Consider this like a snow day … only with snot instead of snow.
For something like eight years, I’ve managed to avoid coming down with a cold or flu. That run has very definitely been broken. Since Thursday, I have manged to watch the entire Masterclass on writing from Margret Atwood, tackle a thirty-hour college course on the ethics in science, and I’m halfway through the first season of Game of Thrones. It’s kind of amazing what can be accomplished when you can’t sleep and can’t drag yourself out of bed. So long as the word “accomplished” covers things that only involve moving your eyes.
So … you might gather from that there’s no APR this morning. However, that’s not correct. There’s just a crappy APR this morning. One attended to in the headachy space between waves of heat and waves of chills.
My daughter-in-law brought this thing home from work. She got sick, then my son, then me and my mother, and as of this morning, my wife. Daughter-in-law is an aeronautical engineer. This is clearly a killer space flu. I advise everyone to stay on the outlook for pods.
Anyway, let’s do a couple of pundits before I crawl back to bed.
Jonathan Chait feels that Joe Biden may be over before he really starts.
New York Magazine
I don’t disagree with the thesis, but Chait’s article this morning isn’t really an article. It’s just a transcript of six other people talking. Why didn’t I think of that?
Michael Tomasky doesn’t think that Biden is going away so fast.
Daily Beast
This past week’s controversy over Joe Biden seemed to show an older man who learned his social skills in another time getting caught in the #MeToo riptides of our time and emerging, depending on your point of view, either exposed as hopelessly out of it or authentically chastened and prepared to adapt.
It did show that, but it also showed us something much more consequential. It showed us a division that has emerged in the Democratic Party that is the most serious in decades, and which might split the party in two in a few years’ time—or even sooner if it helps cost the party the presidency next year.
Tomasky’s idea is the Democratic Party is actually “two activist bases.” I haven’t seen that. I’d say one activist base, plus a cluster of hand-wringers who think those activists are going too fast. Most of the pundits.
Will Bunch is also on the Biden topic this morning
Philadelphia Inquirer
And I’d include some quotes from it by the Inquirer’s sucky firewall suckingly thinks that I’ve already “reached my article limit for this month” even though it’s the first time I’ve even looked their sucky site this month. Because their code sucks. And I don’t have the energy to work my way around it today. So … read it if you can.
Paul Krugman on Donald Trump serial killer.
New York Times
The biggest death toll is likely to come from Trump’s agenda of deregulation — or maybe we should call it “deregulation,” because his administration is curiously selective about which industries it wants to leave alone.
Consider two recent events that help capture the deadly strangeness of what’s going on.
One is the administration’s plan for hog plants to take over much of the federal responsibility for food safety inspections. And why not? It’s not as if we’ve seen safety problems arise from self-regulation in, say, the aircraft industry, have we? Or as if we ever experience major outbreaks of food-borne illness? Or as if there was a reason the U.S. government stepped in to regulate meatpacking in the first place?
Trump is probably the only person who read The Jungle as a kid and sympathized with the factory owners. This is a good piece that revisits Trump’s schemes to not only do things that will absolutely kill thousands, but do it even when the market doesn’t want it.
Art Cullen on the draining of industry from the Midwest
Storm Lake Times
John Delaney said something near the end of the Heartland Forum on Saturday that caught our attention, but he didn’t have time to expand on it: There has been a massive capital outflow from the Midwest as industries like agriculture, retail and manufacturing consolidate and seek efficiency. And this stunning statistic: 80% of venture capital is invested in 50 of the 3,100 counties in America — mainly in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston and New York.
We called to follow up and he was more than happy to talk.
“Eighty percent of the smart money went to 1.6% of the counties,” the former Maryland congressman told us. “That’s a problem for every citizen in this country.”
As ownership has left rural America — whether newspapers, banks, hardware stores or farrowing hogs — capital (profit) that otherwise would have remained in the community flows to where the owners are, and they are not primarily in rural areas. We see it all over Iowa. Delaney believes the trend can be reversed through incentives for a zero-emissions energy economy that still burns fossil fuels, and that targets investments in renewable energy and digital technology jobs in partnership with communities.
The Green New Deal, which Republicans have worked hard to paint as something for “coastal elites” has multiple sections directly addressing the loss of ownership and employment in rural areas. The physical concentration of wealth in a few areas is no healthier for the nation than the economic concentration of wealth in a few hands.
And having some big outside company “build a plant in your area!” isn’t the answer. Local ownership is the answer. I’ve witnessed that over the last three decades in St. Louis. Sure, there are companies in St. Louis, but the biggest of them are no longer headquartered in St. Louis. TWA sold out to American. Famous Barr to Macy’s. McDonnell-Douglas to Boeing. Anheuser-Busch to InBev. Once all those companies had not just thousands of employees in the city, but their executives and boards and hearts. When they launched spin-off companies, they did that in St. Louis. And when they donated to a park, or a symphony, or a museum they did that in St. Louis. The purchase of Famous Barr alone utterly wrecked downtown St. Louis, as Macy’s took what had been the heart of the city—a seven story department building spanning a full block topped with even more floors of offices—and left behind an empty shell. That departure absolutely folded downtown. And … It’s possible I’ve wandered about one Cepacol off the topic.
Nancy LeTourneau wants to evaluate candidates based on how they behave around sports.
Washington Monthly
Except LeTourneau never really writes these things. She just grabs a bunch of quotes and excerpts from other articles and runs them together with a few comments. Wait … where have I seen that before?
Virginia Heffernan is ALSO TALKING ABOUT JOE BIDEN.
Los Angeles Times
Fair enough that Biden, like all of us, has blind spots. There are dozens of American touching rituals that elude me. At what kind of encounters do you cheek-kiss once, twice or three times, and when do you refrain altogether? I honestly couldn’t tell you.
But when someone who does know steers me straight, I hope I don’t ever say, “I have a great heart and my cheek-kissing is a perfect expression of support and encouragement, you sicko scold.”
Instead, I hope I say, “I’m hopeless with this. Can you show me how to do it right?”
Biden doesn’t belong in jail, or even some golf-free rehab center. But even though his behavior fell well short of violence, he justified it using the language and logic of assailants. And that’s where he truly lost me.
Honestly, if I had known every article I read was going to be another hot take on Joe Biden, I wouldn’t have dragged myself out of bed. Maybe it’s the Dextromethorphan talking, but this week I agree with Chait — or at least, the people Chait got to talk. Biden is so done before he officially starts that he may be the first candidate ever who reports that his exploratory committee said “don’t do it.”
And now I’m going back to bed. Talk amongst yourselves, but keep it down. I’ve got another six and a half seasons to peer at through gummy eyes.