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All Good Things Must End. And So Must 2020
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Today in Supreme Court History: December 30, 2005
12/30/2005: Congress enacted the Detainee Treatment Act, which gave rise to Hamdan v. Rumsfeld.
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Today in Supreme Court History: December 30, 2005
12/30/2005: Congress enacted the Detainee Treatment Act, which gave rise to Hamdan v. Rumsfeld.
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Brickbat: No One Could Have Seen This Coming
Tiffany Pacheco, an employee of the Massachusetts Department of Unemployment Assistance, and her husband Arthur have been charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Prosecutors say Tiffany Pacheco used her job to submit more than $240,000 in fraudulent COVID-related unemployment claims on behalf of herself and her husband, who was incarcerated in Texas at the time. She was hired by the agency in April shortly after being released from prison, where she was serving time for aggravated identity theft.
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Brickbat: No One Could Have Seen This Coming
Tiffany Pacheco, an employee of the Massachusetts Department of Unemployment Assistance, and her husband Arthur have been charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Prosecutors say Tiffany Pacheco used her job to submit more than $240,000 in fraudulent COVID-related unemployment claims on behalf of herself and her husband, who was incarcerated in Texas at the time. She was hired by the agency in April shortly after being released from prison, where she was serving time for aggravated identity theft.
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2020 Did Bring Some Good News
Was 2020 the worst year ever? The media keep saying that.
We did have the pandemic, a bitter election, unemployment, riots, and a soaring national debt.
But wait, look at the good news, says historian Johan Norberg. His new book, Open: The Story of Human Progress, points out how life keeps getting better, even if people just don’t realize it.
2020 was “the best year in human history to face a pandemic,” he says.
Had the pandemic happened in 2005, “You wouldn’t have the technology to create mRNA vaccines.”
“In 1990,” he continues, “we wouldn’t have a worldwide web. If we had had this pandemic in 1976, we wouldn’t have been able to read the genome of the virus. And…in 1950, we wouldn’t have had a single ventilator.”
These last 20 years, adds Norberg, have been especially good. “Mankind has attained more wealth than ever.”
I push back: “There’s more to life than wealth! And lot of this money went to the top 1 percent. Ordinary people think they’re doing worse.”
“If you look at specifics like global poverty, child mortality, chronic undernourishment, and illiteracy,” Norberg replies, “they all declined faster than ever.”
Those things are pretty good measures of quality of life.
“Literacy might be the most important skill,” says Norberg. “It’s the skill that makes it possible to acquire other skills. We’ve never seen literacy at these high levels ever before. [Even] in the most problematic countries around the world, it’s better than it was in the richest countries 50, 60 years ago. That’s most important for those who have the least.”
Of course, there were bad trends in 2020. Murder rose in the United States. Social media algorithms divided us further. “Suicide is up,” I tell Norberg.
“I can definitely see the problems,” he replies, “but once upon a time, if you ended up in the wrong school or neighborhood, you had nowhere to go—no other community available to you. Now there is, and that opens up a world of opportunity. Some awful things as well, but some beautiful things.”
That meant that even during this pandemic, people found new ways to help others.
Volunteers used the internet to find better ways to donate their time. Young people brought food to the elderly.
Zoom and Slack taught us that not being in the office sometimes works as well, or better.
Businesses had new tools with which to adapt.
Restaurants moved to takeout and delivery, aided by apps like UberEats and Grubhub.
Such healthy adaptation rarely makes news, because reporters seek out problems.
Many worry loudly about climate change. Some claim the environment keeps getting worse. A dismayed CBS correspondent mourned, “Biodiversity is reportedly declining faster than any time!”
Even if that were true, says Norberg, “We have never made this much progress against pollution. The six leading pollutants, the ones that used to pollute our lungs and forests and rivers, they’ve declined by some 70 percent!”
In January of this year, when President Trump announced the assassination of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, “World War III” trended on Twitter. The Selective Service website crashed for fear there would be a draft.
“People think there’s more war,” I say to Norberg.
“But we’ve forgotten the wars that we had in the past! When I grew up in the 1980s, there were more wars, and battle death rates were four times higher.”
Less war is one reason people keep living longer. After COVID-19, that trend will continue.
“We have this tendency, for good reasons, to focus on problems, because that’s our way of solving problems,” says Norberg. “But then there’s the risk that we’ll just despair and think it’s hopeless and we give up. That’s not the solution to our problems.
“Just cheer up and be happy?” I ask.
He answers, “Be a little bit grateful for what we have.”
COPYRIGHT 2020 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC.
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM
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2020 Did Bring Some Good News
Was 2020 the worst year ever? The media keep saying that.
We did have the pandemic, a bitter election, unemployment, riots, and a soaring national debt.
But wait, look at the good news, says historian Johan Norberg. His new book, Open: The Story of Human Progress, points out how life keeps getting better, even if people just don’t realize it.
