To explain the rise of Rush Limbaugh, who died on Wednesday at age 70, in the early 90s, it helps to understand that, in large parts of America at least, he read as a not your grandfather's buttoned-up Republicanism. He wasn't cool, exactly, but he appealed to middle-aged Boomers who were still coasting on their image as the generation of Woodstock and "Animal House." His bumper music was a song by the Pretenders, a bona fide punk band. He often did comedy skits and spoke in the mellifluous tones of an FM radio DJ.

The senator’s error is not that he was deliberately shirking his duty, but that he couldn’t think of any way he could help. Nero fiddled while Rome burned; Ted Cruz jetted to Cancún. And although the emperor was at least ensconced in a lavish, louche palace, the senator from Texas was stuck in economy class with the peasantry.

Homelessness has become a social disaster on a scale unseen since the Great Depression. It’s a structural crisis that’s escalated to a degree that, despite the best efforts of status-quo neoliberalism to hand-wave it away, can no longer be denied – and neither can its causes.

As a radio broadcaster, Rush Limbaugh, who died yesterday, was a great success: He pioneered his genre, attracted millions of listeners for several decades, and grew fantastically wealthy. Many good people were used to his daily company, something unimaginable to critics who heard only the most odious excerpts from his broadcasts, never the more typical segments. If you’re a Limbaugh fan who feels like you’ve lost a friend, my condolences, and best to stop reading here.

How I learned to understand everyone, whatever the crazy stuff that they do. A divorcing couple sat in my office. Four years before, on a fateful night, on their eighth wedding anniversary, an oak tree fell in front of their car. The husband stepped out into the rain. He stepped into a puddle. His body convulsed. He fell to the ground.

The Republican Party was on trial along with Donald Trump. Both now stand convicted, if not by the Senate, then definitely in the eyes of the nation and the world.

In 1966, I went to Hamburg. I was the keyboard player in Bluesology, and we had a residency at the Top Ten Club, where the Beatles had famously cut their teeth. It was a real baptism of fire. We played on the Reeperbahn, five hours a night in among the brothels and sex shows, to audiences who hadn’t come to see us. But it was still great: we played so much we didn’t have any choice but to improve as a band. Certainly, it was better than my solo debut on the continent a few years later, when some bright spark booked me as the support act to Sergio Mendes in Paris.

On Thursday, the House voted to strip Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of her committee assignments, putting an end to one chapter of what’s sure to be an ongoing saga in the chamber’s Republican caucus. In a meandering nonapology in the hours before the vote, Greene, who has endorsed an impressive array of conspiracy theories, including QAnon and claims that Hillary Clinton had raped, mutilated, and consumed the blood of a child...

Maria Fernandes died at the age of thirty-two while sleeping in her car in a Wawa parking lot in New Jersey. It was the summer of 2014, and she worked low-wage jobs at three different Dunkin’ Donuts, and slept in her Kia in between shifts, with the engine running and a container of gasoline in the back, in case she ran out. In the locked car, still wearing her white-and-brown Dunkin’ Donuts uniform, she died from gasoline and exhaust fumes.

Religious resentment has become a potent recruiting tool for the hard right.

Everyone’s fed up with the baby boomers. Younger progressives charge them with a form of generational hoarding—of titles and power but mostly of money. The richest generation in the history of the world, the story goes, has squandered its wealth on vanity purchases and projects while leaving younger Americans with a debased environment and crazy levels of debt.

Jeff Bezos made $13bn in one day last year; and he’s not the only one getting rich during the Covid crisis. When are they going to be made to give some of it back?

Cobra Kai season 3, the first batch of episodes to premiere on Netflix, does something fascinating with its Big Bad, John Kreese: In a story arc about how old rivalries and past trauma can continue to deal damage across decades, the show’s writers use the character to question the amount of automatic respect and trust that America places in its veterans.

The Mandalorian is undoubtedly fun. But Baby Yoda and his guardian’s lack of respect for the natural world is disturbing. Star Wars has always used interesting wildlife to set the scene. Think the toad-like worrt outside of Jabba’s palace; it provides a peek into the life of creatures seemingly untouched by the antics of the Galactic Empire or the Skywalker family. Though some are not so lucky as to be left in peace.

In the past few days, I’ve seen all kinds of statements from Christian leaders trying to distance themselves from the violent mob at the Capitol. Christian writers known for their thoughtfulness lament that “somehow” white supremacy has crept into our churches, and the faculty of a major evangelical institution put out a manifesto saying that the events at the Capitol “bear absolutely no resemblance to” the Christianity they teach. That mob, they’re telling us, is a fringe element. They’ve radically misunderstood the real message of American Christianity.

To the QAnon community, and others involved in storming the Capitol: The Deep State is real, but it’s not what you think. The Deep State you worry about is mostly made up; a fiction, a lie, a product of active imaginations, grifter manipulations, and the internet. I’m telling you this now because storming the Capitol building has drawn the attention of the real Deep State — the national security bureaucracy — and it’s important you understand what that means.

Why do so many Republicans appear to be at war with both truth and democracy?

New research published in the journal Political Psychology provides evidence that political partisanship can reverse the expected effects of empathy. ...

Billionaires whose wealth has soared during the coronavirus pandemic should stump up to provide emergency aid to the record numbers of people facing starvation, the head of a US charity supporting the World Food Programme has said.

Some thoughts on buying a house, white privilege and homewares for the apocalypse