Bilingualism
Lefty: As a nation of immigrants, the United States should encourage diversity in all its forms. The Latino peoples are entitled to bring their rich heritage with them when they choose to enter our country. Why shouldn’t they continue to speak Spanish if that’s their preference? We’re supposed to be a democracy, even though our imperialist leaders stole the entire American Southwest from Mexico back in 1848. (I see it as poetic justice that the Southwest is slowly reverting to its Spanish roots. Call it Santa Anna’s revenge.) If we post bilingual signs, create bilingual packaging and add bilingual instructions to our voting booths, how does it inconvenience the rest of us? Nobody is forcing you to learn Spanish, Righty. The ignorant xenophobes who fight bilingualism are sending the worst possible message about America to the rest of the world.
The New Moderate:
It wouldn’t hurt Americans to learn a foreign language or two, including Spanish. Our xenophobic tendencies sometimes get the better of us; a nation so vast and powerful shouldn’t be so provincial. But The New Moderate feels compelled to support English as the lingua franca of these States. Should we make it official? Yup, we probably should.
I know I’m attempting to hold back the tide here. I know I’m taking a stand that eventually will put me on the wrong side of history. I know my rhetoric might strike many of you as shrill, immoderate and even hateful. But I don’t think my position is immoderate at all.
The English-speaking majority shouldn’t have to make special accommodations for immigrants who, for whatever reason, resist learning English. Like Righty, I’m especially galled by the stealth bilingualism I’ve noticed in children’s TV shows aimed at English-speaking kids. What are those children’s shows telling us, anyway? That we’re expected to learn Spanish because Hispanics will never learn English? If so, they’re making ridiculous demands of the English-speaking majority while unconsciously insulting the Hispanic community.
Why should the rise of Spanish as a second American language trigger our inner alarm systems? The reasons are many, but let’s start here. Suppose the next great wave of immigrants came to us from Russia, and that those newcomers balked at learning English. Would we adopt trilingualism to accommodate them? How about an incoming wave from India — would we feel obligated to add Hindi, Bengali and other Indian dialects to our already overcrowded signs? Do you see the point?
But bilingualism is more than just the first step toward out-of-control multilingualism. All those bilingual signs, packages, ATMs, automated phone messages, voting booths and TV shows send Latino immigrants the misleading message that they can survive in the U.S. without learning English. Why bother to sort through all those inconsistent English pronunciations and gnarly English spellings when the U.S. makes it so easy to get by en español? The problem is that American college professors aren’t planning to give bilingual lectures anytime soon. If Hispanic immigrants want to advance beyond laboring jobs, they have to be ready for the all-English environment of American higher education.
When immigrants settle in a new land, they should be eager to embrace their adopted nation and learn as much about it as they can — including its language. It doesn’t take more than a few weeks for an observant foreigner to pick up the essential words and phrases. Hi. Bye. What? Where? How much? Help! By six months they should be able to hold simple conversations in the language of Shakespeare and George W. Bush. No excuses. The older folks might be pardoned for preferring the comforts of their native tongue. And The New Moderate encourages all hyphenated Americans to preserve their ancestral language and customs at home. But those who expect to work in the U.S. and attend school in the U.S. should learn the language of the U.S. — and until further notice at least, that language is English.
Some on the left (including our friend Lefty) note with satisfaction that the rise of Spanish in the U.S. represents a kind of historical justice, a reversion of stolen territory to its original tongue. But keep in mind that Spanish was the language of conquerors, not natives. (Anyone out there remember the conquistadors?) Nobody is striking a blow for the underdog by encouraging the acceptance of Spanish as a second language in these States.
A few decades ago the province of Quebec had the audacity to remove English from all its previously bilingual signs, even though its territory has been ruled by the British since 1763. (It’s been nearly 250 years, mes amis — time you got used to it!) The United States would clearly be more justified than Quebec in limiting its communications to a single language — the language of its founders and government. English.
Ultimately, America just can’t afford to deal with the prospect of nations within a nation. One of the great strengths of the U.S. has been its ability to absorb those huddled masses of immigrants and transform them into something called Americans. That transformation is critical to American identity. Without it, the U.S. will most likely decline into a fragmented, factional (think of Iraq or the former Yugoslavia) and depressingly third-rate nation.
Bias against speaking Spanish in the U.S. should never be equated with (or transformed into) prejudice against Hispanics. The New Moderate knows several Latino immigrants who speak fluent English and have adapted themselves to American life in the best immigrant tradition. I’m on their side (assuming they’re here legally), as all moderates should be. We can only hope they carry more clout in their community than those who like to pretend they’re still south of the border.
Summary: No special status should be granted to Spanish or the languages of other recent immigrants, who should learn English if they want to advance in American society.
THE NEW MODERATE 
*** “When immigrants settle in a new land, they should be eager to embrace their adopted nation and learn as much about it as they can — including its language.”
Having lived for 36 years with a wonderful woman who arrived in NYC knowing no English – let alone “American”, and knowing what her and her entire family did to embrace the language of the country they chose to come to …. I say – “Hear Hear !”
Dudah: From what I can see, the recent Spanish-speaking immigrants aren’t learning English because our country makes it so easy for them to get by in Spanish. We’ve never done this for a single immigrant group until now. I don’t know if it’s because of the sheer numbers, or because we’ve become almost insanely “sensitive” to the needs of others. The liberals who encourage the use of Spanish probably can’t see that their very liberalism is preventing Hispanic immigrants from moving ahead in American society. You really can’t get a college education (or a decent job) here unless you know English.
From what I’ve heard, the second generation is picking up English. But as long as the immigrants keep flowing into the U.S., I suspect there’ll eventually be a tipping point at which we’ll have to start learning Spanish.
Indeed. There are many countries that can be multi-lingual and still work, but in any country of good size there still ends up having to be one language that rises to the fore that virtually everyone knows. The logistics get impossible once you get a large enough population. America is far too large and diverse to work without an official language If we don’t nip this trend in the bud, we will be regretting it later.
But to get an opposing viewpoint let me refer to xkcd: http://xkcd.com/84/
English is the primary language of the educated(rich&powerful)and if you come to a country that almost exclusively speaks it, you must learn it. This isn’t Europe, with six contries and 12 languages on every border. That said, we could learn from the European language education system, starting with teaching proper English, ya heard?
As a new explorer coming in the US of North American continent, I have to say that you have to learn the language of “native conquerors” if you want to live with the rich and powerful of this land. If you have to explore and live in the South American continent, you have to learn the language of their “native conquerors”, which is Spanish and Portuguese.
Now, the borders of US are well established and the language is an English dialect, which replaced the languages of natives. Should people from South America come in the US of North America *and live here*, then they have to learn the “native conquerors” language (English dialect), as they learned their “native conquerors” language (Spanish and /or Portuguese).
Why should Spanish be spoken as a second language when living in the US? Is Spanish language a truly heritage when living in South America and should be preserved when living in the US? I truly doubt so, for Mexicans are speaking the language of their conquerors, NOT the language of their ancestors.Why Mexicans, when they want to live in the US, don’t leave a conqueror language (Spanish), for another conqueror language (English dialect)?
Arguing that California is a Mexican territory is like arguing that Spaniards have the right to have California. There are not Aztecs or Inca population who want to reclaim their territories, there is a *new* mixed culture (Aztec, Inca, Spanish) that don’t want to create a *new* mixed culture (Aztec, Inca, English) in the US, and all that NOT because Spanish language is a “heritage”, but because of laziness.
I may be harsh in calling people who want to come from South America in North America “lazy” to learn the new conquerors language, but look at the over 30 nations coming from all the world in the US and speaking English. Their children children don’t speak anymore their native language and still keep some of their cultural traditions.
I am not against learning other languages but why one of them should be Spanish?
Agreed, Valdo. Nobody (except us) seems to notice that Spanish is the language of conquerors. I don’t see any of the immigrants trying to resurrect the Aztec language (Nahuatl, I think). They’re just unwilling to accommodate to their new country, and their new country is bending over backwards to make them feel at home. A lot of the bilingualism we see is nothing more than crass commercialism: stores like Sears display bilingual signs because it means more business from the Hispanic segment of their demographic.
I agree with righty, mostly. However, for one brief shining moment, in 4th grade (1958-1959), the Dallas Independent School District taught Spanish in elementary classrooms. I loved it. My nephew was learning Spanish in pre-school and kindergarten, and you would love to have heard his pronunciation. It was perfect. He glowed with pride as we all listened to him in surprised awe. Those were Montessori schools. Public school put an end to his Spanish-learning. His Greek pronunciation was also perfect. Kids are natural language learners. They just sponge it up, no problem! They don’t learn language because it’s politically correct. You know why they learn it? Peer pressure. They don’t care what adults think. Public school for young children, in my opinion, puts kids to sleep. Bilingualism gives them the gift of looking at life in more than one way. They become careful listeners, observant, empathetic as opposed to loud, obnoxious grabbers. Just understand that these education debates are created by adults for their entertainment. You should read all of Maria Montessori’s books on education. She is the only educator that approached the project with a method. What nerve! Of course, she was an M.D., a Ph.D., an anthropologist and a spiritual/religious person. Her picture was on some denomination of Italian paper money. Can’t remember which one, but I have one my desk. (Would Americans put a picture of a scientist or educator on a piece of money?) Anyway, Mussolini closed all her schools in Italy, so she went to India and opened schools there, and in Mexico. Having whispered something complimentary about Texas schools, I have to say that they were segregated and corporal punishment was A-okay, both of which tendencies I find repulsive. I remember a boy getting spanked with a paddle in front of the class in 1st grade. I had no idea what he had done but resolved on the spot to watch my breath. The adult involved in the spanking looked ridiculous! Textbook revisionism in this way is a waste of money, but, hey, the adults find it entertaining. Charge elementary school teachers to teach in a way that interests children, and they’d all have to go home. I’ve seen them going nuts about their new “material” — stickers, et cetera. Gad! It’s expensive to set up a Montessori classroom, but you only have to do it once, and all the children read by age six, most before then. They learn to read together, using the Montessori material. Most of the new junk every fall that comes out for teachers is sort of derived from Montessori materials (in new colors). But there is no sense in arguing any of these things with school boards! They are going to do what they damn well want to, and they take great pride in it. Besides, Montessori classrooms in elementary schools would put thetextbook publishers out of business, and that would be hard on the adults who are absorbed by them.
As it is, _no_ adult or child I’ve met has learned to read in school. (And my school’s standardized tests put it in the “unaccredited” category. I however, learned to sight read (none of the phonetic crap) when I was ~7, and read at college levels in middle school, when 60% of my fellow classmates at the time read _below_ a third grade level. But then again, my family had money for literally thousands of books, a there was always a parent to teach me to read or read with me. Now I’m in a language class I’ve stuck with for years, and unlike my 7 year old self, I don’t find it easy at all. In fact, compared to my younger self, four years of teaching saw me go from large-font picture books to 900 page chapter books. Four years of High School foreign language, and if I was compared to a native speaker, I’d be considered autistic.
Public schools _do not_ focus on education. They focus on following their little processes for daycare of students. The money isn’t usually the problem either; they spend ridiculous sums of money…on hall monitors and gadgets. For instance, my school gave every student a laptop to use. (The damn things were useless, you couldn’t print, and the internet almost never worked, they were expensive paper weights.) They even spent a full $100 _million_ on a new building. Then they went over budget and started firing art and language teachers… but while they circled the financial drain, the administration felt that they had to hire half a dozen security guards to keep students in school. The schools have turned into bureaucracies, all “conformity” and processes, not learning.
