Lindsey Graham says that the Justice Department is now acting as an investigative arm of President Trump’s jihad against the Biden family:

Mr. Graham, a South Carolina Republican who is the chairman of the Judiciary Committee and a vocal Trump ally, said Attorney General William P. Barr told him in a telephone call early Sunday morning that the department was “receiving information coming out” of Ukraine delivered by Mr. Giuliani. “He told me that they have created a process that Rudy could give information and they would see if it’s verified,” Mr. Graham said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

Nobody should be surprised by this. Republicans have made it clear that they support Trump’s use of federal government resources in his reelection campaign, so why bother trying to hide it anymore? Lindsey Graham apparently has no problem with this, and no one else in the party has complained about it either.

When will it all end? That’s an easy one: it will end when Joe Biden is no longer a threat, and not a day sooner.

Before we dive into a new week, allow me to indulge a pet peeve. Here is Vox’s Alissa Wilkinson on Parasite, the Korean film that won Best Picture last night:

The deck was stacked against the film from the start, for reasons that its good-natured and much-beloved director Bong Joon-ho cheekily joked about all season as he collected awards from critics’ groups and industry guilds. “Once you overcome the one-inch tall barrier of subtitles,” Bong bantered after collecting his Golden Globe for best foreign language film in January, “you will be introduced to so many more amazing films.” The challenge was simple: Americans just don’t like reading subtitles, and the Academy is mostly made up of Americans, working in the American film industry.

First off, it’s hardly just Americans who don’t like subtitles. No one likes subtitles. They’re only common in markets where film revenues aren’t high enough for studios to recoup the cost of producing dubbed versions.

But that’s not my pet peeve. My pet peeve is that of course no one likes subtitles. After all, they eliminate one of the key aspects of the acting craft: reading lines. It is faux sophistication of the highest order to pretend that this shouldn’t—or doesn’t—matter.

None of this is to say that you can’t enjoy subtitled films. Of course you can. And I saw almost no movies last year, so I have no opinion on Parasite one way or the other. It’s only to say that spoken dialogue is a key part of the theatrical experience. Of course it matters.

This post has been revised.

With only a couple of days left until the New Hampshire primary, the latest poll aggregates are showing the dramatic effects of the Iowa caucuses:

Pete Buttigieg is soaring and Joe Biden is tanking. Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders and Amy Klobuchar are steadily gaining ground while Elizabeth Warren is steadily deflating.

Personally, I thought Biden did OK in Friday’s debate, but the consensus of the punderati is that he did poorly. If that’s the case, and he drops below 10 percent, it’s probably all over for Biden. Three presidential races over three decades and three losses.

Beyond that, who knows? I still find it hard to believe that Buttigieg has much of a chance, but after election night of 2016 I’ve given up on prognosticating. There’s obviously something about the American public that I don’t get anymore. If Republicans can nominate Donald Trump, I guess it’s not out of the question that Democrats could nominate Pete Buttigieg.

POSTSCRIPT: It’s worth noting that the two frontrunners are also the two who are the vaguest about how they’ll get anything done. Bernie promises a lot, but it all depends on his mythical “revolution,” and Pete is mostly full of mushy talk about “a new way of doing politics” and so forth. And the candidates who are doing poorly? The one with a plan for everything and the one running on experience in getting things done. It’s almost as if Democratic voters all understand that plans and experience are useless in the face of a Republican Senate that will block every single thing a Democratic president tries to do.

Here is the top story in the Washington Post right now:

For most of my readers, this sounds outrageous. Vindman himself won’t actually be hurt too much: he’ll return to the Pentagon a little earlier than planned, and in a few months he’s going off to war college. But his twin brother was also fired, even though he had nothing to do with the Ukraine affair. And Gordon Sondland is gone too, for making the fatal mistake of refusing to perjure himself to save Trump’s bacon.