2020 was “the best year in human history to face a pandemic,” he says.
Had the pandemic happened in 2005, “You wouldn’t have the technology to create mRNA vaccines.”
“In 1990,” he continues, “we wouldn’t have a worldwide web. If we had had this pandemic in 1976, we wouldn’t have been able to read the genome of the virus. And…in 1950, we wouldn’t have had a single ventilator.”
These last 20 years, adds Norberg, have been especially good. “Mankind has attained more wealth than ever.”
I push back: “There’s more to life than wealth! And lot of this money went to the top 1 percent. Ordinary people think they’re doing worse.”
“If you look at specifics like global poverty, child mortality, chronic undernourishment, and illiteracy,” Norberg replies, “they all declined faster than ever.”
Those things are pretty good measures of quality of life.
“Literacy might be the most important skill,” says Norberg. “It’s the skill that makes it possible to acquire other skills. We’ve never seen literacy at these high levels ever before. [Even] in the most problematic countries around the world, it’s better than it was in the richest countries 50, 60 years ago. That’s most important for those who have the least.”
Of course, there were bad trends in 2020. Murder rose in the United States. Social media algorithms divided us further. “Suicide is up,” I tell Norberg.
“I can definitely see the problems,” he replies, “but once upon a time, if you ended up in the wrong school or neighborhood, you had nowhere to go—no other community available to you. Now there is, and that opens up a world of opportunity. Some awful things as well, but some beautiful things.”
That meant that even during this pandemic, people found new ways to help others.
Volunteers used the internet to find better ways to donate their time. Young people brought food to the elderly.
Zoom and Slack taught us that not being in the office sometimes works as well, or better.
Businesses had new tools with which to adapt.
Restaurants moved to takeout and delivery, aided by apps like UberEats and Grubhub.
Such healthy adaptation rarely makes news, because reporters seek out problems.
Many worry loudly about climate change. Some claim the environment keeps getting worse. A dismayed CBS correspondent mourned, “Biodiversity is reportedly declining faster than any time!”
Even if that were true, says Norberg, “We have never made this much progress against pollution. The six leading pollutants, the ones that used to pollute our lungs and forests and rivers, they’ve declined by some 70 percent!”
In January of this year, when President Trump announced the assassination of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, “World War III” trended on Twitter. The Selective Service website crashed for fear there would be a draft.
“People think there’s more war,” I say to Norberg.
“But we’ve forgotten the wars that we had in the past! When I grew up in the 1980s, there were more wars, and battle death rates were four times higher.”
Less war is one reason people keep living longer. After COVID-19, that trend will continue.
“We have this tendency, for good reasons, to focus on problems, because that’s our way of solving problems,” says Norberg. “But then there’s the risk that we’ll just despair and think it’s hopeless and we give up. That’s not the solution to our problems.
“Just cheer up and be happy?” I ask.
He answers, “Be a little bit grateful for what we have.”
COPYRIGHT 2020 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC.
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM
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Trump Blames Everyone but Himself for His Defeat
Donald Trump’s presidency provided a rich trove of examples for my annual review of the year’s highlights in blame shifting. The 2020 edition focuses on the question Trump has been trying to answer for nearly two months: Why did he lose the presidential election?
By Trump’s account, it was not because voters preferred Joe Biden. Rather, Trump was denied a second term by a long list of malefactors who delivered a phony victory to Biden or ratified that outcome. These criminal conspirators and after-the-fact accessories included:
Dominion Voting Systems. The company allegedly produced fraud-facilitating election software that switched hundreds of thousands (or possibly “millions“) of Trump votes to Biden votes. But according to a statement endorsed by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, “there is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”
Venezuela, Cuba, and China. Sidney Powell, a lawyer who was part of the “elite strike force team” seeking to reverse Biden’s victory, traces the purportedly rigged voting machines to deceased Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez. The anti-Trump plot, she says, reflects “the massive influence of communist money through Venezuela, Cuba, and likely China in the interference with our elections.”
George Soros and the Clinton Foundation. The chairman of Smartmatic, another company that figures in Trump’s conspiracy theory even though its role in the 2020 election was limited to Los Angeles County, is “a close associate and business partner of George Soros, the biggest donor to the Democrat party,” Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani darkly noted. “There are ties of the Dominion leadership to the Clinton Foundation and to other known politicians in this country,” Powell said.
State Election Officials. According to Trump, Democratic election officials across the country resorted to manufacturing phony paper ballots after their initial, machine-based scheme fell short. Republican election officials, such as Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, either actively facilitated the fraud or willfully ignored it.
The ‘Fake News’ Media. As the president sees it, all the journalists who reported that Biden won the election or questioned Trump’s allegations of systematic fraud—including employees of Trump-friendly outlets such as Fox News and the New York Post—were part of the cover-up.
