2020 Political Thread

[skelly]

Care to help me out?

Maybe it’s just me, but China peaked at the around 84K that’s been in there total cases column even being in n the 80K range since I even heard of the JH tracker back in March. I don’t believe that number. I don’t believe they managed to settle on 3 deaths per million population.

At this reporting group:

Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19)

Country-by-country data and research on the pandemic. Updated daily.

ourworldindata.org

they will tell you in the articles and in the graphs and charts that there is problems with the numbers. Being that you can only deal with and produce a picture with the reported cases. The number of real world cases well need much more testing to even get a picture. World wide there is a serious deficit in the number of tests needed to get a picture. Additionally, there are limits to the comparisons that you can make ranking by country because of population, the different testing levels and even the difference in quality of life, economy, poverty level and so on. You have to really go and compare the overall death rate this year to other years if you’re going to get a good guess on many countries. So anybody can say, well, that numbers don’t lie but that rarely is the bottom line.

A qualifier is in most of their charts including this one in daily deaths per million pop.

“Daily new confirmed COVID-19
deaths per million people
Shown is the rolling 7-day average. Limited testing and challenges in the attribution of the cause of death means that the number of confirmed deaths may not be an accurate count of the true number of deaths from COVID-19”

You can go there for yourself and just spend hours looking at the way they’re breaking it down. You can only do so much with the face value of the Johns Hopkins Tracker and the Worldometer numbers, even the CDC tracker...Fun times.

 

[skelly]

“Overall, Europe has seen over 201,000 deaths in the pandemic, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University. Experts say the true toll of the pandemic worldwide is much higher than all reported numbers, due to limited testing and other issues.”

From a pretty recent article here in Time.

Mandatory Face Mask Rules Spread Across European Countries

Several European countries including the U.K., Belgium, and Italy have begun to make face masks mandatory in public

time.com

 

[gangstonc]

Maybe it’s just me, but China peaked at the around 84K that’s been in there total cases column even being in n the 80K range since I even heard of the JH tracker back in March. I don’t believe that number. I don’t believe they managed to settle on 3 deaths per million population.

At this reporting group:

Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19)

Country-by-country data and research on the pandemic. Updated daily.

ourworldindata.org

they will tell you in the articles and in the graphs and charts that there is problems with the numbers. Being that you can only deal with and produce a picture with the reported cases. The number of real world cases well need much more testing to even get a picture. World wide there is a serious deficit in the number of tests needed to get a picture. Additionally, there are limits to the comparisons that you can make ranking by country because of population, the different testing levels and even the difference in quality of life, economy, poverty level and so on. You have to really go and compare the overall death rate this year to other years if you’re going to get a good guess on many countries. So anybody can say, well, that numbers don’t lie but that rarely is the bottom line.

A qualifier is in most of their charts including this one in daily deaths per million pop.

“Daily new confirmed COVID-19
deaths per million people
Shown is the rolling 7-day average. Limited testing and challenges in the attribution of the cause of death means that the number of confirmed deaths may not be an accurate count of the true number of deaths from COVID-19”

You can go there for yourself and just spend hours looking at the way they’re breaking it down. You can only do so much with the face value of the Johns Hopkins Tracker and the Worldometer numbers, even the CDC tracker...Fun times.

You will noticed I posted our position based on statistics normalized by population.

no, the numbers arent perfect, especially authoritarian places like China, but that still doesn’t change the conclusions that can be drawn. There is no way that a China has the problems we have right now. I know they are only showing 600 cases. That may be low, but remember the videos that were being smuggled out of the hospitals when things were bad over there? That’s not happening any more. Even if their numbers were off by a factor of 150, we would still be worse.

We suck at containing this. It started with our lack of leadership.

 

[gangstonc]

“Overall, Europe has seen over 201,000 deaths in the pandemic, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University. Experts say the true toll of the pandemic worldwide is much higher than all reported numbers, due to limited testing and other issues.”

From a pretty recent article here in Time.

Mandatory Face Mask Rules Spread Across European Countries

Several European countries including the U.K., Belgium, and Italy have begun to make face masks mandatory in public

time.com

We’ve had limited testing and other issues here as well.

 

[skelly]

Draw all the conclusions you want but the picture is murky. I assume you’re an informed intelligent person but there is enough ambiguity, misinformation, lack of information, changing facts and numbers, and unbalanced coverage, lack of nuance and objectivism for anyone to be skeptical, draw other conclusions, or waiting to see so to speak.

 

[skelly]

We’ve had limited testing and other issues here as well.

Yes we have plenty of issues!

