Shields Up

the blue model hones its deflective pivots

It’s a pattern.

Benny Johnson @bennyjohnson

BIDEN: "We're not going into a recession."

In the Deep Blue suburban town where I live, our city government has been stumbling through a series of crises. For a couple of years, employees fled from City Hall like the building was on fire, and nowhere was the crisis more acute than in the finance department — where we had five directors in a little over two years, and lost most of the other staff, including one who sued the city over her departure. There was a year when we couldn’t pass a budget, because the budget proposal was such a shambles, and a discussion at a meeting of an advisory commission in which a commissioner asked one of the many finance directors if the numbers in the city’s bank accounts matched the numbers in the city ledger. (Try to guess the answer.)

Recently, an ad hoc committee of local citizens — all finance professionals — wrote a report on the period of crisis, and presented our city council with a recommendation that they hire someone to do a forensic audit of the city’s accounting during those years. The council scheduled the report as a “receive and file” item, placing it on a 28-item agenda as, you’ll never guess, item #28. Then, in a brief discussion that began after midnight, they said that the report was nonsense and hearsay. The end.

So, yes, there was no financial crisis in our city during the years when we had five finance directors, when “permanent” finance directors left after a few months, when we lost most of the finance department staff, when we couldn’t pass a budget, and when we had no idea how much money we were actually supposed to have in the bank. Our city council says so.¹ “These are not the ‘droids you are looking for.”

Meanwhile, we’re not in a recession, or even facing the risk of a recession, because that’s not Joe Biden’s view, and because the technical definition of a recession is very complicated.

PN News @PN_News_EN

Biden Chief Economic Advisor and Frmr BlackRock Exec Brian Deese: "In terms of the technical definition, [two negative quarters of growth] is not a recession."

Also, the inflation of 2021 was transitory. Zipped right by! Also, Joe Biden has a plan to shut down the virus.

The war in Ukraine is SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP, the economy is SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP, the continuing Covid-19 “emergency” is SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP, and the mRNA injections are REALLY REALLY SHUT UP. Actually, the way experts measure this is really complicated, and technically….

And can we sell you this Costco-sized box of January 6? In a period of metastasizing political crisis, here’s what Politico looked like yesterday:

Trump Israel Trump Trump. And here were the top stories at the same place on the same day:

As our multifaceted political and economic crisis accelerates into autumn, expect the national political news to become TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP and a soupçon of “you don’t understand.” The January 6 Committee will just have to remain in permanent session, screaming into the microphone until the set collapses and the live feed dies.²

The Blue Model is dead. There’s nothing left but the look over there shiny object maneuver, all day and every day.

1. A member of our city council, a retired government lawyer, has a single go-to maneuver when people disagree with her, which is to pull her mouth into a flat line and say, “I see that people don’t understand…” or, “I see that there’s a great deal of confusion on this point.”

She is so entirely a social type that I fantasize about mailing her a photograph of Walter Lippmann.

2. “You maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!” — Liz Cheney, November 8, 2022