Republican Politicians. Trump thinks Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R–Ky.) and all the other Republican lawmakers who have conceded Biden’s victory were too scared to “fight.” He has even less regard for state leaders from his party, such as Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, who have had the nerve to defend the integrity of their elections.
Attorney General William Barr. Barr drew Trump’s ire by saying the Justice Department had not seen fraud massive enough to swing the election or “anything to substantiate” claims about rigged voting machines. “The ‘Justice’ Department and the FBI have done nothing about the 2020 Presidential Election Voter Fraud, the biggest SCAM in our nation’s history,” Trump complained last week.
Judges. Nearly all of the 60 or so post-election lawsuits filed by the Trump campaign, whether they alleged actual voting fraud or were limited to challenging election procedures, have been rejected by state or federal judges, including Trump appointees. The pro-Trump lawsuits filed by Powell after she was ejected from the campaign’s legal team have not fared any better.
The Supreme Court. After the Court unanimously declined to hear two lawsuits challenging the election results in swing states, Trump said the justices—including the three he picked—”chickened out,” revealing themselves as “totally incompetent and weak.” Trump, who says he actually won by “a magnificent landslide,” still claims he has “absolute PROOF” of “massive Election Fraud” that for some reason he has failed to produce in court.
The only person Trump has not blamed for his defeat is the one who apparently alienated enough voters to secure Biden’s victory. The personal traits Trump has vividly displayed since the election—vanity, dishonesty, irresponsibility, and recklessness—go a long way toward explaining why that happened.
© Copyright 2020 by Creators Syndicate Inc.
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Trump Blames Everyone but Himself for His Defeat
Donald Trump’s presidency provided a rich trove of examples for my annual review of the year’s highlights in blame shifting. The 2020 edition focuses on the question Trump has been trying to answer for nearly two months: Why did he lose the presidential election?
By Trump’s account, it was not because voters preferred Joe Biden. Rather, Trump was denied a second term by a long list of malefactors who delivered a phony victory to Biden or ratified that outcome. These criminal conspirators and after-the-fact accessories included:
Dominion Voting Systems. The company allegedly produced fraud-facilitating election software that switched hundreds of thousands (or possibly “millions“) of Trump votes to Biden votes. But according to a statement endorsed by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, “there is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”
Venezuela, Cuba, and China. Sidney Powell, a lawyer who was part of the “elite strike force team” seeking to reverse Biden’s victory, traces the purportedly rigged voting machines to deceased Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez. The anti-Trump plot, she says, reflects “the massive influence of communist money through Venezuela, Cuba, and likely China in the interference with our elections.”
George Soros and the Clinton Foundation. The chairman of Smartmatic, another company that figures in Trump’s conspiracy theory even though its role in the 2020 election was limited to Los Angeles County, is “a close associate and business partner of George Soros, the biggest donor to the Democrat party,” Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani darkly noted. “There are ties of the Dominion leadership to the Clinton Foundation and to other known politicians in this country,” Powell said.
State Election Officials. According to Trump, Democratic election officials across the country resorted to manufacturing phony paper ballots after their initial, machine-based scheme fell short. Republican election officials, such as Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, either actively facilitated the fraud or willfully ignored it.
The ‘Fake News’ Media. As the president sees it, all the journalists who reported that Biden won the election or questioned Trump’s allegations of systematic fraud—including employees of Trump-friendly outlets such as Fox News and the New York Post—were part of the cover-up.
Republican Politicians. Trump thinks Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R–Ky.) and all the other Republican lawmakers who have conceded Biden’s victory were too scared to “fight.” He has even less regard for state leaders from his party, such as Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, who have had the nerve to defend the integrity of their elections.
Attorney General William Barr. Barr drew Trump’s ire by saying the Justice Department had not seen fraud massive enough to swing the election or “anything to substantiate” claims about rigged voting machines. “The ‘Justice’ Department and the FBI have done nothing about the 2020 Presidential Election Voter Fraud, the biggest SCAM in our nation’s history,” Trump complained last week.
Judges. Nearly all of the 60 or so post-election lawsuits filed by the Trump campaign, whether they alleged actual voting fraud or were limited to challenging election procedures, have been rejected by state or federal judges, including Trump appointees. The pro-Trump lawsuits filed by Powell after she was ejected from the campaign’s legal team have not fared any better.
The Supreme Court. After the Court unanimously declined to hear two lawsuits challenging the election results in swing states, Trump said the justices—including the three he picked—”chickened out,” revealing themselves as “totally incompetent and weak.” Trump, who says he actually won by “a magnificent landslide,” still claims he has “absolute PROOF” of “massive Election Fraud” that for some reason he has failed to produce in court.
The only person Trump has not blamed for his defeat is the one who apparently alienated enough voters to secure Biden’s victory. The personal traits Trump has vividly displayed since the election—vanity, dishonesty, irresponsibility, and recklessness—go a long way toward explaining why that happened.
© Copyright 2020 by Creators Syndicate Inc.
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