In the news today: As expected, two Democratic senators joined all Republican senators to filibuster a vote on voting rights protections that would stop the unconscionable new state laws intended to make voting more difficult and time-consuming.
Georgia has been one of the states most egregious in inventing new obstacles to the vote, citing conspiracists’ claims of “fraud” as justification.
In the news today: Tonight saw the latest Senate battle to protect voting rights even as Republican-held state legislatures pass unprecedented rollbacks targeting those rights. What’s next is unclear, but Democratic leaders organized the vote tonight as a move to force the two Senate Democratic holdouts—as well as all Senate Republicans—on record for blocking the urgently needed protections.
In the news today: There’s a new federal website for ordering COVID-19 tests. A bit of light has been shed on why one liberal Supreme Court justice has been hearing oral arguments remotely rather than in person: It’s because Justice Neil Gorsuch is refusing to wear a mask, despite being asked to by the chief justice himself. The sex trafficking investigation into Rep.
It has been refreshing, this past year, to not have to listen to the crap-filled ramblings of Republicanism’s treasonous Dear Leader, but Donald Trump has begun to resume his rallies and continues to hold the Republican Party entirely in the palm of his stubby-fingered hand.
In the news today: The Supreme Court handed down a stunning ruling that overturned OSHA rules requiring COVID-19 vaccination or testing for the nation’s largest employers. The most stunning part was the bizarre theory invented by the court’s conservatives—one that would seem to invalidate nearly all workplace safety rules, from fire prevention to safety railings.
In the news today: The battle to protect voting rights is coming to a head in the Senate, where Democrats appear to be going forward with a plan to put filibuster proponents on record with their claims that a Senate rule that is, in current form, younger than the movie Jaws is more important than protecting Americans from new rules designed to keep voters from ballot boxes. Yet more subpoenas for those around Trump.
In the news today: Many of the nation’s most prominent voices are now quite sure that school closures during a pandemic are a political stance—and that’s as good an example of the stakes-free nihilism of our political punditry as you might find.
In the news today: House Republican Rep. Jim Jordan was once eager to mention that he’d been speaking with Donald Trump the very day Trump and his team assembled an angry mob to “march” to Congress as part of a broader plan to erase Trump’s election loss. Once it became clear that the contents of those conversations could constitute evidence of sedition, however, the loudest member of Congress clammed right up.
In the news today: Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is instituting new policies that will seek jail time only for the most serious offenses. That’s consistent with research showing that incarceration for minor crimes is both expensive and ineffective—but the city’s police commissioner is furious. A lawsuit accuses Facebook of abetting a murderous insurrectionist group with algorithms that effectively work as recruitment tools for those groups.
In the news today: The anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection, a day when Donald Trump, his allies, a majority of Republican lawmakers, and a violent mob attempted to nullify the results of a United States election rather than abide an election loss.
Here’s some of what you may have missed:
• ‘He lost’: Biden delivers stinging rebuke of Trump, GOP on one-year anniversary of Capitol siege
• In the year since Jan.
In the news today: Omicron. Omicron, omicron, omicron. While politicians posture and bicker over who can keep schools open longest or manage this new mega-surge with the least “disruption,” the virus at the center of the surge isn’t listening—and that means schools and other services are being shuttered not because any politician ordered it to happen or not happen, but there are simply too many people out sick to make things function.
In the news today: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis finally made an appearance after two weeks of silence as his state yet again descended into pandemic crisis.
Welcome back to our impromptu and sporadically scheduled pandemic guide to anime. If you’ve missed any of our earlier entries, you can find them all here; for our introductory post, you can go here.
We’ll close out our current batch of suggestions with, appropriately, something that’s completely different from all the others. Almost completely different, that is. Like many of the others, it’s a school comedy.
Welcome back to our impromptu and sporadically scheduled pandemic guide to anime. If you’ve missed any of our earlier entries, you can find them all here; for our introductory post you can go here, yada yada yada, introduction done.
All right, recent entries have ranged from the perils of high school life to the perils of the afterlife.
In the news today: The House committee probing the Jan. 6 insurrection wants to hear from yet another House Republican who was in contact with Donald Trump that day: Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, whose pleas to Trump for assistance during the violence were rebuffed. The new year is bringing at least some good news, as new government rules take effect curtailing surprise medical bills.
