(1) Proposed House Rules Seek to Erase Gendered Terms Such as ‘Father, Mother, Son, Daughter’(2) How Many Sexes Are There? - John Skalko(3) Sadiq Khan lights up London sky with BLM Fist for New Year Fireworks(4) NHS Requires "Diversity Training" for Retired Doctors before they're allowed to Administer Vaccines(5) 20% to 40% of healthcare workers refuse to take Pfizer vaccine(6) Antifa riot in Portland for New Year(7) Antifa has been rioting in Portland for years. Mayor Ted Wheeler has continually turned a blind eye(8) Matt Taibbi turns against the Left for journalist-cheered censorship, groupthink(9) Georgia Election Data Shows 17,650 Votes Switched From Trump to Biden: Data Scientists(1) Proposed House Rules Seek to Erase Gendered Terms Such as ‘Father, Mother, Son, Daughter’https://www.theepochtimes.com/proposed-house-rules-seek-to-erase-gendered-terms-such-as-father-mother-son-daughter_3640653.htmlBY MIMI NGUYEN LYJanuary 1, 2021 Updated: January 2, 2021Leaders in the House of Representatives announced on Friday a rules package for the 117th Congress that includes a proposal to use "gender-inclusive language" and eliminate gendered terms such as "‘father, mother, son, daughter," and more.Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Rules Committee Chairman James McGovern (D-Mass.) announced on Friday that the rules package includes changes that would "honor all gender identities by changing pronouns and familial relationships in the House rules to be gender neutral."A separate announcement from McGovern (pdf) said that the Democratic rules package will make "Changes [to] pronouns and familial relationships in the House rules to be gender neutral or removes references to gender, as appropriate, to ensure we are inclusive of all Members, Delegates, Resident Commissioners and their families—including those who are nonbinary."Terms to be struck from clause 8(c)(3) of rule XXIII, the House’s Code of Official Conduct, as outlined in the proposed rules (pdf), include "father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister, uncle, aunt, first cousin, nephew, niece, husband, wife, father-in-law, mother-in-law, son-in-law, daughter-in-law, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, stepfather, stepmother, stepson, stepdaughter, stepbrother, stepsister, half brother, half sister, grandson, [and] granddaughter."Such terms would be replaced with "parent, child, sibling, parent’s sibling, first cousin, sibling’s child, spouse, parent-in-law, child-in-law, sibling-in-law, stepparent, stepchild, stepsibling, half-sibling, [and] grandchild."According to the proposed rules, "seamen" would be replaced with "seafarers," and "Chairman" would be replaced with "Chair" in Rule X of the House.Pelosi and McGovern said that the overall package "includes sweeping ethics reforms, increases accountability for the American people, and makes this House of Representatives the most inclusive in history."The rules package includes removing floor privileges from former Congress members who have been convicted of crimes related to their House service or election.It would also make it "a violation of the Code of Official Conduct for a Member, officer, or employee of the House to disclose the identity of a whistleblower."It also establishes a new Select Committee on Economic Disparity and Fairness in Growth, to "investigate, study, make findings, and develop recommendations on policies, strategies, and innovations" to "[empower]    American economic growth while ensuring that no one is left out or behind in the 21st Century Economy."The rules package will be introduced and voted on once the new Congress convenes.(2) How Many Sexes Are There? - John Skalkohttps://www.academia.edu/34327124/How_Many_Sexes_Are_ThereHow Many Sexes Are There?John SkalkoThe ongoing revision to the list of genders seemingly has no end. In 2014, after years of the traditional binary gender options, Facebook allowed users to choose from among fifty different genders.1 Since that did not seem inclusive enough, they revised the gender options again, or rather dropped them. You can now customize your own gender. Like the homosexual movement, the current gender ideology grows out of the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre.Nature no longer remains a given; it is what you create. Gender no longer needs to be what biology determines; it is rather dependent upon the will, or some deep-seated feeling. [...]3 What determines one’s gender? By what standard do we decide? As Sr. Prudence Allen, RSM has pointed out, gender etymologically is traced back to the Latin generare, meaning "to generate." The Latin generare has a more technical meaning than "mere production" or the colloquial English use of the word "generate." Generare in its technical Latin sense as applied to living things means "to