News Weakly - 12/19/20

It Just Goes On and On
He's on his way out -- not even a month left -- and the media Trump-hating doesn't let up. The headline on one story read, "White House Officials Who Completely Mismanaged The Pandemic Will Be Among The First To Get Vaccinated" and on the other story it was "Donald Trump's Delay to White House Vaccine Raises National Security Questions." No win. It's Trump, so it's wrong. Get the vaccine and it's evil because they "completely mismanaged" the pandemic (yet to be proven, but, hey, we don't let facts interrupt our stories) or don't get the vaccine and threaten national security. Make up your minds.

More COVID! Oh, My!!
I have long contended that the news media is a terrorist organization. That is, their primary approach is often to aim to terrify their consumers. This last year of COVID stories has illustrated my point. Recently Arizona has hit the news. On December 1 they reported 10,322 new cases of COVID, three times any previous single day report. On December 8 they reported another 12,314 cases, a new high. Most recently it was 11,795 on December 14. "If this keeps up," a neighbor told me, "we're all gonna die." He wasn't joking. He was wrong, but he wasn't joking. What do we know? More cases are being reported. Are there more cases or more discoveries of existing cases? We don't know. Was it a spike in numbers or a delay in reporting? We don't know. Is it due to increased spread or improved testing? We don't know. Are people being required to test and discovering they're positive (asymptomatic), or are they concerned that they've been exposed and getting tested? We don't know. (Note: None of these options are mutually exclusive.) But we do know that we're all going to die if this keeps up. No, we don't. Because in Arizona the incidence rate is less than 6% and the death rate from those cases is less than 2%. We're all going to die (death rate among humans remains at 100%), but not from COVID, and the media is refusing to present a fair and balanced story. That's terrorism. (As a clear example, a Florida lawyer has sued the governor to force him to close beaches (although the beaches are almost empty) and force stay-at-home measures because the governor is not doing enough about COVID.)

Gender Parity
City authorities in Paris have been fined for violating gender parity laws. They hired 11 women and only 5 men for senior positions. "This fine is obviously absurd, unfair, irresponsible and dangerous," the female mayor complained. The law there states that no single gender can have more than 60% of management positions. Now that's a gender parity law. Of course, the fine was for 2018 and the law has been repealed. Gender parity is not the aim. Female supremacy is. (As a thought exercise, would the mayor have complained if it was 11 men and 5 women? Likely.)

Baseless Claims
Everyone knows it. Trump et al has tossed out wild accusations of election fraud in key states such as Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Michigan. (That is, they're not saying, "It was everywhere!" Just some key places.) Everyone one knows these claims are baseless. We know they are baseless because we reject the claims. Claims like this one from a forensic investigator in Michigan (released this week) who claims to have proof that the Dominion Voting System "is intentionally and purposefully designed with inherent errors to create systemic fraud and influence election results." Don't worry. You don't need to look at the evidence. We're operating on the certainty that it certainly did not happen, so no such evidence can exist. We're certain that questioning if there was such fraud is an assault on democracy (rather than the silly notion that voter fraud itself is an assault on democracy). It's what we do. See? Baseless claims.

NIMBY
Have you heard the acronym NIMBY? "Not in my backyard." Usually used in reference to sex offenders. "They can't live in my neighborhood." Or, in this case, Trump. Mar-a Lago neighbors are trying to demand that the town keep Trump from living there. The hate continues.

The Right Who Shall Not Be Named
I'm looking ... I'm looking ... nope ... no "Right to change my gender at will." There is a right to the free exercise of religion. It seems turned around, then, that the right that is being demanded at the expense of the other right is the one that isn't named. The HRC issued a list of policy priorities for Biden which included removing accreditation of religious schools that don't embrace "transgender rights." Still, the power of this 0.6% of the population is massive. Evidence the federal judge who has mandated that Ohio must allow residents to change gender on their birth certificates as a matter of constitutionality. Because as we all know, right there in the Bill of Rights, you will find the right to change genders at will. Nope, it's not. Someone should tell the judge. Oh, don't bother. Neither truth nor justice are the American way so much anymore.

Reverse Purge
In 2013 Hollywood gave us The Purge, a science fiction movie about a society that has a yearly 12 hour period to allow all manner of crimes without consequences. (It is, understandably, a horror movie.) Seattle, in view of "Defund the Police," is taking its cue from The Purge, but in reverse. They will have one night a year in which they will enforce laws.

Must be true; I read it on the Internet.