Political Discussion Thread (With Rules)

[Greywind]

[Darkwing Duck]

25 minutes ago, Starlord said:

 

450,000 US Covid deaths - 1/5 of the Global deaths thanks to a non-existent national plan, constant mixed messages, flip-flopping strategies, and embracing pseudo-science.  The Trump Covid response alone is a numbers based reason that almost anyone is better than Trump and that he's one of the worst Presidents ever.

 98% of your answer is not numbers-based.

The part that is, specifically “450,000 US Covid deaths” is rather meaningless since we have no idea how many would have died under Biden.

[Simon]

11 minutes ago, Darkwing Duck said:

 98% of your answer is not numbers-based.

The part that is, specifically “450,000 US Covid deaths” is rather meaningless since we have no idea how many would have died under Biden.

I'm going to go under the assumption that your initial question (and responses) are not disingenuous -- but be careful.

 

You are correct, we don't know how many would have died under Biden...hell, we don't know how many actually died under Trump because he managed to politicize a pandemic and usher in a post-truth era (the actual numbers are looking to be significantly higher).  What we do know is that the numbers under Biden would have been significantly less since there has been zero indication that he would have dismissed the pandemic...much to the contrary, he and Obama prepared for one. Any response would have been better than what we had and we had the potential to be world leaders in response (vs. leading the world in dismissing the pandemic as a "non-concern").

18 minutes ago, Greywind said:

Those are not mutually exclusive factoids...and I would strongly encourage you not to post intentionally misleading graphics like that.

When you are dealing with a predecessor who implemented massive policy changes through executive order and dealing with an immediate massive humanitarian crisis (the pandemic, which we have bungled on an epic scale) executive orders are needed to both reverse prior policy shifts by Trump (not Congress) and to bring the immediate action required to start bringing the pandemic under some modicum of control.

[Starlord]

22 minutes ago, Greywind said:

 

No, Biden Didn't Say 'You Can’t Legislate by Executive Order Unless You're a Dictator' (snopes.com)

[Darkwing Duck]

34 minutes ago, Simon said:

I'm going to go under the assumption that your initial question (and responses) are not disingenuous -- but be careful.

 

You are correct, we don't know how many would have died under Biden...hell, we don't know how many actually died under Trump because he managed to politicize a pandemic and usher in a post-truth era (the actual numbers are looking to be significantly higher).  What we do know is that the numbers under Biden would have been significantly less since there has been zero indication that he would have dismissed the pandemic...much to the contrary, he and Obama prepared for one. Any response would have been better than what we had and we had the potential to be world leaders in response (vs. leading the world in dismissing the pandemic as a "non-concern").

Those are not mutually exclusive factoids...and I would strongly encourage you not to post intentionally misleading graphics like that.

When you are dealing with a predecessor who implemented massive policy changes through executive order and dealing with an immediate massive humanitarian crisis (the pandemic, which we have bungled on an epic scale) executive orders are needed to both reverse prior policy shifts by Trump (not Congress) and to bring the immediate action required to start bringing the pandemic under some modicum of control.

Frankly, I don’t even know how my initial question could possibly be construed as disingenuous.

 

”because he managed to politicize a pandemic”.  Okay, good to know that the moderator isn’t neutral.   I’ll keep that in mind in the future.

«the numbers under Biden would have been significantly less”. Prove it.

 

“Graphics like that”. What graphics?  I haven’t posted any graphics.

 

 

 

[archer]

39 minutes ago, Darkwing Duck said:

 98% of your answer is not numbers-based.

The part that is, specifically “450,000 US Covid deaths” is rather meaningless since we have no idea how many would have died under Biden.

 

You can take a look at pathetic efforts to control COVID vs effective efforts

 

https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2020/health/coronavirus-maps-and-cases/

 

The USA has more people infected per capita than all but three other countries in the world. And two of those are postage stamp-sized countries barely worthy of being called a country.

 

You can look at South Korea which had its first COVID patient identified as on the same day as the first patient was detected in the US.

 

South Korea has had 156 people infected per 100,000.

The US has had 8170 people infected per 100,000.

 

And that's from the very same starting point. One of those country's response to the virus was more effective than the other.

 

Or you can look at it another way: the USA is 4.25% of the world's population and has 20% of the COVID deaths. So you're 4.7 times as likely to die from COVID if you're in the US than if you have been living in other parts of the world.

 

Considering the US has a much better healthcare system than many places, a difference that big is explained by a bungled response to the virus.

 

Now would Biden have screwed up that badly?

 

The short answer is "no". A longer answer is "hell, no".

 

We've discussed at length the Trump administration's obsession with snake oil cures, silencing the CDC, Trump flatly contradicting statements from healthcare officials, and many other things.

 

If you want to discuss that, go back and pick out one of those conversations and ask a question about it. I don't think anyone has the patience to walk you through a year's worth of daily conversations about the Trump administration's deliberate mishandling of the COVID crisis.