TK: I agree that there’s way too much standardization and bureaucracy in public education, but in the end it all depends on the quality of the individual schools, teachers and students. I’m amazed by the rigorous education my son is getting in kindergarten, and his classmates are surprisingly sharp. Of course, he’s lucky enough to be attending a good public school.
In schools with a lot of unruly students, the teachers have to focus more on keeping order. Meanwhile, nobody gets educated. (I wonder whatever happened to reform schools. The troublemakers should just be yanked out of public school and “re-educated” elsewhere.)
Linda: I’m all in favor of studying foreign languages. Our junior high school had a fantastic four-language “sampler” course spread over two years. We took a semester each of German, Latin, French and Spanish so we could decide on the language we wanted to study in high school. (I loved Latin but correctly predicted that all those declensions would be a pain… so I opted for French.) What amazes me is that I still remember so much of the three languages I decided not to study.
What I object to is “stealth bilingualism” — the creeping infiltration of Spanish into our daily lives, with the implication that we’d all better learn it because it’s the language of the future in the U.S. Seems like a misguided effort to appear liberal, open-minded and generous, but we’re unconsciously keeping the immigrants in their place (as unskilled laborers) and, at the same time, opening a kind of linguistic Pandora’s Box. Once Spanish gains a foothold as a legitimate second language here, there’s no stuffing it back inside the box.
Heh, as a liberal San Franciscan, I have to say that not all progressives are on the multi-cultural bandwagon (at least not this one). When I visited Russia, I learned Russian, when I visited Mexico, I learned Spanish. I expect the same courtesy from those who visit (or plan to stay a long time) here: please learn English.
All students enrolled in public schools should be taught primarily in English, no matter what their home langauge is. Currently, some charters schools have implemented Mandarin, Spanish, or Hebrew immersion curriculums. That means that all subjects are taught in these foreign languages. I would imagine (although don’t know for sure) that an appreciation of the history and culture of China is taught in the Mandarin school, an appreciation of the history and culture of Spain and Mexico are taught in the Spanish school, and an appreciation of the history and culture of Israel is taught in the Hebrew school. Are the history and culture of America taught in these tax-supported institutions? Is Shakespeare taught? The battles of the Civil War? Is Hemingway read? I have no idea.
I don’t mean to suggest that American students shouldn’t learn foreign languages, but publically supported schools should not be teaching love and appreciation for foreign countries.
Canada is bilingual (French-English) because some of the conquerors were speaking French, then some were speaking English.
Most of the North America was occupied by England and most of the South America by Spain.
Now, there is a buffer territory between North and South America where natives were forced to speak Spanish, but later, part of this territory, was conquered by English speaking army.
The natives are, already speaking Spanish, now are forced to speak English as they were forced to speak Spanish. The natives, in the conquered by English speaking, would like to speak English if they were not so much “immersed” so much in the Spanish speaking Catholic religion.
“Bilingualism” has nothing to do with cultural heritage, it is mostly English Protestants language against Spanish Catholic language and in the middle are natives who are kicked by both “grand” civilizations : English speaking and Spanish speaking.
That’s what I think from my immigrant point of view. And by the way, Mexicans are not immigrants, just natives who are kicked back and forth between two conquerors: Anglo-Saxons and Spanish Armada
Where I am all of the Federal government offices have Spanish speaking workers, being bi-lingual is a requirement to getting hired. As well as objecting to this as prejudicial and unfair, we have another problem. One-third of our population is Russian speaking. All of their bi-lingual, Spanish speaking employees don’t understand a word of Russian. The Federal Government requirement that the employees speak Spanish has meant that no one was hired who spoke Russian! Now they have to hire interpreters by the hour whenever Russian people come in and they have a Russian interpreter that they route phone calls to who takes messages. What a mess! The local city governments (all 3 cities) have one or more Russian bi-lingual employees and no Spanish speaking ones because that is what we need here. Our High School just got a Spanish teacher for the first time ever. Apparently the Feds demanded it as part of the schools “improvement.” We would be better off teaching our kids Russian so that the two-thirds can speak to the one-third. And back to the original idea…English is the first and foremost language of this country, the Official Language.
I agree with most of this article, but I feel like I have to react when you wrote that
it’s time for Quebec to give up French, because its territory has been ruled by the British since 1763.
First, Quebec, as it’s creation, was only French speaking. The fact that they have been conquered doesn’t mean they have to adopt the language of their new leaders.
This situation is very different from the one where immigrant arrived in a new country.
The French canadian were there first, and, at the beginning, they outnumbered the English-speaking canadian.
But even if you think they should have embraced English, it would have been almost impossible to do so, even after 250 years, because the process of changing the language of an entire population (an homogeneous one) is difficult and cannot be done as fast as you may think.
If you travel to europe you’ll see that many minorities have kepts their old language, even centuries after being integrated in a larger entity.
For instance, the Spanish Province of Catalonia has merged with Spain in the 15th century, and Spanish has been imposed as the only official language at the end of the 17th century.
But, despite the efforts of the spanish government, the province has never lost it’s orginal language, the catalan.
If you’ve ever have the chance to travel there, you’ll find that the main spoken language is the catalan (even though everything is translated and almost everyone understand both spanish and catalan).
So my point is, you shouldn’t expect a population to change language just because you told them to. As long as they will find a community big enough where they can use only their own language, they won’t adopt the new one.
That’s why Quebec has kept French has unique and official language.
And that’s, I think, also why the new Hispanic immigrants don’t adopt English as fast as the immigrants from the previous century did. Because they were able to create very large communities were Spanish is the main language.
Voilà! I’m sorry if I went a little off topic,
and also forgive my poor language, as you may have understood, I’m not a native English speaker.
un ami,
Arthur: I appreciate your good-natured response to a very sensitive topic for French-speaking Canadians. One point I need to clear up: I wasn’t implying that Quebec should convert to English… sorry if I gave that impression. No, Quebec would lose its distinctive character if the French language were to disappear, and I’m all in favor of Quebec keeping its “esprit francaise.”
Instead, I was reacting to the removal of English from the formerly bilingual signs in Quebec. It struck me as a deliberate gesture of defiance toward Anglophone Canadians and other English-speaking visitors. That’s why I said, “It’s been 250 years, mes amis… time you got used to it.”: In other words, while Quebec deserves to keep its distinctive French character and language, it also needs to remember that it’s part of a predominantly English-speaking country. C’est tout. To me, that seems like the ideal moderate stance between assimilation and separatism.
Bilingualism. It’s a concept. It’s plain and simple. When in Rome……
If people want to immigrate to the US then they will have to learn English if they want to find a decent paying job. If not…so be it. Americans are not afforded such luxuries when they re-locate abroad. If anyone says this isn’t true, please let me know where we Americans can go and live and make good money when we don’t speak the language. Yet OUR students are EXPECTED to learn a foreign language in school. Why? To accommodate EVERYONE ELSE.
Don’t get me wrong. I took four years of Spanish in high school and it was my major in college. But that doesn’t mean EVERYONE ELSE wants to learn a foreign language! And some people are hopelessly LOST at it.
A friend of mine immigrated from Poland to Australia LONG before the CONCEPT of bilingual education was even considered. She was 16 when her family moved. She had to go to high school in Australia and LEARN ENGLISH with no “bilingual education”. By 17 she spoke English FLUENTLY. After that they moved to the US.
We need to stop the coddling. At the same time, as has been pointed out, if over time immigration demographics change the “language mosaic” in this country we MAY all have to adapt….but then by THAT time MOST people will probably be bilingual ANYWAY.
My point is no one should be forced. Just understand what you’re up against if you don’t adapt.
I had a bumper sticker made that reads “live here? learn the language.”
If you feel the same way, have one made too. I ordered it online; cost $2.99, no tax or shipping, came in 5 days.
I drive through heavily populated latino areas all day long, hoping they understand my meaning.
I’m SOOOOO sick of seeing everything translated to spanish.
I taught esl for one year, so some are interested in learning, but my opinion the majority are not.
I think you’d be more successful if your bumper sticker would read:
“Vivo aqui? Aprenda la lengua!”
I thought about that, but I wanted to spread the word to Americans, and to any Hispanics who can read it, that I am voicing my opinion and hope that others will join in. I wish I could afford a billboard. I still may have one printed in Spanish. The day I do that…look out.
In Louisiana (former French colony) we have a large indigenous French-speaking population and a statewide French Immersion program; my two children are or have been in it, and I think it’s very successful. I think it’s good for educated persons to know more than one language, even if only for self-edification . . . not that I am the poster boy for speaking a non-English language, tho’ I can read French and Spanish well.
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Hi, have you installed Syndication on your site? I cant find the link.
I agree with your post whole-heartedly. The immigrant populations should be asked be adapt to the language, culture and laws of their host country. Sadly, throughout Europe today, the host countries are desperately trying to alter their own customs and culture to accommodate the immigrants (especially Muslim immigrants)
Note that Europeans going to Islamic countries trying to establish western cultural values would never happen. Some of them might even be killed. It’s blatant cowardice on part of Europe to give up its cultural heritage of hundreds of years so easily.
A lot of different people commented back in 2014.
That seems to be when there were not unlimited emails multiple times a day . There were many that were really “moderates” and not so conservative or liberal that we ave left now.
Bloomberg has spent over $400M and has move from about 4% support to about 19%. That is before his opponent get a hold and begin exposing him. These are not comments when he was a dumb kid in achool, these were just a few years ago.
Stop and frisk…You can not get many people to buy apologies the really are not apologies
Comments about blacks and latinos not knowing how to work.
Sexist comments..Can you attack someone for issues you do yourself?
China comments. ““The Communist Party wants to stay in power in China and they listen to the public,”..really, can he sell that?
So when he gets in front of Sanders, Warren, Biden and Buttigieg and they begin their assualt, what percent of his supporters will begin questioning their support?
Well I’ll be.
The democrats think anyone can do anything.
Biden thinks coal miners can be taught to do computer coding
Now it comes out Bloomy thinks anyone can be a farmer. Just stick seeds in the ground and feed the world!
https://www.newsweek.com/mike-bloomberg-teach-anyone-farm-less-gray-matter-modern-jobs-1487633
Who would have thought. Wonder why California has so many homeless with the ease of learning something new
This is getting very interesting. I think he needs to go back home because there is way too much baggage that is coming up. And his refusal to let women out of NDA’s, even though it would be legally difficult, was not a good look for him in the eyes of most people who think that would be easy.
And I agree with him about males in female locker rooms, but most progressives dont unless they have a daughter themselves. Republicans would be chastised by every liberal news outlet coast to coast if they said what Bloomy said.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/dawnstaceyennis/2020/02/18/mike-bloomberg-described-trans-women-as-some-man-wearing-a-dress-in-2016-what-about-now/#3217193040b6
I watched the Dem debate last night. Hard to believe that any of these people could win a fair election against Trump.
I thought that Bloomberg said things that made sense. Of course this was after the others took him to the woodshed on his elitism and hypocrisy. Of course, a gazillionaire with a dozen homes, several dozen cars, 3 or 4 airplanes, and a couple of helicopters will always seem hypocritical claiming that the rest of us need to stop using fossil fuels And the guy with 7 fulltime armed bodyguards will always sound like a hypocrite when he tells other to give up their guns.
