This piece, written by Yascha Mounk and published this week in The Atlantic, has generated considerable debate (and engendered considerable angry pushback) on social media and in various outlets of widely varying political orientations, and because of its undeniable (if simplistic) appeal, it is probably worth bringing to people’s attention, if only for purposes of discussion.
The purportedly homegrown display of economic sabotage currently unfolding in Canada and on the U.S.-Canadian border has garnered a large share of right-wing supporters in this country, primarily among those who oppose COVID-19 restrictions, decry the use of vaccines, and generally revel in performative gestures against what they consider government “overreach.
Immediately after the Republican National Committee censured Reps. Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney for investigating the Jan. 6 attacks at the U.S. Capitol, accusing them of “persecuting” fellow Republicans who had (after all) simply been engaging in “legitimate political discourse,” the United States Department of Justice released previously unseen video of one of the insurrectionists participating in such “discourse.
The U.S. media are still flummoxed by the question of how to cover Donald Trump’s actions, even a full year after his ejection from the Oval Office. That ambivalence is understandable; never before in the history of this country has someone so thoroughly brazen and insouciant in his raw criminality occupied a position now enjoyed by Trump, whose every utterance now smacks of outright, seditious intent.
By all accounts, Artemis Rayford was a happy, vibrant 12-year-old. He loved playing football and wearing his Tennessee Titans jersey. As a sixth-grader at Memphis, Tennessee’s Sherwood Middle School, Rayford had participated, just before the last year’s winter break, in a program his school coordinated with the Memphis Police Department—intended to discourage violence and gang activity. He and his fellow students learned about a new law passed in Jul.
There are few people in modern political history who have done as much damage to our democracy as Newt Gingrich. As the prototypical, ideological Republican “bomb-thrower” who first came of age during the Reagan “revolution” in the 1990s, Gingrich ushered in and patented an era of hyperpartisan viciousness and crass, unrelenting political rancor that finally reached its apotheosis in a GOP now firmly under the thumb of Donald Trump.
As the year-end holidays slowly tick towards their inevitable conclusion; as families gather (however possible) to enjoy the warmth of the many shared experiences and trials of the past year; and as we eagerly await yet again the inexorable descent of that familiar iridescent ball in Times Square at the stroke of midnight on Jan. 1, it’s a special time.
If Republicans take over the House of Representatives in 2023, they intend to force the Biden administration into making drastic cuts to domestic social programs in exchange for “agreeing” to raise the nation’s debt ceiling. Goaded by Donald Trump, their plan is to hold the country hostage, threatening to push all of us over the brink into an unprecedented fiscal calamity if their demands are not met.
Imagine testing positive for COVID-19, then deliberately not telling anyone for a week that you tested positive while continuing to go about your normal routine, knowingly putting others at risk. Then imagine being so cowardly and venal that rather than admitting to that test, you instead decided to blame the grieving families of dead U.S. soldiers for exposing you because you were too afraid of the political consequences that would follow if you had told the truth to begin with.
The reviews are in: “[S]o aimless it threatens your sanity” declares The Guardian. “A mesmerizing feast for the eyes,” reports Salon. ”Isn’t something we needed;” pronounces NBC news. “An addictive look at who the Beatles were,” according to Variety.
News outlets under the First Amendment have a tremendous amount of leeway, and, of course, they should. They should be entitled to print diverse, conflicting, even vehemently oppositional views, and they shouldn’t be concerned about how many people might disagree with any given viewpoint they choose to print. Hell, that’s why we’re all here on Daily Kos.
Donald Trump may think otherwise, but if a man can’t be trusted with his own children, one has to wonder why Pennsylvania voters would trust him with their vote. As reported by Kate Riga for TalkingPointsMemo:
A judge granted sole legal custody to Laurie Snell, the estranged wife of Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania Sean Parnell, after a bitter custody battle in which Snell accused him of assaulting both her and their children.
One of the hardest things to do in life is to admit you’ve made a mistake. Admitting mistakes strikes directly at our notions of identity and self-worth; it’s why people double down when faced with irrefutable evidence that they’re wrong, and it’s why telling people they’re wrong will render futile most efforts to change their minds about something.
In the final vote count for the so-called “bipartisan” infrastructure bill now sailing towards President Joe Biden’s desk to become the law of the land, there were six Democratic “no” votes—all from a subset of House Democrats who Fox News considers equally interchangeable whenever it’s time to demonize the Democratic Party. They were Reps.
