A good way to spend New Year’s Eve or start 2021 would be to watch Death to 2020 on Netflix that gives a humorous review of the year’s events with a biting sardonic tone. One of the creators of the show is Charlie Brooker, a well-known British TV personality known for his sarcastic wit, who along with Annabel Jones also created the dark futuristic series Black Mirror.
Here’s a clip from the show.
Here’s another clip.
Here’s the trailer.
My idea of a great New Year’s eve is to spend it at home and go to bed at the usual time. On a few occasions I have been invited to a friend’s house for a party and everyone was given a pointy hat and noisemaker and all watched the TV and waited for the clock to run down and the ball to drop before letting out a cheer and then going around wishing everyone. I took part in these because the people are nice and I did not want to be a grouch but it all seemed so strained and artificial.
This year it looks like much of the world will be cutting back on such celebrations. France has banned gatherings and has assigned 100,000 police to break up parties and enforce a curfew. New York City has announced that Times Square, where revelers usually gather, has been closed and the traditional ball drop has been canceled.
[Read more…]
This is the time of year when people make lists, most of which I ignore. A common sport is to look at the predictions that people made for the year and to see how they panned out. Making predictions is always a tricky business, especially when it comes to politics so we should not be surprised when many of them turn out to be wrong.
This article compiles a list of predictions that went wrong during this year. While it makes for amusing reading, I think it lumps together two different categories.
One category are those predictions that were mistaken but defensible based on the best available knowledge at the time. In this category, I include the prediction by a public health analyst back in May that “We’re not going to see an effective [coronavirus] vaccine proven safe until well into 2021, if then”. Based on the fact that the record for the shortest time for all previous vaccines was four years, this was not an unreasonable prediction.
The people who deserve to be ridiculed are those whose predictions are not based on evidence or even reality but are driven by an ideological agenda or as part of a propaganda effort or are simply wishful thinking about what people hope will happen. In this category is Kayleigh McEnany’s prediction that Trump will keep the coronavirus from coming to the U.S. and Trump’s multiple predictions that the virus would go away ‘soon’.
We know that January 6th is the day when Congress is scheduled to meet to ratify the Electoral College votes and declare Joe Biden the winner. At his first post-election news conference held just before Thanksgiving, when asked if he would leave the White House if the Electoral College declares Joe Biden the winner, Trump replied, “Of course I will. Of course I will. You know that.” However that was his only concession to reality and since then he has continued to deny the fact that he lost.
[Read more…]
We have seen so many stories this year of deadly violence perpetrated by police on unarmed people, mostly people of color. But there are other kinds of police abuse that, while not ending in the death or injury of the person at the receiving end, also end up being traumatic. Many of these are due to the police barging into people’s homes with no warning, such as this case where a perfectly innocent woman was kept naked in her own home. This happened two years ago but the city tried to block release body-cam video that supported the woman’s version of what happened.
[Read more…]
An evangelical pastor in Fort Worth, Texas mocked and dismissed the covid-19 safety guidelines and said that he was going to celebrate Thanksgiving with his family with no restrictions.
Pastor Todd Dunn had been urging “Faith over fear!” since the COVID-19 pandemic started in March. Just before Thanksgiving, he posted a message on Facebook dismissing precautionary measures advised by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to keep wearing masks and avoid gatherings with family members who don’t live in the same house.
“I’m not wearing a mask when around my family like the CDC requests and we are traveling so we’ll take our chances,” Dunn’s Facebook post read. “And to top it off we are huggers so there you go! There will be no social distancing CDC. Faith over fear!!”
Among the cronies pardoned by Trump yesterday is Charles Kushner, father of Trump’s son-in-law Jared. What crimes was he convicted of?
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie called it “one of the most loathsome, disgusting crimes” he ever prosecuted as U.S. attorney.
After Charles Kushner discovered his brother-in-law was cooperating with federal authorities, the wealthy real estate executive and father of President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared, hatched a scheme for revenge and intimidation.
Kushner hired a prostitute to lure his brother-in-law, then arranged to have the encounter in a New Jersey motel room recorded with a hidden camera and the recording sent to his own sister, the man’s wife.
How sleazy can you get?
[Read more…]
After the right wing echo chamber broadcast and amplified Trump’s wild claims of election fraud by the Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic, they were threatened with legal action. Smartmatic posted on their website the basis of their complaint.
According to Smartmatic’s demand letters, these organizations could have easily discovered the falsity of the statements and implications made about Smartmatic by investigating their statements before publishing them to millions of viewers and readers. Smartmatic had nothing to do with the “controversies” that certain public and private figures have alleged regarding the 2020 U.S. election. Multiple fact-checkers have consistently debunked these false statements with stunning consistency and regularity.
[Read more…]
Yesterday, Donald Trump pardoned a lot of people and you can be sure that there will be more to come before he is kicked out of the White House.The list of pardon beneficiaries include the usual cronies and politicians. But the ones that really stick in the craw are the pardons of people who killed civilians and were tried and convicted of their offenses.
The four Blackwater guards — Nicholas Slatten, Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, and Dustin Heard — were convicted by a federal jury in 2014 after a lengthy trial that saw some 30 witnesses travel from Iraq to testify against them. Prosecutors accused the men of illegally unleashing “powerful sniper fire, machine guns and grenade launchers on innocent men, women and children.”
According to prosecutors, the four were among seven Blackwater employees who opened fire in the Nusoor Square traffic circle in Baghdad, killing 17 people.
An FBI investigation found 14 of the deaths unjustified, according to rules of engagement for private security contractors in Iraq. Slatten was accused of firing the first shots.
