up in jail on trumped up drug charges because you want to have a war on crime. Where a war on drugs when it is the crack epidemic affecting black and brown people, but then it's a crisis when it is

affecting white people. Sure, in this area, I give the Biden administration a C plus. Now, my friends who work in immigration reform probably would not Why because Joe Biden said that he would stop deportations. Well, it wasn't so long ago that we saw thousands of Haitian refugees being scooped up and sent back to their devastated country that it had been hit by yet another natural disaster with COVID raging and an assassinated president. But we scooped him up,

sent them right back. No ability to apply for asylum, no let us hold them, no, no nothing. But Joe Biden said that he was going to stop those deportations,

right that America should be safe haven. Okay, I give him a C plus because we know and probably won't really really truly know for years how many children were stolen from their parents during the Trump administration with no documentation, meaning that the Trump administration actually took no documentation, like they couldn't even put together a Google Excel sprights sheet that would allow us to know who the child is,

what area did they come into, who were they with? Right, so that there was going to be a reunification plan, but the Trump administration had no desire and was not going to attempt to reunify these people. Punishment was the point this administration. However, to date, I believe have reunited over five hundred children with their families and have made it a point to do so. Are looking to pay

restitution to those parents. Now once again, as a black queer woman in America, I'm still looking for what restitution you are paying to Black Americans for ripping them away from their families over the courses of hundreds of years.

But I digress. So in that area, the restitution, the acknowledgment of the cruelty trying to unite these kids, well, all right, I bring them down to a C minus because I'm adding in all of the other deportations, and you know, the fact that while I love Obama, if you talk to immigration activists, Obama deported more people than anybody else. And that's very real. Okay, So so far, we have a D plus for vaccination rollout and messaging, We have a D plus for climate change just because

of the tough talk, and we have a C for immigration. Now, let's go to police reform. Now, if you remember Joe Biden's presidential campaign, his opening solved to the American people was that he was going to be fighting for the soul of America. You saw in his announcement video pictures of the twenty twenty Uprising protests. You saw police, you saw Black Lives Matter signs, you saw all of these things. And he said that we are going to pass the

George Floyd Police Reform Legislation. Well eight months into that failed experiment between that was supposed to be negotiated between Senator Corey Booker and Black Republican Tim scott Um, they announced their failure. Over the summer, came out in a press conference, said they're over here. I'm over here. We're not We're not getting to are They're there? Wait? What I thought he was going to battle for the soul of America. I thought that we were going to do

something about the quote unquote bad apples. It's not enough to just get a conviction for Derek Chauvin, right, or the McMichaels that killed Ahmad Aubrey. Like we're talking about institutional change. We're talking about qualified immunity and the fact that you should have the ability to fucking sue a police officer for wrong, for death, right for murder. No. Eight months that tossed up their hands. That legislation is dead.

So what does this administration get for putting absolutely no weight behind it but just saying, ah, shucks, better luck next time another unarmed black person is killed slowly, painfully for the world to watch for nearly nine minutes. Then voting rights, well, that is playing out on your screens right now. And what do we know. Everything that is being done in the Senate, every little maneuver that Chuck

Schumer is making, is nothing but symbolism. They aren't going to do a rules change, They are not voting to take down the filibuster, they are not going to pass voting rights. And frankly, the Democrats as a whole have failed failed miserably in the messaging of that because they've made it a black and brown issue as opposed to

a democratic issue. Right, this administration was pretty much on voting rights, really loved to wield it around, talking about John Lewis, and particularly in South Carolina, in the state that got Joe Biden elected to be president, right because without without South Carolina, without Jim Clyburne vouching for Joe Biden, he would have lost, He wouldn't have won the primary. So he was fine. Joe Biden was fine to talk

about voting rights, talking about securing democracy. Yeay, yay, yay blacks and some of you browns too, but then went silent. You didn't hear from Joe Biden and voting rights in the same fucking sentence, let alone coming out of his mouth until a couple of weeks ago. And it's failing miserably. So for that, you get a big fucking f for fucking our democracy. So what are we looking at, folks.

We're looking at D plus D plus C minus D plus F. So you know, there are so many issues that I could go down part and parcel once again, I would say in judicial nominations, we are doing well according to polls that are taken that this president has appointed more people to the federal bench in their first year than any other president. So with that, I give you an A the one place that you will get an A. But taking all of these things together, this

first year is basically a D plus. They are barely passing and the poll numbers, and you know how I feel about polls. But you know, when I look at them and I see all the other presidents and what their first term look like, what their first year look like. The only person that is lower than Joe Biden is Donald Trump. So when we're nine months away from midterm elections, what do you think that that says about the excitement

of the base? What do you think that that says about our raw ra feeling that we had in twenty twenty in order to get rid of Donald Trump, or the feeling like we had overcome when we finally see Joe Biden being sworn in after an insurrection. What does it say that where his numbers are? What does it say that my mother, a staunch Democrat, is like, I don't want to watch the news anymore, nor do I even think that voting matters. Look at where we are

she's not alone. So where do we go from here, folks? Honestly, I really don't know, but I got to tell you that, you know, the thing that they need to put up on the television screens are a fucking countdown clock to midtim elections, because that's when our democracy is really up, when the buzzer is going to ring, when the alarm will go off and it'll be too late, because as soon as Republicans get back into power in Congress, you

think that government was grinded to a halt. Now just wait, just wait for the parade of bullshit hearings that they're going to call and air them on television, and it just be back to nonsense. And then all of a sudden, the mainstream news is going to come out be like Republicans they don't seem to care about America so much. Yeah,

you're fucking dummy, they don't. So maybe instead of writing peace after peace slamming the Vice President of the United States, maybe you would go after Republicans with the same amount of vigor for ushering in fascism. But I digress, because you know ratings, So, folks, I want to hear from you today in the comments section or in the tweets, tell me what grade you are giving the administration for

their first year? And why? Right? If it's a tweet, you know, make it succinct, but use the hashtag wook a f as I do on all of my posts, so that I can lay eyes on it. But I do. I want to hear from all of you what grade right? And you can use different categories, You don't have to use the same ones that I did. But overall, even if you didn't want to go mark by mark, what is the overall grade that you would give for this administration in their first year? And do you right? Do

you believe that they can turn things around? That there is enough time. I want to hear from each and every one of you. That is it for me today. Folks on woke f as always, Power to the people and to all the people. Power, Get woke and stay woke as fuck.