President Joe Biden is about to give an evening speech on national television. This shouldn't be all that rare an event, but with Biden it sadly has been. Last March, he gave such a speech on the COVID-19 pandemic response. Last March. Biden himself has reportedly been frustrated by his inability to get his message out, but he really bears a goodly portion of the blame for this himself. Where was the speech to the nation on the Russian invasion of Ukraine? How about a primetime address on inflation? Or the infant formula bottleneck? Or gas prices? Maybe he shouldn't have given a speech on each and every one of these important issues, but it would have been nice to see at least one or two of them addressed by the president, or perhaps a few within just one speech.

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Next Thursday, if all goes according to schedule, the nation will finally start to see what the House Select Committee on January 6th has uncovered during its lengthy investigation of the worst attack on the United States Capitol since 1814. This won't be a one-time show either -- there will be at least eight installments of this miniseries in June, with some of them appearing in primetime.

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It is hard to admit, but the world should really not get its hopes up too high for any sort of outcome in Ukraine other than the one Vladimir Putin initially set out to achieve. Putin wants to completely subdue and occupy Ukraine, which he sees as nothing more than a part of Russia. He will do whatever it takes to achieve that goal. And although not inevitable, the most likely outcome by far is that Russia will completely crush the Ukrainian military and eventually conquer every city in the entire country.

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Nope -- we're definitely not in Kansas anymore. We're not even where we're supposed to be, which is Pennsylvania. We may be in New Jersey; it's not immediately clear (which brings up a rather ironic twist on "There's no place like home," I suppose, since we're not really sure where his home actually is right now...). But today the following news appeared from some fantastical locale or another:

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This is taking silliness to an entirely new level. This entire sequence of "let's just give generations letters" began a long time ago, mostly pushed by Baby Boomers who (perhaps) didn't want any other generation to have a label cooler than theirs. After all, for a good decade or so, the Baby Boomers themselves were referred to (disparagingly) as "the Me Generation." Everything always had to be about them, in other words, so the following generations would just have to make do with "X," "Y," and "Z."

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Starting today, any American age 16 or older should be able to schedule an appointment to get their first COVID-19 vaccine shot. President Joe Biden originally set a goal of the first of May for this milestone, but was able to move it up a few weeks due to the overwhelming success of his vaccination program so far. Biden's first 100 days won't be up until next week, but he has already met or is on track to meet every pandemic-response goal he set for his administration -- including getting an astounding 200 million shots into people's arms in his first 100 days. This was actually a doubling of Biden's original stated goal, but he'll still hit the increased target he set for himself. It seems probable, at this point, that Biden's first year in office will largely be judged on the overall success America ultimately sees in the fight against the deadly disease. And up until this point, Biden's been doing a pretty stellar job.

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During the presidency of Donald Trump, the term "infrastructure week" became a running joke. Team Trump would tee up some big infrastructure event or announcement (in the hopes of driving the media narrative), but then the team captain would just self-destruct in front of everyone, derailing any hope of actually achieving anything meaningful. The first time this happened -- although few now remember it as the first infrastructure week fiasco -- was at a press announcement event with Trump's secretary of Transportation, Elaine Chao. There were a few dog-and-pony props set up, and Chao made her announcement, which mostly dealt with cutting what Republicans consider onerous rules and regulations, in order to move things like highway projects forward faster with less red tape. After her presentation was over, though, Trump took the podium and was soon asked by a journalist about the other big story of the day: the violent and deadly clash in Charlottesville, Virginia, between white supremacists and people opposed to white supremacy. Few may remember the context, but everyone remembers what happened next -- Trump's: "very fine people on both sides" rant. That was the first infrastructure week under Trump.

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America is on the verge of an explosion. I can feel its rumblings already. My guess is it's already started happening in a small way, and in the next two or three months it is going to spread like wildfire. OK, I'll stop with the flaming metaphors and just explain what I'm talking about instead, how's that?

Here's the best way to put it: "What are you going to do when it's over?"

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What will the political landscape look like after Donald Trump leaves office? That question is on a lot of people's mind right now, for obvious reasons. Everyone who voted for Joe Biden wants the entire country to move on and move forward, obviously. But even a lot of Republicans truly hope that the post-Trump world arrives sooner rather than later. What's standing in the way, however, is Trump himself, who shows no signs of fading into the background any time soon.

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I spent some time today watching the end of the Michigan State Board of Canvassers meeting on television. Now, I'm a pretty wonky guy when it comes to politics, but even I never thought I would ever spend any of my time watching a state elections board perform their rather mundane duties. Over the years, I've watched more congressional hearings than I can count, but not since the year 2000 has anyone paid such close attention to the nuts-and-bolts inner workings of how votes are counted and certified in this country. And I certainly wasn't the only one watching -- the streaming on YouTube reportedly had over 30,000 viewers. For the Michigan State Board of Canvassers.

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