Snippets from our last day of 2020 (I dare you):

As the U.S. confronted a new wave of infection and death through the summer and fall, the president’s approach to the pandemic came down to a single question: What would it mean for him? (NY Times)

We came all this way to let vaccines go bad in the freezer? America did not plan how to get millions of people vaccinated. (NY Times)

For months, Americans who despaired about the country’s coronavirus-suppression efforts looked desperately to the arrival of a vaccine for a kind of pandemic deliverance. Now that it has arrived, miraculously fast, we are failing utterly to administer it with anything like the urgency the pace of dying requires — and, perhaps most maddeningly, failing in precisely the same way as we did earlier in the year. America’s vaccine rollout is already a disaster. (NY Magazine)

Txxxx returns to Washington early as allies plot challenge to Biden victory. (The Guardian)

Whenever the MAGA set whines over someone calling for the Republican Party’s demise, one need only point to the fleet of prominent Republicans who have demonstrated their contempt for democracy. [Senator] Josh Hawley reminds us that the GOP is the sedition party. (Washington Post)

The stock market is ending 2020 in record territory, even as the virus surges and millions go hungry. (Washington Post)

Year ends on low note as 787,000 more Americans file for unemployment (The Guardian)

[Senator] McConnell refuses to budge on $2,000 stimulus checks. “Just give us a vote on the House-passed bill, and we can vote on whatever right-wing conspiracy theory you like,” [Senator Schumer] said on the Senate floor. (CNBC)

What did the Democrats win? The minority repeatedly thwarting the will of the majority is intolerable and untenable. (NY Review of Books)

Bomb cyclone in northern Pacific Ocean breaks all-time records. (Washington Post)

Knausgaard returns, with a collection of earnest, tedious, minor essays. Is excessive literary production a social offense? (NY Times)

For psychics, a year like no other: “Everybody wants to know what’s coming”. (Washington Post)

2021 is going to be like the math professor who took over for Ted Kaczynski. (Conan O’Brien)

Happy New Year!