Forums / Discussion / General

Apparently, I misspoke about Feinstein.
Her shares were put into a blind trust, it seems.

The others are more ambiguous, except Loeffler because her husband is President of the NYSE.

The DOJ seeks to suspend civil liberties using the COVID-19 outbreak as pretense.

The Polish government has been creating anti-lgbt laws
Is it just me or does this seem ironic?

I don’t know of a single time a persecuted minority hasn’t persecuted others as soon as they get into power, bigotry is a cultural disease, and it spreads

It's the battle of the hashtags.

Can anybody give me at least two policy related reasons why someone should/would support Joe Biden? The only reason I've ever seen given is "he can beat Trump" or a variation of that.

you mean pick biden over trump or biden over sanders? idk why anyone would choose biden over sanders, but plenty of reasons to support biden over trump;
public option (better than trump's option and more likely to pass than sander's option I guess), drug de-criminalization, green new deal, more immigration friendly policies, liberal judge appointments.

>green new deal
really?
I didn’t hear about that
>liberal judge appointments
we obviously, like the rest of anerican politicians, he’s a lib

its on his website

Trump isn't liberal by any stretch of the meaning.

Trump is going to war with blue states over COVID-19.
Denying medical supplies from the national stockpile, and even disaster relief funds.

Hillary and Bill Clinton sent over 400 pizzas to New York hospitals fighting against coronavirus https://t.co/xnOk5Mxqoc pic.twitter.com/rmqaubnzyG

— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) March 26, 2020

I think you all know what this means

Hopefully this won't make Pizzagate goofs resurface…

I'd like to thank the hospitals of New York for keeping us safe from the Clintons

Wonder what the toppings were. Seems obvious Bill would order meatfeast with extra sausage.

Virtue signalling, and /pol/'s gonna say "PROOF DAT PIZZA GAYTE ISREAL ALL LEFTISTS R PEDOS"

Virtue signalling, and /pol/'s gonna say "PROOF DAT PIZZA GAYTE ISREAL ALL LEFTISTS R PEDOS"

…Virtue signalling?

The clintons are giving pizza to put on a show that theycare about people so they look good

I know, I'm asking what virtue signaling has to do with this

Do you actually believe the clintons do thing out of the goodness of their hearts?

Detroit becomes the next state to feel Trump's wrath, as the Feds are ordered not to send supplies to Michigan.

does it matter? They did something good.

Detroit is a city in the state of Michigan. It's not the state itself.
The article you linked doesn't even mention Detroit specifically, it's talking about Michigan as a whole.

I sometimes don't even notice these errors.

Looks like Michigan is starting to get some much needed medical supplies

Good.
Trump finally realized that this makes him look terrible.

Kentucky hospital chain lays off about 500 employees because they're not bringing in the revenue they used to from elective surgery

They're gonna carry that weight when the Coronavirus starts to ravage their state.

Which employees?

I mean it sucks they lost thier jobs, but if they're the employees that are only trained for the elective surgeries and dont have relevant skills to the quarentine's work load it seems pretty inevitable they would be dropped for the duration.

In 2006 Congress provided supplemental funds to add 104 million N95 masks and 52 million surgical masks in an effort to prepare for the flu pandemic. In 2009, the H1N1 influenza broke out which triggered a nationwide shortage of masks and caused a 2-3 year backlog orders for the N95 variety. 66% of the stockpile was distributed but never replenished under the Obama OR Trump administration.

In January and early Febuary you were called xenophobic , or racist for supporting the idea that there should be a travel ban to China. The WHO, and many major Government Health organizations laid out case after case about why masks won't protect you from the virus. Today we are experiencing the ultimate reality of having to live in a country where half of us are now quarantined. Unemployment claims have risen to an unprecedented 7 million people in the last few days alone.

The WHO was more concerned about upsetting the Chinese leaders than they were about protecting people. Embarrassingly too afraid to even talk about "Taiwan".

We've come to the point where there has been systemic failure across every national and global institution. A complete incompetence from every institution and political leaders. And we will pay the price for it for decades to come.