But Trump himself wouldn’t understand why anyone is upset about this. He can hardly be expected to trust people who betrayed him. Right? And when Vindman was let go, his brother would probably harbor a grudge too. He had to make a clean sweep.

And here’s the key to all this: many of the kind of people who voted for Trump agree completely. Firing these people isn’t outrageous, it’s just common sense. Think about it. What kind of dope would keep people around who believed they were working for a guy who had broken the law? And in key positions, no less. It would be like keeping hand grenades with the pins half pulled lying around on your desk. Anybody with a lick of sense would get rid of them all.

To Trump’s base, this is the way any strong leader acts. You think it’s outrageous. They think you’re nuts.

Hmmm. I’m a little unsure of what I think about tonight’s debate. Pete Buttigieg got a lot of time (or seemed to), though I’m not sure precisely what points he wanted us to come away with. His defense of Joe Biden was very good, though. I’d show you a clip, but ABC News won’t let me.

Amy Klobuchar generally did well, and her final wrap-up was really good. I groaned a bit when she started with an FDR anecdote, but she turned it around into something very effective.

Joe Biden was clearly more animated and forceful than before. This is . . . probably good for him? Yes, probably.

Bernie Sanders was his usual self.

Elizabeth Warren was also her usual self.

Yang and Steyer, as always, didn’t matter.

The climate change discussion was a huge disappointment. The moderators blew it by linking it with NAFTA 2.0, which turned the whole thing into a tedious discussion about whether climate should be a part of America’s trade treaties. I mean, sure, that would be nice, but it’s practically meaningless given the scope of the problem. When will someone start asking climate questions that require the candidates to truly discuss the size of the problem; how we’ll get the rest of the world on board (“Paris” isn’t near enough); and what it will require from taxpayers?

The discussion of race was equally dispiriting. I’ll concede that it’s a genuinely difficult issue, especially in 60-second chunks, but these folks have had months to come up with their answers. Why can’t they do better?

Overall, then, I’m going to say that the debate probably helped Buttigieg. The attacks on him were mostly about experience, and Americans have shown over and over that they don’t really care much about that. Biden and Klobuchar did well and may have picked up a bit. And I suspect that’s about it.

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Well, I forgot that tonight’s debate started at 5:00 here on the West Coast. I picked things up about 20 minutes in, as the candidates were mostly arguing about how we all need to come together and crush Donald Trump. Let’s dive in.

10:25 pm – Steyer agrees with Bernie, but also tosses in a mention of Republican attacks on unions. Then he spends some time telling us what a dick President Trump is.

10:22 pm – Klobuchar says she has a plan based on a National Academy of Sciences report. It includes preschool etc. Then she delivers an emotional and effective mini-speech about how much she cares about people who have trouble paying the rent, trouble finding a job, and so forth.

10:21 pm – Sanders says the reason we have lots of child poverty is because we give huge tax breaks to corporations and the rich. Needless to say, that will change if Sanders becomes president.

10:19 pm – Biden is very convincing that he cares about kids, but he doesn’t offer much of a plan.

10:17 pm – Warren wants a “real plan.” Hers includes early childhood education, higher wages for childcare workers, put “real money” into public education and housing.

10:16 pm – Buttigieg says we’re just doing the wrong things. We need a different kind of politics. Meh.

10:15 pm – Yang talks about various aspects of local life, but doesn’t mention his $1,000-per-person plan. Why?

10:14 pm – Last question: How do we attack child poverty?

10:08 pm – Commercial break! We’re having a rousing debate about whether anyone on the stage actually disagrees with anyone else. I’m on “Team No Differences That Actually Matter Since Republicans Are the Gating Item Anyway.”

10:07 pm – Bretton Woods gets a shoutout!

10:05 pm – Just stop it. Now Steyer is talking about how trade policy gives us leverage to force other countries to fight climate change. This might—might—address about a tenth of one percent of the problem. Unless you’re talking about something that has a chance of reducing carbon emissions by at least five percent or so, just STFU.

