New York doesn’t believe in science. So all the scientist quit.

Europe, once again, shows that the Nobel Prize is worthless.

An let’s talk culture.

 

It’s Science, All!

Andrew Cuomo continues to prove he is the worst, most arrogant, incompetent and corrupt governors in the United States today. That is saying a lot.

• New York has always led the way with Wuhan flu infections. This is not a shock because it is heavily populated and people are always smooshed together.
• Andrew Cuomo issued an order that allowed old people who had the Wuhan flu to be put back into retirement homes.
• At the time, we already knew that the elderly were more susceptible.
• Thousands of the elderly died, helping to make the state the second highest in COVID deaths in the country behind New Jersey.
• Who’s fault did it end up being? Listen

 

https://nypost.com/2021/01/29/gov-cuomo-blames-politics-amid-covid-19-nursing-home-report/

That’s right! It’s Trump’s fault! He doesn’t blame the CDC or the WHO or China or Dr. Fauci. It is Trump’s fault cause I guess Trump is going around and spreading this thing and not helping anyone.

Oh, wait! President Trump did help New York and other states.

• Trump sent tons of PPE to New York.
• Trump sent thousands of respirators and ventilators to New York.
• Trump sent two hospital ships from the Navy to New York.
• The Navy ships, ventilators and respirators were not used.
• Cuomo specifically thanked Trump for all his support.

 

The media were all in on Cuomo. They saw him as the savior against the Wuhan flu and kept pointing out that New York is the way all states should have been handling the virus. Listen to this from Grabien:

Andy embraced the sudden fame.

• He wrote a book about how he handled the pandemic.
• He created a map of the pandemic’s progress over the last year. There was a bit of irony here.
• He won an Emmy over his press conferences.

 

But everyone was not a fan of Andy. There were people who wanted explanations. That’s when Andy’s lies started coming to light. An investigation was done by the state Attorney General. Oops!

New York’s top prosecutor, Letitia James, has determined that Cuomo’s administration may have attempted to cover up mistakes by undercounting the number of elderly who died in nursing homes from the coronavirus. The deaths were shorted by over 50%.

What they did was call COVID deaths from nursing homes, hospital deaths.

• A COVID patient from a nursing home is about to die.
• The retirement home will send the patient to the hospital.
• The patient dies of COVID.
• The death is a hospital COVID death not a retirement home death

 

This softens the blow of Andy’s incompetence. Oops.

Andy’s response was less than sympathetic.

This guy is so out of touch. He is so arrogant. He refuses to take responsibility for anything. It’s just incredible. What’s more incredible is no one in the media is talking about it and even editing interviews that blame Andy Cuomo.

But that isn’t it. Andy’s behavior caused a lot of friction with his own health department. You know, the health department that is run and advised by doctors. Mr. Follow-the-Science decided he was going to run the COVID policy and, now, the vaccine distribution from his office, no matter what his health department says.

• At least nine top New York health officials have left their posts since March of last year over Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s handling of the pandemic.
• According to the NY Times, The governor ignored advice from his public health experts while using them as a foil during a recent press conference while answering questions on the pandemic.
• State health officials have grown increasingly irritated at Cuomo’s approach to the pandemic, claiming that the governor has issued top-down orders to combat the coronavirus without first notifying health department staff.
• One of the latest incidents occurred in Cuomo’s shaping of the state’s vaccine distribution plan. The governor scrapped a plan that health officials at all levels of state government had been working on in some fashion for about two decades.

 

The NY Times stated:

In the fall, Mr. Cuomo shelved vaccine distribution plans that top state health officials had been drawing up, one person with knowledge of the decision said. The plans had relied in part on years of preparations at the local level — an outgrowth of bioterrorism fears following Sept. 11 — and on experience dispensing vaccine through county health departments during the H1N1 pandemic in 2009.

As a result, local officials across the state complained that their efforts to vaccinate were undercut by the Cuomo plan.

