Your posts always have such pretty colors. Is it possible to provide a legend that denotes the meaning behind the colors?
Is it just a random selection?
BTW.....I get it, you hate everything about Trump.... I can agree with you that he's an arogant asshole..........big deal. There's no shortage of arrogance and assholiness around here.
I would offer a suggestion that you channel the energy you used to hate into finding a solution. It seems like a waste of a great mind to not do that.
Your posts always have such pretty colors. Is it possible to provide a legend that denotes the meaning behind the colors?
Is it just a random selection?
BTW.....I get it, you hate everything about Trump.... I can agree with you that he's an arogant asshole..........big deal. There's no shortage of arrogance and assholiness around here.
I would offer a suggestion that you channel the energy you used to hate into finding a solution. It seems like a waste of a great mind to not do that.
You still don’t get it. Nobody around here is potus. It’s not even about trump being an arrogant asshole. That wouldn’t matter at all, if he was providing consistent, effective leadership to the nation. He hasn’t been, and still isn’t, and if your blind loyalty to him means you can’t see that, then there is nothing that can be said. The nation will have to live with the consequences of his total incompetence.
It’s not even about trump being an arrogant asshole. That wouldn’t matter at all, if he was providing consistent, effective leadership to the nation.
I disagree. It would matter. It does matter. It will never be ok. Not even a little.
Bill - you can count on me being that person. I disapprove of Donald Trump and what he stands for, what he is as a politician. What he is as a human being. I disapprove with every fiber of my being. He is a horror of a human being.
It requires nothing but to watch and listen to him to draw this conclusion. He is what he is. And he is that in a very big way.
I will never allow the normalization of this. Ever.
_________________________
"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there."
I can agree with you that he's an arogant asshole..........big deal.
It is a big deal! The country elected an arrogant asshole (your words) as President. That doesn't bother you? How far does YOUR partisan hatred go? That you would give this a pass?
Unfuckingbelievable.
It will never be ok. Not with me.
_________________________
"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there."
Being an arrogant asshole is pretty much a prerequisite for wanting to be president..... some presidents get a pass because they're more eloquent about it.
Being an arrogant asshole is pretty much a prerequisite for wanting to be president..... some presidents get a pass because they're more eloquent about it.
I disagree. And I disagree especially if you're attempting to draw some comparison between Trump and the other individuals who have been POTUS in the last 70-80 years.
Even if that were true - I would not accept that it's ok, that it's acceptable.
Why should we be ok with that? Shouldn't we raise our standards? Good grief, man.
You seem to be suggesting "get over it. they're all assholes".
No. They're not. That is simply not true.
_________________________
"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there."
Registered: 07/11/01
Posts: 29763
Loc: Westborough, MA, USA
Here is a success story I'm not really seeing much about in the papers, and I know for a fact that it is 100% because of dedicated professionals in the Bureau of Consular Affairs, led by Assistant Secretary Carl Risch, a Trump appointee, who has thrown himself fully into working with and supporting his team. He has been embraced by the Bureau and he's done a great job of leading.
Quote:
According to the Department of State, as of April 5 2020, 3:30 p.m. EDT, it has coordinated the repatriation of 43,116 Americans from 78 countries since January 29, 2020. The agency’s repatriation page including countries, the number of Americans repatriated and number of flights are available here. Based on its data, we have put together the top 10 countries by number of American citizens repatriated, and added the regional bureaus for each country.
That's what effective leadership and professionalism looks like.
_________________________ The internet, and the whole technology sector on which it floats, feels like a giant organ for bullshittery—for upscaling human access to speech and for amplifying lies. - Ian Bogost
Professor Truth T. Sweetness says,"Mind your manners!"
I don’t understand the defensiveness. I don’t care who the Potus is, or who my Prime Minister is. It doesn’t matter if I voted for them originally. If they are screwing up, and it is obvious they are, then I say so. I don’t feel obliged to defend them, just because I voted for them. If anything, I would hold them to a higher standard. I would be even more critical. This nonsense about if it was Obama, we wouldn’t be saying anything is utter crap. Trump is NOT providing the leadership the US needs at this time. If that isn’t obvious to everybody, they seriously need to take a deep breath and look at it objectively.
I would offer a suggestion that you channel the energy you used to hate into finding a solution. It seems like a waste of a great mind to not do that.
Some possible solutions have been presented and most of those following them seem to be doing okay. The solution to the Donny problem is getting rid of Donny. And the sooner the better for everyone, including Republicans.
