Sens. Kyrsten Sinema And Mitt Romney’s Weird ‘Ted Lasso’ Cosplay Is Making Twitter Gag
“You stripped middle and lower socioeconomic of programs that would be life-changing and kept drug prices up and you think that’s funny?” a Twitter user said.
Today's Liberal News
The Real Reason Facebook Changed Its Name
Meta—the company formerly known as Facebook—desperately wants you to believe that it is going to put the future on your face. That was the gist of Mark Zuckerberg’s hour-and-a-half announcement today that the largest social-media company in history was officially rebranding, and reorienting itself to focus on “the metaverse.”The news was jarring, but hardly surprising. For Facebook, 2021 has been the Year of Trying to Make the Metaverse Happen.
NASA’s Mission to Jupiter Has Nothing to Do With Jupiter
Imagine Jupiter and its little asteroids as cosmic Halloween decor on the solar system’s front stoop. The planet itself—swirly, stormy, the largest in the solar system—is the pumpkin, while the tiny asteroids that accompany it are kind of like funky-shaped gourds, one cluster in front and the other behind. The pumpkin and these gourds have been on display like this for billions of years, strung together by a quirk of gravity, tracing the same loop around the sun.
Science Fiction’s Very Special Boys
A desert planet. An empire spanning the galaxy. A young boy burdened to be its savior. The 1965 novel Dune’s influence on Star Wars is obvious, but Frank Herbert’s work has echoed throughout all of modern science-fiction storytelling.
Andrew Cuomo Facing Sex Crime Charge In Albany Court
The former New York governor resigned in August instead of facing potential impeachment.
U.S. economy slowed to a 2% rate last quarter in face of Covid
Thursday’s report from the Commerce Department estimated that the nation’s gross domestic product declined sharply from the 6%-plus annual growth rates of each of the previous two quarters.
Vaccine Inequity: Meet the Doctor Refusing a Booster as Rich Nations Get 16x More Doses Than Poor
Wealthy nations have received over 16 times more COVID-19 vaccines per person than poorer nations dependent on the COVAX program backed by the World Health Organization, according to a new Financial Times analysis. COVAX, which was set up to ensure global equitable access to vaccines, has delivered only 400 million doses after promising 1.4 billion this year. Higher-income countries struck separate vaccine deals with manufacturers, leaving COVAX with less negotiating power.
Tariq Ali: WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange Must Not Be Extradited for Exposing War Crimes in Afghanistan
As an appeals court in London is deciding whether WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange should be extradited to the United States for publishing classified documents exposing U.S. war crimes, we go to London to speak with British writer and activist Tariq Ali. Assange faces up to 175 years in prison in the U.S. under the Espionage Act for publishing classified documents exposing U.S. war crimes, including in Iraq and Afghanistan.
FDA advisers endorse Covid-19 vaccine for kids 5-11
Panel members voted 17-0 to recommend the shot, with one abstention.
Democrats pitch industry-friendly Medicaid workaround to win Manchin’s support
The latest idea is an attempt to save a pillar of the party’s health care agenda as members rush to broker final agreements on their sweeping social spending package.
Birx: Trump adviser squeezed out health officials to downplay seriousness of Covid-19
Scott Atlas had rapidly consolidated power on a platform that downplayed the seriousness of Covid to most Americans.
U.S. to defer 33M Covid vaccine doses to Africa
“This deal will get the continent Moderna doses that have been long-awaited and in high demand,” said White House press secretary Jen Psaki.
Yellen expects inflation to linger, then ease later in 2022
The most recent Consumer Price Index showed prices have gone up 5.4 percent in the past 12 months.
Opinion | How Corporations Keep Their Own Workers in Debt
Too many employers are imposing crippling debt on workers. Biden can do something about it.
The political peril that Biden didn’t see coming
The current inflation spike now appears to be on track to persist deep into 2022.
Opinion | What the Supply Chain Crisis Reveals About American Infrastructure
Politicians like to argue in favor of more infrastructure — and more spending on it. But we can use the capacity we already have in much smarter ways.
