It’s safe to say that 2020 really wasn’t a good year for anybody but there are five things that happened this year that were almost completely unbearable.
2020 introduced us to many new phrases. Curbside pickup. Zoom Happy Hour. Peaceful protester. But a personal favorite of mine is the mask nazi. It's a niche genre. These are the masked bandits who wild out on people not being masked up in public places. I'm not calling them Hitler bad. Think more the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld. Though I'm sure if some of the people could have you thrown into a camp, they would.
We've had many a laugh at the expense of mask nazis. I've narrowed it down to my five favorites. Honorable mention goes to the kid who wanted to wear a Hooters mask to the fifth grade. Obviously, he's not the villain in the story. The mask nazis would be the people wanting to stifle his freedom of expression. But I felt he deserved a shout-out.
Conservative talk radio host Mark Levin stated Wednesday it is “truly shocking” Democrats will openly support “anti-semites like Raphael Warnock for the U.S. Senate” without any pushback, noting that it “portends a dangerous immorality by a party that has a long history of hatred dating back before the Civil War.”
“Rodney Robinson, a social studies teacher in Richmond, Virginia, was named the 2019 National Teacher of the Year on Wednesday by the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO).”
A woman was charged with making threats against a Republican election official in Michigan who had refused to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election.
When There Wasn't Enough Hand Sanitizer, Distilleries Stepped Up. Now They're Facing $14,060 FDA Fees.
"Distilleries just learned that to cap off a brutal year, the FDA is charging them a fee normally reserved for drug manufacturing facilities.
For many American craft distillers, 2020 was already one of their worst years ever.
The COVID-19-related closure of tasting rooms and cocktail bars, loss of tourism, and inability to offer in-store sampling slashed their sales revenue and cut them off from their customers.
Then this week, just as it seemed they'd made it through the worst of a terrible year, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had one more surprise in store: The agency delivered notice to distilleries that had produced hand sanitizer in the early days of the pandemic that they now owe an unexpected fee to the government of more than $14,000...Read all.
"The Hilaria Baldwin story gets funnier and funnier. Scott wrote about it here.
Briefly, “Hilaria” Baldwin, social media star and wife of the anti-Trump actor and activist Alec Baldwin, has been impersonating a Spanish immigrant for many years.
In fact, her name is Hillary Hayward-Thomas, and she is from Boston. Her father was a Boston lawyer and her mother was an internist at Massachusetts General Hospital and, I believe, on the faculty of Harvard Medical School. Hillary grew up in Boston and attended prep school there.
For sheer comedy, it will always be hard to top her Today show appearance, where, impersonating a Spaniard and talking about cooking, she uttered the immortal, heavily accented line: “We have very few ingredients. We have tomatoes, we have, um, how you say in English — cucumbers.”
How could the Daily Mail resist a story like this? The Mail has been digging into the past, and now reports on the Baldwins’ 2012 wedding:
EXCLUSIVE: The bride wore a mantilla! Inside Hilaria and Alec Baldwin’s NY wedding where they said ‘sÃ,’ waved flamenco fans and exchanged Cartier rings inscribed in Spanish – and later she said her family ‘couldn’t pronounce her new surname.’
This photo of the Baldwins at their wedding is hilarious, given what we know now. Still, one wonders: did Alec seriously believe that his wife was Spanish? Presumably not: her parents attended the wedding. (Hillary’s father’s family, by the way, has been in Massachusetts since before the Revolution.)...Read all.
In reality, the Chinese Communist Party actively persecuted individuals seeking to limit the spread of what was, to medical experts, clearly an infectious disease by December 2019. Wuhan police arrested doctors and journalistssharing information on how to limit infections — basic instructions like washing hands and maintaining social distancing protocol — or basic information on the outbreak, and forced them to offer the public embarrassing apologies for alleged misinformation. One of those doctors, Li Wenliang,died of a coronavirus infection at age 34 in February. The Communist Party has since attempted to claim him as a martyr.
