Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

Reports of protests are overblown. A few incidents around the country, but nothing major.

5 (45.5%)

A few major incidents in capitals, but nothing much in DC.

5 (45.5%)

A major incident in DC, but nothing much around the country.

0 (0%)

More than 10 capitals have major upheavals, but nothing much in DC.

0 (0%)

A major incident in DC plus more than 10 capitals with significant upheavals.

1 (9.1%)

More than half the capitals around the country have problems with protesters, but DC is quiet.

0 (0%)

DC has major problems, while more than half the capitals around the country also have considerable trouble with protesters.

0 (0%)

Huge disruption to the day.

0 (0%)

Total Members Voted: 9

Voting closed: January 19, 2021, 10:49:21 PM

[barton]

Not Josh or Bart's point.   Which was that Trump RECOMMENDED cuts to the CDC.   No  one here is saying that Trump succeeded.   Wiser heads prevailed in Congress and Trump didn't interfere further - if that's the best thing you can say about a leader....


Funding ran out.

You were led by the nose by the anti-Trump media.  You though all along the CDC remained underfunded, which is not the case.

You can't be that stupid.   Seriously,  read the ABC article and stop arguing things no one here asserted or "thought."  No one said the CDC was underfunded.   As has been verified to you,  three times now,  Trump downplayed the value of its programs for three years and suggested funding cuts.  AS RECENTLY AS THE END OF FEBRUARY.   The fact that Congress didn't go along with his ridiculous suggestions of cuts doesn't magically erase his lack of foresight, leadership, and understanding of what global approaches do to mitigate pandemic.   

[barton]

I gained 5 pounds per week the first 3 weeks of voluntary isolation.
Had to switch to the fat pants I bought a few winters ago and then never needed to wear. 

If you're not going to get exercise, start cutting back on food intake.  I started bike riding at night, running up and down the subway stairs, and did one day of jogging around the neighborhood.

I've lost 8 lbs....will not eat until we have some toilet paper in the house!

DeeJ,  if you're on a toilet chances are good that a tub is a couple feet away.   Not the greatest option,  but an impromptu bidet can be easily achieved if paper is absent.   

Two billion people manage without toilet paper.   Zero people manage without food.

A friend was in the Corps in Zambia - the custom,  in the dry season when leaves are too harsh to use,  is to use the back of the thumb of the non-dominant hand and scrape it around the perianal region.   When you squat,  there is less material there anyway,  and the thumb does the job.   Then you push the thumb into the dirt a few times and drag it on the ground a bit.   In a place with scarce water,  that's good enough.   My grandparents used pages from the Sears catalog and corncobs.   

A real problem (versus "white people's problems") would be if no one could drive food trucks,  or tractors.   

[facilitatorn]

This could all go away if we toss trump into the mouth of an active volcano. The idea has got better science behind it than any republican proposal. It’s definitely worth a try to see what happens. If it doesn’t work right away, we can supplement the effort by tossing other high officials from this administration in as well.

[kiidcarter8]

“during the president’s tenure, every part of our preparedness and infectious disease program activity has been enhanced and expanded.”



- Alex Azar

[josh]

As for the CDC,  its funding for global outbreak management was only saved when Congress intervened and thwarted Trump's attempt to end it.   Once again,  the faithful can claim "Trump didn't do [X ]" only because wiser and saner heads prevailed.   What a thoroughly dishonest and pathetic sort of defense of an incompetent  that is!


Did they override a Trump veto?

The funding ran out.  Congress the approved further funding.

The article (and so many Democrats) lazily claimed as you have - and needed correction.

Not Josh or Bart's point.   Which was that Trump RECOMMENDED  cuts to the CDC.   

No.

My point was that Trump DID fire those people, just as the Snopes piece that Kid posted said he did!

This one:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/

Claim
The Trump administration fired the U.S. pandemic response team in 2018 to cut costs.

Rating

True

mid warnings from public health officials that a 2020 outbreak of a new coronavirus could soon become a pandemic involving the U.S., alarmed readers asked Snopes to verify a rumor that U.S. President Donald Trump had “fired the entire pandemic response team two years ago and then didn’t replace them.”

The claim came from a series of tweets posted by Judd Legum, who runs Popular Information, a newsletter he describes as being about “politics and power.” Legum’s commentary was representative of sharp criticism from Democratic legislators (and some Republicans) that the Trump administration had ill-prepared the country for a pandemic even as one was looming on the horizon.

Legum outlined a series of cost-cutting decisions made by the Trump administration in preceding years that had gutted the nation’s infectious disease defense infrastructure. The “pandemic response team” firing claim referred to news accounts from Spring 2018 reporting that White House officials tasked with directing a national response to a pandemic had been ousted.

Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer abruptly departed from his post leading the global health security team on the National Security Council in May 2018 amid a reorganization of the council by then-National Security Advisor John Bolton, and Ziemer’s team was disbanded. Tom Bossert, whom the Washington Post reported “had called for a comprehensive biodefense strategy against pandemics and biological attacks,” had been fired one month prior.

It’s thus true that the Trump administration axed the executive branch team responsible for coordinating a response to a pandemic and did not replace it, eliminating Ziemer’s position and reassigning others, although Bolton was the executive at the top of the National Security Council chain of command at the time.

[facilitatorn]

“during the president’s tenure, every part of our preparedness and infectious disease program activity has been enhanced and expanded.”



- Alex Azar

The kind of fluffy obvious lie the terminal trump administration has made itself famous for peddling.

Instead of their jobs they do Abbott and Costello style ass covering to no good effect.

Republicanism is a social disease. Good information is the cure.

[josh]

Updated numbers


207K cases

82K  recovered  (40%)

8200+ deaths.  (4%)

Kid, there are two keys to that which make the figure of 4% misleading.

The first is that one should not be comparing deaths to all cases, but to the number recovered - the two figures combined are all the cases that are closed. So, the figure is closer to 10%.

But the second pushes in the other direction: we have no idea just how many cases there are, because too few people can be tested. With broader testing, the folks who are asymptomatic or with very mild symptoms get included in the numbers and the number and percentage who recover both go way up, we hope.

So, we don't really know what that figure really ought to be. Tracking how many people end up with severe or critical cases may be a simpler metric to use and then how many die among them.

[josh]

“during the president’s tenure, every part of our preparedness and infectious disease program activity has been enhanced and expanded.”



- Alex Azar

"Was that enough for me to keep my job, sir?"

~Alex Azar

[REDSTATEWARD]

About those states who have banned plastic grocery bags. 

Researchers at the University of Arizona and Loma Linda University surveyed grocery shoppers and randomly tested their reusable bags. “Large numbers of bacteria were found in almost all bags and coliform bacteria in half,” they wrote in their 2011study, funded in part by the American Chemistry Council and published in Food Protection Trends. No wonder, since the majority of shoppers said they rarely or never washed them

[LarryBnDC]

Re:  Biden and the crisis
Dang - it sure does get dicey if reins are being passed and we are still in the middle of this mess

Just the transition period - 2.5 months between early November and late January might be wild

Biden will snipe at Trump during the campaign - of what he would do - would HAVE done - concerning COVID-19 - and meanwhile Trump's policies stay in effect as we await Biden's sweeping changes

Hint - may actually change very little - after huffing about it so long.

Its the way the system is.  Biden cannot really praise Trump - has to even be careful just how bipartisan he is - during the election cycle.  (It hurt McCain in '08 - having a national crisis that needed bipartisanship)

Trump has earned no praise. Refraining from tripping on his dick at a press conference is not an example of leadership.

[LarryBnDC]

“during the president’s tenure, every part of our preparedness and infectious disease program activity has been enhanced and expanded.”



- Alex Azar

So says a pharma flack...

[LarryBnDC]

About those states who have banned plastic grocery bags. 

Researchers at the University of Arizona and Loma Linda University surveyed grocery shoppers and randomly tested their reusable bags. “Large numbers of bacteria were found in almost all bags and coliform bacteria in half,” they wrote in their 2011study, funded in part by the American Chemistry Council and published in Food Protection Trends. No wonder, since the majority of shoppers said they rarely or never washed them

Um... yeah.

[barton]

This could all go away if we toss trump into the mouth of an active volcano. The idea has got better science behind it than any republican proposal. It’s definitely worth a try to see what happens. If it doesn’t work right away, we can supplement the effort by tossing other high officials from this administration in as well.

[barton]

About those states who have banned plastic grocery bags. 

Researchers at the University of Arizona and Loma Linda University surveyed grocery shoppers and randomly tested their reusable bags. “Large numbers of bacteria were found in almost all bags and coliform bacteria in half,” they wrote in their 2011study, funded in part by the American Chemistry Council and published in Food Protection Trends. No wonder, since the majority of shoppers said they rarely or never washed them

Um... yeah.

The reason canvas tote bags used for groceries have coliform bacteria is because most cars that carry family pets will have some coliform bacteria.   I am more inclined towards vendor "loop" programs where the maker of the plastic bag will recycle it through the stores its used at.   If we don't want plastic nanoparticles in our oceans and soil, then we ought to do whatever it takes including cleaning up the Five Gyres and maybe even washing our vegetables if we took them home in a canvas bag.   Radical,  I know.

[kiidcarter8]

I don't reuse.  Just pay the extra.