Society

When John F. Kennedy was president, McDonald’s invented the Filet-O-Fish to cater for Catholics who wouldn’t touch hamburgers on Fridays and were harming their profits. Nearly 60 years later, the flaccid fish sandwich is still on the menu, but it’s unlikely that McDonald’s or anyone else will introduce products catering specially for Catholics during the administration of America’s second Catholic president. The tumbleweed in the ruined dioceses of the rust belt is rolling across the country. Countless parishes will die of the complications of COVID-19; many will be euthanized by their own bishops, who’ve found just the excuse they needed to close them.

Monday marked a solemn day for America, as the coronavirus death toll in the United States crossed the 500,000 mark. By this weekend, 100,000 will have died during Joe Biden’s short tenure as President. One hundred thousand. Think about that for just a second. Let that sink in. We could do what all the Trump-deranged pundit class did when the 45th president was in charge. That is, compare the COVID death count 'under this President's watch' to various unrelated historical atrocities. One hundred thousand deaths is the same death toll as the German Peasants’ War, a populist revolt in 1524 which lasted an entire year.

We’ve all had to learn more than enough about pathogens in recent months — how contagion spreads, how our immune systems work, what vaccines do and so on. All of us, that is — apart from President Joe Biden, it seems. On Sunday, in order to demonstrate that he ‘listens to scientists’— an important campaign promise — the Commander-in-Chief posted a video of himself being lectured by the Scientist-in-Chief, Dr Anthony Fauci, the man who used to tell us not to bother with masks but now says we’ll still be wearing them until, oh, maybe forever. 'This is the spike protein,’ explains Dr Fauci, patiently. ‘This is the protein of coronavirus.

Throughout the dark years of the Trump administration, brave, isolated voices in America’s richest, most liberal cities needed a means to communicate. They needed a kind of secret signal to show other liberals they were not alone, that the flame of liberalism was still burning. You may have seen the sign above and been confused: Now, thanks to Joe Biden’s triumphal arrival in the capital, these symbols can be deciphered. In each line, the glyphs carry a hidden, greater meaning: 'Black Lives Matter' translates to 'we should defund the police and increase the crime rate in predominately black areas.' 'Women’s rights are human rights' is coded language for 'biological males should win every women’s track meet.' And so on. What about 'Science is real?

The joy of life in America, in the 21st century, consists partly in the knowledge that whenever something bad happens, it’s ipso facto someone else’s fault. So let’s go get the so-and-so! Welcome to frozen-over Texas, where on Wednesday morning, February 17, 2.7 million households were without heat, owing to the uninvited and unwelcome presence of an Arctic cold front spreading suffering and inconvenience through every one of this energy-rich state’s 254 counties. The last time it got anything like this cold around here was 1949. I was here in ’49, albeit too young to appreciate the icicles.

Last week, the homepage of CNN announced that 'The story keeps getting worse for Andrew Cuomo on COVID-19.' The story, penned by Chris Cillizza, is gripping. A top aide confessed that the New York governor’s office had 'knowingly undercounted deaths among nursing home residents during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic’. This 'stunning admission’ is 'a very bad look — to say the least’ for an office currently dealing with separate scrutiny over having sent 9,000 patients recovering from coronavirus back to nursing homes. This figure was 40 percent higher than reported originally, indicating that deaths aren’t the only data Cuomo and his team are lying about. But what the CNN piece fails to mention is that the new, damning evidence about Gov.

Media Karen Culture didn’t take a break for Sunday’s Super Bowl. Once again Florida and its murderous dictator-governor Ron DeSantis found themselves the target of the media’s ire. The NFL set aside the football contest and offered viewers a detour through their favorite social causes. CNN reporter Randi Kaye was reporting from downtown Tampa Bay on the first occasion that the Super Bowl took place in the home stadium of one of the teams playing. She found herself on the phone to the cops looking to stop public gatherings. Kaye was double-masked  and alluded to CNN host Ana Cabrera that she felt her production team was in danger. ‘I spoke to the Tampa police and I asked them, “What are you doing about this?” A lot of people were very concerned.

Last week President Biden signed an executive order to rejoin the Paris Climate Accords. This was a mostly symbolic gesture, as the same alarmism being pushed prior to the agreement in 2016 is still being pushed now while nation-states like China are still ignoring it. Now Biden administration climate envoy John Kerry, under fire for boarding a private jet to Iceland to accept a climate award, is telling the United States and the world that the conditions of the Paris agreement are 'inadequate'. As the global climate elite push eating bugs and staying home to save the Earth on the masses, it’s worth posing the question: what will be adequate?

For the duration of the COVID pandemic, New York’s Gov. Andrew Cuomo has been the living embodiment of hubris. As early as last July, he released a commemorative poster touting his handling of the crisis. It resembled a liberal version of Soviet-style propaganda posters from the Cold War era. He eagerly accepted an International Emmy award for his 'masterful' daily briefings on the pandemic. 'He effectively created television shows, with characters, plot lines, and stories of success and failure,' Emmy Award CEO Bruce Paisner explained. And in October, Cuomo released his book American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic.