We have seen unprecedented attacks on our freedoms in this country this year. We have seen people come after our freedom of speech. If the media and the leftists don't like what we say, you get banned. You get blacklisted. You get silenced. Your freedom of religion has been challenged because people have been told they can't go to church any more. And if they go to church, then they can't sing. And then we've seen our freedom of assembly be threatened as well. People are actually being told in some states who they can spend time with, how many people they can spend time with, and that freedom as well is being threatened. What I wanted to tell all of you today is that that isn't happening in South Dakota.
So what are the lessons from 2020, this year of Peak Insanity?
First, there is now final and conclusive proof that the Media and Social Media companies are out of control, enormously powerful, chillingly uniform and bigoted, and the determined, ruthless, remorseless enemies of everything that is true and good. ..You should know that these people work in the industry of lies, for the agenda of treason...
Second, the same applies with any mainstream political party. Most of these have already fallen. They are already poisoned and corrupted beyond the point at which they can serve any useful function for those who wish to be free....
What you should realise from 2020 is that you live in occupied territory... Once you realise that the whole game is rigged, that the corruption is vaster and deeper than you ever imagined in your most cynical moments, there is strangely a kind of liberty in that.
If you know this, they cannot deceive you anymore.
They cannot break you.
And no matter how much they control this society and direct our nations to destruction, they don’t own you.
You are free in your heart, even if your body is in chains, as long as you know the chains are there.
You cannot break those chains unless you can see them.
And the corrupt and the wicked cannot break you, not finally, not totally, not ultimately, unless you decide to be blind...Read all.
Blackburn said, “One of the things that is so frustrating about this is that you could have had a lot more money than $2,000 in the pocket of hard-working Americans, if back in July or September or twice in October or in November, that they had voted to increase unemployment by $300 per week. Now, we know that what the Democrats are trying to do with this is to put us on a pathway to a guaranteed minimum income, which is one of their socialist agenda items.”
"More than a thousand “critical” Capitol Hill staffers will get priority access to the coronavirus vaccine while seniors and first responders across the country continue an agonizing wait, according to a newly revealed memo.
...According to Beltway think tank New America, most congressional worker bees are under the age of 35.
“Capitol Hill is staffed primarily by Millennials,” according to a study by the group last updated in September.
“Roughly 60 percent of the congressional staffer population is under the age of 35, and 75 percent under 40 years old...Read all.
1687 - The first Huguenots set sail from France for the Cape of Good Hope, where they would later create the South African wine industry with the vines they took with them on the voyage.
1695 - The window tax was imposed in Britain, which resulted in many windows being bricked up.
1862 - U.S. President Lincoln signed an act admitting West Virginia to the Union.
1879 - Thomas Edison gave his first public demonstration of incandescent lighting to an audience in Menlo Park, NJ.
1891 - New York's new Immigration Depot was opened at Ellis Island, to provide improved facilities for the massive numbers of arrivals.
1929 - Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians played "Auld Lang Syne" as a New Year's Eve song for the first time.
1999 - Russian President Boris Yeltsin resigned. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was designated acting president.
Healthy people shouldn't be treated like carriers of the plague. Also, COVID-19 isn't the plague. I've called it a cough since at least March and I stand by my statement. If you're whining about COVID-19 killing people, go look up how many people die from seasonal flu every year then kindly shut your pie hole.
"The Great Reset is real, it’s happening now and will lead to devastation worse — “much, much worse” — than the Weimar Republic, a German economist has warned.
Dr. Antony Mueller, Professor of Economics at the Federal University of Sergipe in Brazil, says that the Chinese coronavirus ‘pandemic’ is being used as cover by the globalist elite to destroy small businesses and hasten a new world order based on “expertocracy, climate green religion, and brutal depopulation.”
This globalist elite — inspired by the World Economic Forum’s ‘Build Back Better’ campaign for a ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ and by the United Nations’ Agenda 2030 — are killing Main Street, together with thousands of jobs, by keeping economies across the Western World in near-permanent lockdown.
“Most people have not noticed yet because at the moment governments can afford to give them subsidies and welfare payments. But the question is: ‘For how long?’ We know this money is coming to an end and that it will soon be over. Next you will see massive unemployment all over Europe as one country pulls down another country.”