“Wait a minute, why are we not doing this?” Anthony J. Picente Jr., a Republican who is county executive in upstate Oneida County, said he remembered thinking.

Cuomo’s plan was to have hospitals deal with the vaccination, something his advisors quickly advised against. They believed the vaccinations should be handled by the local governments. This is because hospitals could not manage it because…they were busy.

Guess what happened? The hospitals could not keep up.

Andy Cuomo stated:

“When I say ‘experts’ in air quotes, it sounds like I’m saying I don’t really trust the experts. Because I don’t. Because I don’t.”

Man of science.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/ny-gov-cuomo-shunned-experts-embraced-lobbyists-drove-top-health-officials-to-quit-over-pandemic-response-report
https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-furious-woman-whose-mother-died-in-ny-nursing-home-says-nbc-news-blocked-her-mentioning-cuomos-name
https://nypost.com/2021/01/29/gov-cuomo-blames-politics-amid-covid-19-nursing-home-report/

 

These Guys Must Be Kidding

The Nobel Peace Prize list of nominees for 2021 have been released. Some make sense others will just make you go, “hmm”.

These Guys Make Sense

Jared Kushner – Kushner, who is Trump’s son-in-law, and Berkowitz, who was the Middle East envoy, were key figures in negotiating deals between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco.

Donald Trump – Duh. Signed the Middle East Peace deals. Defeated the terrorist organization, ISIS. Was the only President in, forever, not to start a new foreign war. Oh, yeah, and he never started a nuclear war.

Alexei Navalny – Man who is running the Opposition to Russian President Vlad Putin.

Wait…What?

Black Live Matter. What?

Norwegian Member of Parliament Petter Eide (a socialist) writes:

“I find that one of the key challenges we have seen in America, but also in Europe and Asia, is the kind of increasing conflict based on inequality. Black Lives Matter has become a very important worldwide movement to fight racial injustice. They have had a tremendous achievement in raising global awareness and consciousness about racial injustice. They have been able to mobilize people from all groups of society, not just African-Americans, not just oppressed people, it has been a broad movement, in a way which has been different from their predecessors.”

Politifact reported:

Officers injured: The New York Post reported on June 8, citing the U.S. Justice Department, that more than 700 law enforcement officers were injured on the job during nationwide protests over Floyd’s death.

People killed: In early June, news accounts reported the number of people killed during the Floyd protests at roughly a dozen, or as many as 19. The victims include a 77-year-old man who was a retired St. Louis police captain and a 22-year-old woman from Davenport, Iowa.

Damage caused: In late June, Fox News reported that according to insurance experts and city officials, the Floyd protests could eclipse the 1992 Los Angeles riots to become the most expensive civil disturbance in U.S. history. The 1992 riots, which followed the acquittal of four police officers in the beating of Rodney King, cost $1.4 billion in 2020 dollars, according to the report, which did not give a specific damage estimate for the Floyd protests. A spokeswoman for the Insurance Information Institute told Scripps National News that “most likely” the Floyd protest “would lead to higher losses,” but did not provide an estimate either.

Black Lives Matter didn’t respond to our requests for comment.

They also support what most Nobel voters support:

• Socialism.
• Hatred of the United States.
• Breaking up of the family.
• Anti-religion
• Anti-capitalism.

 

Stacey Abrams. This is the person who lost the governor election in Georgia but thinks she’s still governor of Georgia.

NBC reported:

Abrams, who played a critical role in helping to register thousands of voters for the 2020 presidential election and Senate runoff election in Georgia, is being nominated for her work to “promote nonviolent change via the ballot box.”

“Abrams’ work follows in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s footsteps in the fight for equality before the law and for civil rights,” Lars Haltbrekken, a Socialist Party member of Norway’s parliament, said.

