Perhaps it is appropriate that I chose to write about this today, since it is Groundhog Day. Because, much like Bill Murray experienced in the movie, it certainly feels like we've been here before. But maybe this time we'll actually get to continue onwards, instead of reliving the same cycle over and over again. That's my hope, at any rate.

I am speaking of the COVID-19 pandemic. The mainstream media has recently lost interest in the story, but there is some great news they really should be sharing with the American public: we may almost be at the end. We may be approaching endemic status rather than pandemic. We may be approaching the vaunted herd immunity. We may, not to put too fine a point on it, almost be out of the woods.

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Today I am revisiting a nightmare. Perhaps it is the situation in Ukraine and Taiwan which caused me to think about this again, or perhaps it was reading an article entitled: "A Normal Supply Chain? It's 'Unlikely' In 2022." The article takes a big-picture look at the issue from all sorts of angles, but ends rather inconclusively. The COVID-19 pandemic changed a whole lot of consumer behavior, businesses made the wrong assumptions at the start of the pandemic, but we may never go back to the "old normal" again since some of these changes may become permanent.

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In his dystopian masterpiece Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell wrote of how truth could be manipulated to control a population. He wrote his novel in the late 1940s, immediately after the horrors of World War II. American schoolchildren are often assigned this book to read, since it is such a literary masterpiece of speculative fiction. Or, at least, they used to regularly be assigned the book. Who knows how many will get to read it in the future?

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We have always been a total sucker for "First Pets," we fully admit. Especially First Cats. So we simply must begin this weekly roundup by extending our warmest welcome to newly-announced First Cat Willow Biden. From the New York Times announcement:

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Joe Biden just got the best numbers of his presidency, and they have nothing to do with opinion polls. The Commerce Department today released the economic numbers for last year, and they are nothing short of phenomenal. Hopefully the media will make as big a deal over this success as they have been about inflation, because people really should have some overall context for the true state of the American economy. But if the media fails to spotlight the great economic news adequately enough, then Democrats shouldn't let them get away with it -- Democrats should continually remind the voters how good the news is and how much the economy has recovered from the pandemic, with every chance they get.

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Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has unofficially announced his impending retirement from the highest court in the land. He deserves thanks from all Democrats for doing so. By making this announcement now, Breyer has shown he has learned the lesson of Ruth Bader Ginsberg's death. And since it was such an important and painful lesson, it's gratifying to see Breyer now put the interests of the court itself above his own. For that, he deserves gratitude.

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Republicans, fresh off an upset victory in the Virginia governor's race, are planning to make education a major political issue in the midterm elections. Democrats are going to need to come up with some way of fighting back if they're going to have any chance in November. But so far, Democrats seem to be on the defensive, without a coherent strategy of what the party stands for or how they're going to present it to the public.

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It was an eventful week in Washington, with a holiday and an anniversary thrown in for good measure, so we're going to try to be a little more succinct in this week's rundown. Well... try to, at any rate.

The week began with Martin Luther King Junior Day, saw a historic (but failed) vote in the Senate on voting rights, contained a marathon of a presidential press conference, and marked the first year President Joe Biden has spent in office. Plus a whole lot of other notable developments along the way.

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One year ago today, Joe Biden was sworn in as president of the United States. His Inauguration was notable for a few reasons, first and foremost the fact that it happened only two weeks after the U.S. Capitol had been besieged and overrun by insurrectionists attempting to prevent Biden from ever taking office. So the entire Capitol complex was heavily locked down and defended for what is normally a positive and upbeat public ceremony. The other two notable reasons that stick in my mind were: Amanda Gorman absolutely stealing the show with her poem "The Hill We Climb," and Bernie Sanders providing the best photo op by sitting on a socially-distanced chair wearing adorable homemade mittens.

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I am writing this after watching a rather extraordinary press conference with President Joe Biden. It was extraordinary for two reasons, really -- it was only the second such press conference he's given on U.S. soil since becoming president, and it was monumentally long, clocking in at just under two hours. It was a true marathon of a presser, as Biden seemed almost reluctant to end it -- and at several times even kidded with the reporters that he could go for another two or three hours if they were up for it. Perhaps he was making up for the lack of regular press conferences in his first year by giving what amounted to a double press conference to begin his second?

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