The coming economic crisis will be worse than any the world has seen before because all the countries in the Western world will become impoverished simultaneously and be unable to help one another.
“We are seeing the destruction of the economy in all Western countries — from the U.S. and Canada to New Zealand and Western Europe. 2020 as been a big catastrophe in the making. It’s just not here yet but it will be worse — much, much worse — than Weimar.”
It was the decline of Germany’s Weimar Republic — a period of high unemployment, deprivation, and hyperinflation — that led to the rise of Hitler.
But however bad it might have been, the coming depression is going to be much worse because society is more atomized and less family-oriented and religious...Read all.
"Rep. Deb Haaland (D-N.M.) discussed environmental injustice with tribal leaders on Monday in her first meeting after being named President-elect Joe Biden's nominee to lead the Department of the Interior.
In the meeting, Haaland committed to "fully" honoring the U.S.'s treaty obligations to tribal nations and working with leaders to address the "disproportionate harm" Native Americans face "from long-running environmental injustices" and climate change.
...The New Mexico lawmaker told leaders at the meeting that she plans to work toward Biden's goal of using the climate crisis to create "good-paying union jobs" and promote clean energy sources, according to Biden's transition team...Read all.
"By the next morning, multiple mathematicians had contacted me and told me they knew the algorithm that had been run to change the vote," the explanation continues. "It was that obvious to people with mathematical expertise. It is a mathematical impossibility for 100's of thousands of votes to show up for VP Biden alone, and to have been injected into the system the way that they were."
"After Nov. 3, the meaning of some words and concepts abruptly changed.
Have you noticed how new realities have replaced old ones?
Media cross-examination of the president now is an out-of-date idea. The time for gotcha questions has come and gone. Why ask a president whether he is a traitor or a crook when you can focus on his favorite flavor of milkshake or compliment him on his socks?...
Impeaching a first-term president after his first midterm election — on a strictly partisan vote, for political reasons other than the U.S. Constitution’s “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors” — now is a terrible idea.
Worse would be to appoint a special counsel to harass a president on unfounded charges of collusion with China. An even scarier notion would be a conservative dream team of partisan lawyers hounding President Joe Biden — using a 22-month, $40 million blank check.
It would be unprofessional for university psychologists and physicians from a distance to diagnose, in pop fashion, the mental faculties of a President Biden.
Certainly, there never would be talk about U.S. Department of Justice officials contemplating wearing a wire as part of an entrapment scheme to remove a President Biden through the 25th Amendment. That almost would constitute a coup attempt.
Almost as bad would be for the holdover FBI director to start “memorializing” his private conversations with Joe Biden on FBI devices...
What happened to the Logan Act?...
To keep track of our brave new American world is easy.
Just consider everything said to be bad by the “Animal Farm” media before Nov. 3 as now good.
And remember that everything said to be good two months ago is now actually bad."...Read all, much here!
Murders have skyrocketed this year, as local governments have become softer on crime.
In the 57 major cities for which data is available, the murder rate is up an average of 36.7%.
Murder went up in 51 cities, and down in only six cities.
...This huge rise in murder occurred as progressive prosecutors became softer on crime, parole became available to more murderers, and the death penalty stopped being used in most states...Read all.
A recent article written by a Vanderbilt University law professor explains why much of the antitrust case recently filed against Facebook relies heavily on emails from CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
"Identity politics has become the new secular religion. We need more heretics.
For me, the defining image of 2020 was also the funniest: that of Democratic lawmakers in the US taking the knee, in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, draped in Ghanaian kente cloth....
* * * * * * * *
What was perhaps more unexpected* was the almost total embrace of Black Lives Matter, the banner under which this movement marched, by the capitalist class. Corporate giants lent their support to the protests. Ben & Jerry’s ice cream pledged to ‘dismantle white supremacy’. And the CEO of JPMorgan Chase took the knee in front of a giant open bank vault...