Abrams has done absolutely nothing in her career except bitch that she lost the gubernatorial election in Georgia. I’ll go a step further: her bitching about having had the election stolen from her (she lost by 50K votes) was a self-centered pitch to make her more relevant in the next election.

The media loves her and Europe can’t get enough of her. That’s because she’s a socialist.

Greta Thunberg is back. Who cares.

The environmental activist has done nothing except travel around the world in a boat, missing school, yelling at adults for ruining her life. I don’t know.

At least she turned 18 and we can not fuck with her without being accused of being closeted pedophiles.

The World Health Organization. Wow.

Let’s see:

• They were wrong about how COVID was spread.
• They were wrong about how transmissible it was.
• They did not press China to let them analyze it.
• They lied about how China was handling the disease.
• They were wrong about how deadly it is.
• They were lied about how many people died in China.
• They did not acknowledge that this virus was developed in a lab and not a natural outgrowth.
• They called travel restrictions xenophobic.
• They spread the Chinese talking point about COVIS. And SARS. and Swine flu. And Bird flu. And they were all lies.
• They ignore the enemies of China including Hong Kong and Taiwan.

 

Yeah, they did such a great job on the Wuhan flu.

Do you guys see something with the Nobel Peace Price? Yeah, it’s bullshit. It’s such bullshit, I would question whether Jarod Kushner or Donald Trump were closeted communists.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/stacey-abrams-nominated-for-nobel-peace-prize
https://www.dailywire.com/news/black-lives-matter-nominated-for-nobel-peace-prize
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/01/jared-kushner-nominated-for-nobel-peace-prize
https://www.kare11.com/article/news/nation-world/nobel-peace-prize-nominees-list-jared-kushner-stacey-abrams/507-c9408831-7335-4725-96f1-d2b52cd482de
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/01/stacey-abrams-among-2021-nobel-peace-prize-nominees-.html
https://www.dnaindia.com/world/report-nobel-peace-prize-2021-list-of-nominees-greta-thunberg-donald-trump-2872067

 

The Culture

Last week, Josie and I watched a Netflix miniseries called Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer. Actually, I saw it twice because Josie fell asleep once and had to leave my place once. I finished it because I was transfixed.

Now I remember this case. I was 17 years old at the time and lived in Los Angeles. Josie was only 6 years old and lived in San Diego. I wasn’t into news at the time but I followed this one. I remember that we would lock all our door and windows. I remember that there were hourly reports on the case. I remember that the news, only daily at the time, spent 15 to 20 minutes out of an hour on the murders. And there were a lot of murders. One every few days.

The documentary, which I recommend if you are into true crime stories, was excellent. There were a lot of things that were skipped probably because of censorship reasons. Richard Ramirez, who ended up being the Night Stalker, was a seriously twisted…human being? No, he was an animal. Filth. But, outside of that, the story was pretty accurate.

But the Left wing news outlet, Vox, had a problem with it. one could tell by there title, Night Stalker Review: Netflix misguided Night Stalker series treats cops like gods. The bad grammar on the title is theirs.

It said:

Falzon describes this moment with relish almost four decades later. In his recounting, the friend — who’d originally contacted police himself with a tip about the Night Stalker’s identity — balked when Falzon asked him to reveal the Night Stalker’s full name. So Falzon forcibly dragged the friend-turned-informant into his police car, threatened him, and punched him in the face.

“It wasn’t my best punch, but it definitely wasn’t my worst,” Falzon says. After further threats, Falzon says, he lunged toward the informant, who cringed away from him, “threw his hands up in a cross,” and stammered out: “Richard Ramirez. Richard Ramirez. Richard Ramirez.”

As Falzon repeated the name, the music swelled and grew more ominous. The episode cut to the docuseries’ cliffhanger end credits. And all I could think was how terrified this person must have been of the police.

Um, he should have been terrified of the police. He was hiding the name of a serial killer, rapist and child rapist. A man who had victimized over 20 people that the police knew of.

