Events

I had about a half-dozen meetings this morning, including one that dragooned me five minutes before another meeting that I had to preside over. The consolations were (a) I took most of them from home, so (b) I got to walk Cassie in sunny, March-like 6°C weather, and (c) when I finally got to the office my view looked like this: I've got two more meetings starting in half an hour before I can head back to my dog. I'll deal with all the OAFPOTUS's chaos tomorrow.

I reported earlier that our Once And Felonious President ordered a halt to all loans and grants, but oh my dog what he did is actually so much worse: As President Donald Trump’s temporary freeze on federal funding to state and local governments seeded disruption and panic throughout the country Tuesday, state officials reported that Medicaid funding in Illinois had shut down. Trump’s administration announced the pause in federal grants, loans and other financial assistance as they embarked on a sweeping...

First: the good. My friend Kat Kruse has a new book of her short stories coming out. She let me read a couple of them, and I couldn't wait to pre-order the entire collection. I should get it on February 17th. Still on the good things—or at least the things that don't seem so bad, considering: The Guardian has a reflection on Seoul removing the Cheonggyecheon Expressway in 2005 to expose the historic stream that the highway previously covered. Margaret Renkl praises the coyotes that live with us in our...

I don't necessarily agree with everything Nate Silver wrote in his analysis from last week, but he makes a some excellent points: Biden hadn’t delivered the complete repudiation of Trump that polls — showing a massive 8.4-point popular vote lead — had been projecting. That’s why the election took four long days to call. Biden’s popular vote (4.5 points) and Electoral College (306-222) margins had been perfectly solid, and the migration of Georgia and Arizona into the blue column had enhanced its visual...

It got a lot warmer in Chicago today: That's the normal high for February 25th, one month from now. O'Hare got up to 5°C, the normal high for March 1st. We also have 62 km/h wind gusts, so it really does feel a lot like the beginning of spring. We're supposed to get up to 7°C on Monday (March 10th), which is practically tropical for this time of year. We'll take it!

Just four, plus a bonus: Paul Krugman explains to Columbia Journalism Review why he left the New York Times, and that the OAFPOTUS "wants you to die." David Brooks predicts "how [the OAFPOTUS] will fail." Four little shits were charged with shooting a coyote with a bow and then stomping it to death on the South Side of Chicago. Finally, in a column from just before the world ended, author Adam-Troy Castro explains, "Why do liberals think all Trump supporters are stupid?": The serious answer: Here’s what...

I had a thought about all the executive orders the OAFPOTUS signed Monday and Tuesday. Do they seem to anyone else like a King's Speech at the state opening of Parliament? Remember than an EO only directly affects the Executive Branch, and in many cases, still requires enabling legislation from the other end Pennsylvania Avenue. I don't like how this reinforces the idea of the President as a monarch—something our founders explicitly said should never happen—but in terms of how an EO actually affects the...

The temperature at Inner Drive Technology WHQ has gone above -6°C for the first time since 10:30pm Saturday. It might even get up to -4°C, at which point we break out the Bermuda shorts. The forecast threatens another brief drop to -14°C tomorrow night before popping above freezing sometime Saturday afternoon. So we've had a bit of cold, sure, but we've only got a few patches of snow here and there, with no significant precipitation expected. Compare that with, say, New Orleans this morning: As historic...

Ah, ha ha. Ha. Today is the first full day of the Once Again Felonious POTUS, who wound everyone up yesterday with a bunch of statements of intent (i.e., executive orders) guaranteed to get people paying attention to him again. Yawn. But that isn't everything that happened in the last 24 hours: Jonathan Last argues that maybe the OAFPOTUS just doesn't like Americans. Jennifer Rubin reminds everyone to remain vigilant that the OAFPOTUS's mangling of the English language has consequences. Jeff Maurer is...

Oh, FFS. I tried to avoid the inauguration entirely, but since we're dealing with the OAFPOTUS again, I couldn't. Especially because of 3rd grader Elon Musk. The OAFPOTUS's second inaugural address was the longest in modern history. If you really want to read the text, the New York Times has annotated it, but I wouldn't recommend it. James Fallows read it so you don't have to: Donald Trump, as 5th-grader. Sometimes Trump’s formal speeches are “written,” in the sense of trying to have “eloquent” or “fine...