Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

The US 2020 Presidential Election & Attempts To Overturn It

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Originally posted by astralis View Post
    trying to get people back to work when there's a pandemic that's rapidly escalating IS insane.

    you crush the pandemic first, or at the minimum get it to manageable levels, and THEN you encourage people to get back into the workplace.
    We never did in the past. Never mind 1918 when we were fighting WWI. In fact, I cannot find a single case of closing off the economy before COVID-19, including 1957 H2N2 killing 116K Americans. AIDS has killed 600,000 Americans.
    Chimo

    Comment


    • Originally posted by GVChamp;1067168/


      Not interested in listening to the garbage arguments about how unfair the lowly proletariat is being treated. The majority of hourly workers you supposedly support are still working and paying taxes to support income replacement for people affected by COVID. Elected representatives have an ethical responsibility to not piss away their tax dollars. This remains true of the privilged people working from home: they are ALSO still working and ALSO paying taxes, and you don't have any less of an obligation to piss away THEIR money just because you think they are too wealthy.
      That makes two of us as I am not interested in your garbage arguments which I have heard for over 50 years.

      Comment


      • Originally posted by WABs_OOE View Post
        We never did in the past. Never mind 1918 when we were fighting WWI. In fact, I cannot find a single case of closing off the economy before COVID-19, including 1957 H2N2 killing 116K Americans. AIDS has killed 600,000 Americans.
        Well I wouldn't lump AIDS into the premise since a majority of people wouldn't run into it

        Comment


        • Originally posted by tbm3fan View Post
          Well I wouldn't lump AIDS into the premise since a majority of people wouldn't run into it
          A majority of the people has not run into H1N1, H2N2, nor COVID-19 neither.

          But the point remains, we're not protecting the right people, the right way. Quarrantine anyone over 65 since 80% of the American deaths comes from that age bracket. It's damned too late to try to contain it in the general population. And tell everyone to get off their ass and go for a walk and stop over-eating junk food. A few push ups and mountain climbers won't hurt either.
          Last edited by Officer of Engineers; 22 Jul 20,, 08:14.
          Chimo

          Comment


          • But the point remains, we're not protecting the right people, the right way. Quarrantine anyone over 65 since 80% of the American deaths comes from that age bracket. It's damned too late to try to contain it in the general population. And tell everyone to get off their ass and go for a walk and stop over-eating junk food. A few push ups and mountain climbers won't hurt either.
            as much as I'd like to see the American population become more fit, there's nothing more useless than saying "get more exercise".

            frankly, I think if the US had a national, STRICTLY enforced mask mandate that would probably be more effective than shutting down the economy.

            but that's neither here nor there.

            my original statement remains: using fiscal means to encourage people to go back to work now is insanity. because if the virus gets significantly worse, people are simply going to reduce their own economic activity.
            There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."- Isaac Asimov

            Comment


            • Originally posted by astralis View Post
              as much as I'd like to see the American population become more fit, there's nothing more useless than saying "get more exercise".
              As one of your generals already stated, obesity is a US National Security Threat. 60% of all military recruits cannot pass their 1st Day Physical Test. I can do no more than say "Get More Exercise" since I'm not American but Americans should not only be saying it, they should be screaming it and demanding it.

              Originally posted by astralis View Post
              my original statement remains: using fiscal means to encourage people to go back to work now is insanity. because if the virus gets significantly worse, people are simply going to reduce their own economic activity.
              Food and shelter still cost a hell of a lot of money. Banks will still foreclose and landlords will still evict. Supermarkets have yet to give away food for free. Food kitchens are now closed. Never mind governments still wanting their share. Compare those CERTAINTIES vs-a-vi MAYBE you get COVIDE-19.
              Chimo

