It is America’s great misfortune to have, in a time of multiple crises, arguably the worst president in its history.
Mano Singham
Just another Freethought Blogs site
It is America’s great misfortune to have, in a time of multiple crises, arguably the worst president in its history.
The National Football Season has started in the US and as expected, players and teams are engaged in various forms of protests for racial justice and against systemic police brutality.
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic only one team, the Jacksonville Jaguars, admitted fans on Sunday. The Jaguars stayed in the locker room for the anthems while their opponents, the Indianapolis Colts, stood on the goalline. The Colts head coach, Frank Reich, was the only member of the team to kneel. Indianapolis Star reporter Joel Erickson estimated half the crowd stood for Lift Every Voice and Sing.
…The Green Bay Packers, Philadelphia Eagles, Buffalo Bills, Miami Dolphins and New York Jets also opted to stay in the locker room for the anthem during Sunday’s early kick-offs.
Elsewhere, Washington players decided to kneel for the anthem, while their opponents, the Eagles, left the field.
After breezily and wrongly predicting, against all the evidence, that we should not worry about the coronavirus because it would magically go away, Trump is now predicting, again against all the evidence, that we should not worry about climate change because the world will magically get cooler.
During his visit to the US West Coast, Mr Trump repeated his argument that poor forest management was to blame as he met Californian officials involved in the battle against the wildfires at a stop near Sacramento, in the centre of the state.
Dismissing one official’s plea to not “ignore the science” on climate change, Mr Trump said: “It’ll start getting cooler, you just watch… I don’t think science knows actually.”
[Read more…]
I am a huge fan of Charles Dickens’s works and have read most of them. I am also a huge fan of the cinematic output of writer and director Armando Iannucci whose sharp and witty screenplays and fast-paced direction of biting satires are a treat to watch. Among his credits are the films In the Loop and The Death of Stalin and TV series Veep and The Thick of It. (The links are to my reviews.)
[Read more…]
Investigative reporter Tom Burgis has written a book Kleptopia: How Dirty Money Is Conquering the World. He was interviewed on the public radio program IA and also in the Daily Beast about his book. I have not as yet read Burgis’s book but I earlier reviewed another book on the same topic Moneyland: The inside story of the crooks and kleptocrats who rule the world by another investigative journalist Oliver Bullough.
[Read more…]
North Carolina is a state that Trump won in 2016 that this year is seen as a possible Democratic pickup so it was not surprising that Trump held a rally there last week.
As Seth Meyers, says, what was troubling though was that there was no sign of any precautions being taken to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
After he was exposed as publicly playing down the seriousness of the virus even though he knew it was highly contagious and dangerous, Trump said that he only did so so as not to create panic. That explanation has been blasted as dangerous by creating a false sense of complacency at a time when accurate information was essential so that steps could be taken to minimize the spread.
But it appears that even now his administration is trying to minimize the danger by pressuring the scientists who work for the Centers for Disease Control to change their reports to comport with his optimistic statements.
[Read more…]
The pandemic has cut deeply into the airline business and they are seeking to lure people back. Surely one of the most bizarre attempts is offering people the opportunity to buy tickets to fly to nowhere, i.e. where the plane takes off, flies around for a few hours, and then returns to the airport.
Singapore Airlines (SIA) is looking to launch no-destination flights that will depart from and land in Changi Airport next month, in a bid to give its ailing business a lift.
Sources told The Straits Times that the national carrier is working towards launching this option for domestic passengers – dubbed “flights to nowhere” – by end-October.
[Read more…]
