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.
In the news today: House Republican Devin Nunes has apparently decided he can do more to undermine the country as private citizen than he can in the House: Today he announced he’ll be retiring from his House seat to (cough) allegedly run a new startup pro-Trump media company. Allegedly.
Georgia Gov.
In the news today: The omicron variant of COVID-19. Tucker Carlson’s dangerous demonization of supposed enemies apparently is something for the cameras, because in his personal life? Different story. And Marjorie Taylor Greene continues to make the nation worse every time she opens her mouth, which takes some real doing. Still, she seems up for the challenge.
In the news today: Another government shutdown battle. What’s the reason for this one? It doesn’t matter. It literally never matters.
In the meantime, Rep.
In the news today: In oral arguments before the Supreme Court, the Trump-appointed conservative justices strongly signaled that Mississippi’s new abortion ban will be used as the vehicle for overturning Roe v. Wade. In Georgia, Stacey Abrams announced she will challenge Republican Gov. Brian Kemp for the governor’s office in next year’s election.
In the news today: Trump ally Jeffrey Clark may be the latest to face criminal charges for defying a House subpoena. Then a Department of Justice official, Clark allegedly sought to boost Trump’s claims of “election fraud” despite those claims being entirely fictional; now that the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection has come calling, Clark is clamming up. Rep. Lauren Boebert may or may not have intended an “apology” when she called Rep.
One House Republican is under investigation for trafficking minors. Another helped cover up the molestation of college athletes. A third partners with neo-Nazis and shows “humorous” invented clips of himself killing Democratic colleagues. A fourth was booted from House Committees for expressing support for political violence—even as that violence threatens her own colleagues.
That Rep.
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:
(Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6)
That housekeeping out of the way, we’ll quickly get to it. We spent the last two go-rounds looking at animated horror of the ghosts, zombies, and monsters variety. If you aren’t into that, rejoice: we’re done.
Welcome back to our impromptu and sporadically scheduled pandemic guide to anime. Having gone through the lengthy reintroductions last time around, we can skip all that and dive right in. Missed earlier entries in the series and want to catch up? Here they all are, in order.
Welcome back! It’s been quite a while since we last met. Like, a while. How have you been? Yeah, me too. It happens.
Back when the days when there had not yet been an insurrection on American soil during the new millennium, and we were only dealing with a deadly worldwide pandemic, we started a wee holiday project of introducing more people in America to the best of what anime, the colloquial U.S.
In the news today: A jury found three men guilty of murdering Ahmaud Arbery. Rolling Stone is now reporting that the organizers of the Jan. 6 rally that resulted in violence inside the U.S. Capitol were in contact with Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows and with Eric and Lara Trump in the days immediately before the riot—and that organizers bought and used hard-to-trace “burner phones” in an attempt to hide the communications.
In the news today: A jury slammed organizers of a violent 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville over $25 million in damages. The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection has released a new set of subpoenas, this time against far-right leaders of the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and other groups that participated in the attack on the U.S. Capitol.
You know the old saying: The wheels of justice turn exceedingly slow, and the only certain outcome is that when it’s all over you’re going to owe people a lot of money.
In the news today: The United States drops in status to that of a “backsliding” democracy, say experts—and it’s entirely because hoax-promoting Republicanism is now challenging the legitimacy of elections. The nation continues the interminable wait to see whether two Democratic senators can be coaxed into taking urgent climate and infrastructure action, even if it may mean one fewer Maserati in D.C. parking lots.