He’s running in the wrong party. But, of course, he’s really a party of one, so, he’ll always be in the wrong party. He is bribing all kinds of organizations and people to support him, which should be a violation of campaign finance law…or law in general… but the media stays silent because Trump.
Bloomberg also defended China on carbon emissions, which the moderators totally let slide
But, honestly, the rest of these people sound insane ~ even Klobuchar, who seems less insane. But, what she lacks in insanity, she makes up by being whiny and preachy.
I did not hear ONE question on: gun control, abortion, transgenderism or foreign policy, to name a few issues that these clowns claim are of primary importance. Well, there was that spat over Klobuchar not knowing the Mexican president’s name, from which she excused herself by saying she had been very tired. Aren’t presidents always tired? Is she gonna forget stuff all the time? What about the 3am phone call?
I thought Biden did better than his usual. He still sounds angry and looks like a deer in the headlights, though.
Mayor Pete is very smarmy and smug. When Klobuchar sarcastically said ” I know you’re perfect, Pete”, I totally agreed with where she was coming from.
And Warren was her usual self, although she was very effective at going after Bloomy.
Sanders actually looks insane. Listening to him, I thought, that he blames everything on corporate greed and billionaires, which makes it easy for him to answer any question. He doesn’t have to know anything at all. There’s a problem? Bernie’s answer: get rid of corporations and rich people. And have government healthcare.
Priscilla, I did not watch any of it. I knew it was a “get Mikie” night and something more important was on TV anyway. Wake Forest ( 6 miles away and my wifes college) v Georgia Tech followed by N.C.State v Duke. Those started at 7 and ended at 11. Basketball is king in N.C.
But Bloomberg letting China pollution slide would be a show stopper for me. I have bitched for years about the unequal treatment of the USA and China in the Paris Agreement. I have basically bitched about any agreement, most recently NAFTA, trade with China, climate agreements, immigration, worlds policeman, etc etc where America gets screwed and the hamburger when others get the steak.
If American’s elect an individual that enters into any agreement that I may or may not support myself, It should have equal treatment of all parties involved. That is why I have supported Trumps policies WITHOUT supporting Trump. And yes Jay, one can do that! No agreement should bury the ax and have that end up in our back!
These damn White Supremecists Nazi’s !!!
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/02/criminalizing_dissent.html
Bolton speaks on impeachment – and it is not what Dems want to hear.
While Bolton said nothing about what he would testify to or what his book actually says,
And I am sure the media will pretend everything else he says does not strongly suggest his testimony would not have been “damning”.
But Bolton said his testimony would not change the outcome, and Democrats screwed up any hope of getting atleast a few republicans votes in the house by running a ghastly partisan process.
https://apnews.com/1c269df302e881e972137be6c128c88a
Bolton has been long forgotten by the Dems ~ he’s of no use to them anymore.
Bolton is an attention grabber. Always has been, always will be. He will do anything to ge pertinent.
Jay, careful how you react to Dave’s comments
“Of course it does to you… Even though Comey WASN’T involved in it… nitwit Trumpism in action…”
Are you sure? This was written almist a year ago.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/how-robert-mueller-and-james-comeys-best-friend-sent-rod-blagojevich-to-prison
Trump is going to be looking at everything that comey mueller Fitzgerald McCabe strzok Weismann was part of and looking for opportunities to commute or pardon
At is purely political/personal
I do not support that
But I am no joining jay in the
Impeach now !!!
Everything trump does that I do not like is not the end of the world
And generally I favor trump engaging in broad use of pardons
Most of trumps pardons are pretty good
I can live with the fact that trump is going to use his. Pardon power to undo as much as possible these opponents life work
These were not good people
Ron you’re getting as loony as the other two Trumpsters here.
If you believe that old article, published in a right-slanted Trump paper, written by a Trump propagandist, is worthy of serious consideration, your metamorphous into a Trump-Pod Person is nearly complete. The Donnie tendrils have nearly covered your face. Agggg… they’re slithering Into your ears!
Really, it’s pathetic to suggest Comey was involved in that Investigation from a far distance because he was friends with the actual chief investigator. As it is just plain dumb for Donnie Dope-ass to suggest those Investigators targeted Blogo as part of some deep-state scheme.
Forrest Gump was prescient: Stupid is as Stupid does – as you Trump enables keep proving; as the Bernie Bros keep proving.
I’ll leave you with this, appropriate for the bilingualism title:
Trump es un gilipollas
Trump ist ein Arschloch
Trump är en skitstövel
Trump est un connard
Trump è uno stronzo
Трамп мудак
Toranpu wa kirainahito
Tè lǎng pǔ shìgè húndàn
Is arsehole é Trump
טראמפ הוא חור
Jay has quoted judge nap on stone before
I do not think nap goes far enough
I know judges do it
But you do not gag a defendant
You can gag lawyers
You can gag or sequester jurors
You can not infringe on the rights of defendants
I would note nap is saying Jackson has shown evidence of bias
And nap who is not a trump fan is saying trump must pardon stone
My device that I use will not allow links like this for some reason. Can only view if I use desktop or go to it on wordpress, which is impossible to find after a day or two of comments. But I have hear Judge Nap multiple times and agree totally with him.on the stone case. Just reference my comment 3-5 days ago.
Judge Jackson: “[Stone] was not prosecuted for standing up for the president; he was prosecuted for covering up for the president.”
Everyone knows it. Even the replacement DOJ lawyers wanted Stone sentenced to the original pre-Barr interference. Stone like his pal Trump is a lying deceitful scumbag. Cohen perjured himself before Mueller. He pleaded guilty to that. GOP hypocrite mother-humpers who cried crocodile tears about B. Clinton’s impeachment for perjury want to absolve this scum ball for the same action.
The truth still matters, Judge Jackson said, and “Roger Stone’s insistence that it doesn’t, his belligerence, his pride in his own lies are a threat to … our democracy.”
That same judgement of threats to our democracy applies to Trump, and Barr. And to you subservient tools who encourage the politicalization of the DOJ, and the intelligence agencies, with political toadies loyal to party and president, but treasonous to the nation.
For the record: Barr is another bullshiter in the Susan Collins mold.
Barr’s threatened to quit if Trump kept tweeting about DOJ cases; Trump immediately continued to tweet, about the Stone trial, the judge, the jurors.
DisBARR Bill; re-Impeach Despicable Don
By the way, I am changing my registration from GOP to independent. That way I can take advantage of the democrat ballots and vote for Sanders in the N.C. March primary. If they are dumb enough to allow this to happen, I will do my part in repaying some democrats for giving us some Trump primary votes in 2016.
Naw, you’re playing devil’s advocate, you actually wouldn’t do anything that creepy, Ron…
DOJ has denied that Barr made such a threat. Maybe he did, maybe he did not. But he did not do so publicly.
Publicly he has stated that he is NOT resigning.
Regardless, you are once again echoing news that is not reliably sourced.
But you do that all the time.
“Judge Jackson: “[Stone] was not prosecuted for standing up for the president; he was prosecuted for covering up for the president.”
That would be grounds for appeal – as Mueller reported – there was nothing to coverup.
Jackson’s remarks make it CLEAR that she was politically biased – because there is no crime that Stone could cover up.
Her statement was proof of bias.
“Everyone knows it. Even the replacement DOJ lawyers wanted Stone sentenced to the original pre-Barr interference.”
Both false statement, and false facts. The sentencing guidelines are clear, the Mueller attorney sentencing recomendations were improper and outside the guidelines.
” Stone like his pal Trump is a lying deceitful scumbag.”
That would cover all of washington. And everyone in the debate last night.
Regardless it is not a crime.
“Cohen perjured himself before Mueller. He pleaded guilty to that.”
There is no such crime as “perjury before Mueller”
Cohen made false statements to congress, but his primary offense was Taxi medallion fraud.
“GOP hypocrite mother-humpers who cried crocodile tears about B. Clinton’s impeachment for perjury want to absolve this scum ball for the same action.”
Not even close to the same actions. Stone did not commit perjury. Clinton did – Twice.
Actual perjury has elements.
One of those is that the misstatements must be material.
Another is that an opportunity must exist to correct.
Errors of recollection rarely constitute perjury.
Stone AND HIS LAWYERS, requested and were denied access to transcripts of his congressional testimony.
The purportedly perjured testimony was EXCULPATORY and it was about evidence proving there was no crime.
I am not aware of anyone ever being prosecuted for perjury before on that.
“The truth still matters, Judge Jackson said, and “Roger Stone’s insistence that it doesn’t, his belligerence, his pride in his own lies are a threat to … our democracy.””
In otherwords the Judge is punishing Stone harshly for continuing to correctly assert his own innocence.
Regardless – how is it that Stone’s pride or “lies” are a threat to our democracy ?
Will democracy collapse because Stone failed to testify that there were texts and emails that proved that Stone’s only source for anything regarding Wikileaks was Credico ? And Credico was no source at all ?
How is it that democracy is threatened by finding out as rational people knew from the start that there was no “there there” ?
Jay – what exactly is the “lie” that stone purportedly told that is “a threat to our democracy” ?
How exactly does democracy fall under threat because Stone was less than perfectly precise in his testimony about acts that were not crimes ?
When Stone testified to congress, the Mueller report was already public, Stone had testified to Mueller for 70+hours. There is no charge that Stone lied to Mueller.
All of Congress had read the Mueller report.
Stone;s testimony did not contradict the mueller report.
To the extent there were any errors in Stone’s testimony it is that he failed to recall texts and emails that were exculpatory from devices he had quit using years before and that were no longer in his possession.
The only way you can ever get a conviction on this is from a corrupt jury with a corrupt judge.
“That same judgement of threats to our democracy applies to Trump, and Barr. And to you subservient tools who encourage the politicalization of the DOJ, and the intelligence agencies, with political toadies loyal to party and president, but treasonous to the nation.”
What is the threat ? We spent 3 years determining that ALL your nonsense regarding Trump was LIES.
And you are STILL repeating those ?
It is extremely well established at this point that the FBI/DOJ were “politicized” under Obama/Holder/Lynch.
It is also very well established that the Mueller team was heavily politicized.
As I have noted repeatedly before.
Horowitz confirmed that by Mid Jan 2017 reasonable suspicion of Trump/Russia collustion no longer existed.
What you still can not grasp is that means EVERYTHING after was illegal, improper and because those involved did not end it quickly on realization of this – political.
You are on the wrong side of this. Barr frankly is not even close to aggressive enough.
The Horowitz report makes it clear that Trump COULD have fired Mueller and shutdown the entire SC investigation – LEGITIMATELY – you can not obstruct injustice.
“Washington (CNN)The intelligence community’s top election security official delivered a briefing to lawmakers last week warning them that the intelligence community believes Russia is already taking steps to interfere in the 2020 election with the goal of helping President Donald Trump win, three sources familiar with the matter tell CNN.“
When Trump found out the report was given to both Republicans AND Democrats, he removed the top security official. In Trump-World only loyal Republicans should be briefed on national security intel.
1). CNN ?
2), CNN ?
3). Do we have to go through this nonsense again ?
Yeah, Really the Russians want to help Trump ?
Because he has sanctioned the crap out of them ?
Because he guaranteed Europe’s supply of NG ?
