(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Media struggles with how to report good economic news [1] ['Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags', 'Showtags Popular_Tags'] Date: 2023-02-04 McKay Coppins/Atlantic: Republicans’ 2024 Magical Thinking Lots of Republicans want Donald Trump to disappear from politics. Their main strategy is hope. The scenarios Republicans find themselves fantasizing about range from the far-fetched to the morbid. In his recent book Thank You for Your Servitude, my colleague Mark Leibovich quoted a former Republican representative who bluntly summarized his party’s plan for dealing with Trump: “We’re just waiting for him to die.” As it turns out, this is not an uncommon sentiment. In my conversations with Republicans, I heard repeatedly that the least disruptive path to getting rid of Trump, grim as it sounds, might be to wait for his expiration. x A useful summary of the jobs report. It's all good news. My meta-theory of why so many people have been wrong about the economy for so long is that many economists (and econ journos) are incapable of acknowledging that sometimes good things happen.https://t.co/tc6DunwAZ1 — Justin Wolfers (@JustinWolfers) February 3, 2023 David Rothkopf/Daily Beast: Trump Is Still a Putin Stooge and a Traitor to His Country As the late great poet Maya Angelou might have said had she thought it was necessary, “When someone shows you over and over and over again that they are a traitor, believe them.” For further, completely appropriate emphasis, she might have elaborated: “When someone shows you over and over and over again, for their entire lives, in business and in government, that they are not only traitors, but corrupt, ignorant, pathologically dishonest, coup-plotting, racist, misogynist traitors, then seriously, I’m not kidding about this, believe them!” x infrastructure week https://t.co/SkRm9b8oEc — Greg Dworkin (@DemFromCT) February 3, 2023 TPM: Leaked Audio And Staff Dispute Show Chaos Inside George Santos’ Office After a little over a week working with embattled Rep. George Santos (R-NY), Derek Myers was informed that he would not be getting a permanent job. During that tense conversation, Santos also offered some parting advice. “Stop going to Colombia for your diluted Botox,” Santos told Myers. The exchange was captured on an at times bizarre audio file Myers said he recorded in Santos’ office on Capitol Hill. During the conversation, Santos cited Myers’ recent legal troubles that stemmed from his work as a reporter. For Santos, this was potentially a reason to remove him from the team. Myers was stunned by the hypocrisy. Santos fabricated much of his biography en route to getting elected last year and is currently facing multiple investigations related to his finances. “I’m thinking to myself, I’m a threat and concern to this institution — George Santos, you’re George Santos!” Myers told TPM. NY Times: Forget Pandemic Puppies. Meet the Inflation Chicken. People are snapping up chickens that are “heavy layers” in response to egg inflation. The chick situation holds lessons about the broader economy. Which shortage came first: the chicks or the eggs? Spooked by a huge spike in egg prices, some consumers are taking steps to secure their own future supply. Demand for chicks that will grow into egg-laying chickens — which jumped at the onset of the global pandemic in 2020 — is rapid again as the 2023 selling season starts, leaving hatcheries scrambling to keep up. “Everybody wants the heavy layers,” said Ginger Stevenson, director of marketing at Murray McMurray Hatchery in Iowa. Her company has been running short on some breeds of especially prolific egg producers, partly as families try to hedge their bets against skyrocketing prices and constrained egg availability. “When we sell out, it’s not like: Well, we can make another chicken,” she said. x 🔵 NEW: Liz Truss is set to make her 'big political comeback' on Sunday, @HuffPostUK reports. The ex-PM has written an article for a Sunday paper in which she sets out where she thinks Rishi Sunak is going wrong. — TLDR News UK (@TLDRNewsUK) February 3, 2023 Henry J Gomez/MSNBC: Michigan Republicans are in turmoil as their leaders navigate tricky Trump terrain Republicans are now completely out of power in the Midwest battleground state and struggling to settle on a path forward. After a shellacking that wiped them out of power in every branch of state government for the first time in 40 years, Michigan Republicans are discordantly wrestling with an uncertain future. The front-runners to be the next state GOP chair are failed candidates from 2022 who lost their races after hewing closely to former President Donald Trump’s election conspiracy theories. A sizable faction of Republican state lawmakers, meanwhile, is eager to move on from Trump, who is running for the White House again in 2024, and encouraging Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to challenge him. Between yesterday’s piece on AZ and today’s on MI, it’s a good reminder that elections have consequences. NY Times: Bias and Human Error Played Parts in F.B.I.’s Jan. 6 Failure, Documents Suggest The F.B.I. appeared to be blinded by a lack of imagination, a narrow focus on “lone wolf” offenders and a misguided belief that the threat from the far left was as great as that from the far right, new congressional documents show. Days before the end of the 2020 presidential race, a team of F.B.I. analysts tried to game out the worst potential outcomes of a disputed election. But of all the scenarios they envisioned, the one they never thought of was the one that came to pass: a violent mob mobilizing in support of former President Donald J. Trump. The team’s work, which has never been reported, is just the latest example of how the Federal Bureau of Investigation was unable to predict — or prevent — the chaos that erupted at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Apparently blinded by a narrow focus on “lone wolf” offenders and a misguided belief that the threat from the far left was as great as that from the far right, the analysis and other new documents suggest, officials at the bureau did not anticipate or adequately prepare for the attack. This is still a bigger deal than the dumb “Lawnchair Larry weather balloon from China” story. And as a reminder that dumb ideas have always been treated seriously: [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/4/2150877/-Abbreviated-Pundit-Roundup-Media-struggles-with-how-to-report-good-economic-news Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/