TrickstaPriest

While I don't want to pile on you, Badger, I will point out that I don't think Obama ever encouraged his base by saying that his political opponents should be forced out of the country, or shouted 'liberate' on twitter at his rival states.
 
As enthused as people ever were for Obama, the words "Civil War" never once came up.  I never thought I would literally have to flee the country.
 
edit: and that's including the changes to the drone strike program, which I still hate him for.

While I don't want to pile on you, Badger, I will point out that I don't think Obama ever encouraged his base by saying that his political opponents should be forced out of the country, or shouted 'liberate' on twitter at his rival states.
 
As enthused as people ever were for Obama, the words "Civil War" never once came up.  I never thought I would literally have to flee the country.
 
edit: and that's including the changes to the drone strike program, which I still hate him for.

While I don't want to pile on you, Badger, I will point out that I don't think Obama ever encouraged his base by saying that his political opponents should be forced out of the country, or shouted 'liberate' on twitter at his rival states.
 
As enthused as people ever were for Obama, the words "Civil War" never once came up.  I never thought I would literally have to flee the country.
 
edit: and that's including the changes to the drone strike program, which I still hate him for.

While I would be cautious about fueling false hope, I agree that more positivism, more steadiness and support from their leadership, would be a boost to morale that people in general, and particularly in the United States right now, would benefit from. Realism can't be so inflexible that it crushes hope altogether.
 
As I heard from someone recently, the politicians can proclaim that the economy is "open" whenever they want, but it's the public who'll decide when it starts rolling back up again. If people are still afraid to go to department stores, restaurants, public entertainments, it won't matter whether they're declared open or not. If parents fear for the safety of their children in schools, those schools will stay empty. If people feel their financial situation is precarious after the lockdown, they won't be good little spending consumers until they feel on more solid ground.
 
Optimism has to be nurtured if society as a whole is to recover. But it still needs to be based on solid evidence, not the rantings of ignorant fools who think "freedom" means "the right to endanger everyone else."

Yeah, this argument makes sense.  I was also thinking last night, about when Obama came to my area and promised along the lines   "he would think about our area the first thing in the morning and last thing at night" and how quite a few people here still think he actually did that.  But, I realize what gets me most mad is when a blanket statement about conservatives get dumped when only a few actually apply to it, and that would amount to the same thing.
 
 

My bad guys, I lost track of which thread I was in again.  Moving further political discussion to the political thread.

Of course they're connected.  By pretending to delegate lockdown authority to the states, Trump neatly avoids any and all blame.  Unemployed?  It's your governor's fault.  Big virus spike?  It's your governor's fault.  Now he can sit on the sidelines and tweet incitements like "Liberate Virginia and protect your 2nd Amendment!" just to keep his base happily enraged.
 
People need to stop thinking Trump is an idiot.  He's not.  He's politically brilliant and utterly amoral.  American lives are not even a consideration in his decision making process.  Evil will always triumph because good is dumb.

I'm really questioning how effective these lockdowns are.  "Essential" employees are still working, and at least here that includes people at fast food restaurants.  I got a bacon cheeseburger the other day at the drive through.  I gave my credit card, which could have been a bigger germ farm than that monkey in Outbreak, to the guy at the window.  Wearing gloves that had touched a thousand other credit cards, he ran it through the card machine that had processed every other card in the city, and handed it back to me.  I grabbed it with my ungloved hand and put it in my wallet.  Then I used that same hand to hold my tasty bacon cheeseburger and shove it into my mouth.
 
The drive through was absolutely packed.  I've never seen Whataburger so crowded as I have the last few weeks.  Every person who can't cook has lined up to interact with the same guy at the window.  Right now we're basically the people in zombie movies who do really obviously stupid things, and are then surprised when they get bitten.
 

On a sort of related note, 
 
Our local law enforcement here (city and county and the next city over) have all come to an agreement:  until something is done or decided about this Covid thing, if you don't think it's worth getting out of your car for, then don't get out of your car.
 
Weirdly, adults making their commutes and errands have picked up an additional 5 to eight miles an hour (which, I suppose, _could_ be due to reduced traffic flow, but since traffic here has _always_ run five mph over any sign, I doubt it).  People under thirty seem to have picked up an additional thirty miles and hour.  It's....  sketchy....  going to work and back lately.  Even my wife has been driving the Leviathan instead of her new car (which seriously ups my dis-infect labor, having to do it every time I get out).
 