Because he move the US not merely to energy independence but to an energy Exporter ?
Because he opposed Russian Pipelines to Europe ?
Because he is encouraging the EU to better defend itself against Russia ?
Because he has had US Warships go toe 2 toe with Russian warships ?
Because he has angered Putin by withdrawling from the INF Treaty ?
Because of myriads of other reasons.
And possibly because of the biggest Dis of all – Trump (as part of a decade long shift in US foreign policy) does not think Russia is the US’s most significant potential foreign adversary – because they are not.
The british “Daily mail” will have more “influence” on the 2020 election that Russia.
Please, Please name a single Person who is going to change their vote in 2020 or did change their vote in 2016 because of “Russian interferance” ?
BTW – even the 2016 Russian Influence story is coming apart – Brennan testified that the Steele Dossier was not part of the ICA assessment – it was. Brennan testified that there were Foreign sources indicating interferance – yet Five Eyes NEVER sent an y “Russian Influence” information.
Foreign countries including Russia do shit in every election – 2016 was no different, nor was it unusual.
Dave, they dont have a message!!!
Russian interferred with election favoring Trump
Trump racist against muslims, latinos (Walls and travel restriction)
Trump tariffs are damaging economy
Trump colluded with Russia.
Trump pressured Ukraine.
Trump obstructed justice
Obama economic policies led to this recovery……..
……..damn, noting is sticking………
OK..until we find something else rewind…
Russians are interfering to re-elect Trump
They have -0- policies to run against, so they are flooding the liberal press with this stuff again.
The question they should be asking is…. ” what are we doing wrong when nothing we do is sticking. Even without Russia, why arnt more people buying our message? Why is the leader of our party today a democrat socialist”?
Again I will reiterate. I think Trump is the scourge of the earth. I would not go to the white house, like championship teams if invited. I would not walk across the street to shake hands if offerred. I would not allow him in my house if requested. He stands for everything wrong in an individual I have always despised.
But I can separate persona from policy and his policy agenda is the closest to my beliefs since Ronald Reagan. And over time, these change since the environment changes. Military involvement during the cold war was very different than today with the middle east the hot spot. Trade much different with China being the problem compared to Ross Perot describing NAFTA as a great “sucking sound” of jobs going to Mexico.
The democrats cant criticize Trump economics, so they try to abscond with his policies and make them theirs. And rewind previous charges that did not stick previously.
Maybe this claim for once is true.
If so will anyone notice ?
I have said already Bloombergs attack adds are not working.
It is not that they are not good, it is that no one is listening.
Most everyone has made up their minds about Trump,
and if you haven’t – unsourced weak crap from the media is not going to get you there.
What are they doing wrong when nothing is sticking ?
That is easy. Once you burn your credibility and your integrity no one pays attention to you.
You are free to think of Trump as you please.
I am not voting for him.
But he is still not the scourge of the earth.
He is one of the better presidents in my lifetime – despite his flaws.
I understand that your not the same never trumper as Jay or the left of the media.
And I am not asking you to vote for Trump.
Just suggesting being objective.
Ultimately the one thing about him that is the most annoying is the least consequential.
While Obama and Bush were far less annonying, they were arguably eloquent and very careful about their words.
But they are also failed presidents – unless you think a D is a passing grade.
Trump is not. He is not as good as he says he is, but he is better overall than the last two.
And we needed that – badly.
And I do not think the other GOP choices would have been nearly as good – overall.
Well for some, this is really going to be the election to beat all elections. We have two old men, both that could cash it in tomorrow, one that is impossible to accept as a person, with very good policies running against a man ( unless the democrat machine steals it from him) that is like everyones grampa, really nice man with.just awful policies that would damage the country for decades.
And according to the latest news, both are supported by the Russians at this point.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/bernie-sanders-briefed-by-us-officials-that-russia-is-trying-to-help-his-presidential-campaign/2020/02/21/5ad396a6-54bd-11ea-929a-64efa7482a77_story.html
Now I know the anti Trumpers will say supporting Sanders is indirect support for Trump, but I ask, ” Will the others use this against him and since these are unnamed source links, are these in the deep state intelligence community leaking this so Sanders loses and someone more formidable can run against Trump?
This election was over the day after the 2016 election when Democrats instead of trying to figure out why they did not resonate with voters spent the next 4 years in outrage because they beleive they should have won, and therefore the only way they could have lost was malfeasance.
The only consequential aspect of this election – is whether the results will be bad enough for democrats to learn what they did not learn in 2016.
Everything you do not like about Trump is a successful REACTION to the left.
Trump will thrive and win so long as democrats concentrate so much power in their own left.
If Democrats change – if they disempower the “hate speach” of their own left,
“Trumpism” will either die or Republicans will lose.
How is it that you see this taking place ?
Are the Russians going to fork with the voting machines ?
I opposed HAV in 2001. I remain opposed to computerized voting machines.
So long as you have paper ballots, that you preserve, there is no form of manipulation of the vote count that will not be caught.
Are they going to put a gun to peoples head and force them to vote for Trump ?
Or is this more of the nonsense of “influence” – by which you really mean “persuade”.
Did you actually look at the 2016 Russian adds ? Do you think they persuaded anyone ?
The media is HEAVILY influencing the election against Trump – do we need to shut them down ?
Grow up – this is nonsense.
It is nonsense that is likely false,
But still nonsense if it is true.
Do you think Trump voters need “russian help” ?
Regardless, this “russian influence” nonsense, is another idiotic claim that voters are stupid and guilible and unable to think for themselves.
If you are unwilling to trust voters – then there is no reason for elections.
Dave, wasnt there a change that required paper ballots or some paper trail? After spending a boat load over the past 8 years on voting machines, N.C. is back using paper ballots, marked with a pen, filling in a bullet point and then scanning that to record the vote.
I dont see how that fixes any problems unless the margin is within recount requirements. Seems like a scanner could be hacked and returns changed enough to avoid recounts.
We need to go back to people counting votes in precincts, multiple times until multiple same results are achieved, calling in returns and then states reporting results hours to days later so the opposition party stops yelling “THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING”
There has been no federal change.
There are many states that have either changed their law – or more commonly just changed what they do.
I have zero problems with a computer as the means by which you fill out your ballot.
but it should NOT be counted from or by the computer.
The computer should print something on paper – that humans can read and verify
And that is then used to count.
I do not care if computers do the counting, whether OCR or whatever.
But there must be a peice of paper that is the ACTUAL BALLOT, that humans can read, that is preserved, and that is what is actually counted.
How you get too that paper ballot is unimportant.
How you count that paper ballot is unimportant.
The existance of a paper ballot that is your OFFICIAL ballot that can be easily read by humans – even if it is also easy to read by machines.
And that can easily be counted by humans – ever if it is normally counted by machines,
Is critical.
It means that no matter what else might happen – no matter what other “hacking” might occur, it will always be passible – within the marging of error of manual counting – to catch any fraud.
The incentives for election fraud are enormous – hundreds of billions of dollars are at stake.
It is likely that you can not make a system where fraud is not possible.
What matters is that you can make one were large scale fraud will always be detected – even if a few days later.
Big players – with billions of dollars will not cheat if they are going to get caught.
I would also note that our election system has another check on it.
The press. every network does exit polling. they all do their own counting based on exit polls, They all predict winners long before official results are in.
That is prefectly fine – infact it is a good thing.
If the press and the “official” counts are at odds significantly – we will investigate.
Ultimately I want the “official” system to be capable of near perfect self verification.
But the press and exist polls provide a sanity check.
Which loops back to Russia in 2016.
did the official results and those of the neworks differ meaningfully ?
If not then HOW did the russians interfere in election.
The answer is that the left defaines some persuasion as evil and others as good.
Fine but when you jump from – “I do not like that” to “that should be ilegal” – you have serious problems – both moral and practical.
You have no source,
You have not named a single actual person.
There is no fact in this story that is verifiable.
The entire story is
“somebody told me that somebody else said something”.
Absent actual verifiable facts you have nothing.
Do we actually have an IC assessment ? I have not seen one – have you ?
What is the evidence of “russian interferance” ?
I still have not seen the evidence of actual interefenace from 2016.
The only “evidence” attached tot he 2016 IC Assessment was the Steele dossier – do we have a Steele Dossier II ?
Your article says that democratic and republican congressmen were given a briefing – then you should be able to identify those briefed ? the first people briefed would be “the gang of 8”
Do you have Schumer, Pelose, Schiff, Warner claiming this occurred ?
How about McConnell, Burr, Nunes, McCarthy ?
No matter who else might have been briefed those 8 would have had to all been briefed FIRST – which one has confirmed this actually occured ?
You say someone was sacked – who ?
How is it we know that this unnamed person was sacked for providing congress an assessment that we do not have any evidence exists, and that makes claims we do not have,
and that is supported by evidence we do not have.
You just do not seem to get it.
We have had 3 years of lies.
We are way past were you or CNN or the left, get beleived because they make some ambiguous claims.
Provide real facts.
Pathological President Petulant Pouting:
Trump Tweet today: “ So @TeamCavuto has very bad ratings on @foxnews with his Fake guests like A.B. Stoddard and others that still haven’t figured it all out. Will he get the same treatment as his friend Shepherd Smith, who also suffered from the ratings drought?”
He wants Fox to get rid of Cavuto for having a guest critical of King Kreep on a Fox show. And Trump Dupes have no problem with that.
More Petulant Pouting:
Trump is:
Suggesting that ratings drive the choices of networks – DUH!!!!!!
That we should be skeptical of those who are frequently wrong – Duh!!!!
I have no problems with Trump wanting whatever he wants.
I have little doubt that foxes choices will be congruent with Trump’s wishes, ONLY if Trump’s wishes and those of fox viewers align.
I have no problem with that.
Rachel Maddow only continues to exist as a talking head because she draws a sufficient audience – not because she has a clue.
And I have no problem with that.
More music to Trump Dupe Ears:
Trump wants Obama impeached.
“President Donald Trump took another swipe at his predecessor, telling supporters that Barack Obama’s healthcare plan warrants him being impeached.
“Impeach Obama. Get him out of office,” Trump said during his stump speech in Colorado Springs on Thursday night. “- Newsweek
Can an ex-President be impeached when no longer in office? A novel concept from Double-Talking-Donnie.
Tho odds of Obama being impeached are near zero.
But Trump’s comments expose your and democrats and the left’s hypocracy.
Though PPACA is not the best example to prove leftist hypocracy.
“ Tho odds of Obama being impeached are near zero.‘
How near zero is zero?
And the Dems now are as stunned by Bernie in the primaries as GOP was with Trump.
Stunned into silence.
Not one major Dem of note not running has opted to support a reasonable candidate: why are these people remaining on the sidelines:: the Obamas, Bill & Hillary Clinton, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Kamala Harris, Jimmy Carter, Al Gore???
Democrats let him into the election.
I honestly hope Bernie wins – for the long term good of the democratic party.
Something on the order of a mcgovern defeat might get democrats to start thinking why they are losing.
“Something on the order of a mcgovern defeat might get democrats to start thinking why they are losing.”
I agree. The insanity of the Democrats is mind boggling to me. On the other hand, it’s obvious that they know that Bernie would lose big, since they are willing to change all the rules to cheat him out of the nomination.
This new Russia interference crap is literally unbelievable.
