Ask A Genius 588: Genius Drain and Wishes for 2021
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020/12/31
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Ok, what are your plans or wishes for 2021?
Rick Rosner: Well, there is a fade somewhat, that trump and his people are prosecuted. In that, we’ve tried the partnering route before. Letting bygones be bygones in the name of healing, that seems like that would only encourage more malfeasance, especially given the current atmosphere.
Back in 1975-74, Gerald Ford pre-emptively pardoned Nixon from being prosecuted for anything he did while in office. That caused a lot of anger back then. I think it would. Biden says that he will leave the Justice Department to make its own decisions about what to do about Trump and his people.
Trump still has 20 more days left in office. People expect him to try to pardon, maybe his family, maybe himself, but he can only pardon himself from federal crimes. State crimes and crimes that that he did that was illegal according to state laws like the state of New York.
You can’t give yourself a presidential pardon for those crimes. I’m hoping that he’s prosecuted. I’m hoping that Fox News, and the other conservative outlets like OAN, Newsmax, will have less power over the lunacy of 70 million Americans.
But I don’t see that going away, really. I hope the Democratic candidates in the Georgia Senate runoff win giving the Senate a 50/50 split between the Republicans and the Democrats. With the vice president being the tie breaking vote, the oddsmakers give that about a one in three chance of happening.
So, probably, Mitch McConnell, the Republicans will probably retain like a one-person lead in this majority in the Senate, which is bad because Mitch McConnell is a terrible person. So, anyway, those are my hopes.
I hope that they come up with a reasonable, under Biden, and a more effective distribution of vaccines. Only two million vaccines have actually been administered this month. Trump promised 100 million doses would be administered by this point a few months ago.
He promised that. Then last month, he promised us 20 million doses would be administered. Now, we’re, maybe, at two and a half million. It’s just one more fuck up on his way out of office. I hope that Biden can lower rates, get people to comply with masking.
Yesterday was the worst day ever for U.S coronavirus deaths at about 3,900, breaking the previous day, record of 3,780. We still don’t have the wave from Christmas get togethers to hit, yet.
It takes two or three weeks. I hope that in general, that more and more Americans realize what a fucking disaster of the past years and the last four years have been. That we figure out some legislation to prevent a recurrence.
Scott: Are you still writing professionally in comedy?
Rosner: Not for money. I mean, I tweet every day and some of the tweets are jokey. Well, I also hope that the last year of shutdown didn’t cost us a year of technological progress.
Scott: What are your odds of thinking that it didn’t do that? What if it was like nine months, but it was a year of slowdown’s? A functional nine months in one year of slowdown rather than a complete halt?
Rosner: It’d still be bad. I’m hoping to enjoy years of added life due to advances in medicine. I don’t want to have give up years of future life because advances weren’t made because everybody was locked down.
We’re on the cusp of huge advances in medicine by 2040. But if everything gets pushed, I’ll be 80 in 2040. If everything gets pushed, I mean, what? I’m in my 70s. The push of a year is a big deal. I had stage one cancer last year. My kidney’s since have been free, have been clean, clear.
But I’m putting a lot of hope in medicine, in medicine getting better. What do I think? I think that it didn’t cost us a year of advances, but it didn’t cost us nothing either. Also, I hope we can clean up America’s image in the world.
So, we continue to attract smart people from around the world. The US only has less than five percent of the world’s population. We’ve benefited for the past 50 years in being a place that smart people want to come to do research and get educated and build businesses.
The Trump era has been terrible for that. It had made us look like a nation of racist idiots. So, I’m sure we’ve lost smart people to China.
Scott: You’ve lost them to Canada.
Rosner: Or Canada.
Scott: Basically, when that stuff was flaring up, the prime minister of Canada went up and said, ‘You have a place welcome here.;
Rosner: Yes, that’s true. I mean, you guys are smart. We’ve been run by the worst president, the stupidest, the most incompetent, the most corrupt president in history. So, that’s it. Those are my hopes.
[End of recorded material]
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
In-Sight Publishing 