Meanwhile, because this is election year, we are utterly obsessed with pinning the entirety of the blame on the "opposing side". I see it everywhere.
We cannot trust any authoritative institution to know what is right or best, and each and every single one of them is acting entirely on what information is either available, and more realistically: which information they'd like to pick and choose from.

We've made it a total taboo to question whether our leadership knows what they are doing, whether the policy that is enacted are going to work, or whether we even understand, fully, the long term ramifications of those policies.

And every single one of the politicians, administrators, authority figure is doing everything they can to cover up their own utter incompetency. The news media especially is responsible for misinformation, gate keeping, and condemnation.

We've bowed down and surrendered so many of our own liberties in hopes that they will be restored never once questioning if whether or not we are openly creating a police state under our noses…and for what? The blind belief that we are doing everything we can "to save grandpa"?

In Malibu California, a lone paddle boating individual is now in jail for daring to go out into the ocean, when no one is around, on his paddle boat.

We've shut down half t he state by an arbitrary decree of what is and isn't considered 'essential' businesses.

In Sacramento, Golf Courses are considered essential businesses and are allowed to stay open, meanwhile the local clothing boutique, cannot. The local barbershops are closed.

We are simultaneously spoon fed panic inducing information from every outlet, but told we are literal monsters when we react to that panic by panic buying and hoarding.

And for our politicians' complete and abject failure of doing what was necessary early on, we've shut down half the country, and condemn anyone who brings up the long-term consequences of a blind and arbitrary quarantine as uncaring, unsympathetic, monsters.

Start social campaigns saying how you're not going to sacrifice a single life for t he stock market? Fuck you if you dare bring up the idea that a recession, or a depression if not total economic collapse would be far, far more devastating.

I'm over it. We should all be over it.
We can't trust any of the institutions around us, so why should we abide by the arbitrary rules and laws they put in place?

I'm heading out tomorrow. See ya guys.

>or racist for supporting the idea that there should be a travel ban to China.

did you not even read the first paragraph?
"widespread panic about the disease has surfaced in the form of hostility and racism toward Chinese people and even people who seem to be of Asian descent who are not Chinese."
The article has nothing to do with the travel ban.

>The WHO, and many major Government Health organizations laid out case after case about why masks won't protect you from the virus.

Surgical masks. They have never said n95 masks won't protect you.

>because this is election year, we are utterly obsessed with pinning the entirety of the blame on the "opposing side".

You can't dismiss criticism by just saying "both sides!!!". One side has clearly done worse to handle this than another. Trump and conservatives on TV spend months downplaying the virus and telling the public to ignore self quarantine and to go out to restaurants.

>We've made it a total taboo to question whether our leadership knows what they are doing

excuse me what. Doesn't that totally contradict what you just said?

>Golf Courses are considered essential businesses and are allowed to stay open, meanwhile the local clothing boutique, cannot. The local barbershops are closed.

I don't see the problem with that. Why should a golf course close?

>Fuck you if you dare bring up the idea that a recession, or a depression if not total economic collapse would be far, far more devastating.

I actually haven't see any evidence for that. Suicides go up, sure, but from what I have seen, total deaths actually go down due to people traveling less.

Economic collapse can be recovered from, you cannot bring people back from the dead

You don't think people die due to economic collapses?

In a civilized state, no

less people do.

The article: "The wave of false and inflammatory information and hostile gestures targeting Asian people in the U.S. emerged largely after the Trump administration declared a “state of emergency” and adopted restrictions on *travel to and from China. The travel restrictions came after the World Health Organization released a health advisory that urged education and precaution, but concluded: “WHO advises against the application of any restrictions of international traffic based on the information currently available on this event.”"*

>You can't dismiss criticism by just saying "both sides!!!".

Yes I can. One side downplays the virus because of fears of economic impact. The other side has the Speaker of the House urging people to go to China Town and spend money on local businesses because "muh racism" concerns in late February. The same person also decided it would be a good idea to introduce her own stimulus bill including provisions for “racial pay equity,” corporate board diversity, election auditing, newspaper bailouts, airplane emissions standards, and other partisan wishlist items unrelated to the coronavirus pandemic. And was even criticized by her own.

