Some Covid-19 thoughts
POSTED BY: captaincrunch
UPDATED: Monday, September 29, 2025 18:59
VIEWED: 301579
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Quote:This week Trump destroyed what Obama did and the destruction will cost Americans hundreds of billions of dollars. It is difficult to focus on anything other than Covid-19 in our current news environment, but spare a moment for President Trump’s new fuel economy standards, announced in final form on Tuesday.
Originally posted by 1KIKI:
Show me the money.
Show me what it was that democrats did better than republicans IN TERMS OF RESULTS.
Anyone can whine and dissemble, and democrats do it better than most. What I don't see are results.
They replace the Obama administration’s standards, which would have pushed the US auto fleet to an average efficiency of 54.5 mpg by 2025, with standards that would reach only 40 mpg (a goal the industry expects to exceed even without a rule). By the Trump administration’s calculations, the change will result in almost a billion more tons of greenhouse gases emitted over the next five years. In one stroke, the best thing Obama ever did for climate change —addressing the most carbon-intensive sector of the US economy — has become the worst thing Trump has done for climate change.
The public overwhelmingly opposes the change. Consumer groups, environmental groups, business groups, and conservative groups oppose it. Even the auto industry is tepid. To a first approximation, the only people truly happy with the change are oil company executives, who will now be able to sell more gasoline.
www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/4/2/21202509/trump-climate-cha
nge-fuel-economy-standards-coronavirus-pandemic-peak
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:Trump is stealing from Democrats and giving the money to Republicans: How Trump’s impeachment trial foreshadowed his handling of the coronavirus crisis. Professor Pamela Karlan tried to warn us.
Originally posted by 1KIKI:
Show me the money.
Show me what it was that democrats did better than republicans IN TERMS OF RESULTS.
Anyone can whine and dissemble, and democrats do it better than most. What I don't see are results.
President Donald Trump’s frustration with Democratic governors who have the temerity to criticize his administration’s flailing response to the coronavirus isn’t just leading him to post sour tweets about them. It’s also reflected in disparities surrounding which states are receiving the medical resources they need to keep patients alive and health care workers healthy.
It’s a situation at least one woman, Stanford law professor Pamela Karlan, saw coming, and warned about during Trump’s impeachment trial. In hindsight, her comments look remarkably prescient.
That trial, you might recall, was all about Trump’s abuses of power as it pertained to his efforts to leverage foreign aid to Ukraine into investigations of his domestic political foes. While the details underpinning that scandal may have seemed obscure to many Americans, Karlan in December sounded an alarm about what Trump’s behavior could entail in the event of a domestic crisis like the one the country now faces.
Referring to Trump’s effort to use congressionally appropriated foreign aid as a quid pro quo for political favors, Karlan asked members of Congress to think about what it would look like if Trump subjected governors to similar treatment.
“Imagine living in a part of Louisiana or Texas that’s prone to devastating hurricanes and flooding,” Karlan said. “What would you think if you lived there, and your governor asked for a meeting with the president to discuss getting disaster aid that Congress has provided for. What would you think if that president said, ‘I would like you to do us a favor. I’ll meet with you, and I’ll send the disaster relief, once you brand my opponent a criminal.’ Wouldn’t you know in your gut that such a president had abused his office?”
The professor’s point was that while Trump using his public office to try and force the Ukrainian government may not seem like an obvious abuse of power to some Americans, it clearly would in a hypothetical situation where he dealt with their elected officials in the same manner.
Unfortunately, less than four months after Karlan uttered those words, the hypothetical she outlined has come uncomfortably close to reality.
More at www.vox.com/2020/4/2/21204228/trump-coronavirus-crisis-impeachment-tri
al-professor-pamela-karlan-warning
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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The VOX article: All blather and no ... what's that word again? Oh yeah ... evidence.
Here's VOX:
Quote:Hmmm... which states requested what? Who GOT what?How do we know these just aren't CHERRY PICKED examples? The reality: We don't. The M$M is cherry picks all the time, bigly. It endlessly recycles critical but untrue stories about Trump, and quietly hides anything positive and true.
