December 31, 2020, New Years Eve of the Plague Year
And so it looks like with Joe Biden's electoral college victory in hand, Donald Trump's "operation warped vision" looks like it is all but over, notwithstanding Senator Josh Hawley's commitment to being an asshole on January 6th. Let's just say that Mr. Trump is as committed to smashing on (indeed, urinating on) established Washington norms with almost the same vigor that Barack Obama employed to defending norms. Sigh.
Where was I? Well, a few hours of 2020 to go, before we all say good riddance to it. Familia TD is home (though the Loquacious Pup will be out and about, I'm sure.) No Times Square crowd for the ball-drop, which should really be shaped like the SARS-COV-2 virus... but, you know... our city fathers have no sense of humor. As if anything that infected 20 million Americans and killed over 340,000 is funny.
A year ago, Mrs. TD and I had dinner in an Indian restaurant in lower Manhattan with dear friends, quietly pondering the year to come. None of us anticipated that this would be a year like no other- essentially under a form of house arrest for over nine months, as economic devastation accompanied the ravages of the pandemic, because America. Tens of millions of American workers have filed for unemployment benefits this year, even as our beloved billionaires made bank. In short, everything horrible and wrong about America that I documented in "Donald J. Putin on American Exceptionalism" has proven to be true, with a vengeance. (Not that it's a 'resolution,' because I don't really do those, but I am working on a sequel.) God forbid even a single billionaire made a large gift to social services charities (say, $100 million to funds devoted to food banks and rent relief agencies), and then dared his fellow billionaires to match him under penalty of shaming. Of course not: our billionaires aren't bound by the laws of people, what with being gods and all. Sigh.
In hobby horse news, Guantanamo is still open, now holding 40 men in arbitrary and unlawful detention, which, in a Scaramucci's time, will have its 19th anniversary (unlikely to be part of a live commemoration this year, for obvious reasons). Interestingly, the number of men cleared for release has gone from five... to six. Joe Biden isn't talking about it, but it would be really good if he "finished the job" that Barack didn't want to invest any political capital in doing. Just because it's the right thing to do.
And so, where do we go? We're all hoping for better things ahead, though the morons of this country that refuse to even wear face-masks to stop a raging pandemic (let alone cancel their holiday travel plans) even as the toll hits record numbers of deaths and hospitalizations with each passing day give one little confidence that things won't be far worse for a while. So we take care of ourselves: always wear masks, NEVER eat out (EVER), unless its seriously outside away from other people, and take established supplements THAT WORK on COVID (Vits B complex, C, D3, Zinc, Selenium, Quercetin, Elderberry syrup) and Melatonin, and if you get sick, get some IVERMECTIN in there, along with steroids and aspirin.
Pretty elemental year: key is coming out of it alive; anything beyond that is gravy. Alrighty boys and girls: happy new year to you all, and best wishes for a healthy and happy new year to come.