If we “know” that the Russians are going to interfere, why don’t we take action to prevent it? What is the point of going on Morning Joe and whining that Trump is a Russian agent? Why do we even have intelligence agencies, if they are completely powerless to stop Putin from doing whatever he pleases in our own country.
Seriously, Jay, why would Putin even want Trump to win, when he could have Bernie, who is a communist? And, if Putin is so stupid as to let his “preference” be so easily dicovered, why can’t the CIA put a stop to it?
Democrats must think we have the stupidest spies on earth…
Priscilla, if I remember correctly, there is some legislation that exempts social media from regulation.
And even if it is regulated and they become responsible for content, how do you regulate billions of user posts?
This is not radio free Europe where the communist could block a frequency to stop our propaganda getting to their people. This is far bigger, and let one genuine site get censured, all hell will break loose.
The best they can do is monitor and when certain Russian support is identified, a warning of fake news is attached electronically to those comments.
ordinarily Social Media would be viewed as a publisher of content – and therefore editorially responsible for their content.
The covington students did not sue the individual reporters who printed defamatory stories – they sued the PUBLISHERS of those stories.
So long as internet content agregators have a light hand in censoring conduct – such as blocking obsenity, they are not otherwise responsible for that content.
BUT if they engage in viewpoint beased censorship – they are now editorially responsible for the content they do not censor.
This derives from Section 302 of the DMCA.
I do not want Google or Facebook or twitter deciding what is “fake news”.
We have already seen how bad the purported fact checking web sited are.
We now have groups like the SPLC – which has itself been exposed as both corrupt and racsict deciding what fake news is, what racism is,
Ordinary people are best able to decide for themselves.
Some of us will decide badly – GET OVER IT.
Yes, A Bernie candidacy will mean a big loss.
But EVERY Democrat has a version of the same problem.
Bernie is actually on of the better democrats – atleast he is “authentic”,
none of the rest are.
With Bernie the debate will be out in the open.
From Warren through bloomberg – most of the issues are the same.
NONE of the democrats are actually “moderates” – not unless they are lying to us all.
Warren’s platform is very nearly as “socialist” as Bernies.
Trump is going to attack every single democratic candidate as a “socialist”,
And he is going to be successful – because ALL the democrats have done everything short of own the label.
Regardless, If Bernie is the D’s candidate – one half of the Democratic base sits out the election. If Bernie is NOT the D’s candidate – the OTHER half the democratic base sits out the election.
To the extent democrats did well in 2018 – it was because they ran actual moderates.
There is not a single democratic presidentical candidate the reflects the positions and values of the 40 democratic house newcommers that won the house for democrats in 2018.
Regardless, in 2020 – These candidates will NOT be running on their own as they were in 2018 – most of them were running AGAINST their party in 2018. They will be running with their party in 2020. No matter who the Democratic candidate is – there is a threat that the whole democratic party could be “going down”.
One of the things that should have been learned from 2016 – is that barring absolute stupidity, neither party is EVER going to permanently fall into the minority.
Trump’s election reflects two Big things.
First the “demographics is destiny” nonsense that left academics have sold is bullshit.
Demographics change over time – sometimes favoring one party sometimes the other.
But those who think that the growing minorities guarantee democratic control in the furure should remember the same was said of the irish, the italians, white immigrants, catholics, workers, in the past. There are multiple trends occuring simulaneously.
Second is that whatever changes do occur, a political party is NOT an ideology. Ultimately it WILL change to assure that it continues to be able to garner majority support.
Throughout history the political parties have always been nearly balanced nationally.
A two party system nearly insures that.
I keep saying that the 2016 democrats did not learn the lesson of that election. That lesson is that Trump was able to build an entirely new republican majority coalition – he did so by identifying a group that Democrats were actively alienating from their own party.
In 2017 Democrats could have changed and forestalled that loss.
Now they must build a new majority of their own – and they can not do that with either the current ideology at the center or the current tactics.
The democratic party must change.
It MUST become more “moderate” – moderate in the sense that others here use moderate – centrist, it must find a new majority, and it can not do that without demphazsizing the left.
I beleive Obaa was the high water mark – the gettysburg of modern progressivism.
“Russion interferance” is just a word salad ruse.
Of course the Russians are going to interfere – in the same way every nation interferes in every other nations elections.
Ukrainian leaders wrote editorials in US papers in 2016
The US runs VOA, We also orchestrated the coup in Ukraine that resulted int eh Russians invading Crimea.
Of Course the US Intelligrence community is going to report Russian interferance.
The US IC will say anything they can get away with that delivers them more power,
Further Anything in the “Russia is evil” catagory resists the shift of US resources away from the move to treat China as more of a threat and Asia as the dominiate US sphere of interest for the future.
And you are brain dead if you think we should focus more on Eastern Europe than Asia.
Regardless, hidden in the entire impeachment nonsense were efforts to thwart the de-emphasis of the Mideast and eastern Europe in favor of Asia – a shif that started in the BUSH administration.
A substantial part of the “Trump is stupid” narative is just a power struggle between cold warrors and modern analysts – and guess what – the newer ones are RIGHT, but the older ones are entrenched and have more power and a clinging to it.
And taking advantage of the lefts outrage over Trump.
BTW Both Obama and Trump were shifting US interest to asia – they did so quite differently, and Obama was less confrontational – both with China and with cold warriors,.
But the shif is happening NO MATTER WHAT.
Hack proofing our elections is relatively simple and not all that expensive.
And frankly – though it needs done, Russia is highly unlikely to “hack” our elections – because the consequences would be horrible.
Some games at the side to cause trouble – sure. But actually change the outcome of an election – no way in hell. No one will ever do that if there is a chance they will get caught.
Dick with a local election ? Maybe. But the US presidential election ? Not a chance.
But mostly “Russian interference” – is really about – providing imputus to the lefts desire to censor everything,.
Who does not grasp that censorship NEVER leads to good ends ?
The remedy for speach you do not like is more speach.
You do not defeat racism, nazi’s white supremecists, russians, conservatives, progressives, whatever voice it is that you think is evil, by silencing them.
Neither Russia nor any other group is a danger to us or anyone int he world simply by expressing things we do not wish them to express.
This nonsense that a US election is some walled garden and only US citizens have a voice in it is bullshit.
We – americans – should actually WANT people through out the world to express their oppinions. Those are INFORMATION for us.
WE – US CITZENS ONLY get to decide who the next US president is.
But we should WELCOME the oppinion of the mexican’s chinese, Russians, brits, french, …
We are NEVER ill served by any effort to persuade us.
Not by the Russians – not by Bloomberg and his billions.
Mike Bloomberg has spent $400m thus far on the US election.
Do you honestly think that all the nations in the world together including Russia are not dwarfed by Bloomberg’s voice ?
Anyone who is concerned about russian bots of social media or any other form of russian “influence” is an idiot.
You have it half right.
It would be good for the Republican Party, and the nation, to be rid of Trump and Sanders. But of course you Trump Dupes have limited vision in seeing the full picture.
And if Bernie gets carved up into little pieces at the nominating convention – as is likely to happen – the Dems will dump Bernie for a more centrist ticket. And America can return to normal contentiousness, sans the drooling idiot now polluting the national discourse with daily boorish tripe.
Jay, the majority of Bernies support comes from younger voters with very strong anti capitalist views, support one payer health system, supports free college and supports debt relief of student debt along with other far left positions.
When the Democrats rob Sanders of his nomination and they put in their puppet, how many of these young voters are going to vote? They are not the rabid TDP’er like yourself. They are not voting against Trump. They are motivated by and voting for something. Sanders. All the others are running on “stop Trump”. Sanders is running on policies. I doubt 1/2 of Bernies voters would show up in November because they will be so pissed they will refuse to vote for someone else.
And this goes twice as much for Bloomberg because he is the embodiment of everything they hate.
In 2016 a sizable number of Bernie supporters either voted for Trump, or didn’t vote at all. Still, Hillary barely lost crucial swing state votes by less than a few percent..
Now it’s safe to say Anti-Trump Republican attrition has increased. Disgruntled Republicans are leaving the party in droves, and likely will exceed Sanders’ defections if he isn’t nominated.. But only if the Dems field a reasonable ticket, and it’s looking like they won’t do that.
America’s epitaph: They Were Warned But Opted Not To Listen
“Now it’s safe to say Anti-Trump Republican attrition has increased. Disgruntled Republicans are leaving the party in droves, and likely will exceed Sanders’ defections if he isn’t nominated.. But only if the Dems field a reasonable ticket, and it’s looking like they won’t do that.”
Only in your minds and that of the left wing media.
Most real world data says the OPPOSITE.
Trump’s rapplies are larger today than in 2016. Reporters like Salena Zito who actually went to flyover country in 2016 and sent out the first clues that Trump was going to win the presidency – BEFORE he won the GOP nomination, are today saying his support in those swing states in HIGHER.
Further Dem’s not only do not have a ticket – they do not have a message.
Trump has the same message he had in 2016 AND he has 4 years of success against totally unprecidented opposition.
So you get a moderate democrat – who would that be ? Bloomberg ? Klobuchar ? Buttigieg ?
These are NOT moderates, they are just less offensive leftists.
Regardless – what is their message ? Bernie has an actual message – it is a powerful one and it appeals to his supporters. But it is a losing message.
The message of the rest of the democratic field is the “HALF-SANDERS”
The bernie voters are right – if you are going to drink the koolaide – drink the whole cup.
Democrats had a chance in 2019 in the house to build a real apealing message – instead of backing their own moderate new democrat winners, they got behind the wing nuts the the AOC’s the impeachment and obstruction crowd.
The consequences of that will be seen in November.
If you do not beleive ? Then – go for it, impeach Trump again.
Regardless, it is wahy to late for democrats to recover. Barring global economic collapse (which is possible), or Trump getting caught in the Oval with a 13yr old boy, this election is over already.
The Democratic primaries are just the means we determine the precise way that democrats will lose
“America’s epitaph: They Were Warned But Opted Not To Listen”
I told you so, is a much more compelling message with unemployment skyrocketing, standard of living declining, fighting in the streets and our soldiers dying en masses in foreign wars we do not understand.
“It would be good for the Republican Party, and the nation, to be rid of Trump and Sanders. But of course you Trump Dupes have limited vision in seeing the full picture.”
That is a decision that US voters get to make.
You have ONE vote, and ONE Voice, that and your ability to persuade is the limit of your “influence”.
Voters may not choose as you wish = maybe they do not see your “full picture” – or maybe they more accurately perceive things than you.
“And if Bernie gets carved up into little pieces at the nominating convention – as is likely to happen – the Dems will dump Bernie for a more centrist ticket. And America can return to normal contentiousness, sans the drooling idiot now polluting the national discourse with daily boorish tripe.”
Que Sera, Sera – whatever will be, will be.
If you want to hope for some convention miracle – no one is stopping you.
But who will that miracle centrist to emerge from the convention be ?
There is not a current or potential democratic contendor that is an actual centrist, much less on who will beat Trump.
And yes, if Sanders is the nominee – you will likely get a repeat of 1972.
But if Sanders is not the nominee – especially if he is brought down by a suspicious process – and your own Trump Russia nonsense has over sensitized people to the belief that the only way they do not get the outcome they want, is by someone else’s fraud and deciept.
Regardless, if you leave the DNC convention without happy Sanders supporters – you lose because they stay home, or worse still vote for Trump.
