Today's Liberal News

Daily Kos Week in Action: Help stop the next insurrection

Hello Daily Kos Community, and welcome back to Daily Kos Week in Action! This weekly series from the Daily Kos Activism team shares the issues we’re working on, and gets your feedback on where we might focus our future efforts.

The insurrection was one of the darkest days in U.S. history, and a grave warning of what our future can become. That’s why this week, Daily Kos promoted several events held across the nation in remembrance of Jan. 6.

Connect! Unite! Act! We can talk to those we disagree with, and not give up on standing with allies

Connect! Unite! Act! is a weekly series that seeks to create face-to-face networks in each congressional district. Groups meet regularly to socialize, get out the vote, support candidates, and engage in other local political actions that help our progressive movement grow and exert influence on the powers that be. Visit us every week to see how you can get involved!

In a supermarket line some time ago, an exchange was going on several customers ahead of us.

Even NASA Seems Surprised by Its New Space Telescope

To the world, the new telescope that NASA recently launched to space is one of the most ambitious scientific endeavors in history. It is the next Hubble, designed to observe nearly everything from here to the most distant edges of the cosmos, to the very first galaxies.To Jane Rigby’s son, it’s “mama’s telescope.”Rigby, an astrophysicist, used to bring her young son to the NASA center in Maryland to watch the James Webb Space Telescope being assembled.

George Clooney’s Unfulfilled Promise

Five years ago, I talked to George Clooney at the Toronto International Film Festival about his latest directorial effort, Suburbicon, a strange hybrid of black comedy and social satire that failed to connect with critics. At that time, Clooney was more than 30 years into an acting career that had seen him star on the hit TV show ER, play Batman, win an Oscar, and work with directors such as Steven Soderbergh, the Coen Brothers, and Alfonso Cuarón, on top of making his own films.

COVID Isolation Is a Lot Like … Muffin Baking

If you’re trapped in COVID isolation right now, you’re making muffins. If that’s literally true, good for you, and I can recommend these. But I’m talking metaphorically. Right now, the infection you’re nursing, and the contagious risk it carries, is—hear me out—raw batter in an oven. You really, really don’t want to remove it too soon.Yes, we are in crisis right now. The pandemic’s been raging for two years, and I am talking about muffins.

January 6 Didn’t Happen Just to America

January 6, 2021, didn’t happen just to America. It also happened to the rest of the world. To watch the crisis unfold from overseas, as I did from my flat in London, was to reckon with the reality that perhaps the United States wasn’t as “back [and] ready to lead the world” as Joe Biden had claimed after his victory.

The Bad Deal Democrats Should Take

This week, several high-profile Republicans have suddenly become interested in reforming the infamously incomprehensible Electoral Count Act of 1887, which lays out the process for certifying the results of presidential elections. Most prominent among them is Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who, in his typically animated way, said Wednesday that the law “obviously has some flaws. And it is worth, I think, discussing.

Reform the Insurrection Act: Former Pentagon Adviser Says Trump Almost Used It to Subvert Election

Former Pentagon adviser Ryan Goodman says former President Trump could have used the Insurrection Act to hold onto power during the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by his supporters. “There needs to be reform of the Insurrection Act,” says Goodman, who authored the report “Crisis of Command: The Pentagon, the President, and January 6” for Just Security, where he is co-editor.

News Roundup: America remembers Jan. 6; Sidney Poitier’s legacy; Ted Cruz’s latest moment of cringe

Hello! It is Friday! The bad news is the GOP continues to refuse the easiest calls to protect our democracy. The good news is that most Americans do remember how Donald Trump & Friends attempted to overthrow our representative democracy last January. To this end, organizers are hoping to use the anniversary of this very scary attempt on our Constitution’s integrity to elect candidates who believe in the concept of equal rights and voting rights.

Popular QAnon promoter who said ‘vaccines kill, don’t get it!’ just died of COVID-19

Cirsten Weldon was a right-wing social media darling of sorts, at least in the QAnon wing of the field. Her MAGA posts, anti-vaxx rhetoric, and willingness to embrace wild and fantastic conspiracy theories gained her tens of thousands of followers. Weldon was a firm ‘COVID-is-a-hoax’ believer who made videos where she yelled at people waiting in line for vaccines that “The vaccines kill, don’t get it!” She also believed Dr.

Walmart takes the CDC’s gift to employers, cuts paid leave time for workers with COVID-19

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) confusing, widely panned (and widely mocked) shift from 10 days of quarantine after a positive COVID-19 test to five days for asymptomatic cases was seen by many as a gift to employers eager to keep workers on the job no matter what—an interpretation quickly confirmed by CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, who said the shift was intended to “keep the critical functions of society open and operating.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz puzzlingly sets his sights on overturning vaccine mandates for kids … in D.C.

On Wednesday, Sen. Ted Cruz’s office emailed a press release indicating that the Texas Republican would propose a bill to overturn the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for schoolchildren—not in his adopted home state, but in the nation’s capital. A particularly ironic quote at the beginning of the press release shows Cruz misconstruing what it means to listen to science when it comes to public health.

You Can’t Simply Decide to Be a Different Person

When I was a kid, my dad did something on family vacations that perplexes me to this day: He ran. Every day, at least four or five miles, rising before the sun and before anyone else was awake. He wasn’t training for anything. He wasn’t trying to lose weight. There was no specific goal, no endpoint, no particular reason he couldn’t take the week off while in the greater Disney World metropolitan area, which, in July, is hotter than the surface of the sun.