Inflation is rapidly turning into President Joe Biden's Achilles' heel. In the midst of an economy that is by every other measure booming, inflation remains the unsolved problem that affects all Americans at the grocery store, at the gas pump, and at the used car lot. Unlike more esoteric economic indicators, people see inflation's effects very directly, as they pay more for basic supplies every week. This represents an enormous political problem not just for Democrats but for Joe Biden personally.

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Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi made some news today, by tentatively signalling she is now more open to the idea of banning members of Congress from making individual stock trades while they serve in office. The easiest way to do this, of course, would be to require all members to turn over all their holdings to a blind trust before they are sworn in. That would solve the problem entirely, but there are currently multiple proposals floating around Capitol Hill with various ideas as to how best achieve a trading ban. Pelosi's previous position had been to reject the idea entirely, saying back in December (when asked about banning members from individual trades): "We're a free-market economy. They should be able to participate in that." She got a lot of blowback for this, while the idea has continued to gain steam among not only Democrats but also some Republicans as well. Today on the Senate floor, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer got behind the idea wholeheartedly, addressing the Senate: "I believe this is an important issue that Congress should address, and it is something that has clearly raised interest on both sides of the aisle over the last few weeks." He urged senators to act sooner rather than later, as well. Pelosi, when asked about Schumer's comments, had a more-nuanced response: "I do believe in the integrity of people in public service. I want the public to have that understanding. We have to do this to deter something that we see as a problem.... And if that's what the members want to do, then that's what we will do."

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President Joe Biden missed an opportunity to make good on a campaign promise this week. It's not the most significant thing happening in the White House right now, I will admit, but it was a missed opportunity nonetheless. Biden could have stood strongly (as he had pledged to do) for the rights of people working for him not to be bullied while doing their jobs. Instead, he wound up looking detached and weak. Perhaps this was the fault of overzealous aides who did their best to not allow a controversy to actually enter the Oval Office, but there's also a danger in protecting the president too much from having to make hard choices.

The story starts with Politico, who was researching an article exposing Dr. Eric Lander, Biden's cabinet-level chief science advisor, as being a bad boss. Plenty of evidence of this exists, apparently, as he would routinely berate and belittle people working for him -- women, in particular. Although Lander is seen as somewhat of a technological wunderkind in the medical research area, that doesn't always equate to being a good boss. Or even one that doesn't break workplace rules, for that matter.

After it was revealed that there had been an internal investigation into Lander that did indeed find evidence of Lander mistreating underlings, the White House's initial response was beyond weak. It recommended that Lander do some touchy-feely events with his staff (brown-bag lunches'll fix everything!) and that the whole department (but not Lander himself) undergo workplace sensitivity training.

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Today Politico caused somewhat of a stir, by publishing an article that examined the question of the chances Democrats will have to avoid getting wiped out in the midterm elections this November. Up until now, the conventional inside-the-Beltway cocktail-party-chattering-class wisdom was that Democrats were toast and might as well not even bother running much of a campaign at all. Historical trends were against them, gerrymandering was going to take the House of Representatives away from them, and Republicans were going to emerge with new congressional majorities pretty much no matter what Democrats did or said in the meantime.

The Politico article challenged all of this, in admirable detail for such a short article. Summarized a bit, the main reasons why Democratic odds might be significantly improving were:

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President Joe Biden had a pretty good week, as political weeks go in Washington. First and foremost, the Omicron variant of the COVID-19 pandemic is fading fast -- the numbers are now down below half of the peak they hit roughly two weeks ago. That's good news for everybody, not just President Biden.

Then it was announced that the United States military had taken out the leader of the Islamic State, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi. Questions still remain about the mechanics of this daring raid in Syria, but nobody is questioning the fact that the targeted terrorist leader is now dead.

The monthly jobs report came out today and it was astonishingly good, showing not only that the economy added 467,000 jobs in January (even in the worst part of the Omicron spike) but also that the previous two months had been adjusted upwards by a whopping 700,000 more new jobs than had been reported at the time. This stunned analysts who had been fully prepared for the jobs report to show the economy had lost jobs in January. The recovery continues apace, and Joe Biden oversaw more than six million jobs created in his first year in office (closer to seven million, actually) -- a jaw-dropping and record-setting number.

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At this juncture in time, what was once seen as a radical suggestion seems more and more to now be a very smart course of action. This is far from ideal, since the original plans would have been far, far better... but we are where we are. So perhaps it is time for Democrats in Congress to consider using the budget reconciliation rules in the Senate to achieve only one of their stated objectives. And there is no more pressing concern for the voters than limiting pharmaceutical companies from their continual greed when it comes to setting the price of their wares for the American public. Lowering prescription drug prices via reconciliation would chalk up an enormous political win for Democrats, heading into the midterm campaign season.

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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.

Of course, as we've seen before (see: Delta, Omicron), this could all prove to be illusory. There may be a new variant lurking out there that will make things much worse in a very short time. That's certainly what both of the previous mutations did. But barring that development (knock wood), America is at least on the brink of the Omicron wave being functionally over.

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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:

After keeping the nation on tenterhooks since even before taking office, the Biden White House announced on Friday that a gray cat named Willow had joined the first family, more than a year after the plucky farm feline from Pennsylvania caught the eye of the first lady, Jill Biden, while she was on the stump for her husband.

"Willow made quite an impression on Dr. Biden in 2020 when she jumped up on the stage and interrupted her remarks during a campaign stop," said Michael LaRosa, the first lady's spokesman. "Seeing their immediate bond, the owner of the farm knew that Willow belonged with Dr. Biden."

Willow is named after the first lady's hometown, Willow Grove, Pa.

Here are some photos of Willow from First Lady Jill, just because. Now we'll all just have to wait and see if White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was right when she predicted last year (when asked when the promised First Cat was going to appear): "We know the cat will break the internet."

Meow!

(Ahem.) With that out of the way, let's move on to the lesser (and less adorable) news of the week, as it were.

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