reproduce." Etymology, however, does not always indicate the true meaning of a word in its current usage; nor is etymology always a good argument for an objective standard. But etymology can be a good place to start.That the etymology of gender does in this case actually point us in the right direction, I appeal to the following thought-experiment by Christopher Martin: Broadly speaking I want to put the biology back into sexuality. Or, as I would put it, I want to put the sex back into sexuality. This works on a number of levels.First, we have to admit sex is a biological and teleological notion. Suppose we met a race of creatures –– fairly clearly non-rational animals –– that was very different from us: on Mars, say. And the question arises: are these creatures sexed? and if so, can we distinguish male and female?We need to think now how we would go about finding out these answers. We would not do it by investigating their psyches, nor even merely by just looking at (or cutting up) individuals. We would try to find out how they reproduced and what was the role of the different organs of the different individuals involved in reproduction.Thus, sex is a biological and teleological notion. Anything else which is called sexual is so called ultimately because it has some relation to this process, to these organs.8 Anytime we discover a new species and we wonder whether such individuals are sexed, we observe how they go about reproducing. If we observe that the members of the species reproduce asexually, then we rightly conclude that neither male nor female exist in that species. But if we observe that two are required for reproduction to occur, we rightly conclude that the species reproduces sexually by the union of the two. Later we name these two differently based upon the roles they play in reproduction, namely, as male and female. Such is why Aquinas held to a binary account of gender: "The distinction of the sexes is ordained in animals to the generation which occurs through coitus."9 If human beings had no ordering to reproduction, or no sexual reproduction occurred, not only would one have no concept of gender, there would be no biological sex in human beings.There, thus, can only be two biological sexes for human beings, namely male and female. In syllogistic form what I am arguing is this:1. Biological sex is defined in relation to the roles played in sexual reproduction.2. Sexual reproduction involves only two, namely, male and female.3. Thus, biological sex is only two, namely, male or female.Defects occur in nature, but defects imply a norm from which they deflect. A castrated man is still a male; a female with a mastectomy is still a female. That one is born with ambiguous genitalia does not do away with one’s true gender. That it is hard to identify x as male or female does not mean one is neither, just as we may know either Todd or Gary is approaching from a distance without being able to distinguish whether he is in fact Todd or Gary. Identical twins are hard to distinguish. But epistemological problems need not entail ontological ones.Further, take the case of plants that reproduce sexually. When we discover a plant missing parts of its sexual organs, we do not thereby conclude that we have discovered a third gender. Rather the biologists rightly concur that what you have found is a defective plant. Likewise, in human beings, when one has an extra chromosome, or defective genitalia, you have just that: a sexual defect at the physical level. Such people often may be wonderful, loving, and morally upright persons, but physically something has gone wrong.Hermaphrodites are individuals with both pairs of sex organs. While in very rare cases some human beings have both pairs of genitalia, in no case whatsoever has it ever been observed that both pairs are fully functioning. True human hermaphrodites with both male and female sexual organs that fully function don’t exist. Such is why no cases of self-fertilization have ever been recorded in human beings.10Let us grant for the sake of argument, that we discovered an individual human being with both pairs of fully functioning sex organs. Even such a case, however, would not count against the binary distinction. What you would have is someone who is both male and female; one who is able to act either as male or female depending upon the other sex with which that individual desired to reproduce. Hermaphroditism, rather than disproving, actually reinforces the traditional binary distinction. We would not even know hermaphrodites existed, let alone be able to speak of them, unless we knew of the male-female binary. Hermaphroditism is essentially parasitic upon the binary gender distinction.Differentiating PotenciesHow we fundamentally distinguish male and female then is based upon the two biological roles in reproduction. A human individual that has