In the news today: The nation slides towards another self-inflicted crisis as Republicans once again vow to block a debt ceiling boost. The reason? So their party can campaign against Democrats for keeping America’s bills paid. Yet another book of the Trump era explores the depth of the Trump team’s depravity, including the effort Mike Pence went to to try to meet Trump’s demand that the United States presidential election be nullified so that Trump could maintain power.

As hospital workers desperately try to save lives with limited resources and dwindling available beds during the COVID-19 pandemic, public health officials Idaho activated a “crisis standards of care” for northern hospitals last week that would in rare cases allow hospitals to save beds and ventilators “for those who are most likely to survive,” The Associated Press reported of the guidelines dated last year.

In the last two months, we’ve watched two billionaires fly their personal rockets on suborbital flights that they celebrated with lots of self-aggrandizement. On Wednesday evening, another billionaire will launch, not on his personal rocket, but on one he’s renting from billionaire No. 4 for another tourist flight. Which, on the face of it, seems like more of the same.

I’m sure we’ve all heard the horror stories about Spirit Airlines, which are primarily known for their cheap but often unpleasant flights. In this case, though, the story isn’t about the inconveniences of flying with Spirit; it deals with the issues of flying while Muslim.

While the phrase is often associated with security and service staff mistreating Muslim travelers, a Muslim woman was harassed and mistreated by another traveler in this incident.

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.