In other news, still no symptoms.  Given that some of the stuff of seen suggests I'm not likely to be an asymptomatic carrier (given other health issues), if nothing happens by Sunday noon, I'm going to move back into the house.
 
 

See, this is what I was talking about earlier: creating a false equivalency. Admiration for Barack Obama never descended to the level of the blind devotion to Donald Trump that so many of his supporters maintain. When Obama made mistakes, when he fell short of his promises, many people who voted for him, many people in the media, called him out on it. Obama never denied indisputable facts that anyone could see. Obama never claimed genius or infallibility. Obama was rational, and he listened to those who knew more about a subject than he did. Obama was capable of common human compassion. And agree with him or not, he proved he was competent to hold his office.
 
All politicians are not equal. Obama's flaws were not of the same order of magnitude as Trump's. The Democratic Party also has significant flaws, but they are not protecting and enabling a leader they know is incompetent, know is unstable, know is dangerous, for their own selfish benefit.
 
Even if you insist on seeing two evils, in this comparison there is a very clear lesser one.

Yeah, for me, I try to (don't claim I always follows through, lacking perfection and all*) go for truth, and let things fall as they may.  
 
*We will not speak of the possibility of me being wrong again.  

Every time I get my hopes up, they're stomped into the ground in spectacular fashion. The power elite is just too entrenched. All we get is talk. I'm sick to death of talk. I'm getting old and I'd like to see some progress before I kick the bucket for pity's sake.

If you are one of those people that have known this man for what he is - human-shaped excrement in a suit - long before he considered running for President, you may feel compelled to determine which group in particular he owes the most thanks to, if only to divine a smattering of logic admist this madness. Some have concluded that there is simply a surplus of venom behind the smiles and waves we see across this nation: racism, sexism and/or greed...or at least a general callousness well-practiced at putting on the facade of civility. While I personally believe attributing his political victory solely to hate is overly simplistic, I do not fault people for arriving at the realization that perhaps we have failed on a fundamental level that cannot be shifted to a convenient scapegoat. Ultimately, if we decide that this man is a reflection (fully or partially) of who we are, then we will inevitably be faced with a collective identity crisis. Sad to say, I find it improbable that enough citizens are going to make that effort to dig deep: some don't recognize the problem, some do yet are apathetic and others are willing but feel impotent to effect change.

Good link
 
alas, folks are very  reluctant to sacrifice their ego and tribal identification

He tapped into a lot of resentment, much of it quite justifiable if misdirected. He told folks things like Rich people would be paying more, that he'd drain the swamp and stamp out the typical corruption, that he'd bring jobs in manufacturing back to America. Of course, none of those three were kept but we do tend to forget he made those statements... his followers certainly forget... or rationalize. Rich People are making more IF they cut him or his family/friends a chunk of the pie especially, not less; he didn't drain the swamp, he just put in whole new varieties of snakes, some far more toxic than what was there before; and he would make a show of 'saving' fifty jobs at an American factory while ignoring the dozens more companies that happily kept up business as usual or automated with more deals under the table than ever it seems.
 
Now, those that voted for him are divided into chunks. Those who regret; those who see him as winning and would rather win without morality than risk losing with higher ideals; and those who dare not,  not even for a moment, admit they have become cheerleaders for villains bordering on the cartoonish but with ramifications far too harmful to the country. 
 
Of course, it's not just Republicans that voted for him... but let's hope the Independents that were Pro Trump have realized this little experiment has not worked well at all.
 
 

I'm glad to be so wanted nowadays.

Wait’ll you see what he wants you for. 

Not to get anyone's hopes up, but there is some optimism around early results of remdesivir trials.

I've been doing the exact same with my chiro -- they're still open, but I'm not in any dire need.  Heck, with the forge closed down I'm doing pretty well of late.

They still keep checking every 2 weeks, which is nice of them, but I keep pushing them out until I either _really_ need it or our stay at home orders are relaxed.

In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently no culture of the earth, no navigation nor the use of commodities that may be imported by sea, no commodious building, no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force, no knowledge of the face of the earth, no account of time, no arts, no letters, no society, and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
 
Hobbes; Leviathan

A couple years back I took a bite out of one of their base 'beef' tacos and had to spit it out.  I couldn't physically keep it in my mouth.  x_x

So we got our stimulus checks today....and...they're gone. They paid for exactly one of our monthly bills. Any attempt to make this seem like more than a bribe for votes seems hollow. My views haven't changed. I hear bribes are all the rage in the world of the 1% though.

Delete the first two images.
 
Divide the remaining day numbers by 100.
 
Then you have me.