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

[bodiddley]

In an interview with the financial-news site TheStreet, Dr. Anthony Fauci said the public was initially told not to wear masks to stop COVID-19 because of shortages of PPE for doctors.

As I said at the time, the US Gov't was lying to people about the need and efficacy of face masks because there was a shortage.

And of course once you say it isn't needed, then when you change the advice, people start questioning if you know what you are talking about, because your credibility is shot.  And compliance will be significantly less.  Lying to the public about health risk and proper precautions is entirely wrong and disgraceful.

Of course, later they came up with a work around -- to make your own mask.  Which could have started a month or more earlier.  People could have been using their scarf or a bandanna or any cloth material.  Also, I'm sure some folks had masks lying around and would have started wearing them sooner if they were told it was beneficial and helped prevent the spread/infection.  For instance, I got my mother to start using her scarf when out shopping by mid-March, and a little while later my father poked around and dug up a handful of N95 masks he had for doing sawing and other home repair work.  They could have been masked up earlier if the CDC advice had advocated such as essential.

And this idea that it's either/or for social distancing and face masks astounds me.  As much as possible it should be an all-of-the-above approach.  Minimizing risk is the name of the game.  No one precaution is 100%.  You layer them to up the protection.

[bambu.]

Norway, Finland, Germany  ...  nothing  like America in size, population, culture and gun laws.
As a general rule, in those countries there are no MS-13 -ilk gangs.

[bodiddley]

The West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources announced the five-church outbreak in a Saturday press release about a house of worship in Greenbrier County, where it said “at least 17 cases have been identified.” It did not name the Greenbrier church, or the churches in the other four counties, to “protect the possibility of identifying individuals.”

Isn't that exactly wrong?  You want the public to know where an outbreak occurred, so anyone who was there can get tested or self-quarantine, plus folks who might have been in contact with anyone who goes to those churches can get tested or monitor their status, or start wearing a mask, etc.

Seems like a completely misguided privacy concern.  Maybe 100 people attended.  Nobody is being identified. 

A couple days later the Gov did say which church in Greenbriar had the outbreak, where 28 people tested positive.  So far, seems 61 people were infected at the 5 WVa churches and they infected another 28 people.   So far.

With church-going and political rallies and disdaining masks and lockdowns, the Republicans seem to be self-selecting to be high risk groups.  Good for them.

[kiidcarter8]

Wonder how the "Summer of Love" is going in Seattle today.

Street justice being doled out, I hear.  Suspected thief had the snot beat out of him.

As for business owners, cops not responding when they call is never a good thing.

[bodiddley]

Norway, Finland, Germany  ...  nothing  like America in size, population, culture and gun laws.

Or police training ...

[bambu.]

Norway, Finland, Germany  ...  nothing  like America in size, population, culture and gun laws.

Or police training ...

The "hail fellow well met",  "everyone in the world is a lovely person",  PC, cops in those other countries would get
"eaten alive" in America.

[Yankguy1]

Maybe one day you'll visit America.

[kiidcarter8]

We still don't know enough about how and why COVID can be deadly for kids:

https://www.newsday.com/news/health/coronavirus/coronavirus-children-inflammatory-syndrome-cohen-study-1.45762197

We still don't know if mutations of the virus are making it more transmissable:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/science/coronavirus-mutation-genetics-spike.html

There are long term effects potentially for people who have just mild symptoms:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshuacohen/2020/06/13/report-suggests-some-mildly-symptomatic-covid-19-patients-endure-serious-long-term-effects/#6e715abb5979

And we are staring down a possible resurgence in the Fall:

https://www.crainsnewyork.com/health-care/health-and-hospitals-preps-fall-resurgence-covid-19

But folks, go back to acting like everything is normal because we need to get Trump reelected, uh, quality of life.

And if a few more hundred thousand die, no biggie.  Just 0.009 percent of the population.

`Worst case is most often not THE case.

(how bout all those beds we were gonna need?  People are dead because of the pessimism)

[barton]

Bo..

With church-going and political rallies and disdaining masks and lockdowns, the Republicans seem to be self-selecting to be high risk groups.  Good for them.

The problem for people like me is living where I know Republicans who, for various reasons, are naive and simply do not realize the way that much of government has hijacked reason and logic.  In a real sense, they are victims of the officials in whom they placed their trust.  The cynical calculations of those seeking reelection can kill the naive and ignorant.  And, of course, being surrounded by them and forced into contact with them (I buy groceries and home supplies, e.g.), me and mine are also put at higher risk.  So the high-risk of Republicans splashes onto the naive and ignorant, and onto Independents and Democrats who live where they themselves are a minority.  It doesn't worry me personally (my lungs regularly go on ten mile hikes up and down mountains, and I've always had a strong immune system), but it makes it somewhat likely I was a virus-shedding asymptomatic carrier at some point in the last couple months. 