In some ways, the downfall of Jared Porter is a prototypical #MeToo story. A man in a position of relative influence made unwanted overtures to a female colleague via text message, in a milieu where rebuffing him was potentially injurious to her career. He was overly persistent, unforgivably lewd, and seemingly impervious to her discomfort, and while he apologized after being told directly that his conduct was inappropriate, it was too little, too late. The woman, a reporter, was thoroughly and understandably demoralized by the experience — and once the man’s conduct became public knowledge, he was thoroughly and understandably defenestrated from his high-profile position as a Major League Baseball general manager.

So far the Massachusetts vaccine rollout has been going about as smoothly as the Patriots’ first season sans Tom Brady. There is plenty of room for improvement.  Frankly, the Commonwealth should have nailed the rollout. When it comes to healthcare — well…it’s kind of our thing. According to US News, Massachusetts currently clocks in at #2 for best healthcare in the country, second only to Hawaii. That’s not to mention the fact that Massachusetts’s single-payer system was one of the main inspirations for Obamacare. That’s right: the blueprint for Barack’s crowning achievement actually originated from one of Mitt Romney’s binders. But the current COVID statistics tell a different story.

Where is Jack? You know, Jack-the-Giant-Killer? The little fellow who caught the giant Cormaran in a deadfall and dispatched him with a pick-ax? Who strangled the giant Blunderbore and his brother? And who tricked the double-nobbed giant Two-Heads into stabbing himself?   I realize that today’s children’s books are less sanguinary, and some readers may need a refresher in the exploits of the Cornish boy who set things right back in a time when giants were in the habit of abusing their monopoly on size and strength. Jack made up in ingenuity and quick thinking what he lacked in brawn. And we could use his help right now. For once again, we have a plague of giants. Giant Twitter. Giant Apple. Giant Facebook. Giant Google.

If your aim is to stop America descending into civil conflict, it’s hard to think of a less effective method than forcing millions of people to abandon public platforms and instead use some segregated messaging system. Big Tech companies are not actually de-escalating hate online censorship, and corporate media companies are merely using their actions as an excuse to de-platform their ideological competition. The Silicon Valley overlords should think about this as they carry out an unprecedented purge of users following the siege of the Capitol. President Trump’s personal and official Twitter accounts have been ‘permanently suspended’ (oxymoron?) and Facebook has banned him from posting.

On Tuesday, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida was confronted by CNN’s Rosa Flores in a clip that soon went viral. Senior citizens had begun the vaccination process in Florida. Most counties rely on an appointment app but several counties in Florida had allowed seniors to get vaccinated on a first-come-first-served basis. This had led to long lines with some elderly waiting overnight in their cars.  Flores was asking a leading question, the kind only Republicans get from CNN: ‘What has gone wrong with the rollout of the vaccine? We’ve seen phone lines jammed, websites crashing, and also senior citizens waiting overnight for the vaccine.

Donald Trump said during the second and final presidential debate on October 22 that he was optimistic a vaccine would be ready 'within weeks’. When moderator Kristen Welker asked if that was a 'guarantee’, Trump replied that it was not, but that the US would have a vaccine by the 'end of the year’. It wasn't the first time he had made this prediction publicly: 'I think we’re going to have a vaccine by the end of the year,’ Trump said back in May. The media could have accepted that the President probably has better insight into the timeline of vaccine development and approval than those not involved in the process.

Virginia governor Ralph Northam: first a doctor and now apparently a theologian. Northam took a shot at churchgoers during a press conference announcing the state's latest coronavirus restrictions on Thursday, arrogantly explaining to Virginia residents how they are supposed to understand their relationship with God. While reminding churches to practice social distancing and require masks indoors during Thursday's presser, Gov. Northam smugly remarked that 'you do not need to sit in the church pews for God to hear your prayers.' Northam also asked people of faith what the most important thing is this time of year: 'Is it the worship or the building?' 'For me, God is wherever you are,' he added.

After eight months of frantic work, several coronavirus vaccines appear ready for launch. But there are 330 million Americans, and decidedly less than 330 million shots right now. So the great question America must ask is, who should receive the vaccine first?At least, it was supposed to be a great question. Mercifully, the New York Times has come forth like the Good Witch of the North to show us the way. Figuring out health policy is easy, it turns out: just decide the best policy based on race.That was the clear message of a Saturday article posing the question: 'The Elderly vs. Essential Workers: Who Should Get the Coronavirus Vaccine First?

When I was a young attendee of a Charismatic Christian church, people were very keen to make themselves look ‘cool’. There was Christian rock. There was Christian rap. There was something called The Street Bible, which reframed Biblical stories through a modern lens. I don’t want to be too mean about this stuff. Some of the Christian rock was pretty good. The Street Bible had a sense of humor about itself. Even the rap wasn’t that bad. (I say that because I know what you are imagining. ‘My name is Ben and I’m here to say/Worship God and don’t be gay.’) Hillsong, at the time, was a very cool church. They had enormous services, and hit songs, and pastors who looked as if they had walked out of daytime television.