In the news today: Former Sen. Harry Reid, a giant of progressive politics, died last night at age 82. The nation’s COVID-19 pandemic has now reached yet another all-time high, with a 7-day average now topping a quarter-million new cases per day. And the mass shooter responsible for five deaths in Denver has been identified as a white supremacist who repeatedly advocated for political violence on social media—and wrote a “book” that reveled in such violence.
In the news today: The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection will be moving into a new, more visible phase of its work with new public hearings. But it also has to decide what to do with Trump allies who have key evidence about the attempted coup but are refusing House orders to produce it.
In the news today: What the heck is up with Rep. Madison Cawthorn? Seriously, Cawthorn’s story about how he met his soon-to-be-ex-wife is so bizarre that it defies description. Cawthorn’s proven willingness to lie about his own life story might explain some of it, but if he’s not lying? Eeeesh.
In a rare bit of “good” news, as COVID-19’s omicron variant rapidly takes hold through the country and officials warn that we’re in for a bleak pandemic winter, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have released updated guidelines for how long those who have tested positive for COVID-19 but have no symptoms should stay isolated, now cutting the recommended quarantine time from 10 days to just five.
Welcome back to our impromptu and sporadically scheduled pandemic guide to anime. If you’ve missed any of our earlier entries, you can find them all here; for our introductory post you can go here.
Having run through many of the most famous choices and most popular genres, it’s now time to switch things up.
In the news today: Quite a bit of good, for a change! The U.S. economy continues to boom, and the supply chain surge that saw major U.S. ports clogged with more imports than they could handle is waning after prompt federal and state action. A new pill believed to be effective in reducing COVID-19 symptoms has been approved for emergency sale—hopefully in time to help mitigate what’s expected to be a very large surge of omicron-infected patients.
In the news today: The omicron variant of COVID-19 is looking to be bad news for the unvaccinated—but potentially catastrophic for overworked hospitals. Rethink travel plans, wear masks, and make sure you’ve gotten your booster if it’s time for you to get one.
In the news today: Sen. Joe Manchin faced harsh statements from the White House and fellow Democrats today after he appeared on Fox News to claim he now opposed the Build Back Better framework even though he had been negotiating with Joe Biden directly on its contents less than a week ago. The omicron variant of COVID-19 is here, and both the federal government and hospitals are preparing for another winter of mass casualties.
In the news today: There’s been significant public movement of late in multiple investigations of the Jan. 6 coup attempt, and all of it points to an organized, pre-planned effort to erase the 2020 U.S. presidential election by proclaiming that Trump’s loss was invalid—based entirely on a Republican hoax campaign pretending so.
In the news today: Significant public movement in the investigation and prosecution of the Jan. 6 insurrection. The House select committee investigating the coup has now released numerous text messages and documents that make a mockery of Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows’ claims of executive privilege—and show just how furiously Trump’s allies were working to create pretexts for voiding the election—including using the military, if necessary.
In the news today: At least 800,000 Americans have now died of COVID-19, and topping the 1 million mark now looks almost certain. Sen. Joe Manchin has long hidden behind claims that his coal wealth was tucked away in a “blind trust”; it now seems the Maserati-driving senator’s blind trust isn’t as “blind” as he had previously claimed.
In the news today: Responding to the transparent absurdity of the Supreme Court’s stance on the Texas “bounty hunter”-premised state ban on abortions, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced he’s calling the court’s bluff, pushing for a similar bounty-hunter bill that allows any Californian to sue those who manufacture, sell, or own assault rifles in the state.
In Rolling Stone, Andy Kroll reports that the pledges the nation’s top law firms took—you know, those promises to stop funding Republican lawmakers who allied themselves on Jan. 6 with a seditious attempt to topple government?—have by and large met the same fate as pledges from other powerful companies and interest groups.
In the news today: The economic news continues to be surprisingly bright, considering that we’re still knee-deep in a worldwide pandemic.
In the news today: As the Senate’s Republicans stonewall each basic task of government, Democrats once again scramble to keep government open despite near-unanimous Republican opposition to doing so. A Senate leader is insisting that the Senate will act to make such stonewalling more onerous—but we’ve been hearing that all year.