the ability to reproduce with the female is biologically and truly a male. A human individual that has the ability to reproduce with a male is biologically and truly a female. Male and female are correlative terms.One must distinguish, however, between two types of "abilities." Males are still males even if not reproducing right now with a female; males are still males even if unable to reproduce due to sterility; males are still males even if unable to reproduce due to castration or genetic or physical defect. The sense of "ability" or "potency" in question here is a fundamental one. A mechanic that doesn’t have the proper tools is still "able" to fix your car, but not in the same way in which a mechanic with the proper tools is "able" to fix your car in the here and now. A male is the type of organism that is able to impregnate the female. In other words, he could impregnate her, given that he has the appropriate functioning organs. A female, however, cannot impregnate another female.It does not matter how many surgeries a female may have. Male sexual organs will not and cannot fully integrate into a female body. A female qua female cannot physically impregnate another female. One day, perhaps, a robotic penis or male genitalia could be implanted into a female. But since robotic parts are not fully integrated into the body, it would not be the female doing the impregnating but the robot or the male sperm donor via the robot.For the sake of argument, let us grant that it is physically possible (which we deny), that a female could have a complete sex change operation that she had a fully functioning male genitalia, male hormones, and male chromosomes that were fully integrated into her body. In this case she would cease to be female, but become a male. Even if complete sex change operations were possible, such operations would be no argument against the traditional binary distinction. In such a case she would not become a third gender; she would cease to be female and become a male.By definition, a male is an organism that is able to reproduce with a female, given the proper conditions. Some males have physical defects, such as sterility or impotence. Surgery may remedy such defects. But that the surgery will be successful presupposes they are the kind of organism that is able to impregnate a female. A female cannot impregnate another female because females by definition are not the kind of organisms that impregnate.Given that human beings reproduce sexually, they are biologically either only male or female. Men are men and women are women. True hermaphrodites with fully functioning sexual organs do not exist in human beings. There is no tertium quid.(3) Sadiq Khan lights up London sky with BLM Fist for New Year Fireworkshttps://political-viewer.com/2021-01-01/sadiq-khan-lights-up-london-sky-with-blm-fist-for-new-year-fireworksCurious ReporterMayor Sadiq Khan surprised locked down Londoners with a divisive New Year exhibit which used fireworks and drones to light up the night empyrean with the clenched fist symbol of Black Lives Matter. Khan, whose term in office has been elongated for a year without an Election as a result of the Chinese virus pandemic, shared a clip of the exhibit filmed by the BBC on convivial media with the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag"The future holds unexposed hazard but no stress, humankind is no stranger to progress, and as we’ve proven, when we collaborate, progress follows expeditious," verbally expresses a male voice in the clip, afore the BLM fist is suddenly emblazoned across the welkin above the Millenium Dome."This is one voice with one message: Black Lives Matter," a female voice proclaims, as fireworks explode around the fist, which commences to multiply:Our New Years Eve show just sent a loud, proud message to the world: London stands together against racism – tonight and always. #BlackLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/CQXZ4j9HfF — Sadiq Khan (@SadiqKhan) January 1, 2021The Labour politician’s highly partisan New Year illuminations may prove controversial for Britons who have been dismayed by the destructive and belligerent actions of the Marxist-led race kineticism’s adherents — generally conducted in defiance of otherwise ruthlessly enforced lockdown rules with little or no police interference, due to senior officers’ trepidation of the group.In London alone, Black Lives Matter mobs have perpetually defaced Sir Winston Churchill’s statue, endeavored to burn the flag on the hallowed Cenotaph national war memorial and daubed it with graffiti on the anniversary of D-Day, and bloodied police officers and chased them through the streets shouting "run, piggy, run".One female officer was left with horrific injuries when she was knocked from her horse during disorder on Whitehall, near the Prime Minister’s