On the one hand, the production must have felt it would be satisfying to deprive Ramirez of some of that notoriety. To some extent, it is satisfying. In particular, it’s inspiring to hear from Ramirez’s survivors, including one couple who narrowly escaped their brush with Ramirez, and one victim who was assaulted by Ramirez when she was a child. Seeing her declare with certainty that she’s fine feels like the ultimate victory over Ramirez.

But Ramirez’s life arguably fits into a conversation about the cyclical nature of abuse and the cyclical horror of war — each a form of trauma. Likewise, a more thorough examination of Ramirez’s actions in the context of Satanic Panic could have made for a fascinating discussion within the series, had it been handled well. To what extent was Ramirez responding to the Satanic Panic of the era, and to what extent was he acting independent of it, but still becoming a part of the larger societal hysteria? These are all themes I’d have loved to see explored.

So, what this is saying, is that the film unjustly made the police into heroes for capturing a serial killer who left few clues and was completely random in his crimes. Instead, the documentary should have showed how a rapist, serial killer who kidnapped children and raped them was a victim. Nice.

The absence of Ramirez from his own story wasn’t that confusing to me because I could see what Night Stalker was trying to do. But it was confusing to other viewers I’ve spoken with, many of whom were totally unfamiliar with Ramirez’s story and naturally expected to learn about the titular serial killer.

There’s an obvious argument to be made that “understanding the mind of a serial killer” is too often used to justify overblown, glorified serial killer narratives. Sure. But we also need to understand the minds of serial killers, as well as the societal and personal circumstances that can lead to criminal behavior, if we’re ever going to fully understand criminality and attempt to rehabilitate potential offenders before it’s too late.

The only thing that would have confused me is why the writers didn’t say all that Richard Ramirez did. A lot of that was cut out because of the shear brutality of his crimes. There was more than enough as far as the timeline goes and pictures and videos of the crime scenes. In fact, other critics said that the documentary was too violent.

Perhaps it was. Carrillo and Salerno seemed to do good police work, even if the clue that led to the killer came from a Northern California citizen who apparently got punched in the face for his good deed. We need dedicated police officers who have positive relationships with their communities. Whenever cops do good work — work that truly serves the public — that moment feels like a victory. It comes with deep relief and pride in the justice system for functioning as it should.

But herein lies the difficulty of being a true crime fan: We have to recognize that police officers as a group perpetuate an inherently flawed and racist system of justice that fails people of color and marginalized communities far more often than it serves them. We can never lose sight of the reality that for every moment when the cops and the community are in harmony, there are countless others when the police force is the oppressor. And cases like Ramirez’s are often used as excuses for police to crack down and enact violence on people who aren’t serial killers.

Night Stalker doesn’t acknowledge this paradox at all. Instead, it treats Carrillo and Salerno like demigods. It approvingly lets a cop talk about punching an informant in the face and edits it like a pivotal, satisfying moment of triumph rather than a horrifying example of police brutality. And that strange omission — I mean, it’s dealing with the LAPD in the ’80s, perhaps the most notoriously racist police force to exist outside of the LAPD in the ’90s! — undermines Night Stalker’s effort to excise the bad seed at the heart of its story. Especially given the racial tensions between the police and their communities that erupted across the nation in 2020, I’m wondering if the production team ever stopped to think about how their approach to the police might be perceived.

 

 

Night Stalker is a reminder that building a true crime story around the non-criminals isn’t enough. You need balance — and more crucially, context — for every narrative beat, especially because these are real crimes, still sending ramifications and echoes throughout society decades later.

Those echoes are clear, just from the fact that so many people who witnessed and lived through the Ramirez story are still around to talk about it nearly four decades later. History is living and walking — and very occasionally still stalking — among us. In the case of Night Stalker, that history deserved more careful attention.

https://www.vox.com/culture/22240673/netflix-night-stalker-docuseries-frank-salerno-gil-carrillo