Today's Liberal News

Community Spotlight: Has your perspective changed in the nine months since the inauguration?

It’s time to check the Community’s zeitgeist again now that we are nine months into the Biden-Harris administration with a signature infrastructure bill to be signed on Monday. A year ago, we were seesawing through election results, hoping nothing (else) dire happened before the inauguration. Then the insurrection gave one last flare of horror before the government was “free” of Trump and we could move on.

105-year-old Julia Hawkins breaks 100-meter dash record, and my back hurts from sleeping wrong

Back in the summer of 2017, 101-year-old Julia “Hurricane” Hawkins set a couple of world records when she competed in the USA Track and Field Outdoors Masters Championships. The sprinter became the oldest female athlete to ever compete in the events, and at the time she crushed the existing world record for the 100 metes, at that age bracket, with a 40.12 second time. At the time Hawkins joked that she “missed my nap for this.”

On Saturday, Nov.

Daily Kos Elections 2022 primary calendar

Below you’ll find Daily Kos Elections’ calendar of major-party filing deadlines, primaries, and runoffs for the 2022 elections. For a chronological version of this calendar, click here. Beneath the table, you’ll find detailed notes on requirements for runoffs, exceptions to filing deadlines, and important conventions.

What the school bus driver shortage tells us about the economy, this week in the war on workers

You may have heard about school bus driver shortages this year. Maggie Koerth’s fabulous in-depth look at the job shows why that would be. The headline might give you all you need to know: “Would you manage 70 children and a 15-ton vehicle for $18 an hour?” But the headline leaves out a very important piece: It’s a part-time job, so that $18 an hour might only be for four hours a day, timed so that it’s difficult to have another job.

A Dictator Is Exploiting These Human Beings

A small Kurdish boy is sitting on the ground in a damp Polish forest, a few miles from the eastern border with Belarus. The air is heavy with cold and fog. The boy is crying.Around the boy, sitting in a circle, are his parents, uncles, and cousins, all from the same village near Dohuk, in Iraqi Kurdistan. There are 16 of them, among them seven children, including a four-month-old infant and an elderly woman who can scarcely walk. They don’t speak Polish, or English.

Steve Bannon Knows Exactly What He’s Doing

Does anyone still remember the Chicago Seven?
They were a disparate group of radicals—some who knew each other, some who didn’t—who went to the Democratic convention in Chicago in 1968 to spark trouble. Trouble did indeed erupt, although maybe not the exact trouble they had wanted. They were indicted and prosecuted. And then things went terribly wrong for the government.The prosecution thought it was running a trial, a legal proceeding governed by rules.

Whether Patients Understand Is Beside the Point

Last week, during a White House press briefing on COVID-19, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky urged Americans to get jabs for their kids. “We know that vaccination helps to decrease community transmission,” she said, “and protect those who are most vulnerable.”Her message was succinct, accurate, and easy to understand. But it was at odds with new guidance from the American Medical Association and the Association of American Medical Colleges.

The Man Who Freed Me From Cant

I always find it hard to list the books that have influenced me the most. Memory is tricky, and a work can assert its influences over my thinking long after I’ve forgotten its particular details, or even its title. Moreover, people who set as their job the task of judging what others do, and why, are not always reliable when turning the lens upon themselves.

Black high schooler attacked by students in KKK costumes on Halloween, says lawyer

In an absolutely disturbing nightmare scenario, a Black teenager in Woodsboro, Texas, says he was attacked by three fellow teens wearing costumes resembling Ku Klux Klan (KKK) robes. The high schooler, whose identity has not been revealed as he is a minor, was out for Halloween when he was allegedly attacked by the teens with a taser gun, as reported by The Independent.

School board member files criminal report with sheriff’s office over book by queer, Black writer

Eager as ever to jump backward in time, conservatives have used their time amid a global pandemic to push anti-queer legislation and try to ban books. As Daily Kos has covered, we’ve seen librarians face potential obscenity charges over stocking books with LGBTQ+ and sexual education themes. We’ve heard Texas school administrators suggest teachers need to include an “opposing” view of the Holocaust when they stock their classroom libraries.