official residence, suffering a collapsed lung, broken ribs, and a broken collarbone.The New Year fist exhibit was accompanied by a snippet of music from rapper Michael Ebenezer Kwadjo Omari Owuo Jr — aka "Stormzy" — albeit the cull of lyrics is remotely eccentric:Lord I’ve been broken Although I’m not worthy You fixed me, now I’m blinded By your grace You came and saved meStormzy, who denounced  Britain as "definitely, 100 per cent" racist in 2019, was a perhaps deliberately instigative cull for inclusion in the festivities (such as they were, in a tier four lockdown), given his past history yelling "f*** the regime, f*** Boris" while wearing a Union Jack stab vest during a performance in Glastonbury.The rapper, raised by a single mother from Ghana, has been a dedicated race activist since well afore the George Floyd unrest, providing funding for two ebony-only scholarships at the University of Cambridge, for example."If we weren’t oppressed, we wouldn’t be shouting," declared the award-acquiring victory multi-millionaire last summer. "[T]his is an authentic pain. This ain’t some marginally trend. This is genuine life and this has been our authenticity for hundreds, thousands of years," he suggested, stretching the timeline for the oppression he alleges to a period millennia afore Africa’s colonisation.UK City to Change Statues Which ‘Over-Celebrated Empire, Christianity and "Great" White Men’ https://t.co/8kzJPttm93 — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) October 19, 2020(4) NHS Requires "Diversity Training" For Recently Retired Doctors Before They're Allowed To Administer Vaccineshttps://summit.news/2020/12/31/nhs-requires-recently-retired-doctors-to-have-diversity-training-before-theyre-allowed-to-administer-vaccines/NHS Requires "Diversity Training" For Recently Retired Doctors Before They're Allowed To Administer VaccinesClown world strikes again.Published 12 hours ago on 31 December, 2020Paul Joseph WatsonRecently retired doctors are being prevented from helping administer COVID-19 vaccines because the NHS requires them to have "diversity training" and knowledge of "radicalisation."Yes, really.40,000 doctors and nurses applied to return to the NHS back in March at the start of the pandemic but only 5,000 had been given jobs by July, according to a report in the Telegraph.Similar bureaucracy is also hampering the vaccine rollout, with doctors having to fulfil the requirements of the Equality Act.Dear NHSThe Red Tape faced by retired docs who want to help the vaccination roll out. 20 pieces of evidence most of us simply don't have. REALLY???If this is a war, use your Dads Army and cut us some slack.I can remember how to do an IM injection. Rant over ?? pic.twitter.com/2CfhQ2nJr2— ? melanie jones ??? (@medicsupport) December 30, 2020This means that when they wade into the minefield that is the application process for helping to administer the vaccine, they have to provide 20 pieces of evidence, including documents on Equality, Diversity and Human Rights, Fire Safety, Conflict Resolution, and Preventing Radicalisation."Reached this page on my application and have given up for now. Can’t see many retired clinicians wading through this lot – or having all required docs," said Professor Maureen Baker.Reached this page on my application and have given up for now. Can’t see many retired clinicians wading through this lot - or having all required docs. Process *must* be urgently streamlined @NHSEnglandNMD Couldn’t design anything more bureaucratic in a month of Sundays! https://t.co/IJuVjb7qNC— Prof Maureen Baker CBE (@Maureenprsb) December 30, 2020"Yes I’m going through this today….now on my 7th hour of CPD! Not even at ‘pre-employment screening’ yet. Suspect many will have given up by now," commented Professor Nicola Thomas.Yes I’m going through this today....now on my 7th hour of CPD! Not even at ‘pre-employment screening’ yet. Suspect many will have given up by now ?? https://t.co/wckLrGEvbB— Prof Nicola Thomas ?? (@nicolamthomas) December 30, 2020The NHS responded by saying it was necessary "in order to recruit a wide array of individuals from a variety of backgrounds."Thanks for your feedback. We appreciate the time taken to join the National Vac Programme. We have a stringent recruitment process in place in order to recruit a wide array of individuals from a variety of backgrounds – many of whom are not registered healthcare professionals 1/2— NHS Professionals (@NHSPbank) December 31, 2020In other words, meeting diversity quotas is more important than getting as many doctors as possible to help speed up the vaccine rollout.Ludicrous.(5) 20% to 40% of healthcare workers refuse to take Pfizer vaccinehttps://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-12-31/healthcare-workers-refuse-covid-19-vaccine-accessCALIFORNIASome healthcare workers refuse to take COVID-19 vaccine, even with priority accessBy COLLEEN SHALBY, EMILY BAUMGAERTNER, HAILEY BRANSON-POTTS, ALEJANDRA REYES-VELARDE, JACK DOLANDEC. 