[Darkwing Duck]

Just now, archer said:

 

You can take a look at pathetic efforts to control COVID vs effective efforts

 

https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2020/health/coronavirus-maps-and-cases/

 

The USA has more people infected per capita than all but three other countries in the world. And two of those are postage stamp-sized countries barely worthy of being called a country.

 

You can look at South Korea which had its first COVID patient identified as on the same day as the first patient was detected in the US.

 

South Korea has had 156 people infected per 100,000.

The US has had 8170 people infected per 100,000.

 

And that's from the very same starting point. One of those country's response to the virus was more effective than the other.

 

Or you can look at it another way: the USA is 4.25% of the world's population and has 20% of the COVID deaths. So you're 4.7 times as likely to die from COVID if you're in the US than if you have been living in other parts of the world.

 

Considering the US has a much better healthcare system than many places, a difference that big is explained by a bungled response to the virus.

 

Now would Biden have screwed up that badly?

 

The short answer is "no". A longer answer is "hell, no".

 

We've discussed at length the Trump administration's obsession with snake oil cures, silencing the CDC, Trump flatly contradicting statements from healthcare officials, and many other things.

 

If you want to discuss that, go back and pick out one of those conversations and ask a question about it. I don't think anyone has the patience to walk you through a year's worth of daily conversations about the Trump administration's deliberate mishandling of the COVID crisis.

South Korea is not Biden.

[Simon]

Darkwing Duck will no longer be joining this conversation.

[Starlord]

1 hour ago, Darkwing Duck said:

 98% of your answer is not numbers-based.

The part that is, specifically “450,000 US Covid deaths” is rather meaningless since we have no idea how many would have died under Biden.

 

11 minutes ago, Darkwing Duck said:

South Korea is not Biden.

 

Ok, this is just trolling and I'm out.

[TrickstaPriest]

45 minutes ago, Starlord said:

Ok, this is just trolling and I'm out.

 

It's almost like 'everyone who argued trump wasn't doing a pandemic response was lying!' has been spoonfed to them over the last year-ish.

 

2 hours ago, Greywind said:

 

To be fair, if you were looking at Trump's last couple months versus Biden's first couple months, this would be a fair comparison.  Most of the EOs were in response to Trump's, unless I'm mistaken.

 

I could be mistaken!

[archer]

2 minutes ago, TrickstaPriest said:

 

It's almost like 'everyone who argued trump wasn't doing a pandemic response was lying!' has been spoonfed to them over the last year-ish.

 

I don't think he even believed that.

 

He asked for numbers, thinking that no one would go through the trouble of providing them.

 

Then when numbers and an explanation was provided, he pouted rather than trying to have a conversation.

 

That's a very standard series of events, in my experience.

[Pariah]

I think "Moving the Goal Posts" might be the phrase you're looking for.

[Pariah]

3 hours ago, Darkwing Duck said:

Can anyone give me a numbers-based reason they believe Biden is better than Trump or vice versa?

”Trump is a big, orange doodoo head.” is not numbers-based.

”Trump is ten big, orange doodoo heads,» goes against the spirit of my question.

 

Before attempting to answer a question like this, I'd have to know what kind of numbers you'd be willing to accept as reasonable.

 

For example, I could give the number 350,000+, the number of Americans who died from COVID-19 under his presidency. But then I think you would likely argue that that number doesn't count, because those deaths were not directly his fault and because there's no way to know how many would have died had Joe Biden been president.

 

I could also give the number two, the number of times Donald Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives. But I doubt you would accept that answer either, because you would simply claim that House of Representatives impeached him without any justifiable reason, but just because they didn't happen to like him.

 

I'm not claiming any particular expertise here. I'm not a political scientist, I'm an actual scientist. But it has been my experience that when people ask questions like this, they're not asking because they want an answer. They're asking because they want someone to fight with. I suppose it's even possible that the last group of people you were fighting with got tired of you and just stopped fighting, and that's why you're here initiating this conversation now. And if that is the case, I am disinclined to help you propagate this conversation further.

 

But I could be wrong. It's possible that you are asking this question in good faith, and that you really are genuinely curious why people don't approve of the former president. And if that is the case, you have my apologies for any presumption on my part.

[archer]

 

[TrickstaPriest]

1 hour ago, Pariah said:

But I could be wrong. It's possible that you are asking this question in good faith, and that you really are genuinely curious why people don't approve of the former president. And if that is the case, you have my apologies for any presumption on my part.

 

Well!  He ain't here now, but.

 

2 hours ago, archer said:

I don't think he even believed that.

 

He asked for numbers, thinking that no one would go through the trouble of providing them.

 

Then when numbers and an explanation was provided, he pouted rather than trying to have a conversation.

 

Pretty much.

 

Rather, they hate establishment dems so much that they literally believe everything said from the same groups that suggest/tease/imply that 'the only good dem is a dead dem' and somehow believe it to be unbiased news.