              Comment


              • Originally posted by WABs_OOE View Post
                As one of your generals already stated, obesity is a US National Security Threat. 60% of all military recruits cannot pass their 1st Day Physical Test. I can do no more than say "Get More Exercise" since I'm not American but Americans should not only be saying it, they should be screaming it and demanding it.
                Colonel, I totally agree. But we have completely gutted our school physical fitness programs. They have been reduced or dropped. More and more school teams get cut. Additionally, we have destroyed our K-12 civics education so we have a sompletely uninformed electorate. Pogo said it best..."We have met the enemy and he is us!"
                “Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
                Mark Twain

                Comment


                • Originally posted by Albany Rifles View Post
                  Colonel, I totally agree. But we have completely gutted our school physical fitness programs. They have been reduced or dropped. More and more school teams get cut. Additionally, we have destroyed our K-12 civics education so we have a sompletely uninformed electorate. Pogo said it best..."We have met the enemy and he is us!"
                  Speaking of that Venice has decided to limit gondola passenger due to fat tourists. I wonder who they could be? Not me I'm 6'1" and weigh 167-170 ever since college so 48 years of zero change.

                  https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/v...ntl/index.html

                  "From some countries, it's like bombs loading on and when (the boat) is fully loaded, the hull sinks and water enters,"
                  Last edited by tbm3fan; 22 Jul 20,, 18:56.

                  Comment


                  • Trump's Remedy for Low Poll Numbers: Reminding People Polls Can Be Wrong

                    WASHINGTON — “I’m not losing,” President Donald Trump insisted in an interview on Sunday with the Fox News anchor Chris Wallace after being presented with the cable network's latest poll, which showed former Vice President Joe Biden with an 8-point advantage nationally.

                    The president, who often promotes poll numbers when they are favorable to him — and even regularly advertises what he claims is a “96% Approval Rating in the Republican Party” without citing any source for that questionable statistic — said the public polls that showed him losing were “fake in 2016, and now they’re even more fake.”

                    There aren’t many campaign metrics out there these days to buoy a president who loves to cite a record he has shattered. He hasn’t been able to pack a stadium with supporters since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, and Biden has out-raised him for two months in a row. Unlike Hillary Clinton’s slim lead in national polls four years ago, Biden has held a nearly double-digit lead in an average of polls for more than a month.

                    In response, the Trump campaign has highlighted the meaningless marker of “boat parades” as a measure of voter enthusiasm. The most recent shattered record Trump has touted online is a heat index. “We may have set a record for doing such an interview in the heat,” Trump tweeted Tuesday, referring to his outdoor interview with Wallace. “It was 100 degrees, making things very interesting!”

                    Meanwhile, his campaign and his top advisers have echoed his attempts to discredit public polls, in an effort to treat them, dismissively, as an extension of “the media.” The Trump team sent a cease-and-desist letter to CNN after it published a June poll that showed Trump losing to Biden. (The network said it stood by its poll.) And in a recent interview with Newsweek, the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who is overseeing Trump’s campaign, dismissed public polling as “all BS.”

                    Privately, aides said, Trump knows things aren’t looking good for him — he just thinks the public polls are overstating the situation. His campaign does not conduct national polls, but aides have presented him with internal data about battleground states that show a closer race than the public polling numbers. His pollsters tell him regularly that he is in a close race and that there is more polling bias in the news media today than there was four years ago, a claim untethered to any measurable metric. They assure him that his base is still enthusiastically engaged and that the middle that might have been planning to vote for him in March has moved away through no fault of his own.

                    That has helped lead Trump to think that the public polls are overstating Biden’s advantage, advisers said, and that they offer only a snapshot in time. But his internal numbers still show him trailing Biden, and he is worried about his standing. He asks his advisers with more regularity, “What do we need to do?” and grills his friends about “how is it looking?” while making public course corrections, the advisers said.

                    Over the past several weeks, he changed his stance on promoting masks, claiming that it was “patriotic” to wear one, and resuscitated the daily coronavirus news conference — both an acknowledgment that he needs to be seen as taking the virus seriously again.

                    On Tuesday evening, campaign aides circulated a news story from CNBC, in which the host Jim Cramer said that Trump’s belated endorsement of face coverings had sparked a rally in recovery stocks.