31, 20205 AMThey are frontline workers with top-priority access to the COVID-19 vaccine, but they are refusing to take it.At St. Elizabeth Community Hospital in Tehama County, fewer than half of the 700 hospital workers eligible for the vaccine were willing to take the shot when it was first offered. At Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in Mission Hills, one in five frontline nurses and doctors have declined the shot. Roughly 20% to 40% of L.A. County’s frontline workers who were offered the vaccine did the same, according to county public health officials.So many frontline workers in Riverside County have refused the vaccine — an estimated 50% — that hospital and public officials met to strategize how best to distribute the unused doses, Public Health Director Kim Saruwatari said.The vaccine doubts swirling among healthcare workers across the country come as a surprise to researchers, who assumed hospital staff would be among those most in tune with the scientific data backing the vaccines.[...]In online forums, some healthcare workers throughout the country have expressed frustration over going first — a status some have associated with experimentation.Nicholas Ruiz, an office assistant at Natividad Medical Center in Salinas, Calif., said healthcare workers wrestled with the same doubts, fears and misinformation about the disease as the public. Though he interacts with nurses who treat COVID-19 patients, he’s not taking it and knows many others who aren’t. [...]Times staff writers Laura Newberry and Jaclyn Cosgrove and staff photojournalist Francine Orr contributed to this report.(6) Antifa riot in Portland for New Yearhttps://nypost.com/2021/01/02/portland-mayor-ted-wheeler-vows-to-get-tough-with-antifa/Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler vows to get tough with AntifaBy Jon LevineJanuary 2, 2021 | 1:54pm | UpdatedAfter months of mollycoddling, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler vowed to get tough on Antifa, whose members engage in near-nightly campaigns of mayhem, violence and destruction in the city."My good faith efforts at de-escalation have been met with ongoing violence and even scorn from radical Antifa and anarchists," Wheeler said in a news conference Friday evening. "In response, it will be necessary to use additional tools and to push the limits of the tools we already have to bring the criminal destruction and violence to an end.""It’s time to push back harder against those who are set on destroying our community and to take more risks in fighting lawlessness," Wheeler added.The mayor was granted a second term by Portland voters last month, narrowly beating out an openly pro-Antifa candidate, Sarah Iannarone.The Wheeler press conference was prompted by a New Year’s Eve riot near the Mark O. Hatfield Federal Courthouse, which has been a frequent target of the agitators."A gathering in downtown Portland has devolved into a riot. Participants have thrown multiple firebombs at officers and launched commercial-grade fireworks at the Federal Courthouse and Justice Center," Portland police tweeted early New Year’s Day.Throughout 2020 Antifa rioters had been given free rein in downtown Portland. The situation became so bad that President Trump briefly deployed federal troops to protect US property in the city in July.(7) Antifa has been rioting in Portland for years. Mayor Ted Wheeler has continually turned a blind eyehttps://townhall.com/tipsheet/bethbaumann/2021/01/02/portland-mayor-ted-wheeler-suddenly-realizes-his-deescalation-wont-thwart-antifa-thugs-n2582449Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler Waves the White Flag in His Battle with AntifaBeth Baumann| @eb454|Posted: Jan 02, 2021 2:25 PMPortland Mayor Ted Wheeler (D) slammed Antifa and their radical destruction following riots that plagued the city on New Year's Eve."My good faith efforts at de-escalation had been met with ongoing violence and even scorn from radical Antifa and anarchists. In response, it will be necessary to use additional tools and to push the limits of the tools we already have to bring the criminal destruction and violence to an end," Wheeler explained during an address. "Lawlessness and anarchy come at great expense and with great risk to the future of our community."The mayor said he is now at the point where he wants to "push back" against those who are "set on destroying our community.""In closing, once again, I condemn anyone who engages in violence or criminal destruction no matter their ideology," said Wheeler.In his new year's presser, Portland Mayor @tedwheeler admits that his efforts to de-escalate & compromise with antifa have failed to yield results. He condemns the violent