Jay, hard to determine why anyone does what they do. But obama has been in Bloomies non stop ads here for 2-3 weeks. I can not imagine Bloomberg using Obama in his ads with Obama saying wonderful things about him without B.O.’s approval and tacit backing.
Obama has never backed Biden, so it appears he supports Bloomberg.
He’ll support Bloomberg big time if Mike chooses Michelle as VP.
The election is 9 full months away and you are already throwing “hail mary’s”.
You might as well hope for video of Trump in the oval felating a 13yr old.
Believe me, you and the other Trump Zombie Drones, would thank Trump for satisfying the perverse desires of the victim and ask to have him jailed for making Donnie behave badly.
I am not going to support ANYONE who is perving children. Not Trump not anyone.
But the credible allegations regarding Trump are with ADULTS – not even young adults,
If you want to look for child pervs you need to look at Democrats.
Sanders is the one who wrote Paedophila fantasies and Clinton has frequent flyer miles on the lolita express.
God No! Not another American royal family. Didnt we learn from the Clinton bitch fiasco? Democrats cant be that f ‘in dumb can they? Thats being dumber than nominating Trump!
You heard it hear first, or 2, or 15th or 397th.
Michelle is not running, Oprah is not running.
Clinton – who the hell knows.
But none of these people are going to put their reputations on the line in a doomed effort to save democrats.
In US history – when has someone who choose NOT to run for president jumped in to save their party as VP ?
Bloomberg is the last high power candidate to enter the race.
Probably the lead contender for everyone’s VP is Sen. Brown.
The ONLY think that any VP has ever added to any politiical ticket is a bump in the odds of winning their state.
Ohio is a MUST WIN for Democrats, if they are to stop Trump.
If the Democratic VP nominee does not help democrats win ATLEAST 2 of MN. OH, PA, and WI – then democrats go down in Flames.
Bloomy isn’t a died-in-the-wool Dem, any more than Trump was a real Republican – and if he thought it would help get him elected you bet your ass he’d try to get her as VP.
I think it would be a brilliant move: solidifies the important Dem black & Hispanic & women’s vote. And if Michele could be convinced to be his VP now, and Bloomy announced it now, he’d get the nomination.
But I doubt she’s interested in running for public office. Unlike Hillary who quickly returned to the political spotlight, Michelle seems to be keeping a low public profile for everything but promoting her book (she donated all royalty profits to a children’s charity).
Ron – Did you have the same incensed reaction to the Bush dynasty? Or do only Dem dynasties raise your ire?
Ron, you really need to start thinking like Joe, he’s your political bro in most everything else.
“I’m a conservative. I disagree with most of the policy advanced by the Democratic candidates. But I’ll support WHOEVER the Democrats nominate because we can survive 4 years of bad policy. We can’t survive 4 more years of Trump’s attack on the very heart & soul of our Democracy.” Joe Walsh
The overwhelming majority of americans would be happy of the next 4 years was like the last 4.
The “we can not survive” argument is rhetorical bunkum.
We did survive and we thrived, we can and we will.
We would also survive 4 years of Bloomberg, or Sanders.
But we would not thrive.
And that is why Trump will be re-elected. There is no doubt we will survive 4 more years of trump.
In point of fact – even ignoring all the good parts, all the things that you loath about Trump – were never a “threat to democracy”.
All of Trump’s worst traits – while undesireable in a president, do not constitute an existential threat to anything but “the deep state” The entrenched bureaucracy.
It is highly unlikely that Trump would be re-elected with an Obama economy,
But he would still not constitute something we “could not survive”.
Dead beat dad Joe is selling hyperbolee.
The question is why are you buying ?
More examples of your dumb-ass assertions:
“The overwhelming majority of americans would be happy of the next 4 years was like the last 4.”
Really? Are you that mathematically challenged? The RCP Poll on America’s Satisfaction With Direction Of The Country must be in error, because it shows a steady 60% DISSATISFACTION.
“ It is highly unlikely that Trump would be re-elected with an Obama economy,”
We’re living in an extended Obama economy, numb-nuts. All significant economic growth statistics show better improvement during Obama’s last term than Trump’s first term – except for Trump’s swelling national deficit.
And yet on every measure of peoples satisfaction with their lives at the moment – like consumer confidence, the numbers are record highs.
https://ei.marketwatch.com/Multimedia/2020/01/28/Photos/MG/MW-HZ158_Consum_20200128104527_MG.png?uuid=34c08702-41e5-11ea-9b18-9c8e992d421e
Your right according to Gallup only 41% of people are satisified with the direction of the US.
But you miss the fact that 41% is the HIGHEST that has been since GWB was president.
Dave, when someone is ask if the country is moving in the rightbdirection, I would answer no. Not because of Trump, his persona or his policies. I would answer no because I believe we are moving further toward more government intervention into lives regardless of party. Trump can only be around another 5 years. I look at the direction long term, not just months. And my fear of democrats getting into the whitehouse and giving us Obama on steroids just multiplies my dissatisfaction.
I provided Jay a rebutal – with sources.
But for multiple reasons I did not need to.
If I am wrong – we find out in November.
The fear of democrats that the strong economy has them doomed is palpable.
You can sense it.
If the economy were poor if people were truly upset with the economy – democrats would be blaming Trump relentlessly – instead they are trying to give Obama credit.
In fact Jay has BOTH argued that it is not true that things are going well AND that Obama is responsible for the fact that things are going well.
This is not one group of democrats contradicting another – this is Jay contradicting himself.
We all get to decide for ourselves – using our own ouija board and tea leaf readijng what will happen in 2020.
I probably will not vote for Trump – but I am prepared to bet money that he wins easily.
You get to make your own assessment.
Again, I failed to communicate my intended thoughts.
I saidwhat I said about the country moving in the right or wrong direction because there are different ways of interpreting that question which impacts the responses they get.
From Gallup
Changes Since Trump Took Office
As Trump enters his re-election year, Americans are more positive on eight key issues than they were just before he took office in January 2017.
Gallup records double-digit increases in public satisfaction with the nation’s economy, security from terrorism, military strength and the state of race relations.
Satisfaction is also up by between six and nine points on crime, the position of blacks and other racial minorities, the distribution of income and wealth, and the opportunity for a person to get ahead through hard work.
“We’re living in an extended Obama economy, numb-nuts. All significant economic growth statistics show better improvement during Obama’s last term than Trump’s first term – except for Trump’s swelling national deficit.”
No Jay – we do not. Obama’s average growth was 1.8% – even including the post recession bump that is normally huge. That growth rate was DECLINING in 2016 and it looked like we were headed for a recession in early 2017.
No the growth statistics DO not show better improvement during Obama’s last term
Why do you offer this garbage – it is easily disproven.
The economy swung WIDELY during Obama’s term – He really did through the course of his presidency have a couple of quarters of strongly positive growth – but not in a row.
The last quarter of negative growth was in 2014 – Obama’s 2nd term. Since Trump was elected there has only been a single quarter of growth below 2%.
There were 8 (one negative) in Obama’s last term.
Obama’s peak 2nd Term Growth was in 2014 and it declined steadily from that quater until 4Q 2016.
Again the expectation was that there would be a recession in early 2017.
All of this can be confirmed in Trading Economics.
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/gdp-growth
Further Trump’s presidency has NOT been as good economically as Trump claims,
But it is TRIVIAL to Prove it is NOT a continuation of the Obama Economy.
Any look at the growth (or other graphs) shows that the economy during Obama was highly volatile shooting way up one quarter and tanking the next.
While the Trump economy has had stable growth with very little volatitity from Q1 2017 forward.
Essentially the Obama Economy mirror’s the political volatility of the Trump presidency,
While the Trump Economy mirrors the steady political nature of the Obama presidency.
Which do you want – a president whose remarks are jarring an economy that is a roller coaster ride ?
BTW Labor Force participation was over 66 When Obama was elected.
It bottomed at 62.5% in Q4 2016 and is now 63.4%
Trend line after trend line headed DOWN either through Obama’s presidency, or in his last term, are now rising – albeit weakly.
Everyone of these BOTTOMED in Q4 2016.
The 4 highest deficits as a percent of GDP recorded since 1945 were 2009, 2010, and 2011, 2012.
Trump’s first 3 year deficits average slightly higher than Obama’s last 4 year deficits – as a percent of GDP. But forward trends are that GDP is rising FASTER than Deficits.
I would note that Trump’s record Deficit – still lower than Obama’s first 4 years, was with democrats in control of the house.
And ALL of Obama’s deficits below 6% of GDP – down to 3%, occurred when republicans controlled both the house and senate.
Trump is NOT a Defict Hawk. Nor unfortunately are house republicans.
But the DATA indicates that deficits are low ONLY when the GOP controls the house and LOWEST, when the GOP controls the house and senate – regardless of who is president.
Re Dead Beat Dad Joe’s hyperbole:
Certainly your disapproval of his views, strongly colored by his child support negligence, extend to his other political exhortations: against Obamacare; for Social Security and Medicare reform; for gun rights; pro military; zero tolerance for abortion; suspicious of global warming claims; pro free market.
All those views, held by a derelict daddy, are therefore tainted – correct?
Jay, this is the difference between your thinking and mine. You think we can not survive bad people. I dont think we can survive bad policy.
Mine can be documented. Can yours?
What do you mean ‘survive?’
The Germans survived — actually thrived — from 1933 to1944. Like frogs in slowly boiling water, the ‘people’ didn’t realize the attrition and disintegration of their German nation until it was too late to get out of the pot.
You and I, Ron, and our entire generation of Americans, are now living on the downward cusp of American exceptionalism. And we won’t be here to see where or when it levels off.
That doesn’t mean our final years will entirely be filled with despair. On the contrary, the technology of abundance should persist in developed industrial nations another decade or two, if the consequences of approaching climate calamity aren’t severe.
I see us now as two old fuddy-duddy’s with contrary political opinions, on the deck of the Titanic after the iceberg collision, waiting to see if we manage to reach a lifeboat as the ship tips towards eternity. Past disagreements subside, we make quick amends with a sincere handshake, and as a gesture of camaraderie, I hand you this favored English recipe to use should you reach safe land:
Hassleback Baked Potatoes
2 Baking potatoes, thin sliced 1/4 inch (see video)
1/4 cup Unsalted butter melted
1 tea Italian herbs
1 tea Garlic powder
Salt
1. Slice potatoes
2. Place in baking tin w/foil
3. Brush outside with olive oil and salt
4. Bake @ 425f 20 minutes
5. Melt butter, add herbs, pinch salt (4-5 min)
6. Brush potatoes with butter mix
7. Bake 20 min more, add butter, bake 20 min, spread slices with knife
Jay, Joe Walsh is nothing but a grifter. He has said multiple times that he would vote for Bernie Sanders, a communist, over Trump. There is no way any real conservative or moderate would do that. And don’t kid yourself that “Republicans are leaving the party in droves.” That’s just not happening.
Even if I believed that Trump was an authoritarian dictator, Bernie Sanders aspires to be that and worse.
Here is the only scenario that I see that could get a Democrat elected in 2020 ~ Bloomy bribes Bernie to drop out, stating health reasons. It makes sense for a couple of reasons. 1) Bernie had a heart attack, just a few months ago, and he always looks exceedingly unhealthy. The Bernie bro’s may accept this without going too crazy. 2) Bernie has already proven that he can be bought. Obama and the Clintons bought his support in 2016 for the price of a nice vacation home on Lake Champlain. Bloomy can make him a very rich man, overnight.