                    The president also unceremoniously demoted his longtime campaign manager, Brad Parscale, and his campaign has shifted the majority of its advertising resources to a message of law and order, claiming inaccurately in a new television ad spot that if Biden is elected, the country’s police departments will cease to exist.

                    His political opponents assume he knows he is losing, and badly, and that his blanket dismissal of public polling as “fake” is part of a strategy to sow doubt and confusion in November. “Saying the polls are fake helps in laying the predicate for claiming the election is rigged,” said William Kristol, the conservative writer and prominent “Never Trump” Republican. “Because his brand going forward depends on his being a victim of a rigged system, not accepting defeat. He has a general interest in discrediting the truth, and this is part of an assault on the truth.”

                    But aides said that even in private conversations, Trump has not let the reality of his current political standing fully sink in.

                    “No one’s ever come back from something like this,” said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion, referring to Biden’s polling lead over Trump. Indeed, it has been almost 25 years since Bill Clinton sustained such a gaping advantage over his opponent, Bob Dole, in 1996.

                    But when donors and outside allies have been blunt with Trump and told him that he is, in fact, losing, the president has pushed back, claiming that things are getting better and there’s still plenty of time for improvement, according to Republicans familiar with these conversations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose private exchanges.

                    “My polls show we’re getting real movement since Rushmore,” Trump has told multiple associates, referring to his Fourth of July address at Mount Rushmore, in which he framed the campaign as a battle against a “new far-left fascism” seeking to wipe out the nation’s values and history. White House advisers viewed the speech as a success, if a temporary one that was quickly overtaken by Trump’s defense of the Confederate flag. Yet the Biden campaign has not seen a real improvement in how voters view Trump since the beginning of the pandemic, according to a person who was familiar with the campaign’s data. Voters’ impressions of Trump, the person said, have only grown more negative.

                    In private conversations, Trump has also brought up the general election debates as an opportunity for him to improve his standing in the race, telling allies he expects his opponent to perform poorly in that format.

                    Trump’s view of his position in the race is partly belief in his own myth after the 2016 victory — the prognosticators were all wrong, and he was right — and partly the rosier-than-reality picture that he hears from certain advisers about the state of the race.

                    A president who loves numbers — the stock market when it’s on the rise, the monthly job report when it spells a positive story line for him — particularly loves polls, such as in the 2016 primary season, when he was outpolling his Republican rivals. He also has a great out if he doesn’t like the polls: November 2016.

                    His sources for his poll numbers, beyond cable television and newspaper articles, are his aides, some of whom willfully distort the electoral landscape to avoid his wrath — going so far as to tell him he’s winning in states like Maine, where he is losing. Aides said that even those advisers who are willing to bring him bad news no longer deliver the full picture.

                    One of Trump’s main pollsters, Tony Fabrizio, often had the most dire predictions and was known not to shy away from a “sky is falling” briefing with the president. But aides said that everyone has tiptoed around the president ever since June, when he threatened to sue Parscale after he presented polling data that showed Trump trailing Biden in several crucial states.

                    Now, aides said, even the aides with more dire predictions will explain away bad numbers by pointing to outside factors and will often blame news coverage for Trump’s slump.

                    The campaign disputed that there was anything terrible they even needed to brief the president about.

                    “We track 17 states that will decide who the next president will be and we trust the methodology,” said Tim Murtaugh, the campaign’s communications director. “In those states, our data shows that President Trump remains strong against a defined Joe Biden and is well positioned for reelection. ”
                    _______________

                    He can still win: COVID-19 keeping people from the polls, His screwing around with the USPS to keep mail-in ballots at bay, a favorable SCOTUS ruling, Foreign meddling, and of course the ever-helpful Electoral College could still put him back in the Oval Office for another 4 years. At which point we can kiss this Republic goodbye.
                    “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

                    Comment


                    • Originally posted by astralis View Post
                      trying to get people back to work when there's a pandemic that's rapidly escalating IS insane.

                      you crush the pandemic first, or at the minimum get it to manageable levels, and THEN you encourage people to get back into the workplace.
                      Most of us aren't getting back to work, and aren't ever getting back to work, because we never stopped working. We obviously need expanded unemployment benefits because we're not going to get to full employment anytime soon, but the emergency solution we arrived at back in March is not the obviously correct one. By your own standards, we should have been addressing this back in May, when we were in the process of opening up in most states(and which we still are in some states!)