 

[Kory]

I’m glad a failed football coach who was fired for being terrible at his job thinks the $600 boost for the tens of millions unemployed is too much. It’s not like he received a $5+ million buyout for being laid off...because he was terrible. Meanwhile, those people who have been laid off had no doing in it. That was government forced...but keep talking Tommy.

 

[Evan]

We’re also not talking about the fact that the summer surge in Covid -19 is world wide and in countries that haven’t reopened, or even those that stayed opened. Beirut suffering from a surge of 300,000 in the last month and now the big explosions. As bad as things are here with the coronavirus you are still better off in the USA dealing with it...I guess this video talks about Trump’s performance but really how to think about it is the US response overall ranks well if you want to compare it worldwide. But I know most on here are more informed than the average.

No it doesn't.

 

[Evan]

Maybe it’s just me, but China peaked at the around 84K that’s been in there total cases column even being in n the 80K range since I even heard of the JH tracker back in March. I don’t believe that number. I don’t believe they managed to settle on 3 deaths per million population.

At this reporting group:

Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19)

Country-by-country data and research on the pandemic. Updated daily.

ourworldindata.org

they will tell you in the articles and in the graphs and charts that there is problems with the numbers. Being that you can only deal with and produce a picture with the reported cases. The number of real world cases well need much more testing to even get a picture. World wide there is a serious deficit in the number of tests needed to get a picture. Additionally, there are limits to the comparisons that you can make ranking by country because of population, the different testing levels and even the difference in quality of life, economy, poverty level and so on. You have to really go and compare the overall death rate this year to other years if you’re going to get a good guess on many countries. So anybody can say, well, that numbers don’t lie but that rarely is the bottom line.

A qualifier is in most of their charts including this one in daily deaths per million pop.

“Daily new confirmed COVID-19
deaths per million people
Shown is the rolling 7-day average. Limited testing and challenges in the attribution of the cause of death means that the number of confirmed deaths may not be an accurate count of the true number of deaths from COVID-19”

You can go there for yourself and just spend hours looking at the way they’re breaking it down. You can only do so much with the face value of the Johns Hopkins Tracker and the Worldometer numbers, even the CDC tracker...Fun times.

Cool. Your entire argument is predicated on the argument that testing isn't and hasn't been lacking in the United States when it obviously has been. It's undeniable. Not to mention, our contact tracing programs and national coordination of key resources are just laughable.

We're the world's richest and most technologically advanced country with the most robust public health infrastructure of any country even remotely near our population size. Not to mention our superior private sector and R&D investment.

We should be crushing South Korea, Japan, and anywhere else in the Middle East, Europe, etc.

I'm tired of the excuses. Our government has unquestionably failed in containing the virus and their continued response is incredibly mediocre. The buck stops with one man, but it's obvious you are unwilling to hold him accountable. That's fine. You are entitled to your opinion even if the facts don't remotely support it. Just don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining, when in fact, it's just a cacophony of spin, misinformation, and wishful thinking.

Bottom line, the President blew it. He doesn't even deserve to be dogcatcher in a small town.

 

[Evan]

I absolutely didn’t mention anything untrue nor absurd. At one time “under control” was defined as having enough hospital beds and effective treatments, enough ventilators, enough PPE. When the president says under control it’s treated as if he means there’s no risk and it’s over. Guess what, he’ll never be “ in touch” with a reality that isn’t defined until after we can pin him down with a statement then rally our talking points around it. As sophomoric as he can be sometimes, on purpose, the Axios interviewers behavior during and after the interview is blatantly so. By comparison, a Tucker Carlson interview of Biden would seem soft. I’m not waiting on that though he can’t even sit down with Wallace.

Sure you did, but who am I to force self-reflection on someone on an internet forum?

It's odd that you knock Jonathan Swan for a lack of professionalism when the President himself was quite pleased with the interview. In fact, Swan is one of his favorite reporters and Trump has continually fed him scoops dating back to his first year in office. Is the President an idiot who can't detect "sophomoric behavior" by an interviewer or is this a case of thou doth protest too much?

Did you actually watch the interview? Can you tell me, specifically, what Jonathan Swan did that was sophomoric or unprofessional? I'm extremely curious -- particularly since the President actually explicitly disagrees with you. More importantly, I find it fascinating that you actually think the story of the interview is Swan and not the President's unhinged, uninformed, and completely delusional behavior.

Do you think the President came off as sane or even partially connected with reality in the interview? Do you think his comments about John Lewis were appropriate? Do you agree that Trump has done more for the black community than "anybody" with the exception of Abraham Lincoln?