This is the kind of partisanship I am sick of. This has been a shit show from our leaders on Capitol Hill. They care less about the impact of the coronavirus, and more about how to score their own political points. Both sides in this case are full of total incompetence.

>I don't see the problem with that. Why should a golf course close?

How the hell are Golf Courses essential businesses? Are you completely missing the point about arbitrary classifications about what is and isn't essential businesses?

>I actually haven't see any evidence for that.

My generational cohort, and the one before mine have been royally fucked by the 2008 financial crisis. Among my generational cohort, unemployment was uniquely higher than in any other. We barely, barely finally started getting on our feet towards the mid 2010s, when we are dealing with yet, another financial and economic crisis that is going to primarily effect our economic well being. And yet, here we are, once again being asked to bend over and take it up the ass because "Grandpa's got to live for another 6 months".

That's what, another decade or two of economic destitution, and inability to climb the socio-economic ladder so a tiny fraction of the generation above us get's to live a few more years?

And besides. We are risking an economic collapse akin to what's happening in venezeula, in robert mugabe's zimbabwe, the harsh decade of the 90s in Russia post USSR. Life was absolutely miserable for tens of millions. To this day there are parts of those countries, (I'll speak for Russia as I am more familiar with that) that have never recovered since.

And if you think it's hyperbole- over 50% of the US workforce works in small businesses, the businesses most vulnerable and most likely to not survive several months of forced quarantine by the government.

if only people understood what a thin thread civilized society actually hangs on. Some in America, saw a small glimmer of that in 93' LA Riots, where the police force effectively became completely ineffective. But that was just a small glimmer of what a societal collapse can be.

How many times do people have to say it? It's not a choice between a bunch of people getting sick and dying, and economic collapse. It's a choice between a bunch of people getting sick and dying and the resulting economic collapse, and just economic collapse.

^
no joke. Its not like the economy would still be doing great if tens or hundreds of thousands of people started dying from a new virus.

I'm pretty sure I've given my personal political views on here before, I'm extremely aware of how fragile society itself is
economic could be prevented by government controls, not fucking bailouts

58,000 people are already dead even with quarantines and lock downs, 7,100 in the US. No shutdown at all, the death toll is in the millions, easily. If the 5% death toll when untreated is to be believed, then if even just a quarter of the US gets it, that's still 4 million dead. Just in the US. The idea that the economy would be doing better under those circumstances than it is right now is baffling to an absurd degree. Even a death toll of 2% is still in the millions if we just let everyone get it. This "opening up the government" argument isn't even a debate, it's just an exercise in seeing who can do the math.

The ridiculousness of trying to downplay people stabbing and spitting on asians in the streets due to people saying its not racist to blame china for the disease is really sad to see. Multiple non-chinese asians, koreans and japanese and vietnamese, etc, are getting pretty damn close to hunted for the crime of their eyes being slanted by dumb and scared idiots. The same kind of idiots who are trying to ram trains off the tracks to expose a conspiracy that doesn't exist. Or the people attacking telecom workers and setting 5g towers on fire because of fear mongering that the end times are upon us and putting the blame on someones feet.

Here's some food for thought on your damn equivocation. One side of the political spectrum isn't trying to claim that Corona isn't real, that Corona is anything but a virus, and that active violence and wanton destruction are the only way to fight it. Republicans refuse quarantine, refuse to practice social distancing, and are actively trying to do things that contract or spread the virus because their leadership told them it was a trick by Democrats to crash the economy.

And you're fearmongering right alongside that tune. In the words of our president, Sad. Very sad.

I dont think that we have a choice on deaths.

~1 week infectiveness before and after symptoms? Practically everywhere including the third world? Even assuming it doesnt mutate and become a two or three blow disease like spanish flu we cant stay in quarentine anywhere near long enough to be safe emerging.

Only question would be what runs out first, the nation's money or people's patience; either way this thing is going to pass through us and people are going to die. I think the main utility the quarentine has right now is buying time so we can build up hospital capacity.