_________________________
"On religion, the common man finds it to be true, the wise man finds it foolish, and the wealthy man finds it useful." -Seneca The Younger ~76AD
Registered: 07/11/01
Posts: 29763
Loc: Westborough, MA, USA
Can people see how this might be a problem?
Quote:
On Saturday, President Trump suggested research exists that shows people with lupus don’t get the coronavirus, implying that their use of hydroxychloroquine protects them. “There’s a rumor out there that because it takes care of lupus very effectively, as I understand it, and it’s a, you know, a drug that’s used for lupus,” he said, “so there’s a study out there that says people that have lupus haven’t been catching this virus. Maybe it’s true; maybe it’s not.”
There is no such study.
_________________________ The internet, and the whole technology sector on which it floats, feels like a giant organ for bullshittery—for upscaling human access to speech and for amplifying lies. - Ian Bogost
Professor Truth T. Sweetness says,"Mind your manners!"
That is disturbing for sure. Maybe a PhD in Economics is who we should be listening to, Peter Navarro or Larry Kudlow?
"One of those is a doctorate in economics (the other is a master’s in public policy), but Navarro has used it to suggest that he has broad expertise related to the coronavirus crisis. On Monday, he argued on air with CNN anchor John Berman, who asked him about the use of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment. Over the weekend, there had been reports that Navarro had clashed bitterly on the matter with Dr. Anthony Fauci, a top National Institutes of Health epidemiologist who is on the coronavirus task force.
Like the president, Navarro believes the drug should be administered aggressively. Fauci, a renowned veteran of the HIV/AIDS crisis, does not believe there is yet evidence that hydroxychloroquine — which is used to treat lupus and malaria — is helpful in battling COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus.
Asked by Berman what allowed him to make medical pronouncements, Navarro referenced his educational pedigree. “I’m a social scientist,” he said. “I have a PhD,” asserting he was adept at reading medical studies.
Navarro is not the first economist to become involved in the coronavirus response. Before the pandemic arrived in earnest in the United States in early March, top White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow repeatedly claimed that the U.S. would not suffer from a serious outbreak. “We have contained this,” he said in late February, describing the Trump administration’s response as “pretty close to airtight.”
Kudlow has since walked those comments back, but the damage to his already shaky reputation was done. He has not been present at the White House coronavirus briefings.
My neighbor has a PhD in Dramaturgy, I'll ask her what drugs I should be taking.
_________________________
We're all gonna lose an eye!!!
Registered: 07/11/01
Posts: 29763
Loc: Westborough, MA, USA
There seems to be some evidence that coronavirus is preying on non-white citizens in larger numbers.
It will be interesting to see what analysis shows are the reasons why.
_________________________ The internet, and the whole technology sector on which it floats, feels like a giant organ for bullshittery—for upscaling human access to speech and for amplifying lies. - Ian Bogost
Professor Truth T. Sweetness says,"Mind your manners!"
Registered: 10/16/01
Posts: 10621
Loc: Litchfield, NH, USA
Originally Posted By: Vanillagrits
Your posts always have such pretty colors. Is it possible to provide a legend that denotes the meaning behind the colors?
Is it just a random selection?
BTW.....I get it, you hate everything about Trump.... I can agree with you that he's an arogant asshole..........big deal. There's no shortage of arrogance and assholiness around here.
I would offer a suggestion that you channel the energy you used to hate into finding a solution. It seems like a waste of a great mind to not do that.
I already came up with one solution 'grits, for multiple factory production of ventilators, and I posted it in partial detail a while ago. It's what Trump should have done, and HE DIDN'T. He thought that just GM would be enough to make more ventilators.
I can't save the country from where I am in a dinky little backwater town in Southern NH, and I could never deal with the likes of Trump telling me I was WRONG about what type of actions need to be taken. I'm sure I wouldn't know all of them or the key players, but I'll bet you I could find them as well as the emergency playbooks to issue a response, faster that Donnie could get off his fat a$$ and actually DO SOMETHING for a change.
Right now, one of the biggest challenges would be trying to undo the catastrophic mess he's already made to date by his inactions, then yanking HIM out of the loop on a permanent basis. THE ONLY parts Trump needs to play in this pandemic daily update, is the greeting from the podium, and the introduction of the main players in their fields of expertise. Then, PERHAPS, a short nightly ON SCRIPT UPDATE to tell the nation where we stand today.
Trump is ONLY standing at the podium for political exposure, and to confuse and undermine to efforts of his experts that have REPEATEDLY STATED FACTS that are nearly 180° in opposition to his off-script BS.