The plus here is that the air is thinner and dryer, both factors that reduce transmission.   

[barton]

A lot of Republicans are like children who need protection from their own simplistic thinking.  Unfortunately, that's not really achievable, and they will keep following short pithy platitudes that are easy to mentally digest and repeat to others, and society will suffer and degenerate.  Understanding how the world really works, and how populous technological nations function, requires time taken to process complexity and nuance, i.e. stuff you can't fit on a bumper sticker or in a tweet.  The Internet has turned out to be a highly effective method for favoring and proliferating GOP memes. 

Same goes for religion.  Who wants to read a ten page essay (or god forbid, a BOOK?) by a theologian on the moral conflicts and conundrums of modern life, when there are all kinds of cult extremists who can boil it down to simple short summations that appeal to your fears and prejudices and tell you how you've been chosen?  Put them and the GOP Far Right together and you have a giant zombie factory. 

[bambu.]

Maybe one day you'll visit America.

I did basically, via mrs bambu's visit.
I visit America every few days via youtube videos on my tv screen.
I drove thru the Hollywood hills past the Hollywood sign.
I drove Route 66, with a father and son.
Nearly everything was shut!   The burgers looked nice though.

I take train trips in America.
I walk the streets of NYC etc.
I fly over NYC by helicopter.
I fly in from the sea by plane and over NY to land at La Guardia.
It's all flat..flat as a pancake.
Sydney is the second hilliest city in the world after San Francisco.

[barton]

And then there's the stock market.....

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/15/opinion/coronavirus-stock-market.html?action=click&auth=login-email&login=email&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

The Federal Reserve, however, has been there and done that. It moved quickly, buying bonds, establishing special lending facilities, and essentially doing whatever it took to lubricate markets and keep money flowing freely.

The result was the second act of the play, a stock rebound that made up about half of the losses from the initial plunge.

Up to that point the behavior of stock prices generally made sense. But then came the third act, a surge in prices that eliminated most of the previous losses and drove the Nasdaq to a new high. And this surge bore all the usual signs of a bubble.

Robert Shiller, the world’s leading expert on such things, has pointed out that asset bubbles are, in effect, naturally occurring Ponzi schemes. Early investors see big gains because later investors drive prices up, inducing more people to buy in, and so on; the party continues until something cuts off the flow of new money, and suddenly everything crashes.

So it was with the recent stock surge. Encouraged by the Fed-induced recovery of stocks from their March lows, some investors began buying. Their optimism became a self-fulfilling prophecy, as initial gains led more cautious investors to join in, driven by FOMO — fear of missing out. It looked a lot like the dot-com bubble of the 1990s, except on a vastly accelerated timetable....

[bodiddley]

Sydney is the second hilliest city in the world after San Francisco.

CITY OF HILLS / With 50-plus hills, it's no wonder that San Francisco is considered the second hilliest city in the world, next to La Paz, Bolivia

Another article says Lisbon is 3rd behind La Paz and SF.
I'm not sure if they count the number of hills, or elevation up and down or what.

ChingQing China is a very vertical city, very up and down though it might be more one big hill than lots of little ones.  Lots of steps.  One of the few Chinese cities where you rarely see a bicycle in the main section of town.  The adjoining other half of Chongqing is more flat and normal.

[bambu.]

If I lived in America, would becoming a cop be anywhere near the top 50 of my desired jobs?
No.

. Shift work
. Directing traffic in the rain
. Chasing gun-toting thugs thru dark alleys
. Arresting violent and dirty drunks
. Cleaning out patrol cars and paddy wagons after drunks had vomited in them
. Conducting traffic stops day and night, not knowing if I was going to live or die
. Going into battle with rioters throwing bricks, burning cocktails etc
. etc
All for the princely sum of not much money.

[bodiddley]

Despite Trump rhetoric, there's talk in China of preferring Trump re-elected -- as he's more likely to muck up US alliances and therefore not pose much threat to China.
While Biden more likely to repair traditional US alliances and therefore be better able to counter China.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/china-warms-idea-four-more-134033802.html

I think the unspoken subtext is that Trump is more likely to make a mess of the US, weaken the country, while getting too distracted to actually do much harm to China's interests.

“If Biden is elected, I think this could be more dangerous for China, because he will work with allies to target China, whereas Trump is destroying U.S. alliances,” said Zhou Xiaoming, a former Chinese trade negotiator and former deputy representative in Geneva. Four current officials echoed that sentiment, saying many in the Chinese government believed a Trump victory could help Beijing by weakening what they saw as Washington’s greatest asset for checking China’s widening influence.

I should add that China has a poor track record of understanding US politics.  Though in this case they have Obama's Veep v. the current president, so should have a decent idea of the two candidates.  But clearly times and opinions of China have shifted in the past couple years.