Kevin Brobson is the Republican candidate on the ballot for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. The race has garnered an unusually high degree of right-wing “dark money” involvement since Democrats currently enjoy a 5-2 majority on that court and the race is to replace retiring Justice Thomas Saylor.
In a way, it’s good to have this finally stated. Over the past 30-odd years, we’ve been treated again and again to more than obvious attempts by the Republican Party to channel racism from their base of support.
Donald Trump and the Republican Party had four years to pass an infrastructure bill revamping and upgrading the nation’s transportation systems, broadband access, roadways, and everything else included in the current so-called “bipartisan” infrastructure package that has already passed the Senate. They didn’t come anywhere close to accomplishing that.
On Jan. 6, 2021, Republican Jim Banks of Indiana, along with 146 of his fellow Republican lawmakers, voted to support the violent efforts of the seditionist mob incited by Donald Trump to attack the U.S. Capitol and overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Just like mumps, just like chickenpox, just like measles.
As reported by The Washington Post, Californians have another reason to be thankful that Gov. Gavin Newsom will remain in charge of their state government, rather than some Trump-worshiping Fox News personality. Newsom announced Friday that, once the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) grants full approval, the Golden State would enact the first statewide COVID-19 vaccine mandate for eligible schoolchildren.
The COVID-19 pandemic has now killed more Americans than the 1918 Spanish flu, based on the official death count from COVID-19 compared to the estimated fatalities from the 1918 pandemic. As reported by Berkeley Lovelace, Jr., for CNBC:
Covid-19 is officially the most deadly outbreak in recent American history, surpassing the estimated U.S. fatalities from the 1918 influenza pandemic, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
Reported U.S.
If ever there was a clear-cut demonstration of why the response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been such a catastrophic failure in so many U.S. states, the county council of Elkhart County, Indiana, just provided a good example.
It’s well understood that Facebook and other social media sites have transformed millions of ordinary Americans into newly minted internet virologists and microbiologists, furiously digging through memes and videos—most of highly dubious origin—to find any justification for their preexisting, often politically inspired rationales for refusing the COVID-19 vaccines.
On Wednesday evening Rachel Maddow made an excellent point: While Democrats and the Biden administration focus on the mundane aspects of trying to do what’s best for the American people—passing infrastructure legislation, preserving and protecting the right to vote against GOP measures to suppress it, combating the causes and effects of climate change, and trying to ensure that women retain autonomy over their own bodies, for example—for Republicans, even addressing or
If the five rabid ideologues on the U.S. Supreme Court who last week sanctioned the Texas law prohibiting women from terminating an unwanted pregnancy after six weeks were capable of shame, this might embarrass them.
Among the many weapons of choice carried by the domestic terrorists who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, one of the more common was the ordinary nylon zip tie. In addition to their well-understood industrial uses, these flexible, non-yielding fasteners are also commonly used by law enforcement as restraints.
Since they have a perfectly innocent utility, carrying them can hardly be considered a crime under normal circumstances.
Very late Wednesday night, just before midnight, five right-wing fanatics on the United States Supreme Court took the cowardly step of preemptively overruling Roe v. Wade from the shadows. They did this quietly and surreptitiously, mindful that they would have risked the full wrath of the American public by explicitly overturning Roe, a decision that has stood for nearly half a century in guaranteeing the right to terminate one’s own pregnancy without governmental interference.
Throughout the pandemic, the media have often been hamstrung in efforts to convey the severe medical effects of COVID-19 by their inability to film actual patients in the last stages of infection. One of the barriers has been the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA),the national standard ensuring privacy of personal health information.
Nevertheless, some patients have provided the necessary permission to be videoed while still in the hospital.
Fox News is very upset. Because, on Thursday, MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace went there:
“If kids aren’t in school, it’s because Republicans didn’t get vaccinated and Republican governors stood in the way of mask mandates that would make it possible,” Wallace said.
While calling Wallace a “flack” and “one of the most fanatically anti-GOP voices on MSNBC,” Fox conspicuously omitted any factual rebuttal to her statements.
The truly unprecedented refusal of 90 million Americans to accept a safe, available vaccine proven to prevent their own infection, sickness, or death from the COVID-19 virus (or the more recent, more transmissible delta variant) has itself spawned a substantial amount of scientific research. Of the various factors contributing to this trend among a huge swath of the U.S.
It’s hard to overstate the body blow delivered to the entire right-wing project in the form of the four battle-scarred police officers who testified about their brutal experiences combating the mob of insurrectionists who Donald Trump unleashed against this country’s institutions on Jan. 6, 2021.