Many major stations have now started cutting him off at the knees when he picks up the ball and starts running with it (after the play has been blown dead), and will continue to do so due prevent inaccurate information from drifting out into the public as much as possible.
As it stands right now, we're still being too soft on our handling of this pandemic in this country, that's why we're have such skyrocketing numbers above the other countries. And just wait until they start getting some REAL TEST NUMBERS coming in during the next couple of weeks.
You ain't seen nothing yet, because someone that doesn't know jack-sh*t was left in charge of something he really cares nothing about... OTHER PEOPLES LIVES.
The proof of THAT was when he said things like...."I take no responsibility for that." and, "I never said that." "I never said that!!" But yet, he DID say BOTH of those things, yet he denied it.
"Lead, Charlie Brown, lead!"
Actually, I think I'd RATHER HAVE Charlie Brown...at least HE never had any pathological lying issues, to my knowledge.
. . Falcon
_________________________ . . . but, what do I know?
THE ONLY parts Trump needs to play in this pandemic daily update, is the greeting from the podium, and the introduction of the main players in their fields of expertise. Then, PERHAPS, a short nightly ON SCRIPT UPDATE to tell the nation where we stand today.
Totally agree with you on this. He should close his Twitter account also.
Originally Posted By: FalconEddy
As it stands right now, we're still being too soft on our handling of this pandemic in this country, that's why we're have such skyrocketing numbers above the other countries. And just wait until they start getting some REAL TEST NUMBERS coming in during the next couple of weeks.
I can agree with you as far as the response being too soft...but I think a the measures need a strict ending date to keep it from becoming a permanent power grab by the federal government......or State and local governments for that matter. As far as the numbers go, I really want to disagree with you, but I'm afraid you're probably going to be close....I do think that the raw numbers here in the US will be higher because a higher percentage of people will be getting tested and we are a large nation. These will be the numbers that get trumpeted by certain members of the press even though the per capita numbers give us a better view of what's going on.
I'm always interested in your solutions, solutions are uncommon. Criticism and hate are too common and I don't see you as a common guy.
NYT: Politics Through the Looking Glass: Virus Scrambles the Left-Right Lines
The 2020 edition of the Conservative Political Action Conference in Oxon Hill, Md., in February offered a theme-park version of what was to be President Trump’s re-election message: Under the banner of “America vs. Socialism,” the convention featured anti-Marx branded popcorn, an RV emblazed with the words “Socialism Takes Capitalism Creates” and a children’s book promoting personal freedom and private-property rights.
Speeches included tirades against big government and “Medicare for all.”
“The virus is not going to sink the American economy,” the president’s chief economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, told a packed auditorium. “What is or could sink the American economy is the socialism coming from our friends on the other side of the aisle.” Mr. Trump, the keynote speaker, proclaimed, “We are defeating the radical, socialist Democrats” who “want total control.”
Four weeks later, with the coronavirus sinking the American economy, the federal government was preparing to cut $1,200 checks to tens of millions of citizens, part of a $2 trillion economic stabilization package that was also providing businesses with no-interest loans — likely to be partly forgiven — to pay their employees while they are shuttered. The Trump administration was issuing guidance for Americans to stay inside their homes while weighing a New Deal-style infrastructure program to create jobs.
And the CPAC message seemed a relic from a distant time.
Such is life for the political warriors of the Covid-19 campaign, where, in this pre-peak stage of the crisis, the national political debate is inside out and upside down, sending both sides of the national divide scurrying to figure out where the new political and ideological lines will settle come the fall.
As Republicans prepare for a re-election battle almost certain to hinge on perceptions of the Trump administration’s readiness and efficiency in performing its most solemn duty — to protect American lives — the decades-old debate over government’s role in American life has entered an unfamiliar phase of discombobulation. A president who leads a movement that was galvanized by Ronald Reagan’s motto that the four most terrifying words from the government were “I’m here to help” is now responsible for the largest federal disaster response since the Great Depression.
“The era of limited-government, country-club Republicanism is over,” said Stephen K. Bannon, an ideological architect of Mr. Trump’s 2016 victory.
At the same time, lingering conservative distrust of government and “experts,” combined with a red-and-blue fissure over the severity of the crisis, have surfaced dystopian national divisions: between those taking social-distancing measures seriously and those who view them as resulting from government overreach, between those who would support a prolonged economic shutdown and those who would be willing to trade additional casualties for a faster return to normalcy. “That,” said Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union, “is one of the questions our politics will solve in November.”