10:03 pm – We’re supposedly talking about climate change now, but we’re actually talking about NAFTA 2.0. Sheesh. That’s got to be the least important part of a climate change plan imaginable.

9:58 pm – Wait. Donald Trump is considering an executive order that would “establish a classical style, inspired by Greek and Roman architecture, as the default for federal buildings in Washington”? I missed that. I hope we’ll get a chance for everyone to weigh in on this tonight.

9:46 pm – Warren hauls out a tiresome old trope: we talk and talk about racial issues but it’s time we finally did something about them. The first part of this is something that could have come straight from Rush Limbaugh’s radio show, and the second part condemns past Democrats for never doing anything for minority groups. But the problem here is not that Democrats never do anything; the problem is that it’s genuinely difficult to pass legislation aimed only at blacks and Hispanics. You can target assistance to the poor, which has a disproportionate benefit for minorities, but there’s a hard limit to how much you can explicitly discriminate either for or against minority groups.

9:37 pm – Buttigieg talks about eliminating prison sentences for drug possession. Great! But in the federal courts, a grand total of 213 people were incarcerated for simple possession in 2017. And my guess is that some of those were more serious charges that got pled down. In any case, contrary to myth, incarceration for simple possession is not a problem at the federal level. (It’s a bigger problem at the state and local level, especially for pretrial imprisonment, but there’s a pretty limited amount that a president can do about that.)

9:33 pm – Why does Tom Steyer always wear that same tie?

9:29 pm – Now Buttigieg is talking about reforming the Supreme Court and adding members to it. This is ridiculous. Where exactly does he plan to get the 60 Senate votes he would need to do this? Or does he think Democrats will eliminate the filibuster if they win control of the Senate?

9:22 pm – Everyone hates guns.

9:05 pm – Commercial break! My initial impressions are (a) Buttigieg is getting a lot of time, and (b) someone advised Biden that he needed to amp up his speaking style. Apparently his poor performance in Iowa convinced them that playing the calm, experienced statesman wasn’t working.

8:55 pm – Apparently none of the Democrats would have killed Qasem Soleimani. But nobody mentioned the New York Times piece suggesting that Iran wasn’t responsible for the attack that started the spiral of retaliation in the first place.

8:43 pm – Biden thanks Buttigieg but then calls for a big round of applause for Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who Trump fired today. And he got it. Mitt Romney got a round of applause too. But what about poor old Gordon Sondland? He testified against Trump and got fired too.

8:41 pm – Buttigieg is asked if Democrats should be reluctant to nominate a person whose son is under investigation. His answer: “No.” What’s more, “anyone who would seek to weaponize a son against his own father” is an “incredibly dishonorable person.” It was a nice answer.

I think I’ll let our kittens grow up for another couple of weeks before they get featured again. I figure that four weeks old should be pretty close to peak cuteness. In the meantime, here is brave Sir Hilbert, who chased away an invader cat on Wednesday night and made our house safe once again.

In this victory portrait, Hilbert is sitting on the fabulous teal chair. This chair is about 80 years old and still in perfect condition. My family gets it reupholstered in teal every decade or two, and that’s it. What I want to know—and what no one can give me a straight answer to—is why an old chair like this is so sturdy. Is it the wood? The joints? Something else? Whatever it is, I can tell you that new chairs like this one sure don’t last anywhere near 80 years.

Vice President Mike Pence says we shouldn’t worry our pretty heads about the federal deficit:

“The president came into office and he said, ‘First and foremost, we have to restore growth,’” Pence said. “Deficits and debt are right in line, but it is first about getting this economy moving again and we really do believe the trajectory of this economy,” Pence said.

….Asked about the debt-to-GDP ratio — which has grown from Obama’s tenure in the White House to Trump’s — Pence said Friday that “in a second term, we’ll continue to address those issues.”