                      We didn't, because these fixes get implemented when the program expires. The program expired, so it's time to discuss the fixes. If you need an extension on the current program, it should be a short-term extension, not a multiple month one.

                      FWIW, it sounds like the payroll tax holiday is DOA, so everyone will get their wish of continuing to impose hidden taxes on workers rather than being upfront about how much the social safety net actually costs.


                      60% of all military recruits cannot pass their 1st Day Physical Test. I can do no more than say "Get More Exercise" since I'm not American but Americans should not only be saying it, they should be screaming it and demanding it.
                      Best of luck, we're getting fatter and there does not seem to be any end in sight. Even healthy states like Colorado and Minnesota would have been regarded as colossally obese 20 years ago.
                      I get my exercise in almost every day, but Chicago has an excellent beer scene so...uhhh...yeah.
                      Last edited by GVChamp; 24 Jul 20,, 14:31.
                      "The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions but by iron and blood"-Otto Von Bismarck

                      Comment


                      • FWIW, it sounds like the payroll tax holiday is DOA, so everyone will get their wish of continuing to impose hidden taxes on workers rather than being upfront about how much the social safety net actually costs.

                        Yeah, they are so well hidden that they show up on every pay stub you get....
                        “Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
                        Mark Twain

                        Comment


                        • Originally posted by Albany Rifles View Post
                          FWIW, it sounds like the payroll tax holiday is DOA, so everyone will get their wish of continuing to impose hidden taxes on workers rather than being upfront about how much the social safety net actually costs.

                          Yeah, they are so well hidden that they show up on every pay stub you get....
                          There's an employer side portion that does not typically appear on your stub, because it is not "technically" your portion. The tax incidence is probably yours, though.
                          "The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions but by iron and blood"-Otto Von Bismarck

                          Comment


                          • Trump calls off Florida segment of GOP National Convention

                            WASHINGTON (AP) — Bowing to the coronavirus threat, President Donald Trump has scrapped plans for a four-night Republican National Convention celebration in Florida that had been set to draw more than 10,000 people to a pandemic hot spot to mark his renomination.

                            Trump had already moved the convention’s public events out of North Carolina because of virus concerns. But the spiking virus shifted to the South, too, and the planned gathering in Jacksonville increasingly appeared to be both a health and political risk. Trump and his advisers feared that going forward with big parties and “infomercial” programming in Florida would ultimately backfire on the president.

                            “It’s a different world, and it will be for a little while,” Trump said, explaining his decision at a Thursday White House coronavirus briefing. “To have a big convention is not the right time.”

                            A small subset of GOP delegates will still formally renominate Trump on Aug. 24 in Charlotte, North Carolina, at an event scheduled to last just four hours.

                            Trump had decided last month to shift the ceremonial portions of the GOP convention to Florida because of a dispute with North Carolina’s Democratic leaders over holding an indoor gathering with throngs of supporters taking a pass on face masks.

                            But his plans for a grand gathering in Florida started shrinking almost as quickly as the move was announced, as virus cases spiked in the state and other parts of the country.

                            Trump said he plans to deliver his nomination acceptance speech in an alternate form still to be determined — perhaps online. Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien said the campaign will still “provide exciting, informative, and enthusiastic programming so Republicans can celebrate the re-nomination of President Trump and Vice President Pence.”

                            Trump said thousands of his supporters and delegates wanted to attend the events in Florida but “I just felt it was wrong” to gather them in a virus hot spot. Some of them would have faced quarantine requirements when they returned to their home states from the convention.

                            “We didn’t want to take any chances,” he added. “We have to be vigilant. We have to be careful, and we have to set an example.”