Wall Street Journal Under Fire For Publishing Lie-Filled Letter From Trump
Donald Trump’s “letter to the editor” was crammed full of nonsense, but the newspaper published it anyway,
California’s In-N-Out sparks latest pandemic culture war
In no time, the Fisherman’s Wharf In-N-Out was a top conversation topic at Fox News.
Civil rights hero Claudette Colvin files to have her record expunged
Montgomery, Alabama, is ready to do the right thing. For starters, the city finally renamed Jefferson Davis Avenue on Tuesday. Mayor Steven Reed, who is Montgomery’s first Black mayor, was on hand to celebrate the street now named after Fred. D. Gray, the legendary civil rights lawyer who worked directly with Martin Luther King Jr. and E.D. Nixon, representing leaders like Rosa Parks and King.
Rittenhouse judge has a history of jackassery that goes back over 30 years
Word that the judge in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial ruled this week that those shot by the 17-year-old could not be called “victims” during the trial brought a swift reaction from Rittenhouse defenders who claimed there was nothing unusual about that order. That includes the part where Judge Bruce Schroeder informed the defense that in their closing arguments, they could call those shot by Rittenhouse “looters,“ “rioters,” and “arsonists.
Biden blows cover off Youngkin’s private Trump pandering
If there’s one thing Republicans absolutely positively don’t want over the next year, it’s a cycle in which the party’s de facto leader Donald Trump is on the ballot in every single race across the country.
Senate Republicans are using every trick in the book to steer attention away from Trump and back to President Joe Biden.
Anti-vaxx Chronicles: COVID is socialism! But is that redemption in the end?
Facebook is a menace. COVID-19 is a menace. Conservatism is a cesspool. Together, those three ingredients have created a toxic stew of malevolent death and devastation. We can talk about all those things in the abstract, look at the numbers and statistics, and catch the occasional whiff of seditionist right-wing rhetoric.
Democrats Cut Paid Leave From Build Back Better Package
In recent days, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) turned on the paid leave proposal, likely forcing Democrats to cut the popular policy out of their final package.
Virginia mom and GOP strategist says teaching racism should be up to parents, not teachers
Patti Hidalgo Menders, president of the Loudoun County Virginia Republican Women’s Club, is the worst kind of Karen. She believes that teaching the racist history of America makes white kids feel bad, and Black and brown kids fall into victimhood—therefore it simply shouldn’t be taught.
A Patriarchal Tradition That Just Won’t Budge
About a year before Christine Mallinson gave birth to her first child, she and her husband agreed that all of their children would take her last name. The decision came down to family cohesion: The couple wanted their children—they eventually had two—to share a last name with the only cousin near their kids in age, who was Mallinson’s niece.
Ron DeSantis, Hero Of Vaccine Opponents, Mandated Vaccine Registry For Florida Kids
Before he was a favorite of those decrying “medical tyranny,” Florida’s GOP governor approved a mandate that doctors log kids’ vaccines into a database.
The Blockbuster That Hollywood Was Afraid to Make
When I asked him about his film adaptation of Dune, the writer-director Denis Villeneuve quickly held up his prized copy of Frank Herbert’s book, a French-translation paperback with a particularly striking cover that he’s owned since he was 13. “I keep the book beside me as I’m working,” Villeneuve told me cheerfully over Zoom. “I made this movie for myself. Being a hard-core Dune fan, the first audience member I wanted to please was myself.
Democrats Hit Tax Snag As They Finalize Build Back Better Deal
“Every sensible revenue option seems to be destroyed,” Sen. Bernie Sanders complained Wednesday.
Democrats Might Give Up on a Methane Tax, and Maybe That’s Okay
Yet another climate provision may be out of the Democrats’ signature spending bill. On Monday, The New York Times and Reuters reported that Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, one of two pivotal Democratic votes, wants to remove the bill’s tax on methane leaks from oil and gas operations. (A spokesperson for Senator Tom Carper, a Democrat from Delaware whose committee oversees that proposal, denied the reports on Twitter.