This is more than just rhetoric. On Wednesday, the Washington Post reported that while staunch Trump ally Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) “promptly” received all of the supplies he asked for from the federal government, states with Democratic governors such as Wisconsin, Illinois, and Massachusetts (not to mention New York and Michigan) were not having the same luck. It’s not clear that Trump’s political grudges are driving that disparity, but the Post reported some officials are “wondering whether politics is playing a role in the response.”
What we need: A list of all 50 states, whether they are "blue", "red", or "purple", what they each asked for, and what they each received. Now THAT would be reporting. This? THIS is just propaganda.
Please note the section where VOX distances itself from its own article
Quote:
It’s not clear that Trump’s political grudges are driving that disparity, but the Post reported some officials are “wondering whether politics is playing a role in the response.”
Ahhh... the infamous "some say".
Famous phrase from Top Gear, where the overvoice ponders the origin and identity of the anonymous helmeted test driver code-named The Stig. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stig Funny, when used in a comical setting, but we should ALL be wary of "some say" in so-called serious reporting.
Also, SECOND is a propagandist.
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
#STAYTHEFUCKHOME
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Quote:I'll show you a propagandist working hand in glove with Trump: Cory Gardner, Republican senator from Colorado. Cory says all of America's Covid-19 problems are completely the government of China's fault, not the GOP's fault. Cory doesn't mention that Taiwan and South Korea, adjacent to China, have it under control while back in the USA the GOP controlled governments have nothing under control. Couldn't possibly be because Trump is living up to being Signym's "loose cannon" and cannot manage his job as President.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Also, SECOND is a propagandist.
www.foxnews.com/opinion/sen-cory-gardner-coronavirus-spread-because-of
-chinese-communist-partys-ineptitude-and-deceptions
Look who is at the top of the list:
www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
USA. We are Number ONE! Worst in the World. Thank you, Donald Trump. Thank you so much! You are truly Signym's "Loose Cannon"!
Despite Signym's hatred of Hillary, she would not have acted like goddamn idiot Trump searching for a pathway to Worst Country In the First World: Coronavirus Contest.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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A former 9/11 Commission member explains why the US needs a 9/11 Commission for the coronavirus
Alex Ward: You’re clearly trying to lay out, as a professional, the case for a system-wide review by an impartial body. But you’re also just a person like all of us and a citizen of this country. So just as a person, are you mad at the way this has been handled?
John Farmer Jr.: Exasperated, I would say. It’s hard to watch, this sort of slow-motion response to a rapidly escalating crisis. It’s just hard to watch.
There’s almost no excuse for the dilatory nature of this response. If you go back to 2009, there was a PBS show about predicting pandemics, and even earlier shows about pandemic flu. We’ve known about these threats and these vulnerabilities for a long time. It’s not like this was completely unanticipated and unimaginable. It’s less understandable than the chaos of 9/11, in my opinion.
www.vox.com/2020/4/3/21206135/coronavirus-covid-9-11-commission-trump-
review
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
It’s less understandable than the chaos of 9/11, in my opinion.
Not really. Nobody was worried about stray airplanes falling out of the sky by Kamikaze Muslims and hitting them in the head after 9/11. But people are so terrified of getting infected today that they're doing their church activities over Skype.
Apples and Oranges.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:6ix, you really, really misunderstood that story. The World Trade Center collapsing was almost a one of kind event. Almost: a bomber crashed into the Empire State Building during WWII. Then Bush was seeking revenge against terrorists who were already dead. That was the stupidest response imaginable. Unsurprisingly, Bush's Revenge Mission was a huge waste of money that killed a million people who were not involved with 9/11.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
It’s less understandable than the chaos of 9/11, in my opinion.
Not really. Nobody was worried about stray airplanes falling out of the sky by Kamikaze Muslims and hitting them in the head after 9/11. But people are so terrified of getting infected today that they're doing their church activities over Skype.
Apples and Oranges.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
In extreme contrast, pandemics have been around long enough to be mentioned in the Bible. The American Colonists destroyed the Indians in North America by using pandemics. There was even a movie, Contagion (2011), about a pandemic. Until Trump fired them, there were officials working inside the White House to handle pandemics. Unsurprisingly, Trump has since been running around like chicken with his head cut off, not knowing what to say or do, but he sure knows how to draw attention to himself. He still has 48% chance of reelection, so with all that attention focused on Trump rather than Covid-19, he must know what he is doing to win in 2020.
https://odds.watch/trump-2020
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Trump is playing president on television instead of doing the job.
