covid politics

[crazydoc]

Well, he is a human being.

You're right - he has at least one human characteristic - the asshole.

 

[JohnRoberts]

In light of Trump's handling of COVID, do you really believe Hillary would have done worse?  Seriously?  Do you really think she would have been as incautious, as dismissive of the threat as well as the advice of actual medical experts?  Do you seriously think she would have prepared for the threat as poorly as Trump did? 

In January, President Trump banned all foreign nationals who were in China during the time of the coronavirus outbreak from entering the United States. Many pundits and health experts have since credited this decision with helping to slow the coronavirus pandemic on American shores.

However, at the time former vice president Joe Biden railed against the decision.

The democrats were calling President Trump xenophobic until they later realized he was correct and flip flopped changing the attack to saying he didn't react soon enough. You can't have it both ways, but keep trying.  :

JR

PS: I couldn't find a specific Hillary quote from back then with a quick search. A few months later at a speech in India Hillary called President Trump an "anti-asian racist". I suspect she was singing from the democratic greek chorus back in Jan too.

 

[hodad]

The democrats were calling President Trump xenophobic until they later realized he was correct

Just as a point of reference, Canada did not institute a Chinese travel ban & the lack of it made negligible difference vs. US.  You can criticize the Dem response (although Trump has certainly played up the anti-Asian angle, even to this day), but the ban itself was not a terribly effective move (didn't health experts say that at the time?) and was indeed way too late to have much effect regardless--although that was not necessarily all that obvious at the time.

 

[Winston OBoogie]

Even the UK right wing paper 'The Daily Mail' agreed that Trump's recent use of the term 'Kung Flu'  was racist.
But a white guy living in Hickory MS  probably thinks it isn't so who knows? 

In other news:  3 Million official cases of Covid in the US as of today.  Hillary *still* isn't president and therefore bears no responsibility  at all for the lack of leadership and response to this. 

 

[JohnRoberts]

Apparently, most voters understand it correctly: "Only 18% believe that people who use this phrase actually want to get rid of police departments."

https://www.monmouth.edu/polling-institute/reports/monmouthpoll_us_070820/

Hopefully 100% of the people understand we can't do away with the police...

JR

 

[Tubetec]

Policing reform has been a buzzword here in Ireland  for a few years now , but things dont change fast.
The array of technology law enforcement find at their finger tips nowadays is leading to a situation of public mistrust .
Big data and governments are aggregating vast amounts of data on the population ,which can end up used to 'fit people up' for crimes that may not have even been committed yet .
Yesterday they launched a Covid tracing app here in Ireland , of course government swear blind peoples privacy is being respected ,but its now emerged that GPS data is being used in the joint venture between Apple/Google in their covid tracing app. So far in the first 36 hours since its launch over 1 million sheeple have downloaded it to their phone .Can we really expect Apple/Google not to be fingering the pie behind our backs  , the reality is we dont have a clue whats going on under the surface of this app and the code isnt available for scrutiny by privacy watchdog organisations.
We'll have to wait until the law of unintended consequences rares its ugly head to find out whats been lost in terms of privacy , problem is once that genie is out of the bottle it wont go back in ever. 

 

[living sounds]

Hopefully 100% of the people understand we can't do away with the police...

JR

100% is always unrealistic. These days, you cannot get 100% of people to agree that the earth is spherical, after all.

It's possible to get away with a lot less police, especially a lot less hostile, armed or even militarized, if the homework is done in other departments.

Police works best if and when they are actually part of a community and can be relied upon to help, instead of being in an adversarial relationship with much of the populace.

I think I recommended watching the show "The Wire" here before. The entire current disfunction is layed out perfectly, as well as a lot of solutions. On top of that it is drama in perfection.

 

[living sounds]

Thinking that the entire United States is comparable to a tv drama based on some inner city issues, isn't much different than thinking the world is flat imo...

Police disfunction.

 

[JohnRoberts]

Police disfunction.

The wire (fiction) was loosely based on Baltimore that apparently is pretty bad. A common trend is that large cities that have been democratic run for decades have lots of disfunction. It is remarkable how quickly the mayor of NYC is degrading public safety there (he tried to blame it on Covid, while pulling $1B funding from the police, that he has never supported). The anarchists can't believe their good fortune with police capabilities being degraded across many large cities. I do not expect a summer of love like that Seattle mayor predicted, more like a summer of crime and violence.

Try not to buy social justice themes hook, line, and sinker... the "racial grievance" industry is making hay from these high profile iconic incidents.

Sadly this is yet another issue being politicized beyond recognition by political actors.

JR

PS: Talking about what words mean, apparently "black lives matter" doesn't encompass black on black killings (including dead children).

 

[living sounds]

A common trend is that large cities that have been democratic run for decades have lots of disfunction.

Arguments in these cases tend to confuse correllation with causation.

 

[crazydoc]

PS: Talking about what words mean, apparently "black lives matter" doesn't encompass black on black killings (including dead children).

BLM has to do with racist inspired (whether overt or subconscious) subjugation or killing of blacks by whites. There are lots of white on white killings (and of children) of the same character, whether robbery/drug/gang/anger/crazy inspired just like black on black. Conflating the etiologies is just poor thinking.

 

[crazydoc]

Nothing very clear yet - I guess we'll see how this plays out in the next weeks:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/tulsa-coronavirus-spike-after-trump-rally-likely-linked-official/ar-BB16vFZj?ocid=bingcovid

 

[JohnRoberts]

Arguments in these cases tend to confuse correllation with causation.

