Prime
In our email correspondence over many years, TPM Reader AB has often been highly – to my mind often reflexively – critical of Democrats, even to the degree that it’s led to some exasperating clashes of opinion between the two of us. With that background I was very struck by his reaction to President Biden’s speech.
I thought it was the best presidential speech I have ever heard in my lifetime.
The President’s Address
I thought the President’s speech was very good. It was also very much Joe Biden. Obviously one couldn’t remotely imagine Donald Trump giving this speech. But I would have a hard time imagining Barack Obama giving it either. Obama’s would have been good too. But it would have been very different.
A few quick observations.
Where Things Stand: It’s Been A Year
TPM has been working remotely for one full year, as of today.
Because such things as space and time and memories have escaped into the ether, a photo memory app on my phone alerted me to the grim anniversary.
From TPM Reader RT …
I can’t really say I had a COVID moment. It was a series of COVID moments. The first was when I sat around playing with MATLAB a year ago to understand the implications of what an R0 value of three means. Like many other folks I’d seen the movie Contagion and thought I knew about reproduction numbers. But I really didn’t. I hadn’t really internalized what the mathematics implied. Staring at the numbers in disbelief. Texting my friend who is biostatistician at a major medical college hoping I was wrong. His reply was simply “Do you have enough food to last for three weeks?”. Then the long days of isolation and encounters with the maskless while trying to just simply shop for groceries. Constantly fretting if I got to close. Did I touch anything? What’s that sniffle mean? The slow decent over summer and fall into the illusion that these precautions would keep my family safe.
Then came the phone call the day after Christmas. “I don’t think your father is feeling good, can you put a mask on and come see?”
From TPM Reader LC …
I think my start of COVID era is very common: rumors and rumblings in February, a friend who’s a medical professional telling me that things were going to get bad, realizing that COVID was here when the NBA was canceled and Tom Hanks got sick, and then getting sick myself in March 2020 (I was not sick enough to get tested by March 2020 standards, but I’m 99% sure I had COVID).
However, I rather talk about a more recent, dare I say joyous, COVID moment. Based on my age, occupation, and health status, I didn’t think I’d get a vaccine until May at the earliest. My husband’s a teacher so he would be eligible before me, but my state (Georgia) has fairly strict requirements for eligibility and we weren’t sure that he would get the vaccine before the end of the month. I don’t think Georgia moved into the 1B phase until this week!
Where Things Stand: Committee-less And Bored, Greene Annoys Her Own Colleagues
Forty of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-GA) Republican colleagues voted against her motion to adjourn the House this morning, a wave of intra-party pushback on a pellucid delay tactic designed to do little but stall the passage of the crucial COVID-19 relief bill.