In times of crisis — from wars to natural disasters to recessions — Americans have looked to the federal government to step up and lead the national effort to confront the challenge.
In the face of the coronavirus pandemic, our federal government, led by Donald Trump, has essentially abdicated its traditional role of spearheading a coordinated response.
State and local governments have always provided the majority of front-line public services in the United States. And a relatively high level of decentralization has been baked into the American constitutional order for centuries, serving most of the time as a good way to cope with the inevitable challenges of governing a country that is both vast and diverse.
But the federal government has unique resources and flexibility, as well as the ability to move things from one part of the country to another to ensure that capabilities are deployed where they are most needed. It can coordinate national-scale markets, mobilize money when things are tight for households and state governments alike, speak with a single voice abroad, communicate rapidly to the population as a whole, and mobilize a far higher level of expertise than any state or local government. Most of all, the places experiencing the greatest level of need at any point may not be the places with the most capabilities. The federal government can get organized, set priorities, and make sure important problems are being addressed in a timely and comprehensive way.
But while Donald Trump enjoys playing president on TV, he’s always been lazy about doing the actual job. So while he’s taking advantage of the crisis to stage daily extra-long episodes of the Trump Show with guest appearances from Mike Pence and public health officials, the executive branch of the federal government is mostly missing in action.
David Schleicher, a Yale Law School professor who studies federalism and comparative issues, notes that “in most countries — as far as I can tell — the crisis has led to centralization of authority, both towards the national government and towards the chief executive,” which is the historical pattern in the United States. But now in America, while state governments have moved to centralize authorities rather than allow an uncoordinated response, the federal government has been absent.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:6ix, you really, really misunderstood that story.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
It’s less understandable than the chaos of 9/11, in my opinion.
Not really. Nobody was worried about stray airplanes falling out of the sky by Kamikaze Muslims and hitting them in the head after 9/11. But people are so terrified of getting infected today that they're doing their church activities over Skype.
Apples and Oranges.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
No I didn't.
Muslim terrorists obeying their brainwashing and willing to die for their "God" weren't 125 nanometers in diameter. Neither, of course, were the planes they were downing.
Apples and Orange.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:Convince me you understand this story:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
No I didn't.
Muslim terrorists obeying their brainwashing and willing to die for their "God" weren't 125 nanometers in diameter. Neither, of course, were the planes they were downing.
Apples and Orange.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
Donald Trump Did Nothing to Stop the Export of Respirator Masks
The 3M mask story keeps getting weirder, and neither 3M nor the Trump administration seems eager to provide details of exactly what their dispute is about. However, it’s been widely reported that 280 million masks were sold overseas in a single day from a single seller last month even though American health care workers were desperate for them. This number originates from a Forbes story by David DiSalvo, who spent a day in mid-March with a mask broker named Remington Schmidt:
When contacting potential buyers, Remington needs two things to secure a deal with a seller: a letter of intent to purchase and proof of funds. “If you are working with a seller who has masks but you can’t quickly show proof of funds, someone else is going to buy them,” he told me.
And I watched that happen repeatedly throughout the day. Buyers from state procurement departments and hospital systems expressed desperate need for masks, but the deals bogged down when it came to providing proof that they could commit and follow through. In the meantime, another buyer provided proof of funds and the masks were gone, sometimes within the hour.
By the end of the day, roughly 280 million masks from warehouses around the U.S. had been purchased by foreign buyers and were earmarked to leave the country, according to the broker — and that was in one day. To his knowledge none of the masks had been purchased by buyers in the U.S.
Halting these shipments didn’t require use of the Defense Procurement Act. It required two things: (a) an executive order banning the export of masks and (b) purchasing authority for FEMA to buy as many masks as it wants.
These are things President Trump could have done two weeks ago with a stroke of his pen. No new legislative authority would have been required.
6ix, if you understand the story then you understand Trump is worthless as a President. Trump is arguing with 3M now to hide his negligence from last month.
www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2020/04/donald-trump-did-nothing-to-sto
p-the-export-of-respirator-masks/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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