If he gets to the convention with 40-45% of the vote, and they steal the nomination from him, many of the Bernie bro’s will stay home on election day. Bernie could go 3rd party, which would be even worse for Dems, although I don’t see him doing that.
It’s Bloomberg’s money, and the fact that even an amount as much as $5 billion would be relative chump change for him, that will save the Democrats, if anything can.
,
Well well we’ll – the Russians are in accord with Ron, Dave and Priscilla : All want a Trump-Sanders race.
“Bernie Sanders briefed by U.S. officials that Russia is trying to help his presidential campaign.” WPO
I want the democrats to return to sanity.
I do not see that happening until the far left of the party is seriously weakened. I do not see that without a McGovern style loss.
If there was actually a better way – it is well hidden.
I did not consult Ron, or the Russian’s – my opinions are my own.
“Bernie Sanders briefed by U.S. officials that Russia is trying to help his presidential campaign.” WPO
Assuming this is true – which I doubt,
Why didn’t the Obama DOJ brief Trump in 2016 ?
Trump WAS briefed by the FBI in 2016 of Russian attempted intervention in his campaign.
And by October 2016 Trump certainly knew the Russians were putting their thumbs on the election scale on HIS behalf because the DHS released a public WARNING about the WikiLeaks hacked Dem emails.
Trump of course denied the Russians were Involved in any way, and isn’t that still your blockheaded opinion too?
In 2016 President Elect Trump was briefed by James Comey about PARTS of the Steele Dossier, as a deliberate effort by Brennan and Comey to provide an excuse for the media to report the Steele Dossier – something none of them would touch before.
And in an effort to Trap Trump – Comey’s own emails document that he was Hoping that Trump would respond in a way that would provide a basis for further investigating.
There was NO briefing like what was allegedly just given to CANDIDATE Sanders – EVER,
Nor was the brifing to Trump about “Russian interferance” – it was specifically about a small part of the Steele Dossier.
The DHS notice is linked below.
It occured 3 months AFTER the FBI started spying on the Trump Campaign.
It says nothing at all about the Trump campaign. Despite the fact there WAS an unsuccessful effort to hack the RNC – BEFORE the DNC hack.
About half the DHS claims have subsequently proved false.
And the remained are to this day at BEST 50% confidence level.
Guicifer 2.0 did NOT hack the DNC – I know that VPA established that, regardless, Mueller did not beleive the Guicifer 2.0 nonsense – and Mueller’s team interviewed Guicifer 2.0
The Mueller report claims the hack was by the GRU – which is extremely odd as though Guicifer 2.0 was not likely the hacker, Working through people like Guicifer 2.0 rather than directly is the NORM for Russian hacking. Russia thwarts global investigations into tens of billions of dollars of cyber crime in return for “favors” from eastern european cyber criminals.
Russia UNLIKE the US, PRC and PRK does NOT maintain a significant government employed group of hackers – that said the Russia protected black hat hackers are likely significantly better than the US or PRC or NK teams.
Anyway, your DHS notice is rife with errors and does not constitute anything even close to the defensive briefing that Sanders was purportedly just given – if we are to beleive NYT.
https://www.dhs.gov/news/2016/10/07/joint-statement-department-homeland-security-and-office-director-national
The actual IC Assessment was that Russian efforts in 2016 were no quantitatively or qualitatively different from prior elections.
That Russia – and before them the USSR has ALWAYS attempted to find ways of casting doubt on US elections. That their Goal is NOT to influence the election, but to undermine voters faith in the election itself.
I do not think you will find many on the right who would not agree that in 2016 the Russians succeeded in sewing doubt in US elections – beyond their wildest dreams.
And they were aided in doing so by the US CIA, FBI, and Hillary Clinton.
There is ZERO doubt at this point that the CIA/DIJ.FBI “undermined” the use 2016 election.
As to the actual acts committed by Russia – as opposed to the media hype – that continues into the 2020 election where the Russians are purportedly now trying to help Sanders.
No I do not beleive most of the claims. That does not mean I beleive the Russians did nothing. But it does mean that I do not beleive our Intelligence Community.
And given their past track record – the collapse of the USSR, 9/11 Iraq Uranium. I can not think of a good reason to beleive the US IC.
It is increasingly looking like the Russia sourced portions of the Steele Dossier were deliberate falsehoods provided by Russia – in otherwords the most successfull Russian election interferance operation EVER was providing Steele fake dirt on Trump.
So yes – I absolutely beleive the Russians interfered – just not in the inconsequential was you claimed.
With respect to the 2020 elections – NYT is now reporting that Russia is trying to aid Sanders – and that the Sanders Campaign was breifed on that.
Do you beleive any of that is true ?
To be clear – I do not know. I am not claiming to know.
What I will claim is that the ACTUAL possibilities are endless.
That NYT made up the story to harm Sanders.
That someone in the DNC made up the story to harm Sanders.
That someone in the US IC made up the story to harm Sanders and/or Trump.
That Russia is actively spreading false stories about their own actions to sow chaos,
And that their goal could just as easily be to harm Trump or Sanders rather than to help either.
The russians absolutely suck at influencing US voters directly. but they are incredibly good at manipulating US intelligence agencies and the US press – tasks that are far easier.
Further manipulating US Press is far more effective than manipulating US voters.
Which is more likely to influence your Vote ? A really bad Russian Sanders or Anti=Clinton social media meme ? Or reports in the Press that Russia is trying to help/hurt Sanders/Clinton/Trump
We absolutely know that portions of the Steele Dossier came from a Putin connected Russian Source. But we do not know what his actual goal was – i.e. we have no idea if he was feeding garbage to Steele to help Clinton or hurt her.
From the begining of the Cold war to the present the US has probably only had a single well placed agent inside the USSR/Russia – and we got him killed. It is near certain that all other intelligence we got from sources in Russia was planted – it was what the Russians WANTED us to know.
BTW the British did this to the Germans during WWII AND The Germans did this to the British in Denmark.
Put simply getting trustworthy information from foriegn sources is incredibly difficult.
You can never tell if you are dealing with the truth – or someone feeding you what the other side wants you to know.
Another Schiff scam, Jay.
“One intelligence official said that Pierson’s characterization of the intelligence was “misleading” and a national security official said Pierson failed to provide the “nuance” needed to accurately convey the US intelligence conclusions.”
https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/23/politics/intelligence-briefer-russian-interference-trump-sanders/index.html
In other words, she lied, so that Schiff could leak it out of his committee. Ho Hum, same old, same old….
I do not know all the details and all the players.
But as one editorialist pointed out
We KNOW that SOMEONE is LYING – either the reporters or the Intelligence community,
Because we have two different stories.
One that the Sanders Campaign was Told that Putin was aiding Sanders.
The other that the “Gang of 8” was told that Putin was aiding Trump.
While it is possible for Putin to be aiding both Trump and Sanders, it is not possible that the Intelligence community told Sanders the Russians were aiding the Sanders campaign. but told the Gang of 8 that they were aiding Trump.
Or more accurately – the IC could have done that – but only if they were engaged in trying to influence the election themselves.
Again i do not know the details.
But:
i do not trust the Intelligence community – and that is not Knew to Trump.
These are the people who got everything in vietnam wrong, screwed up the cold war, missed the collapse of the USSR, missed that Iraq was invading Kuwait, missed 9/11, told us that Iraq was developing a Nuke, missed the attack on Benghazi – need I go on ?
Somewhere there is a quote – never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence. I am extremely suspicious of mallice in this instance. But I have no problem at all assuming incompetence too.
Jay posted that the National Security Advisor should not be political.
I have no problem saying we should just get rid of the national security counsel entirely.
Truman who created to the CIA ultimately determined they were a huge mistake.
I read something recently that it has been determined from Soviet archives that the only Spy the US ever had in the USSR that was not a double agent – we got killed.
And that through the cold war the Russians fed the CIA exactly what they wanted the CIA to know. Quite often that was the truth – it was sometimes useful to russia for the CIA to know the truth about something AND for Russia to know that the CIA knew the truth.
I have little trouble beleiving that.
I would also suggest thinking seriously about all the incredible complexities of international spying – agents, and double agents and triple agents, and sometimes feeding the otherside disinformation and sometimes feeding them the truth and the unbeleivable complexity of all of this
And then consider the hacking claims regarding the DNC – because there is absolutely zero difference – if anything it is MORE complex and more nuanced.
Absent human intelligence that you can trust and prove, there is no means to EVER know for certain the origen of a hack. If you think you have been hacked by script kiddies – it is possible that you were hacked by a very capable nation state pretending to be script kiddies and leaving a fake trail of bread crumbs. Everyone should remember that StuxNet was a hack done by the NSA targeting Iran, that the US deliberately made look like it was done by the Israeli’s and No one would have ever found out the truth but for Snowden.
The US IC has claimed that they know the DNC hack was russian because the Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear tools were used. Absolutely those tools originated in Russia. But versions of them are in the possession of every significant nation state, and lots and lots of unafillitated black hat hackers. We know that Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear attacks on French Television that happend BEFORE the DNC originated in Pakistan. We also know that Crowd Strike claimed that Ukrainian Artillary was hacked by the Russians – and that turned out to be complete crap – there was no hack at all.
Getting these things right is nearly impossible.
The US IC may be incompetent, they may be malicious, this might just be fake news, it may not even by the US IC, It may be True, it may be disinformation from other countries, it may be disinformation for Russia. It also may be Russia just trying to stir up trouble again.
One thing we can be absolutely certain of is that no matter who wins the 2020 election, that Putin would be ecstatic if americans spent the next 4 years fighting with each other over it, sure that the results were somehow illegitimate.
Even James Comey was smart enought to gather that Russia’s primary goal is NOT to “influence” the US election – that is actually far outside their ability to do in any consequential way. But to undermine american confidence in the US elections.
I would further note for Jay:
Of Course Russia interfered in the US elections – if nothing else the Steele Dossier was Russian interferance.
Of Course Putin will deny it.
Of Course Trump will say Putin denies it and that he beleives him.
And BTW Obama was say exactly the same thing.
What is the IC’s assessment of who Borris Johnson would prefer to win the US 2020 presidential election ? Or Macron ?
Why is it we think we can know these kinds of things ?
Why is it we think they matter ?
This whole game reminds my of a logic problem.
There are two brothers, one lies all the time, the other tells the truth all the time.
You are at a fork in the road with the brothers and they know the way to go and you do not.
You can only ask one of them one question, what question should you ask ?
This is a solveable problem. What is going on in the heads of foreign leaders is not.
Nor is it relevant – atleast not to elections.
Should the american people place their vote based on what we guess other foreign leaders might prefer ?
Must we vote against Bernie because Putin wants him ? Should we vote for him, if Putin doesnt’
You are free to vote however you please – but you are stupid if you are doing so based on IC guesses as to what some foreign leader would prefer.
Trying to determine what is in the minds of foreign leaders is the stuff of Ouija boards.
There are actual reasons our Intelligence community should try to determine those things.
If the Russian’s actually beleive they can work with Trump because he is a deal maker – if true that is useful information for negotiating with Russians.
Of course the “if true” is a really important caveat – because we can never know if it is true.
We can only know what others DO, not what they think.
Bujt this confusion that we can know and judge peoples thoughts is incredibly common. unfortunately.