So it's just a coincidence in your judgement?

There does seem to be correlation between democratic led cities and inner city poverty, then poverty with crime. Connect the dots.

I don't want to get down in the partisan mud over this but President Trump is not responsible for gun violence in NYC, or Chicago, or.....  Likewise the local city and state leadership have plenty of culpability.

JR

 

[JohnRoberts]

Nothing very clear yet - I guess we'll see how this plays out in the next weeks:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/tulsa-coronavirus-spike-after-trump-rally-likely-linked-official/ar-BB16vFZj?ocid=bingcovid

IIRC cases were rising in Tulsa before his convention but the wisdom of having an indoor rally with thousands yelling and screaming is not very wise. I would invite close inspection of Tulsa COVID cases along with inspection of the several massive riots, rallies, and Floyd ceremonies held in multiple cities where social distancing was not practiced. Of course these finding need to be normalized for the increased testing perhaps charted on the same graphs.

JR

 

[hodad]

So it's just a coincidence in your judgement?

JR

YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  JUST LIKE GLOBAL WARMING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[JohnRoberts]

BLM has to do with racist inspired (whether overt or subconscious) subjugation or killing of blacks by whites. There are lots of white on white killings (and of children) of the same character, whether robbery/drug/gang/anger/crazy inspired just like black on black. Conflating the etiologies is just poor thinking.

I have suggested right here for years that words matter and can have consequences.

We all see the high profile events that go viral in the current hypersensitive cultural climate. These isolated events are inexcusable and reforms have already been started. The police chief in Minneapolis was a reformer, but he got flushed by the social justice crowd calling for scalps. (ironically the town council there has hired personal security after voting to defund police). Millions of views on social media do not equate to systemic racism, but help sell the big lie  IMO.

Speaking of MN rep Omar (D-MN)

During a press conference on Tuesday, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-M.N.) said that the myriad “systems of oppression” that apparently exist in the United States, including “in the air we breathe,” must be torn down.

“But we can’t stop at criminal justice reform or policing reform for that matter,” Omar said. “We are not merely fighting to tear down the systems of oppression in the criminal justice system.”

“We are fighting to tear down systems of oppression that exist in housing, in education, in healthcare, in employment and in the air we breathe,” she said.

Omar then said white families in America have 42 times more wealth than black families and are two times more likely to own a home. She also discussed living situations before claiming, “We know environmental racism is real.”

To end her speech, Omar, a radical Democrat who supports many socialist policies, began talking about dismantling the political and economic systems “of oppression” in the United States.
“As long as our economy and political systems prioritize profit without considering who is profiting, who is being shut out, we will perpetuate inequality,” Omar said.

“So we cannot stop at the criminal justice system,” she continued, “We must begin the work of dismantling the whole system of oppression wherever we find it.”

In 2018, Omar told The Intercept,  “the ideals of socialism is one that is deep in my values and so I think as Democrats, we all share serious socialism ideals about providing for people and caring about our communities and making sure that government is held accountable in providing for its citizens.”

Perhaps she didn't mean what she said?

JR

PS; VP Joe Biden has already promised to select a black female VP pandering to two interest groups in one fell swoop. Rep Omar is old enough to be VP  (and gains one more minority group).  : AOC has started moderating her screed, she will be old enough to run in 2024, but I can read her mind either, we only have her words to go on.   

 

[cyrano]

President Trump is not responsible for gun violence in NYC, or Chicago, or..... 

It seems to me we finally have figured out one thing Trump excels at: avoiding responsibility...

I mean, he doesn't read memos. Doesn't listen to advice. Just to be able to state later he didn't know about it.

 

[JohnRoberts]

It seems to me we finally have figured out one thing Trump excels at: avoiding responsibility...

I will give you the benefit of the doubt for not understanding the federal government. Street crime in the cities is the responsibility of local mayors and then state governors.  President Trump has recently warned state governors that if they don't clean up their cities he will... Legally he can't do it directly but formally offered federal help to cities experiencing increasing violence.

I mean, he doesn't read memos. Doesn't listen to advice. Just to be able to state later he didn't know about it.

:  Regrettably after almost 4 years in office he is slowing becoming more like a politician, but don't believe everything the opposition news media claims. 

JR

PS: Perhaps ironic ex-President Obama was notorious for claiming to only learn about scandals in his administration after reading about them in the news. Of course he still claims there were no scandals in his administrations.  :

 

[living sounds]

So it's just a coincidence in your judgement?

There does seem to be correlation between democratic led cities and inner city poverty, then poverty with crime. Connect the dots.

Affluent white people fleeing the inner cities decades ago and leaving mostly poorer black people, who tend to vote Democratic, might have more to do with it...

Systemic inequality makes the problem worse, for example taxpayer money is distributed very unequally in the US (like poorer schools more in need of funds tend to get less than richer schools that don't need it as much)...

Best to try not to jump at the simple explanations that fit ones existing narrative...

 

[cyrano]

Belief is a strange thing...

I've talked to fanatic muslims. I've talked to fanatic christians. Even if you try very hard to burst their reality bubble, you won't succeed as it only exists in their mind and is extremely adaptable.

The same seems to go for Trumpistas. Reality doesn't matter. It's the other side's fault anyways. Every time. Facts don't matter. It's all propaganda, you know. Fake.

It seems living in a reality bubble promotes tryptophan secretion. Like being high all the time. Nothing affects you, as it's all fake anyways. That is, when it suits you.

Makes for a pretty easy and simple life...