@poochyena
>Pelosi tried to limit the affects of racism and xenophobia. thats good. … awesome, thats great
Precisely my point: you are utterly incapable of squaring any blame, or any criticism of your side in terms of how it's handled the current situation. That she's more concerned about pushing a bunch of Democrat agenda items into a stimulus bill designed to tackle the hardships from the virus tells me she cares less about the fallout or victims of the virus, and more about scoring political points for her side.

>It doesn't seem arbitrary to me.
But that's not how our state did it. It was an overnight blanket shut down based on determining what is an essential and non-essential business. If this was instead focused on isolated hotspots of where the virus is, I would believe you. But it isn't. But I will say, in this case, it's probably less arbitrary as there are plenty Sacramento politicians that love their golf courses – and we can't have that be shut down, right? Fuck the rest of the plebs and their parks, beaches, shops, etc.

Thanks for proving my point on partisanship though.

>It's not a choice between a bunch of people getting sick and dying, and economic collapse. It's a choice between a bunch of people getting sick and dying and the resulting economic collapse, and just economic collapse.

Or we could have done what South Korea did – instead of shutting down businesses in masse, resulting in massive damage to our economy, we could have done mass testing, focused quarantines on the most vulnerable people, and the most vulnerable regions. Strict enforcement of quarantines on those infected, etc etc We had a clear model to follow and we didn't follow it. We just shut it down and hope for the best. And if we didn't, if we would have let this continue, how would it have led to economic collapse? How is keeping businesses open going to lead to economic collapse here?

> its not racist to blame china for the disease

How is it racist to blame China for the disease?

>Republicans refuse quarantine, refuse to practice social distancing, and are actively trying to do things that contract or spread the virus because their leadership told them it was a trick by Democrats to crash the economy.

Sure. And they wrong. However, many of these Republicans also live in states where there is comparatively few cases of the actual virus. So few, that it is easy as hell to see how the whole thing is overblown. I'm not saying that they are right to ignore it outright. Nor am I saying that they are right to think that this is overblown. But I can see how they would.

>And you're fearmongering right alongside that tune.

What am I fear mongering here? I'm here to highlight the systemic, across the board incompetence of not just our government officials on the right and the left but health institutions that are sending completely mixed signals, incorrect data, flawed predictions models, law enforcement and regulation that is horrific.

Now we have Florida arresting people without bond for violating the quarantine. Cops arresting people in California for daring to go paddle boating by themselves on an empty beach. While simultaneously releasing prisoners early because of the fears of the virus. This is systemic failure, across the board. And our liberties, freedoms, our economic well being, are the cost of this incompetence.

And to say that I am fear mongering because I dare criticize the systemic failure here?

I hope that when this is all over we bring out the actual guillotine.

I call being Napoleon

> That she's more concerned about pushing a bunch of Democrat agenda items into a stimulus bill designed to tackle the hardships from the virus

I don't understand the problem of having an agenda to tackle the hardships the virus and response to the virus.

>It was an overnight blanket shut down based on determining what is an essential and non-essential business. If this was instead focused on isolated hotspots of where the virus is, I would believe you.

You even pointed out golf courses weren't shut down, so why are you so insistent on the idea that businesses were shut down solely on if they are essential or not?

>Fuck the rest of the plebs and their parks, beaches, shops, etc.

beaches and shops are usually crowded. certain types of parks like playgrounds are too. I think less populated hiking trails should stay open, and they are in nearly every state as far as I'm aware. Maybe every state.

>Or we could have done what South Korea did

But we didn't, because of republican's constant downplaying of the virus, so now thats not an option.

>And if we didn't, if we would have let this continue, how would it have led to economic collapse? How is keeping businesses open going to lead to economic collapse here?

Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people dying would be detrimental to the economy long term. If the businesses were forced shut down now, they would all be voluntarily shutting down now or in a few weeks due to concerns over the virus spreading into their business and employees. So then you still have the shut downs, but now will more deaths.

We absolutely have a choice on deaths. No matter what, more people die with quarantine than without, and we need quarantine specifically to stop the virus from mutating, and lowing the amount of cases at once until a vaccine is made. This absolutely can be managed if the governments stop treating this as a blight on the economy and pass the required emergency protocols. To say "Oh, this is going to kill the same number of people in the end anyway" is defeatist and shortsighted.