In the middle of it all is the president, whose operatic inconsistency about his administration’s role was apparent on Saturday when he predicted “a lot of death” but raised the possibility of relaxed social-distancing guidelines for Easter services.
It is so early in the crisis that both sides are navigating public opinion day to day, uncertain whether the fault lines have been truly scrambled or will re-emerge only hardened once the crisis abates, whenever that is.
“We don’t know what it’s going to look like on the other side of this in terms of people’s attitudes — whether it’s going to have short-term effects or long-term effects,” said Anita Dunn, a senior adviser to former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the likely Democratic presidential nominee.
The sudden, unprecedented nature of the election cycle has made it impossible to strategize too far ahead: The party conventions, where nominees make their strongest cases, are in doubt; traditional retail politicking, necessary for exciting base voters and winning over converts, is impossible, and voting is facing a potential shift toward more mail-only balloting than ever before in a presidential election.
With the death count mounting last week, the two sides were sparring over whether Mr. Trump’s early declarations that the virus was contained had cost lives.
“He has some great vulnerabilities no matter how many proposals he puts out, and the single greatest one of them is the month of February,” Ms. Dunn said. “The number of people who are sick is significantly greater than it needed to be because this administration didn’t act when it could have — and that is not an issue that is going to go away.”
For their part, Trump campaign aides were trying to go on offense, painting Mr. Biden and the Democrats as working to undermine Mr. Trump as he seeks to lead the country through the crisis as a “wartime president.”
“In January, while the Democrats were entirely focused on impeachment, President Trump took the critical step of restricting travel from China in response to the coronavirus,” the campaign said in a statement. It criticized Mr. Biden for calling Mr. Trump’s response “xenophobic” and pointed to polls showing approval of Mr. Trump’s handling of the pandemic. (An ABC News/Ipsos poll on Friday showed his support dipping from an earlier uptick.)
Beyond the back and forth is the question that has rested at the heart of American politics since the New Deal: What is the federal government’s appropriate place in managing public welfare and private behavior?
Democrats view the crisis as vindicating their long-held belief in “the importance of government and the functions that only a government can do,” as Ms. Dunn put it.
Conservatives ascended over the last decade with the anti-government, institutions-skeptical sentiment of the Tea Party, which was itself partly fueled by anger over the bank bailouts and the stimulus measures that followed the 2008 financial crisis.
Mr. Trump took the White House embracing the movement’s resentment of elites and “experts,” and his administration moved quickly to cut back agencies — including a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention program built to detect and manage potential viral outbreaks — as it vowed to end the Affordable Care Act.
“Now we’re in a crisis where big government is the only thing that can save us, and elites — a combination of these two things that Republicans say they hate,” said Stuart Stevens, a Republican strategist for the George W. Bush and Mitt Romney campaigns who has soured on his party in the Trump era.
So far, Mr. Trump, politically limber to begin with, has sought to have his $2 trillion federal response and eat it, too.
He has shared billing on the front of the mailing for “The President’s Coronavirus Guidelines for America” with the Centers for Disease Control, an agency some of his supporters view as part of the so-called deep state. And he approved the C.D.C. recommendation that all Americans wear masks.
Yet he said he would not wear a mask himself. He has praised the government’s lead infectious-disease official, Dr. Anthony Fauci, but dismissed Dr. Fauci’s call for a national stay-at-home order, as some Republican governors resist going along with the C.D.C. guidance.
In a sign of the ideological fogginess of the moment, the Trump campaign on Friday argued in an email that Mr. Biden’s plan to add a government-run option to the Affordable Care Act “would end Obamacare as we know it,” as Mr. Trump continues to back a lawsuit seeking to do just that.
Guy Cecil, chairman of the major Democratic super PAC Priorities USA, said the administration’s anti-Obamacare position would prove politically punishing as the pandemic wore on.
“The fact that the administration is still seeking to overturn the Affordable Care Act at a time when more people are being thrown off their health care is only going to become more important,” he said.
It was only a few weeks ago that centrist Democrats were openly fretting that Senator Bernie Sanders’s Medicare for all plan and Andrew Yang’s call for a universal basic income would hurt the entire party with swing voters by feeding the Republicans’ “socialism” theme.
Now, with the swift bipartisan passage of the $2 trillion stimulus, perhaps only the first of its kind, those fears are subsiding.
