TIPPING
ITEM
Who knew so many of you wanted to offer up a gratuity for your enjoyment of Wide World of News?
You can do that via one of these methods:
• PayPal. markhalperinnyc@gmail.com
• Venmo. Mark-Halperin-4 (telephone number ends in x3226)
• Zelle. markhalperinnyc@gmail.com
What that loudmouth will say on your morning Zoom: You can also email Halperin at markhalperintalk@gmail.com and ask where you can send a check.
What you should say on your morning Zoom: What you should really do is become a voluntary paying subscriber to Halperin’s newsletter to show your continuing support.
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ENDING
ITEM
What happens when David Ignatius, Peggy Noonan, and 95% of the Dominant Media all agree that President Biden has lost both the thread and the storyline?
What that loudmouth will say on your morning Zoom: I stopped paying attention to Biden around Thanksgiving; wake me when it’s over. And I have zero idea who Peter Baker is.
What you should say on your morning Zoom: It’s one thing to lose David Ignatius:
President Biden hit a political wall this week in his push for voting rights legislation, just as he did last year in trying to pass his Build Back Better spending package. It’s time for Biden to ask himself why he’s in this morass….
[S]uccessful presidencies carry a sense of political momentum, going from success to success. Sadly, President Biden has lost much of that forward drive. It’s time for a restart, with less shouting and more of Biden’s trademark common sense.
It’s another thing for one writer (Peggy Noonan), in a country with more than 300 million people, to consistently best capture what many think is wrong with the Biden presidency in the context of the man, the moment, and his party, in this case through the prism of his Georgia voting speech:
By the end he looked like a man operating apart from the American conversation, not at its center. This can be fatal to a presidency….
When national Democrats talk to the country they always seem to be talking to themselves. They are of the left, as is their constituency, which wins the popular vote in presidential elections; the mainstream media through which they send their messages is of the left; the academics, historians and professionals they consult are of the left. They get in the habit of talking to themselves, in their language, in a single, looped conversation. They have no idea how they sound to the non-left, so they have no idea when they are damaging themselves. But this week in Georgia Mr. Biden damaged himself. And strengthened, and may even have taken a step in unifying, the non-Democrats who are among their countrymen, and who are in fact the majority of them.
….but the real danger for Team Biden is that his job approval floor could be about to make the Quinnipiac poll look like good news for the White House, if progressives follow Dave Sirota in launching the biggest and most deadly circular firing squad since “Kill Bill: Vol. 1.”
If Joe Biden loses even a little support from a discouraged left, his job approval rating could dip lower than, yes, Donald Trump at his lowest.
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QUIZZING #1
ITEM
For which living former president is the Biden White House record so far the least surprising (and most ITYS)?
What that loudmouth will say on your morning Zoom: Donald Trump, of course – and watch this!
What you should say on your morning Zoom: Barack Obama – and it isn’t even close.
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VOTING/FILIBUSTERING
ITEM
What that loudmouth will ask on your morning Zoom: How could Ron Klain and Susan Rice let this happen?
What you should say on your morning Zoom: Remember, a lot of the rest of the Biden-Harris-Klain-Pelosi-Schumer agenda (minimum wage increase, immigration reform, etc) is not going anywhere if the filibuster is staying – and Sinema and Manchin made clear it is staying.
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CALIBRATING
ITEM
Drudge says:
What that loudmouth will say on your morning Zoom: I know this will sound like verbal irony, but this pandemic is never ending, except in my own life, where I’ve decided it is OVER.
What you should say on your morning Zoom: Did you see the Times? This thing might be ending. Or, at least, this part of this thing.
At another bleak moment of the pandemic in the United States — with nearly 800,000 new cases a day, deaths rising and federal medical teams deploying to overwhelmed hospitals — glints of progress have finally started to emerge. In a handful of places that were among the first to see a surge of the Omicron variant last month, reports of new coronavirus infections have started to level off or decline.
Daily case reports have been falling rapidly around Cleveland, Newark and Washington, D.C., each of which sustained record-shattering spikes over the past month. There were also early signs in Chicago, New York, Puerto Rico and hard-hit ski resort towns in Colorado that cases were hitting a plateau or starting to drop.
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SCOTUSING
ITEM
What that loudmouth will say on your morning Zoom: Wait, do I still have to wear a mask to work today or stand in line in the cold to get that test?
What you should say on your morning Zoom: This ruling confirms my suspicion that all the Trump Justices are going to be (like all the Democratic Justices) results-oriented and political when the chips are truly down. That is a tea leaf as big as the Ritz for 2022 and beyond.
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QUIZZING #2
ITEM
Who is paying closer attention to the aftermath of the Ghislaine Maxwell trial – Donald Trump or Bill Clinton?
What that loudmouth will say on your morning Zoom: Yes.
What you should say on your morning Zoom: Bill Clinton.
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RUSSIA-ING
ITEM
What that loudmouth will say on your morning Zoom: You got to hand it to Putin – he’s got Biden’s number.
What you should say on your morning Zoom: You got to hand it to Jake Sullivan and Tony Blinken – they have done what can be done to prepare for the various contingencies. I just hope they aren’t really relying on the Europeans to put security ahead of economics.
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QUIZZING #3
ITEM
Between now and the Super Bowl, will there be more gossip items about Tom Brady or Kanye West?
What that loudmouth will say on your morning Zoom: I think Kanye because he craves the limelight.
What you should say on your morning Zoom: I think the GOAT because the limelight craves him.
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