"Even Dr. Anthony Fauci has soured on the idea of closing schools in response to Covid-19, amid overwhelming evidence of student harm and a lack of evidence of public benefit.
But the destructive policy seems to have a new lease on life in politics.
In a dreary Tuesday speech in Wilmington, Del., President-elect Joe Biden suggested that some schools should remain closed through April--and even longer if there is not another huge round of federal spending on education.
...Look, we can only do that if Congress provides the necessary funding so we get schools, districts, communities, and states the resources they need for those so many things that aren’t there already in a tight budget.
Taxpayers may be even more depressed to learn they will now be asked to fund a Biden administration program to persuade people to ignore the message of the Biden presidential campaign.
As candidates, Mr. Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, cast doubt on the safety of any vaccines approved by the Trump administration.
On Tuesday, after modestly acknowledging “there’s a vaccination hesitancy in many communities,” Mr. Biden promised “a massive public education campaign to increase vaccine acceptance.
...He then promised to “ensure vaccinations are free of charge,” perhaps unaware of existing federal policy.
Then Mr. Biden’s speech got a little more confusing when he said:
I hope the president will clearly and unambiguously urge all Americans to take the vaccine... I took it to instill public confidence in the vaccine. President-elect Harris took hers today for the same reason.
Sounds like someone’s bucking for a demotion...Read all.
Knowing the amount of virus carried in the body could help doctors predict the course of a patient’s illness.
"As Covid-19 patients flood into hospitals nationwide, doctors are facing an impossible question.
Which patients in the E.R. are more likely to deteriorate quickly, and which are most likely to fight off the virus and to recover? As it turns out, there may be a way to help distinguish these two groups, although it is not yet widely employed.
Dozens of research papers published over the past few months found that people whose bodies were teeming with the coronavirus more often becameseriouslyill and more likely to die, compared with those who carried much less virus and were more likely to emerge relatively unscathed. The results suggest that knowing the so-called viral load — the amount of virus in the body — could help doctors predict a patient’s course...
...The idea is not new: Managing viral load has long formed the basis of care for people with H.I.V., for example, and for tamping down transmission of that virus.
Little effort has been made to track viral loads in Covid-19 patients...Read all.
The billionaire philanthropist is set on saving the Earth no matter the cost.
"While you may have been paying attention to [Gates'] efforts on vaccination and lockdowns, you may not have noticed that one of Gates' most controversial causes just got a go-ahead: A project that would help block out the sun," the Western Journal's Douglas Golden wrote.
Reuters reported that the geo-engineering plan — a Harvard University project funded largely by Gates— "plans to test out a controversial theory that global warming can be stopped by spraying particles into the atmosphere that would reflect the sun's rays."
People don’t agree with lockdown and try to undermine the scientists. Not least of which, some fellow called Professor Neil Ferguson, during the first half of 2020: What Neil Ferguson’s booty call tells us about modern politics. “It is actually incredibly important news that Ferguson, the Imperial College modeller who said it was possible 500,000 Brits would die if we didn’t lock down, defied the lockdown. It deserves the frontpage treatment it is getting today.
For Ferguson’s booty call with his married lover actually reveals a great deal about the 21st-century elites and how they view their relationship with the masses. It’s one rule for them and another for us.” QED: Dr. Fauci Admits He Has Treated The American People Like Children.--Posted by Ed Driscoll"
“The actions taken by Democrats to ram through this legislation are a reflection of just how extreme the party has become on abortion. Led by Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Chuck Schumer, and Nancy Pelosi, the Democrats’ agenda for the entire nation is reflected in this bill: abortion on-demand, up until the moment of birth,” Dannenfelser argued.
1853 - The United States bought about 45,000 square miles of land from Mexico in a deal known as the Gadsden Purchase.
1922 - The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was formed.
1924 - Edwin Hubble announced the existence of other galactic systems.
1940 - California's first freeway was officially opened. It was the Arroyo Seco Parkway connecting Los Angeles and Pasadena.
1944 - King George II of Greece proclaimed a regency to rule his country, virtually renouncing the throne.