Personally, I think Trump has serious mental health issues and should be locked up in a loony bin somewhere. He's utterly detached from reality, and his narcissistic view of the world is so insanely delusional that if I were one of his family members I'd have him commited under the Baker Act the next time he travels to Mar-a-Lago. At this point, he's only marginally more sane than Kanye which *really* isn't saying much, is it?

Do you agree that the President appears to be completely insane? I think it's quite undeniable at this point. The man should not have access to the nuclear football under any circumstances. That the 25th Amendment hasn't been invoked is unquestionably the biggest scandal of his Presidency. The man legitimately wondered if we could clean the Coronavirus out of someone's system by injecting them with various disinfectants. There are psychiatric patients who play with their own feces that aren't even that crazy.

I wasn't going to vote for either of the two major party candidates in 2020, but Trump's recent interviews have so disturbed me that I've finally decided to cast a ballot for Biden.

Actually, I should be more explicit about my intentions. Even if I'm in the ICU at my local hospital, on a ventilator, I would will myself to wake up from the forced sedation, rip the endotracheal tube out of my own throat, and then drag myself across 50 football fields of broken glass, dripping copious amounts of blood and fluids along the way, simply to get to the polls to vote for Biden.

Let me be clear. This isn't about Joe Biden. If Pol Pot was somehow miraculously resurrected, and replaced Biden on the ballot, I would still do the same. The Democrats could nominate a ticket of Jeffery Dahmer's bloated corpse and Bashar Al-Assad as VP, and no amount of broken glass, claymore mines, or fire-breathing dragons could prevent me from going to the polls to vote against Trump.

I'll be damned if my wife and children have to live one more second in a country where the President and his supporters hate their guts simply because of their ethnicity. I don't care what the left does. They can burn every city to the ground tomorrow. I don't care. My mind is made up.

 

[skelly]

Sure you did, but who am I to force self-reflection on someone on an internet forum?

It's odd that you knock Jonathan Swan for a lack of professionalism when the President himself was quite pleased with the interview. In fact, Swan is one of his favorite reporters and Trump has continually fed him scoops dating back to his first year in office. Is the President an idiot who can't detect "sophomoric behavior" by an interviewer or is this a case of thou doth protest too much?

Did you actually watch the interview? Can you tell me, specifically, what Jonathan Swan did that was sophomoric or unprofessional? I'm extremely curious -- particularly since the President actually explicitly disagrees with you. More importantly, I find it fascinating that you actually think the story of the interview is Swan and not the President's unhinged, uninformed, and completely delusional behavior.

Do you think the President came off as sane or even partially connected with reality in the interview? Do you think his comments about John Lewis were appropriate? Do you agree that Trump has done more for the black community than "anybody" with the exception of Abraham Lincoln?

Personally, I think Trump has serious mental health issues and should be locked up in a loony bin somewhere. He's utterly detached from reality, and his narcissistic view of the world is so insanely delusional that if I were one of his family members I'd have him commited under the Baker Act the next time he travels to Mar-a-Lago. At this point, he's only marginally more sane than Kanye which *really* isn't saying much, is it?

Do you agree that the President appears to be completely insane? I think it's quite undeniable at this point. The man should not have access to the nuclear football under any circumstances. That the 25th Amendment hasn't been invoked is unquestionably the biggest scandal of his Presidency. The man legitimately wondered if we could clean the Coronavirus out of someone's system by injecting them with various disinfectants. There are psychiatric patients who play with their own feces that aren't even that crazy.

I wasn't going to vote for either of the two major party candidates in 2020, but Trump's recent interviews have so disturbed me that I've finally decided to cast a ballot for Biden.

Actually, I should be more explicit about my intentions. Even if I'm in the ICU at my local hospital, on a ventilator, I would will myself to wake up from the forced sedation, rip the endotracheal tube out of my own throat, and then drag myself across 50 football fields of broken glass, dripping copious amounts of blood and fluids along the way, simply to get to the polls to vote for Biden.

Let me be clear. This isn't about Joe Biden. If Pol Pot was somehow miraculously resurrected, and replaced Biden on the ballot, I would still do the same. The Democrats could nominate a ticket of Jeffery Dahmer's bloated corpse and Bashar Al-Assad as VP, and no amount of broken glass, claymore mines, or fire-breathing dragons could prevent me from going to the polls to vote against Trump.

I'll be damned if my wife and children have to live one more second in a country where the President and his supporters hate their guts simply because of their ethnicity. I don't care what the left does. They can burn every city to the ground tomorrow. I don't care. My mind is made up.