                            Democrats will hold an almost entirely virtual convention Aug. 17-20 in Milwaukee using live broadcasts and online streaming, according to party officials. Joe Biden plans to accept the presidential nomination in person, but it remains to be seen whether there will be a significant in-person audience.

                            The Biden campaign did not immediately respond to messages Thursday seeking comment on Trump’s announcement.

                            In recent weeks, Trump aides and allies have encouraged the president to consider calling off the convention, arguing it was not worth going forward with the event if the focus would be on the pandemic. Trump acknowledged that consideration, saying, “I could see the media saying, ‘Oh, this is very unsafe.’”

                            After a three-month hiatus, Trump has stepped back to the forefront of the government’s handling of the virus with regular briefings aiming to stanch an erosion of support in public and private polls that has followed the surge in new virus cases.

                            Trump said he did not cancel the convention events at the request of local officials, but the Jacksonville City Council was set to meet Friday to discuss safety concerns around the gathering.

                            Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry, a former chair of the Florida Republican Party, said he appreciated Trump “putting health and public safety first.”

                            “I know this was a difficult decision and just demonstrates and reaffirms once again his commitment to Jacksonville, the state of Florida and the people of the United States of America,” he said. “I’m grateful for him and his leadership, and this was the right way to move forward.”

                            Joe Gruters, current chair of the Florida Republican Party and a state senator from Sarasota, called it a “selfless move.”

                            “Having our home-state candidate was going to be a really big deal for Florida, but listen, he had it right,” Gruters said. “At the end of the day, it’s about safety.”

                            More than 10,000 people were expected in Jacksonville — already a fraction of the number that would typically attend a nominating convention. Only 336 delegates will be allowed to participate in Charlotte under extraordinary procedures approved last month by the Republican National Committee. The balance of the more than 2,500 delegates will vote by proxy.

                            Cory Burkarth, a spokesperson for the city of Charlotte, said Thursday, “We have an agreement in place with the Republican National Committee to host a substantially scaled down business meeting and that is what we are planning to do.”

                            The RNC had raised more than $35 million in contributions earmarked for the convention since 2017, according to an analysis of campaign finance disclosures by The Associated Press. The list of donors to the now-canceled event reads like a who’s who of industry titans, power brokers and wealthy Republicans.

                            The RNC’s convention committee had spent $9.5 million through June. But that doesn’t take into account the spending of the local host committee, which pledged to raise $70 million.

                            The Charlotte City Council voted in April to accept a $50 million federal grant for convention security. City Attorney Patrick Baker said the city had spent $14 million prepping for the convention but expected Charlotte to get reimbursed through the grant.
                            ______________

                            That sound you just heard was me breathing an enormous sigh of relief. I had no desire to see this city descend into another Trumpist dumpster fire.

                            I wonder who put the gun to his head and told him to call it off? Probably McConnell.
                            “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

                            Comment


                            • Originally posted by GVChamp View Post
                              There's an employer side portion that does not typically appear on your stub, because it is not "technically" your portion. The tax incidence is probably yours, though.
                              So the employer sees it on their pay stub. So what? Definitely not hidden. I'm sure AR, TH, DOR, astralis and me we all know the tax is split 50/50.

                              Comment


                              • Originally posted by tbm3fan View Post
                                So the employer sees it on their pay stub. So what? Definitely not hidden. I'm sure AR, TH, DOR, astralis and me we all know the tax is split 50/50.
                                You guys are all educated, politically interested, and on the right hand of the intelligence distribution. You make up like, 10% of the country. I guess I technically shouldn't assume on behalf of AR since he does not post as frequently as the rest of you, but 3/4 isn't a bad proportion for a generalization.

                                Even then, there's a big difference between understanding something intellectually and getting a bill with 4 digits on it.
                                Last edited by GVChamp; 24 Jul 20,, 19:20.
                                "The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions but by iron and blood"-Otto Von Bismarck

                                Comment

                                Working...
                                X