Politics

It’s often said that memory is a fickle thing. Today, that fickleness has become a danger to the republic. If you turned on any of the major news networks over the past week, with the possible exception of Fox News, you’d have seen wall-to-wall coverage of the anniversary of the January 6 attack on the United States Capitol building. What’s concerning about this is all the misplaced lamentations. The travesty of the day was not the riot itself, though the assault was obviously horrific and a symbol of America’s democratic backsliding into an illiberal abyss. But the rampage was never an actual existential threat to the United States government and calling the attack an “insurrection” isn't accurate.

At the stroke of midnight on January 1, Bill de Blasio — New York’s bumbling, mildly sinister but profoundly incompetent mayor — got laughed out of office as his second term came to an end. Don’t let the door hit ya, the city collectively sneered...despite voting for the man twice. The new administration couldn’t even wait until morning to flip the official @NYCMayor Twitter account. One minute after midnight, it changed all its pictures over to ones of Eric Adams, before the man had even been officially sworn in. An image of the smiling new mayor loomed over de Blasio’s final message: a photo of he and his wife walking in shadow down a long hallway with their backs turned on a city they abandoned long ago.

Biden issues a 2024 warning to Republicans Joe Biden rarely mentions Donald Trump by name. That was the case in his speech at the Capitol yesterday, even though the president pinned the blame squarely on his predecessor, who, he said, isn’t “just a former president, he’s a defeated former president.” Asked after the speech why he didn’t used the T-word, Biden said that “he did not want to turn it into a contemporary political battle between me and the president. It’s way beyond that. It’s way beyond that.” The irony of Biden’s “he who must not be named” policy is that the president is at his most animated and politically potent when he is talking about his predecessor.

Cockburn realized this January 6 commemoration stuff was serious when he saw that even Lin-Manuel Miranda found time in his schedule to put in an appearance at the Capitol today. Actually, who knows if he was free? Miranda, the creator of Hamilton and high priest of Obama-era cringe, delivered a pre-recorded message to the American people and performed, with other cast members from the show that made him famous, the song “Dear Theodosia.” You might be wondering whether this struck the right tone for what was Cockburn was told was going to be a somber commemoration of one of the darkest days in American history.

Jeffrey Epstein is dead and Ghislaine Maxwell stands convicted of numerous human trafficking crimes, but many of their alleged co-conspirators remain at large. Victims on both sides of the Atlantic claim they were preyed upon by the high and mighty but the predators remain unindicted and, as yet, unaccountable. Among the most high-profile of these alleged abusers is Prince Andrew, Duke of York, and ninth in line to the British throne. The Duke, the third child of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, faces a civil lawsuit by Virginia Roberts (now Giuffre), whom Epstein recruited as a sex slave when she was still a minor. Roberts claims that Epstein and Maxwell trafficked her to Andrew in March 2001. She then met and danced with Andrew at a London club.

Biden's inflation nothingburger Joe Biden seems to have decided who is to blame for inflation: big business. After months of mixed messaging and empty spin on one of American voters’ top concerns, the administration has settled on its pre-existing commitment to antitrust action as the best medicine for rising prices. In its latest antitrust move, the White House yesterday unveiled a package of measures designed to target market concentration in the meat processing industry. Biden announced that he would be sending $1 billion to independent meat processors and enforcing stricter rules for “Made in America” labeling. Other measures include a streamlined process to report anti-competitive behavior and greater transparency in the cattle market.

The first workday of 2022 and already Washington, DC has been paralyzed by snow. That isn't saying much, given that half an inch is enough to shut things down around these parts. As a kid growing up in Connecticut, I remember countless snowy mornings when I'd wake up early, pad downstairs, turn on the listings, only to be devastated to learn that school was only delayed by half an hour. Cut to DC, where they'll close the schools because it's cold outside. So it goes in our thin-blooded nation's capital. And in fairness, the fact that many federal employees are still working from home has mitigated the paralysis somewhat. Still, a city needs to move in order to work, and it's there that the literal gets at something figurative.

Mom, can you come pick me up? They’re talking about a national divorce again. This time, it’s the Party of Lincoln fantasizing about separation. Marjorie Taylor Greene sparked the latest round of divorce discourse amid speculation about visitation rights for blue-state transplants to red America. She mused that proposals for punitive taxes and a “cooling off period” of suspended voting privileges for new arrivals were “all possible in a National Divorce scenario.” Right on cue, blue-checkmark cholesterol levels shot into the stratosphere. To her credit, Greene clarified that she was “clearly…not in favor of divorce” in a thread she posted the next day. “You know what is necessary about threatening a divorce?

If you think politics was insufferable in 2021, just wait until the New Year. The midterms are around the corner, so before the incessant campaign ads begin, I’d like to suggest a few New Year’s resolutions for our political class. Let’s start at the top with the president of the United States, Joe Biden. Perhaps Joe, who as usual is on vacation in Delaware, could begin 2022 off by firing his speechwriters. I have long suspected that saboteurs lurk in the White House. Who in his right mind would put the word “Galapagos” into a Biden speech? There is a double agent in the Biden-Harris administration who is trying to trip up the 79-year-old — so whoever it is needs to hear two of the last president’s favorite words: “You’re fired.

The thing about an annus horribilis is that eventually it's supposed to end. Yet this has not been the case with 2020, which incidentally, according to the Chinese calendar, was a Year of the Rat, proving that the universe can be just a bit too literal sometimes. Dashed were the hopes that 2021 would be a fresh start, that the endless problems of 2020 would dissolve into the ether like so much smoke at a mostly peaceful protest. Instead this year began like it was going to be even more 2020 than 2020 was. Six days into 2021 and we'd already suffered an event so jarring that it's now denoted by just a date.