You obviously have your perspective on it! Feel free to be as big of a knee jerk reactor as you accuse anybody else of being. Hope you slept good after getting all that off your chest. I don’t choose to get so nasty and personal with any posters on here but it’s your choice how you want to act and conduct yourself on the inter web.

 

[maroonedinhsv]

You obviously have your perspective on it! Feel free to be as big of a knee jerk reactor as you accuse anybody else of being. Hope you slept good after getting all that off your chest. I don’t choose to get so nasty and personal with any posters on here but it’s your choice how you want to act and conduct yourself on the inter web.

What did he say that you viewed as nasty and personal toward you? I saw a great deal of insults directed at Donald Trump, but I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that you aren’t him.

 

[Evan]

You obviously have your perspective on it! Feel free to be as big of a knee jerk reactor as you accuse anybody else of being. Hope you slept good after getting all that off your chest. I don’t choose to get so nasty and personal with any posters on here but it’s your choice how you want to act and conduct yourself on the inter web.

What did I say that you took as being personally aimed at you? And what was "nasty" outside of my criticism of the President? I could make a hundred insulting posts a day toward Donald Trump and I wouldn't be able to even come close to the level of nastiness he has displayed as President.

I am genuinely curious what I said that you feel was a personal attack or aimed at you. I disputed your assertion in rather flat terms, but outside of that I'm not understanding what you are personally taking offense to. Should I put a trigger warning on my posts that discuss Trump?

 

[skelly]

The tone and tenor, including the sarcasm and insisting that I was being untruthful and absurd, I fell was over the top, esp. compared to my tone and tenor, at least from my perspective, in the recent posts/discussion.

 

[Evan]

The tone and tenor, including the sarcasm and insisting that I was being untruthful and absurd, I fell was over the top, esp. compared to my tone and tenor, at least from my perspective, in the recent posts/discussion.

If you took my tone as being sarcastic then I apologize because that wasn't my intent at all. I was just being very direct.

I don't believe you intentionally said something that is untrue. You're being lied to by this Administration, and you repeated their spin. At the end of the day, that's probably why we'll never agree on this subject. You believe their fig-leaf explanations for the irresponsible and scandalous way the President has handled this pandemic. I believe the White House (and Trump's) explanations and claims are flatly untrue and many of their talking points are absurd.

With that said, are you interested in answering any of the questions I asked you in the previous post? Disagree with tone if you must, but the questions I asked were completely valid. Thanks.

 

[Mike S]

I wasn't going to vote for either of the two major party candidates in 2020, but Trump's recent interviews have so disturbed me that I've finally decided to cast a ballot for Biden.

I'm obviously not voting for Trump, but I will absolutely not vote for Biden either. This isn't the Biden of 12 years ago. He's a figurehead being used by the Democratic Party to grab as many moderate votes as possible so they can grab the White House and have a whack job extremist liberal in the Veep spot ready to take over. I'm not putting my name behind that.

I'll just waste my vote again like I did in 2016.

 

[gangstonc]

our government has failed us.

 

[Evan]

I'm obviously not voting for Trump, but I will absolutely not vote for Biden either. This isn't the Biden of 12 years ago. He's a figurehead being used by the Democratic Party to grab as many moderate votes as possible so they can grab the White House and have a whack job extremist liberal in the Veep spot ready to take over. I'm not putting my name behind that.

I'll just waste my vote again like I did in 2016.

Obviously it's a concern, but I comforted by the fact I was was told voting for Doug Jones would lead to horrible consequences as well and that obviously hasn't panned out. Unfortunately the Republicans became even more clownish in their attempts to win the seat back instead of running someone decent.

I'm undecided if I'll vote for Jones again, but I certainly won't vote for Tuberville.

I personally think Joe Biden still has plenty of agency and will make his own decisions. How long he has taken to choose a VP candidate shows he's not letting the choice be dictated to him. Obviously I'm hoping he chooses someone more like Val Demings than Karen Bass, but I think the VP position is overrated. Absolutely no one thinks Pence will have a future in politics if Trump loses in 2020.

I think Biden is pandering to get Bernie votes, and it's hard to knock the guy for doing so considering how 98% of all Republican officials have embarrassingly abandoned all of their principles to line up to lick Trump's boot over the past 4 years. If I was going to knock Biden, it would be for his shift on the Hyde amendment and abortion. That does bother me. But shouldn't it also bother people that Trump and Barr have re-instated Federal Executions? Besides that, notably, even though they had control of all 3 branches of government for 2 years -- Planned Parenthood remains funded.

