Newsweek 11/27/2020

1989 “The volume of garbage keeps growing,” Newsweek reported, “up by 80 percent since 1960, expected to mount an additional 20 percent by 2000. Not including sludge and construction wastes, Americans collectively toss out 160 million tons each year—enough to spread 30 stories high over 1,000 football fields, enough to fill a bumper-to-bumper convoy of garbage trucks halfway to the moon.” Fears grew as new landfills had to open—no one wants a landfill in their neighborhood. By 2017, Americans produced 267.8 million tons of garbage, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. 1963 “There are signs that China’s Red rulers are taking a more pragmatic view,” wrote Newsweek. China stepped back from its “bellicose stance in a nuclear world,” instead shifting to a focus on “feeding the nation’s hungry millions.” Recently, China has been…

Recently, Mr. Fu Shen made public his latest research result on “Taunting Magistrate Wang of Liyang County for Refusing to Drink”. Mr. Fu Shen, 83, is a famous Chinese art historian, appraiser of calligraphy and paintings, the former director of the Chinese Art Department of Freer Gallery of Art, a steering committee member of Taipei Palace Museum, a concurrent professor of the Institute of Art History of Taiwan University, a visiting professor of Zhejiang University, and an honorary professor of Nanjing University. Li Bai (701-762 A.D.) was a famous Chinese poet of Tang Dynasty. With the courtesy name of Taibai, as well as the pseudonyms of “Householder of Azure Lotus” and “Banished Transcendent”, he was also regarded as the “Immortal Poet” by later generations. When it comes to Li Bai’s calligraphy…

@fredguterl “I’m not at all hooked in any high-tech internets.” » P.16 IN THE WEEKS LEADING UP TO ELECTION DAY, the focus was on Pennsylvania and its 20 electoral votes as the potential fulcrum of victory in a tight race. As anticipated, the Keystone State did indeed put Joe Biden over the top. But in the end, the most consequential state of the 2020 race may turn out to be Georgia, one that most Democrats had written off. And the party largely has one person to thank for that: Stacey Abrams. The former gubernatorial candidate turned voting rights activist was a pivotal force in pushing Biden to apparent victory in Georgia, albeit by the slimmest of margins—just 14,000 votes or three-tenths of a percentage point—marking the first time since 1992 that the state…

“I’m not at all hooked in any high-tech internets. I don’t even have a (cell) phone, man. I’m talking to you from on a landline.”—KEITH RICHARDS“DO WE WANT TO WIN, DO WE WANT TO GOVERN, OR DO WE WANT TO BE INTERNET CELEBRITIES?”—House Democratic Caucus Chair Hakeem Jeffries, on his party’s left wing“It started as just a very strange syndrome where I kept breaking into a terrible sweat. It was like a poncho of sweat, embarrassing really.”—HUGHGRANT ON COVID-19“It will definitely start a conversation. It will definitely promote comment and debate and that’s good, that’s what Mary did all her life.”—U.K. AUTHOR BEE ROWLATT ON A NUDE STATUE HONORING MARY WOLLSTONE CRAFT“WHEN YOU HAVE PUBLIC FIGURES LIKE BANNON CALLING FOR YOUR BEHEADING, THAT’S REALLY KIND OF UNUSUAL.”—Dr. Anthony Fauci“If you…

Two weeks before Election Day, President Donald Trump startled official Washington with an executive order that threatened to unravel the country’s 140-year-old civil service system. The White House insisted the move—which makes it easier to fire government lawyers, scientists and other employees in policy-making positions by placing them in a new job classification—was designed to remove incompetent people who are protected under current rules. But outraged observers in and outside the administration feared it gave Trump more latitude to dismiss people he views as disloyal or working to undermine his agenda. To those in Joe Biden’s circle, however, the action was regarded as a direct threat: a portent of the damage Trump would be able to do while still in power over the 78 days between Election Day and Inauguration Day, when…

1801 President John Adams established precedent by filling vacant judgeships before successor Thomas Jefferson could arrive, including the appointment of Chief Justice John Marshall, the longest-serving Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. An embittered Adams did not attend Jefferson’s inauguration. 1828 In December, less than a month after Andrew Jackson won the election, his wife, Rachel, died of a heart attack at age 61. Jackson blamed the vicious campaign, marked by personal attacks on both of them, for her death. 1860-61 During the transition between James Buchanan and Abraham Lincoln, seven of the 11 states that became the Confederacy seceded from the Union. The Civil War began one month after Lincoln took office. 1869 President Andrew Johnson did not attend successor Ulysses S. Grant’s inauguration because Grant refused to sit next to him in a carriage on…