1953 - The first color TV sets went on sale for about $1,175.
1978 - Ohio State University fired Woody Hayes as its football coach, one day after Hayes punched Clemson University player Charlie Bauman during the Gator Bowl. Bauman had intercepted an Ohio pass.
It's times like these when Ted Cruz might wish he had gone to Yale instead. Though, maybe not. They don't make the Ivy League quite like they used to. At Harvard, one department held a panel on something called "Maternal Justice." That's a thing the left likes to do nowadays. They take a word and put "justice" after it to try to create a new thing, usually so they have an excuse to claim anyone who thinks they're silly is racist. The tweet announcing this panel is an impressive collection of virtual-signaling woke buzzwords.
Some of us have been questioning the COVID-19 death counts reported by the CDC through the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) for some time. Of course, CNN and the corporate media love the likely elevated counts to push their narrative. Lockdown Inc. loves them to justify their destruction of lives and livelihoods. A report from the Freedom Foundation, a Washington State think tank, explains why. The foundation’s original analysis of deaths in the state found the number may have been inflated by as much as 13%:
What they found were "troubling discrepancies between the numbers of total votes counted and the total number of voters who voted in the 2020 general election."
They now are questioning "how the results of the presidential election could possibly have been certified by Secretary of the Commonwealth Kathy Boockvar and Governor Tom Wolf."
Fauci admitted in an interview with the New York Times that he moved the goal posts on herd immunity percentages partly based on public polling data to covertly encourage more Americans to get vaccinated.
At the beginning of the pandemic, Fauci stated publicly that 60-70% of the American public would need to be inoculated with a vaccine to achieve herd immunity. But Fauci slightly increased his percentages as the pandemic raged on, suggesting in his interview with the Times that achieving herd immunity would require 90% of the American public to receive the vaccine.
...Newspapers are running story after story about how, in the absence of such bailouts, state and local legislators are forced to slash funding for services.
...Consider a recent New York Times article, "With Washington Deadlocked on Aid, States Face Dire Fiscal Crisis."
The report tells us: "Alaska chopped resources for public broadcasting.
New York City gutted a nascent composting program that could have kept tons of food waste out of landfills….
In Maryland, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra will lose a $1.6 million state subsidy."
These examples not only are not dire; they represent activities that the government has no business wasting taxpayer money on.
Orchestras, for instance, overwhelmingly benefit the rich. If affluent Americans want to enjoy the pleasure of live classical music, they should pay for it themselves, fully and honestly.
...spending includes the lavish pensions paid to state employees. Why should I, as a resident of Virginia, pay for public employees' retirements in badly managed states such as Kentucky? As the Times explains, Kentucky has one of the most poorly funded public-sector pension systems in the country, and now it is further delaying its payments into the system.
Meanwhile, "some, like California and New Jersey, had recently committed to raising their contributions to cover past underpayments—but now can't afford to do so."
...one dollar of government spending during the last recession returned much less than a dollar in growth, even under the best circumstances.
Worse, systematically bailing out state and local governments creates a serious moral hazard, reducing decision makers' incentives to plan better for the next downturn...Read all.
...Which industries got the biggest favors inserted into legislation that The Hill columnist Joe Concha called “the swampiest thing ever”? Without a doubt, it was the solar- and wind-energy sectors. According to a December 21 estimate from the Joint Committee on Taxation, the extension of the solar sector’s investment tax credit (ITC) will cost the American treasury another $7 billion between now and 2030...Those billions will be added to the $27 billion in ITC credits that were already designated for the solar sector and $34 billion in PTC that will be collected by Big Wind between now and 2029.
...In 2018, the American solar industry got roughly 250 times as much in federal tax incentives as the nuclear sector, when compared by the amount of energy produced.
Coming in a close second is the wind sector, which got about 160 times as much as nuclear...Read all.
So this is how liberals settle science.
In a taste of the kind of intolerance progressives practice when they have the power to do so, a top doctor at a California hospital lost his position last week after having the gall to question the logic behind coronavirus lockdowns.