I don't let the predictions of eventual culture war doom bother me anymore. Trump has done more to excite and grow the left-wing of the Democratic Party than Bernie, AOC, and the rest of the Squad combined. Something that was quite predictable, too, and I know you are someone who saw that coming just like I did. I don't think we defeat the radical left by allowing Trump to be re-elected. I also don't think we defeat them by rejecting Biden considering he's considerably more Centrist (as was Hillary) than Obama and John Kerry.

The GOP's descent into madness started with Sarah Palin. I hope it ends with Donald Trump. I fear, however, that unless the GOP and Trumpism are annihilated across the board in 2020, that the rot of Trumpism will cause the GOP to move further into Populism and Protectionism, abandoning decades of principles, with the hope they can make a last stand among their dwindling base of Baby Boomer voters.

We need at least two strong parties with distinct visions for the country. Actually, we need multiple 3rd parties with the infrastructure and support to build governing coalitions as is found in other countries where multiple parties collaborate to create concensus governments. I'm sick of the status quo and being politically homeless. We need to change our entire electoral system to incorporate ranked choice voting, assure 3rd parties have a seat at the table, and break the two party stranglehold on our system. If the GOP doesn't wake up soon we're going to end up being a one party State where the Democrats control everything.

 

[Mike S]

I've seen nothing from Biden over the last year that makes me think he has all of his faculties about him. I agree the Veep spot tends to be overrated, but not so much when the guy at the top of the ticket is 78 years old and clearly struggling with aging issues.

Plus, I don't equate voting for Doug Jones with voting for Joe Biden for obvious reasons.

 

[Evan]

I've seen nothing from Biden over the last year that makes me think he has all of his faculties about him. I agree the Veep spot tends to be overrated, but not so much when the guy at the top of the ticket is 78 years old and clearly struggling with aging issues.

Plus, I don't equate voting for Doug Jones with voting for Joe Biden for obvious reasons.

I haven't noticed any cognitive decline in Biden that is atypical compared to his age group. I believe his stutter has been intensely magnified due to the intense spotlight the RNC and Trump's campaign has placed on it. It's similar how they claimed Hillary had one foot in the grave yet 4 years later she's just fine.

It's largely a focus group tested way of distracting from Trump's own obvious decline. I dislike Trump, but he wasn't slurring his words or unable to complete a sentence 4-5 years ago. Those are recent phenomenons.

Neither Trump nor Biden should be running for President; I'd fully support a Constitutional amendment that prohibits candidates from running if older than 72, unless they pass a comprehensive suite of cognitive tests from an independent and non-partisan panel. And, they'd be required to be re-tested every 3 months while in office, and the results should be released to their cabinet as a check on in-office decline.

I also think no candidate should be allowed to run unless they fully disclose their tax return and finances. That should be part of any new amendment. The old system of trusting that our President would be honorable, decent, and/or at least capable of being shamed has been exposed as inadequate.

By the way, I'd be all for Biden publicly taking a cognitive test. I think both he and Trump should be forced to do a suite of such tests publicly with the administrator being chosen randomly from a group of highly-qualified doctors and research scientists.

If you haven't seen it yet, I'd like to get your thoughts on the following video of Biden:



Sure, it's edited and staged, but it's inarguable he's driving the vehicle just fine, operating its systems, and multi-tasking while doing so. That's worth something, IMO.

I have a parent that just turned 80, and I was also extremely close to my grandfather before he passed at 89. I've witnessed the aging process and cognitive decline that occurs in all people in those age ranges. Some have it worse than others, but I haven't seen that in Biden.

I think his stutter is unfortunately being used as a cudgel by those who want brand him by deceptively editing video and highlighting anytime he misspeaks. The Trump campaign has been busted multiple times recently for doctoring or deceptively editing videos of Biden. I think there's a clear reason why -- they can't run on Trump's record or supposedly superior cognitive abilities. Anyway who has watched Trump in the past year has noticed his extreme cognitive decline -- the speech slurring alone is alarming.

In short, I do think Biden has declined cognitively. Anyone that age is going to have that happen. The question is, however, how much of it is visible and measurable, and how much of it is simply due to attempts by bad actors to take advantage of his stutter?

We have a whole lot more information about Biden's health than Trump's -- including that before 2017 he received top-notch physicals and testing from the doctors that attend to the VP/POTUS. And that was before Trump politicized that entire process and made it laughable. I just don't have any concerns about Biden's health. It is Hillary redux. Trump is a million times more likely to experience a serious health issue than Biden is. Biden isn't morbidly obese, he exercises, and doesn't live off of a diet of fast food, Diet Cokes, and minimal sleep.

If Biden were to pick Val Demings or Tammy Duckworth would you still be concerned about who might replace him if he were to be incapacitated or die?