So there you have it: deficits really do stimulate the economy. This certainly explains why Republicans were hellbent on keeping the deficit as low as possible during President Obama’s term in office but don’t care about it now that President Trump is in office. They certainly didn’t want to help the economy when Democrats were in power, after all.

By the way, here’s the trajectory of the economy that Pence believes so strongly in:

But vote Republican anyway! We already know they’ll fight tooth and nail against a strong economy if a Democrat is president, so what choice do we have?

Hey, remember that rocket attack from an Iranian militia back in December? It killed an American contractor, so we launched a retaliatory attack that killed 24 and wounded 50. Then a big crowd of Iranian sympathizers surrounded the US embassy in Baghdad, and President Trump responded by killing Qasem Soleimani, head of Iran’s Kuds Force. Iran responded, and finally the whole thing petered out.

Funny thing about that. It turns out that the original attack might not have been from an Iranian militia after all. It might have been from ISIS:

Iraqi officials say their doubts are based on circumstantial evidence and long experience in the area where the attack took place….Khataib Hezbollah has not had a presence in Kirkuk Province since 2014. The Islamic State, however, had carried out three attacks relatively close to the base in the 10 days before the attack on K-1. Iraqi intelligence officials sent reports to the Americans in November and December warning that ISIS intended to target K-1, an Iraqi air base in Kirkuk Province that is also used by American forces.

….“We have requested the American side to share with us any information, any evidence, but they have not sent us any information,” Lt. Gen. Muhammad al-Bayati, the chief of staff for former Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi, said in an interview….“They did not ask for my analysis of what happened in Kirkuk and neither did they share any of their information,” he said. “Usually, they would do both.”

American officials disagree, insisting that the attack came from Khataib Hezbollah. They haven’t released any evidence to back this up, but they’re absolutely, totally sure of it. And I guess that should be good enough. After all, American military intelligence has a long track record of always being right about things related to Iraq. Right?

Yahoo News reports that Ukrainegate is far from over:

The Treasury Department has complied with Republican senators’ requests for highly sensitive and closely held financial records about Hunter Biden and his associates and has turned over “‘evidence’ of questionable origin” to them, according to a leading Democrat on one of the committees conducting the investigation.

….Sens. Charles Grassley, chairman of the Finance Committee; Ron Johnson, chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee; and Lindsey Graham, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, have focused their efforts in Washington, seeking to extract politically useful information from agencies of the U.S. government. They’ve issued letters requesting records from Cabinet departments and agencies, including the State Department, the Treasury, the Justice Department, the FBI, the National Archives and the Secret Service.

Grassley and Johnson have sought to obtain some of the most sensitive and closely held documents in all of federal law enforcement — highly confidential suspicious activity reports (SARs) filed by financial institutions with FinCEN, an agency of the Treasury that helps to police money laundering.

The Treasury Department has complied with the Republican requests in nearly record time. Meanwhile, when it comes to records about Donald Trump that Treasury is legally required to turn over, they’ve told Democrats to “pound sand,” as Sen. Ron Wyden puts it. Welcome to America, our planet’s newest banana republic.

It’s worth noting that this is how Trump works: even if he can’t wreak his vengeance directly on you, he’ll find someone close to you instead. Mitt Romney better watch out for this. He might be personally unassailable, but are his kids? His cousins? His friends? If you don’t think that Donald Trump is looking into this already, you are just hopelessly naive.

Who needs the South Pole, anyway?

Antarctica has logged its hottest temperature on record, with an Argentinian research station thermometer reading 18.3C, beating the previous record by 0.8C. The reading, taken at Esperanza on the northern tip of the continent’s peninsula, beats Antarctica’s previous record of 17.5C, set in March 2015.

….Prof James Renwick, a climate scientist at Victoria University of Wellington…“The reading is impressive as it’s only five years since the previous record was set and this is almost one degree centigrade higher. It’s a sign of the warming that has been happening there that’s much faster than the global average.”

That’s 65°F for you American folks. A nice day for a walk.