“It makes it harder to label your opponent a socialist,” said Howard Wolfson, a top strategist for former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York, who ended his presidential bid last month.
The moment is not without irony for Mr. Sanders, whose chances to win the nomination have faded as his signature proposals have appeared to gain greater acceptance. A Morning Consult/Politico poll released last week found that Medicare for all had support from 55 percent of registered voters, up nine percentage points from mid-February.
“I’d love to see you tell me that you can’t campaign on free treatment now,” said Mr. Sanders’s campaign manager, Faiz Shakir. “Because all of our fates depend on everyone being tested and treated.”
With a “Yangwasright” hashtag trending on Twitter, a Marquette University Law School poll of Wisconsin voters found nearly 80 percent generally approved of the government’s direct payments to individuals.
Mr. Bannon, who left the Trump administration in 2017, saw evidence of a national coming together for measures, like a $15 federal minimum wage, to help “the heroes of this catastrophe” — whom he identified as “the truck drivers, the kids at the Amazon plants, police, doctors and nurses.”
He predicted a pandemic-born political realignment in step with his own brand of “economic nationalism,” in which shared resentment over income inequality, corporate greed and global trade policies that gave China so much economic influence in the United States would create a new political coalition drawn from Sanders supporters, working-class Democrats and Republicans.
“What we want is a better deal for the little guy — trade barrier protections, high wages and also entrepreneurialism, not corporate capitalism,” he said.
Republicans close to the White House argued that the party’s primary tenets were unshakable, even in this crisis.
For instance, where Mr. Trump has been hesitant in using the Defense Production Act to compel American factories to produce medical supplies, “Joe Biden and Democrats call for compulsion, which is markedly different,” said Tim Murtaugh, the Trump campaign communications director.
Mr. Trump has likened government mandates for manufacturers to nationalization of industry, a line his supporters presumably would not want him to cross. Parts of his political base are chafing at government moves to control social interactions and shutter businesses to fight the virus.
With that in mind, Mr. Schlapp, the chairman of the American Conservative Union, which runs CPAC, described the huge aid package as restitution, not socialism.
“The conservative principle is when government takes your property and economic rights, they are obligated to come up with a financial settlement,” said Mr. Schlapp, whose wife, Mercedes Schlapp, is a Trump campaign adviser.
Conservatives, he said, are less deferential to government than their liberal counterparts and are not likely to put up with it for long, presaging a potentially intense election-year conflict between left and right over when to end social distancing measures.
“Eventually, we have to ask ourselves, what’s the appropriate level of risk to open it back up,” Mr. Schlapp said. “It will be a showdown, and I think that will tell us a lot about our country.”
_________________________
"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there."
Registered: 07/11/01
Posts: 29763
Loc: Westborough, MA, USA
Here's a good summary of current information about cases and deaths.
Also, there is a lot of controversy about deaths being underreported, and of course about cases not being recorded because there aren't widely available tests. So while it's positive that the death rate is lower, it is climbing, and we don't actually know what the rate is.
Edited by flatcat (04/08/2001:47 PM) Edit Reason: Fixed link
_________________________ The internet, and the whole technology sector on which it floats, feels like a giant organ for bullshittery—for upscaling human access to speech and for amplifying lies. - Ian Bogost
Professor Truth T. Sweetness says,"Mind your manners!"
Registered: 07/11/01
Posts: 29763
Loc: Westborough, MA, USA
Also, let's hope that it doesn't stay at 3%. If half of all Americans are infected, and 3% of them die because of COVID-19, that's over five million people.
_________________________ The internet, and the whole technology sector on which it floats, feels like a giant organ for bullshittery—for upscaling human access to speech and for amplifying lies. - Ian Bogost
Professor Truth T. Sweetness says,"Mind your manners!"
Here's a good summary of current information about cases and deaths.
Also, there is a lot of controversy about deaths being underreported, and of course about cases not being recorded because there aren't widely available tests. So while it's positive that the death rate is lower, it is climbing, and we don't actually know what the rate is.
I don't understand how to calculate "death rate" or percentage.
It's not the math I'm talking about. I got that.
I'm talking about the data considerations....
If you have a certain number of cases at a given point in time - and a certain number of deaths at that same time.... the first number (total cases at that point in time) represent cases that (a portion of which) don't have an outcome. As this number skyrockets during the peak period of infection.... the calculation of the death rate is impossible with just that information. There is no way to accurately predict with just that data, it seems to me.
Or am I wrong about that?
Edited by Webster (04/08/2003:56 PM)
_________________________
"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there."