extremist movement by name & calls for more to be done. https://t.co/1MJhHOxO1u pic.twitter.com/HtsSSM3dzz— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) January 2, 2021Multnomah County Sheriff Mike Reese described the New Year's Eve riots, where Antifa focused on destroying the city's Justice Center, which houses Portland Police Bureau's (PPB) Central Precinct, the PPB headquarters, and the Multnomah County Detention Center, one of the county's two jails."I want to start out by saying the violence last night was criminal and reprehensible," Reese said.When Reese arrived at the Justice Center around 10:30 p.m. PST Friday night, he saw "a fire at Second and Main, store windows that had been broken in and out, and debris filling the street in front of the central precinct, where it was apparent the building itself had come under attack."Antifa thugs attempted to break into the Justice Center but were unsuccessful. Instead, they reverted to launching commercial rockets and a Molotov cocktail into the building, Reese explained. Federal police attempted to help out but they also "came under attack.""As [the federal police] tried to push people away from the fence, they were attacked with commercial rockets, fireworks, and bottles filled with paint and rocks the size of baseballs," the sheriff said.The Portland Police Department responded to protect federal police, but they too came under attack."It was absolutely criminal in nature what was occurring in the streets. And, even though a riot had been declared and people were ordered to disperse, it didn't appear anyone heeded that direction," Reese recounted. "We had to try and escalate and move back but we came under attack."Multnomah County Sheriff Mike Reese spoke about the new year's eve riot in downtown Portland where antifa ransacked and looted businesses, started fires, assaulted responding law enforcement, and tried to break into the Justice Center. pic.twitter.com/1iutoyagup— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) January 2, 2021Here is a look at some of the destruction that took place:A mob of antifa pursued a group of retreating officers at the new year’s eve riot in downtown Portland last night. Law enforcement used pepper spray to try and stop them. pic.twitter.com/XDWn5HFs8n— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) January 1, 2021Antifa destroyed another Starbucks & other downtown businesses in their Portland riot. pic.twitter.com/w1aAvOVZ4Z— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) January 1, 2021In downtown Portland outside the Hatfield federal courthouse, antifa rioted for New Years by launching mortar fireworks and projectiles at police. #PortlandRiots #antifa pic.twitter.com/c66b4WJdjL— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) January 1, 2021Antifa in Portland started multiple fires and tried to break into the federal courthouse again to burn it down. #PortlandRiots pic.twitter.com/KV5Wp1JbK7— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) January 1, 2021Another street fire started by antifa in downtown Portland for their new year riot. Rioters cheer in the background. #PortlandRiots pic.twitter.com/D97TftGfl9— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) January 1, 2021Antifa started multiple fires at their riot in downtown Portland after smashing up businesses. #PortlandRiots pic.twitter.com/TH7lryN9f2— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) January 1, 2021NEW YEAR’S EVE DESTRUCTION: Capitol Hill biz owners and neighbors are fed up with black bloc marchers wrecking the city. The owner of Cafe Argento says they’re being targeted for just trying to improve the neighborhood.Story 6pm @komonews #seattle #CalAndersonPark pic.twitter.com/WF7pDQL68b— Jonathan Choe Journalist KOMO News (@choeshow) January 2, 2021The sad part: Antifa has been rioting in Portland for years. Mayor Ted Wheeler has continually turned a blind eye to it, acting as though the violence did not exist.(8) Matt Taibbi turns against the Left for journalist-cheered censorship, groupthinkhttps://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-wokest-news-stories-of-2020-59aThe Wokest News Stories of 2020When editors in 2020 weren't being fired in bunches, they were taking aim at everyone from Beethoven to mermaids to skyscrapersMatt TaibbiDecember 31, 2020The year 2020 will be remembered in the real world for a terrifying pandemic, mass unemployment, a nationwide protest movement, and a historically uninspiring presidential race. The year in media, meanwhile, was marked by grotesque factual scandals, journalist-cheered censorship, and an accelerating newsroom mania for political groupthink that was equal parts frightening and ridiculous.The tiniest violations of perceived orthodoxies cost jobs. Reporters and editors were whacked en masse in uprisings at