Today's Liberal News

News Roundup: ‘Black privilege,’ a white insurrectionist, and Lindsey Graham is always, always on TV

It’s Sunday, which means that Sen. Lindsey Graham was on television again to express unconvincing outrage about a Thing. County maps of COVID-19 vaccination efforts continue to show big disparities. Oh, and a Capitol insurrectionist seems quite sure that her white skin will spring her from any jail cell the feds try to toss her in.

Here’s some of what you may have missed:

• ‘We’re tired of it’: Sen.

Nuts & Bolts: Inside a Democratic Campaign: Don’t waste your breath

It’s another Sunday, so for those who tune in, welcome to another discussion of the Nuts & Bolts of a Democratic campaign. If you’ve missed out, you can catch up any time: Just visit our group or follow the Nuts & Bolts Guide. Every week I try to tackle issues I’ve been asked about. With the help of other campaign workers and notes, we address how to improve and build better campaigns, or explain issues that impact our party.

Devin Nunes’ mom does his FEC reports, and she appears to be really bad at it

California Rep. Devin Nunes is famously suing the Twitter parody account @DevinNunesMom, but in real life, his mom does his fundraising committees’ FEC reports.

It’s not that weird, of course. I mean, I don’t get it personally, but that could be because my mom’s voted for every GOP presidential candidate since Eisenhower and still somehow thinks Donald Trump is human. No, the weird part is that Nunes’ mom appears to be really bad at her job.

Ex-former guy spokesman allegedly lied about employment status to reduce child support payments

Assuming Jason Miller is a real person and not a failed Soviet-era experiment to cross the human genome with the formula for Axe Body Spray, he appears to be in some trouble.

According to The Guardian, the former former-guy spox, who impregnated another Trump campaign adviser while engaging in an extramarital affair in 2016, lied about his employment status in order to reduce his child support payments.

‘I Didn’t Realize How Much of a Machine It Is.’

To be a fan of The Bachelor is to accept a set of contradictions. It professes to help people find true love, but via artificial means. Contestants will say they’re on the show “for the right reasons,” but later admit to non-romantic motives or bristle at the thought of getting engaged. It implies that love is universal by casting a wide net for suitors, but it didn’t feature a Black lead until Matt James became the Bachelor this year.

The U.S. Doesn’t Know How to Treat Its Allies

President Joe Biden is promising the world that “America is back,” but his effort to reclaim global leadership shouldn’t come at the expense of the country’s closest friends. At a NATO foreign ministers’ meeting last week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken sharply criticized Germany’s efforts to get more natural gas from Russia through a pipeline project known as Nord Stream 2.

What AI Can Teach Us About the Myth of Human Genius

“Everyone knows it is impossible to turn the eyeball around, such that the pupil can peer inside the skull.” So says the narrator of Stanislaw Lem’s 1974 short story, “The Mask,” in which a young woman struggles to describe the experience of realizing that, under her skin, she is a robot.

There’s a Better Way to Date Online—If You Like Trains

As a single person wandering through the world, it can be difficult to find someone who loves all the right things: parks, subways, bike lanes, human-scale buildings, high-density housing, debates over the ideal length of a city block. Even on a dating app, you can’t always tell from a profile who might be thinking, behind a smile, I hate cars.

The Flaw at the Center of Purity Culture

The summer before my sophomore year of high school, I dedicated my life to Jesus and became a Christian. As one of the few Asians at my school, outside Atlanta, I found refuge in local Korean churches, where I met like-minded friends.Week by week, our hangouts after church became less about finding comfort in our Korean American selves and more about finding our identity in Christ. A big part of forming a Christian identity when I was young was about waiting to have sex until marriage.