 

I could go on -why- that hate is easy when they listen to decades of conservabubble news, but...

 

Someone can claim turnabout is fair play, but I'm pretty sure my "Climate Change is my primary issue" stance makes it pretty clear there's no turnabout on that stance.  Every politician I judge by a pretty basic line of "how likely are they to be participating in killing the human race and destroying society"  >_>  After judging from that basis, I can make room to talk about political biases.

[TrickstaPriest]

Meanwhile, local politics in my area

 

 

 

 

 

[TrickstaPriest]

4 hours ago, Simon said:

When you are dealing with a predecessor who implemented massive policy changes through executive order and dealing with an immediate massive humanitarian crisis (the pandemic, which we have bungled on an epic scale) executive orders are needed to both reverse prior policy shifts by Trump (not Congress) and to bring the immediate action required to start bringing the pandemic under some modicum of control.

 

Also, this.  I'm glad you raised the vital context in understanding what's going on.

 

People like playing meme games.  To those still on this thread - memes are a liar's dream.  They literally are the best gift for information deception campaigns in a society like ours.  Play with them, joke about them, but be aware that they mean absolutely nothing about reality without context.

[Iuz the Evil]

While the federal government response was objectively terrible, and the same can be said for many state response efforts, government response to the pandemic has been in fact highly variable in the United States. Local health officers, staff and jurisdictions have in many cases engaged in heroic efforts to keep their community safe. Just an observation, federal government isn’t the only government. Individual experiences vary.

[TrickstaPriest]

7 minutes ago, Iuz the Evil said:

While the federal government response was objectively terrible, and the same can be said for many state response efforts, government response to the pandemic has been in fact highly variable in the United States. Local health officers, staff and jurisdictions have in many cases engaged in heroic efforts to keep their community safe. Just an observation, federal government isn’t the only government. Individual experiences vary.

 

Yeah.  But for emergencies at the national level, it's up to the federal government to secure supplies, provide instruction/training, coordinate response, at the very minimum.  There's a lot of responsibilities that state-level response literally doesn't have the training/authority/etc for.

 

...Not that I know much about that.  Just my expectations on how response systems would run.

[Cygnia]

ICE Threatened to Expose Asylum-Seekers to Covid-19 if They Did Not Accept Deportation

[Iuz the Evil]

5 hours ago, TrickstaPriest said:

 

Yeah.  But for emergencies at the national level, it's up to the federal government to secure supplies, provide instruction/training, coordinate response, at the very minimum.  There's a lot of responsibilities that state-level response literally doesn't have the training/authority/etc for.

 

...Not that I know much about that.  Just my expectations on how response systems would run.

That’s something I do know a bunch about, unfortunately. Local emergency response is my jam.
 

What you describe is partially correct, the role of the Federal Government is to provide supplies, coordinate delivery of response resources in collaboration with State jurisdictions, and offer training and guidelines for requesting such support. They do not coordinate response in a direct way, rather they defer to State and Local government who are the “boots on the ground”. It’s mostly laid out in the Incident Command Structure documents you can get from FEMA or the free ICS trainings (I think there are some on YouTube).
 

The current bottlenecks seem to support this approach, as lack of vaccine supply (Federal deployed resources), PPE before that, and so on seem to me to indicate they’ve not even been able to manage their own responsibilities. Local Emergency Operations make many of the distribution and response decisions, and are designed to. Where they’ve fallen down, it’s the responsibility of their local elected officials and appointed reps to improve response. They request even National Guard deployment by way of the State (Governor), and provide direction to that resource when it arrives (through their chain of command of course).

 

Basically there has been very little direction from the Federal Government that’s useful in the last year. State and Local responses aren’t the same thing at all, I am increasingly finding I prefer local control and input for some things (and Federal for others). Responding to disasters of any type is one of those things, it’s faster, more responsive to community concerns, and has far more accountability to the impacted individuals. Local responses have varied from abysmal to heroic, but aren’t easily categorized as the Federal one has been.

[Pariah]

Imagine my surprise.

 

Trump shifted campaign donor funds into his heavily indebted private business after his election loss, report says

[Old Man]

Late to the party, but I wanted to throw out some more little numbers for anyone still interested.

 

2: Impeachments

8: Cabinet members convicted of felonies

5: War criminals pardoned

62: Lawsuits filed to overturn the 2020 election

61: Defeats in those lawsuits

519,000,000: Taxpayer dollars spent on those lawsuits (so far)

0: Trump tax returns released

2: Drunken rapists and completely unqualified theocrats appointed to the Supreme Court

2: Self-coup attempts

5: Fatalities in those attempts

 

I'm sure I missed some.

[unclevlad]

I think I'm just as glad I spent most of my day, when I was paying attention here, playing the alphabet game.

 

My blood pressure certainly is...

[Starlord]

Disclaimer Steals the Show in MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell's Election Fraud 'Documentary'