the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Wall Street Journal, Vox, the Miami Herald, and countless other places.Some of the purges were themselves amazing news stories. A contractor named Sue Schafer was fired after the Washington Post publisheda 3,000-word expose about a two-year-old incident in which she attended a Halloween party dressed as Megyn Kelly, who herself had been fired from NBC for defending blackface costumes. Schafer, in other words, was fired for dressing in blackface as a satire of blackface costumes, in an incident no one heard of until the Post decided to make an issue of it. This was one example of what the New Yorker recently exulted as the "expensive and laborious" process of investigative journalism, as practiced in 2020.Raymond Chandler once said that when he ran out of ideas, he just had a character burst into a room with a gun. 2020 op-ed writers in the same predicament could insert random nouns into a MadLibs template: "Is/Are _____ Racist?" Everything from knitting to Jesus to botanical gardens to women to dieting to mermaids to Scrabble and perhaps a hundred other things made the cut, to the point where it became a bottomless running gag for inevitable cancel targets like the satirical Twitter personality, "Titania McGrath."A few of these stories were interesting, but most were indistinguishable from pieces in the Onion, whose satires of media have been rapidly gaining on reality for years, the gap tightening to less than a year in 2020 (see the 2019 Onion piece, "Man’s Existential Terror About Country’s Slide Towards Authoritarianism Sublimated Into Campaign To Get Journalist Fired For Tweet").If in looking at the following list it strikes you to wonder, "Where were the editors?", it turns out an atmosphere in which even senior New York Times bosses have to be afraid of staff is almost like having no editors at all! Given their importance in preventing the scourge of what the New Yorker called "journalistic individualism," i.e. reporters allowed to operate outside the "collective interest," this was really too bad. In honor, then, of that sacred covenant between writers and editors — well, the ones not purged, reassigned, or forced out this year — here’s a shortlist of the most remarkable (and presumably edited) articles of 2020, the year of the woke headline:15. Fast Company, June 15: "5 thoughtful ways to approach discussing racism at work."After the murder of George Floyd on May 25, offering white readers literary guidance on how to suppress their inner conquistador in diverse company became an extremely popular genre, both in books like smash #1 bestsellers White Fragilityand Antiracist Baby, and in press treatments like this Fast Company piece. The latter contained the following advice:DO BE MINDFUL OF OPENING UP MEETINGS AND INTERACTIONS WITH QUESTIONS LIKE "HOW ARE YOU?" OR "HOW WAS YOUR WEEKEND?" Recognize that by doing so, you can potentially be re-triggering what your Black colleagues are experiencing or dismissing their experience by pretending all is normal. It’s not and hasn’t been for a long time.Don’t ask "How are you?" — just assume the answer is, Same as it’s been for 400 years, jackass, and keep walking to your cubicle. Welcome to 2020!(9) Georgia Election Data Shows 17,650 Votes Switched From Trump to Biden: Data Scientistshttps://www.theepochtimes.com/georgia-election-data-shows-17650-votes-switched-from-trump-to-biden-data-scientists_3640670.htmlBY ALLEN ZHONG January 2, 2021 Updated: January 2, 2021Georgia election data indicates 17,650 votes were switched from President Donald Trump to Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, data scientists testified on Wednesday during a state Senate hearing.A team led by Lynda McLaughlin, along with data scientists Justin Mealey and Dave Lobue, presented the results before the Georgia Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Elections.Mealey worked as an electronic warfare technician in the U.S. Navy for nine and a half years and was a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) contractor as a data analyst and programmer for the National Counterterrorism Center. He currently works for one of the "Big Four" accounting firms as a programmer.Lobue is a data scientist with over a decade of experience in a number of industries."What we have here is we actually have fraud that we can prove in this election, there was fraud in Georgia’s election, we can prove it with data," Mealey said. "The voting will of the people of Georgia is not reflected in what was certified by the Secretary of State."According to their analysis on time series election data which was published online as early as Dec. 24, Trump’s votes were decrementing in various counties instead of increasing as they do normally.17,650 votes were allegedly switched from Trump to Biden as result.[...]