The incident speaks volumes about how liberals silence critics and says even more about the state of science in a statist world.
Four years ago, 15-year-old Mimi Groves, then a freshman at Heritage High School in Virginia, was excited to get her learner’s permit. After receiving it, she sent her friend a 3-second Snapchat video in which she said: “I can drive, [n-word]!”
Somehow, the video was circulated among a few students at school. It survived for years, and, last year, Jimmy Galligan, who was a senior along with Groves at Heritage, ended up seeing it. Galligan, whose mother is black and whose father is white, said he was offended by the video. Instead of explaining the issue with a white girl using the slur to Groves herself, Galligan held onto the video and waited until he could use it against Groves to destroy her.
Typically, such an act would be seen as bullying, but in today’s pro-cancel-culture society, Galligan received a New York Timesprofile and the story presented from his point of view, along with a headline clearly favoring his actions. “A Racial Slur, a Viral Video, and a Reckoning,” reads the Times headline about Galligan’s act.
The “reckoning” refers to what Groves endured at the hands of Galligan. Groves had been accepted to the University of Tennessee and was set to join the school’s cheer team, which at the time was the reigning national champion. When Galligan posted the video of Groves online and it went viral, she lost her position on the cheer team and was forced to withdraw from the university after facing pressure from admissions officials. The officials apparently told her they received “hundreds of emails and phone calls from outraged alumni, students and the public,” the Times reported.
Groves told the Times that she didn’t “understand the severity of the word, or the history and context behind it because” she was so young. She told the outlet the slur was used in “all the songs we listened to, and I’m not using that as an excuse.”
There’s something for everyone to hate in this story: A college freshman gets her life destroyed by being videoed quoting a rap song when she was 15. The crusading New York Times, staffed by journalists who earlier this year exclaimed that a Tom Cotton op-ed somehow endangered them, is thrilled to sic the social media dog pile onto her. And college administrators who take their lead from that mob. A whole lot of people who should know better need to ask themselves:
Researchers from Tel Aviv University claim that they have found a way to significantly eliminate COVID-19. The new study found that UV-LED lights effectively, quickly, and inexpensively kill coronavirus. The promising study was published in the November 2020 issue of the peer-reviewed Journal of Photochemistry and Photobiology B: Biology. The study attempted to find the disinfection efficiency of ultraviolet light-emitting diodes irradiation at different wavelengths or frequencies on coronavirus. It is said to be the first of its kind in the world, according to the Jerusalem Post.
Only 300 asymptomatic cases in the study of nearly 10 million were discovered, and none of those tested positive for COVID-19.
WUHAN, China, December 23, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – A study of almost 10 million people in Wuhan, China, found that asymptomatic spread of COVID-19 did not occur at all, thus undermining the need for lockdowns, which are built on the premise of the virus being unwittingly spread by infectious, asymptomatic people.
Published in November in the scientific journal Nature Communications, the paper was compiled by 19 scientists, mainly from the Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, but also from scientific institutions across China as well as in the U.K. and Australia...Read all!
“These lawyers are true patriots who are fighting for the truth and, obviously, getting very close,” Trump tweeted on Sunday.
“AG should be sanctioned. Fight on!”
...Nessel responded shortly after it was posted. “A patriot is a person who vigorously defends their country against its enemies and detractors,” she wrote. “History will reveal which you were. I wish you loved your country half as much as you love yourself. Also, time to stop obsessing about those women from Michigan. You’re not our type.”
"The Hilaria Baldwin story gets funnier and funnier. Scott wrote about it here.
"More than a thousand “critical” Capitol Hill staffers will get priority access to the coronavirus vaccine while seniors and first responders across the country continue an agonizing wait, according to a newly revealed memo.
"Rep. Deb Haaland (D-N.M.) discussed environmental injustice with tribal leaders on Monday in her first meeting after being named President-elect Joe Biden's nominee to lead the Department of the Interior.
Murders have skyrocketed this year, as local governments have become softer on crime. 
“These lawyers are true patriots who are fighting for the truth and, obviously, getting very close,” Trump tweeted on Sunday.