Morning Thread

US covid cases were falling fast and then...flat and nudging up slightly again. Shoot that vaccine into everybody!!!

Wednesday Night

Rock on.

Lock Him Up

We can enjoy the show for a bit.

New York (CNN)The Manhattan district attorney's office has subpoenaed financial records related to Steve Bannon's crowd-funding border-wall effort, signaling that its criminal investigation into former President Donald Trump's chief strategist is advancing, according to people familiar with the matter.

Prosecutors sent the subpoenas after Trump pardoned Bannon in late January for federal conspiracy crimes tied to the southern border-wall project, making Bannon among the Trump world figures -- including the former president -- subjects of criminal investigations by Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance.

Woke Fed Chair

Trump's one good legacy (so far, so good at least).

"Our peers, our competitors, advanced economy democracies have a more built up function for childcare" - Fed Chair Powell

"We used to lead the world in female labor force participation... and we no longer do. It may just be that those policies have put us behind."

— Jeanna Smialek (@jeannasmialek) February 24, 2021

No Coup You Coup Who Coup

Conservative approach to this is similar to their approach to things like racism. Which is something like, "it isn't real, except if it is it's good."

America's Worst Ron Johnson

Senator Ron Johnson from Wisconsin.

Grand Old Police Blotter

Murder is basically legal with a car, except possibly if you're drunk, but usually even then.

Days after South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg fatally struck a man while driving in September, detectives told the Republican official they had found a pair of broken reading glasses inside his Ford Taurus. They belonged to the man he killed.

That was a problem, detectives said, because Ravnsborg, 44, said he didn’t know he had hit a man until the following day, when he returned to the scene and found the body of Joseph Boever, 55, in a ditch.

“They’re Joe’s glasses, so that means his face came through your windshield,” one of the detectives said in an interview released by the South Dakota Department of Public Safety on Tuesday.

Lunch Thread

Get your lunch on.

Regeneration

I've said this before about kids, but it's true of a lot of the population. Four years of Trump being cast as the lead in the teevee show The American President has surely warped a lot of expectations of what the character of The President is supposed to be like, not to mention his large group of wacky sidekicks.

You see it with journalists, some of whom are old enough to remember a time before and some who really got on the White House ride for the first time with Trump. They haven't yet adjusted, and they're professionals. Tons of people probably didn't even pay much attention to politics before Trump, and then did, so the basic format of the 21st century presidency, followed by Bush and Obama and presumably broadly imitated by Biden, will be new.

Owning It

Leaving aside the merits of Obamacare, it was the case that many Democrats were scared that if they voted for it they would lose their seats, and many did lose their seats, although that vote might not have been the cause.

Again, I don't want to debate the merits of Obamacare, but if you're passing something based on the idea that it is broadly "good," something's going wrong - substance, messaging, timing - if you're nonetheless scared it will be very unpopular.

Nobody Who Went To Penn Could Be bad

Do we think Don Jr. rats out his pop, or stays silent in a desperate attempt for approval from the guy who won't even remember the name of his son, Donald.

For months, some of Donald Trump’s top advisers have assured him that he has virtually nothing to fear from the Manhattan district attorney’s tax investigation, which they view as merely “fishing” for information. But investigators with the D.A.'s office have been expanding their criminal probe into Trump’s business empire, asking questions and grilling witnesses—as recently as in the past few days—not only about Trump but particularly about his eldest son, Don Jr., and Allen Weisselberg, one of the former president’s most trusted officers, The Daily Beast has learned.

Not optimistic about any of this, but I guess we can enjoy the show while it lasts.

More Thread

I'm sorry, I'm doing my best to make this blog more bipartisan.

Tuesday Night

Rock on.

America's Worst Clarence Thomas

Clarence Thomas.

Happy Hour Thread

Get happy.

The Thin Blue Line

Pretty fucking thin.

TA retired NYPD officer who had been assigned for a time to work perimeter security at City Hall and at Gracie Mansion, the mayor's official residence, has been accused of using a pipe to attack a U.S. Capitol officer during the Jan. 6 siege, law enforcement officials with knowledge of the case told News 4 Tuesday.

Thomas Webster surrendered to the FBI's Hudson Valley office Monday to face charges in the ongoing investigation. A day later in White Plains federal court, prosecutors said the former U.S. Marine attacked a Capitol police officer with an aluminum pole while holding a Marine Corps flag. Webster then allegedly ripped off a mask and caused the officer to choke, proseuctors said.

The alleged "eye gouger."

Who Cares If It Gets Zero Republican Votes

I mean, who cares if Mitt Romney or 10 House Republicans or whatever vote for the Covid aid bill or anything else? Why does this matter to anyone? Let the opposition party oppose and take the consequences for the position and stop dreaming of A Good Republican to make something Bipartisan.

Much of the time our dumb system does require people of both parties not behaving like complete assholes, because different parties control different bits of our government.

When one party has the trifecta, that's an opportunity! Let the Dems ram stuff through, let Republicans say it's bad, and then they can argue about it for election 2022.

Hot as Hell

I think we're going on about a dozen years of imagining that Republicans were in the grip of some sort of "fever" that will "break" and then TipnRonnie can have drinks together again.

I am just a dumb guy with a very fine blog, but I suspect this is not true.

More than that, I don't think this often expressed idea actually helps things much. It's condescending as hell. "You guys are fucking nuts but you'll come around soon!"

Not that I mind being condescending. It just isn't a way to win people over, and it comes from the people who imagine that somehow the nutters can be won over.

The Rhythm of the Blog

Boring meta, but I try to keep the posting rhythm a certain way, though that has to match somewhat with the news cycle and also I occasionally have life outside the blog. The last guy was a chaos agent, with weird shit flying at us from all directions at random hours, though at least there was always something to blog about, even if it was usually incredibly stupid!

I seem to remember back in the dark ages we'd have more posts and discussions about stupid shit. You know, not just "is American civilization about to fall" but "hey, is this teevee show good?" Maybe we can get back to that a bit. Or maybe just keep twirling twirling twirling towards freedom!

Anything is possible. It is a blog.

Poster Solidarity

We are all Neera Tanden.

Lock'em Up

A bit more consequential than bribing your failchildren into elite schools.

A California program intended to improve COVID-19 vaccine availability to people in hard-hit communities of color is being misused by outsiders who are grabbing appointments reserved for residents of underserved Black and Latino areas.

The program to address inequities in vaccine distribution relies on special access codes that enable people to make appointments on the My Turn vaccine scheduling website. The codes are provided to community organizations to distribute to people in largely Black and Latino communities.

Morning Thread

The last guy released a statement yesterday and not *every* journalist banged their fist down on the retweet button as fast as they could, so that's progress.