Wonderful example of the tolerance of the left.
This is 40 minutes long. There is no need to watch it all. It just slowly gets worse fromt he start to the end. The good news is that aside from throwing things and dumping hot Coffee on Bennett no one gets hurt – probably because you has a giant for a personal security guard.
Well I watched 6 minutes or so. Why should we think college students would be any different with the socialist teaching high school and university classes these days? These same things happened in countries like Venezuela.
Bennets responses are not “perfect” – but they are excellent given the context.
Regardless, she was willing to have discussions with these people.
And near the start – though the discourse was still MOSTLY shouting by students, occasionally there was something approximating dialog.
But all of the last 30min is the students slowly increasing their hostile conduct with Bennett having no opportunity for dialog. She left before things turn actually violent.
But that is where they were headed.
The campus police did NOTHING, They did not even assist in getting her off campus when it became unsafe to stay.
Students got in their cars and followed her off campus – only thwarted because the Ohio Highway Patrol did intervene.
Bennets great crime ? – She is a 2nd ammendment advocate.
BTW she does these videos all the time. Some go better, some go worse.
Though always the hecklers are present.
You would think that she was Jeffrey Epstein – not a “girl with a gun”
Very interesting story. You read, you decide.
https://theintercept.com/2020/02/18/mike-bloomberg-lp-nda-china/
I was wrong. Jay was Right, Trump is evil.
This story is horrid. How could Trump pay this guy to write a story critical of Xi and then not just abandon him, but Join Xi is screwing over the guy and his family – for what ? T make a bit more money in China.
Trump’s got to go. How can we have a president this morally bankrupt ?
I hope this was sarcasm. hat article is about Mikie.
“I hope this was sarcasm. hat article is about Mikie.”
Yes.
Yet, Jay and apparently Clint think Bloomberg is a better class of oligarch than Trump.
I sympathize with the woman and her husband’s ordeal.
From her account it sounds like they were poorly treated by “Bloomberg.” And as the owner of Bloomberg News, that reflects badly on Mr. Bloomberg. How badly depends on the extent of his knowledge/approval of the treatment the couple received. Bloomberg was mayor of New York when this went down and was not involved in the day to day operations of his businesses. But her repetitious usage of “Bloomberg” negative behavior towards her, instead of “Bloomberg News” makes it seem like a personal attack on Bloomberg the owner. If Fox News was named Murdock News, would all criticism of it be a direct indictment of Rupert? Should we personally blame Rupert for Hannity and Carlson and the other dumb yahoos spouting faux news daily?
But if Bloomy is in fact as disreputable a guy as Trump, and proves to be as committed to lies, distortion, insults, and idiocies as Trump, as soon as he’s elected I promise to immediately start calling for his impeachment, pronto!
.
“The fish rots from the head”.
Several people have CORRECTLY noted that though Trump may not be responsible for the specific acts of Cohen – Trump hired him as his lawyer. Trump is responsible for the fact that he hired someone with Cohen’s character.
But Trump’s personal involvement in these NDAs that you keep ranting about – was writing checks and that is about it. He is culpable for that.
Though I have little problem with paying women alot of money for their silence regarding pretty vanilla consensual sex.
No one was put in harms way by Trump.
As you note we do not know Bloomberg’s personal involvement with this woman or her family. But like Trump – Bloomberg bears some responsibility for the actions of those he hired – he chose them.
It is likely that Bloombergs staff is richer, better dressed more eloquent than Trump’s
But these people – though maybe more cultured were MORE thuggish than Cohen.
Absolutely the more Bloomberg knew – the more culpable he was.
But at the barest minimum he is as culpapable as Trump with regard to Daniels.
Not force or coercion was used with Daniels. She voluntarily accepted alot of money for silence. She was never at risk or danger.
Bloomberg’s paper used this woman’s husband to get a damaging story on a tyrant.
Then they threatened to leave him high and dry when the winds shifted.
That is far more dispicable.
Just to be clear – like Trump – Bloombergs actions were LEGAL.
But the only leverage used with Daniels was money as enticement.
This women was subject to significant coercion.
Legal coercion. but still coercion.
Fox was targeted for a number of lawsuits for the misconduct of Bill OReilly and Roger Ailes.
While I expect the plantifs to prove their case – otherwise, I have no problem with that.
Ultimately – though a bit late the Murdock family decided to Sack OReily and Ailes.
We have subsequently found that the same misconduct has occured through out the media.
Fox was not even close to unique. The number of leading lights of the media engaged in sexual misconduct is large and knows no political boundaries. Regardless,
Too the extent that the cases can be proven – the OWNERS and management share responsibility
I absolutely beleive in free markets. I do not beleive in a priori regulation.
I STONGLY support Torts. Holding those who share in the culpability for a bad act that has actually occured accountable for that act.
That has the same ultimate effect as a regulation – with some differences.
You have a tort claim against another – if you were harmed as a result of their actions.
There is no requirement to violate a law. There just must be a REAL harm, and REAL responsibility for that harm.
But yes, I will hold Murdock, and Bloomberg and the owners and manager of NBC, PBS, ….
all responsible when through their bad choices or negligence their employees are sexually harrassed or otherwise harmed.
“Should we personally blame Rupert for Hannity and Carlson and the other dumb yahoos spouting faux news daily?”
So far Hanity – who I do not like at all, and Carlson who I like alot but often do not agree with – are NOT the “Faux News” – their track record for accuracy is FAR better than Anderson Cooper, or Tapper, or Lemon or Maddow, or ….
Regardless. yes Murdock is absolutely responsible for them. If they fail – he will lose money. If they succeed, he will make alot of money.
If either of them mistreat their employees – to the extent Murdock is aware he is responsible for that too. I have not heard that either Carlson or Hannity are engaged in sexual harrassment.
For all of the talk of Trump “not being fit” to be president, he is doing a much better than average job, particularly given the obstacles he has faced.
Bloomberg, while having many of the qualities I might normally want to see in a Democrat candidate (against MFA and the GND, opposed to the fascist type of government control of corporations that Bernie and Liz extol) is unfit for the US presidency, in my opinion, because he is willing to defend the Chinese economic war on America, which benefits him personally.
Back in December, Bloomberg had this exchange with Margaret Hoover about China, on “Firing Line:”
“Bloomberg: The Communisty Party wants to stay in power in China, and they listen to the public. When the public says I can’t breathe the air, Xi Jinping is not a dictator; he has to satisfy his constituents or he’s not going to survive.
Hoover: He’s not a dictator?
Bloomberg: No, he has a constituency to answer to.
Hoover: He doesn’t have a vote. He doesn’t have a democracy. He’s not held accountable by voters.”
…So Bloomy thinks (or is tying to gaslight us into believing) that Xi is NOT a dictator, and that the Chinese people, who do not vote, and can be killed or thrown into prison camps are his “constituency?” I wonder what his response to the corona virus would have been?
Even Bernie calls Xi an authoritarian dictator.
Looks like it might be the democrats overlooking Bloomberg being Xi’s puppet, but making a big deal about Trump being Putin’s puppet.
Where the difference with these countries influencing our election lies with Russia feeding false or misleading news about the dems or positive influence about Trump on social media. China does it through influencing leadership of American corporations with large operations in China.
You can bet money China will be actively backing anyone but Trump!
Words matter.
I do not much care about, and we can not as a country do anything about (without violating the rights of americans) foreign countries “influencing” US elections – overtly or covertly or through proxies expressing a preference.
I do not care that several prominent members of the Ukraine Government were openly and officially anti-Trump in 2016 – I bring it up periodically, because Jay and others claim there was no Ukraine influence in 2016. That is absolute nonsense. The Ukrainian Ambassador to US’s anti-Trump editorial is STILL posted on the Ukraine embassy’s website.
Regardless, our government is free to express views about who should win foreign elections – and visa versa. I would greatly prefer our government did not. I would prefer other government stayed out of our election. But you can not supress the speach of foreign countries without supressing the speach of americans. And even though I do not care much about the speach of foreign countries – ultimately I do not want even them “silenced”
If Russia wants to run internet bot farms stupidly trying to influence US elections – so what ?
I would consider it the role of the US media to ferret those things out and report on them.
But not the role of our government to thwart them.
I care about foreign countries spending money in US elections – but as a practical matter – you can not actually stop that either.
And I am always opposed to laws that will not work.
BUT when foreign nations actually try to hack our voter registration or voting machines – THAT is a really big deal. Again we probably can not stop them from trying.
But we can do things to assure they do not succeed, but the left is not interested in that at all.
That is one of the things I find must frustrating about the left.
One any issue – even ones I might agree with them – not only do they decide what the issue must be, but precisely how it must be solved.
There is zero interest by the left in doing anything about Russian hacking of or elections machinery. But they are happy to censor the entire internet justified by purported Russian bots.
Bloomberg is “technically” correct.
I would assume most of us recall the collapse of the USSR – or east germany.
One day – quite rapidly, East Germany just ceased to exist. Why ? Because the East German people decided that they were no longer listening to their government.
Xi has exactly the same problem in China.
All that said, there is a huge gulf between a free society and the extent to which Xi can oppress his own people before they decide the government does not exist.
We saw mass protests in Hong Kong this summer.
What do you think would happen if those protests were say 5 times larger ?
Or possibly only 2 times ?
Hong Kong came very very very close to the point where Xi had only two choices – let go, or use force. What happens in Hong Kong when the police refuse to obey orders to reign in protestors – and when the protests get large enough – that is what happens.
What happens when the military will not put down the protests – because we are past the ability to claim that it is just some fringe, but it is clearly the majority of people ?
Even the military will not put down the protests – that is what happened in East Germany.
Bloomberg is not so much saying that Xi is not a dictator, but that dictators do not exist.
Again “technically” he is correct – no government ever has sufficient force to make the entire population obey if they are determined not to do so.
There is a reason the dystopia in 1984 used magical technology – because the human resources necescary to acheive compliance by force are enormous. Evenb the USSR and the PRC had to keep people happy enough – or terrified enough – or a combination sufficient to secure compliance.
But this is a horrible economic model.
Xi has been a major regression in Chinese freedom.
Part of Trump’s abiltiy to leverage Xi in these trade talks is that Xi’s regression towards dictatorship has made his country more fragile and economically weaker.
I have a thread running with Ron that standard of living is inextricably linked to freedom.
It applies to china too.
“There is nothing in all the world greater than freedom. It is worth paying for; it is worth going to jail for. I would rather be a free pauper than a rich slave.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
Yeah, and MLK would be defending Trump now, right….🤣😂🙃🥴
MLK’s niece, Alveda King, defends Trump all the time.
In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
I have no idea what King would do – and neither do you.
Blacks have done better under Trump than Obama or any prior president.
King care alot about that.
At the same time King was somewhat socialist.
So the question is whether he was committed to an ideology or to results ?
So no one has beriefed the 2020 Trump campaign about “russian interference”.
So the NYT story is most likely Fake NEws.
Why we should question “experts”
From the linked report:“… friends of Haney’s told us he was planning on doubling down on efforts to “protect America from progressive leftists socialists”.”
Police should immediately stop and frisk any known Bernie supporters there…
So because Haney had political views you do not like – it is OK to murder him ?
You have been telling us all that the politics of Ciaramello do not matter – only the truth of his (hearsay) evidence of a (non) crime.
I do not know of Haney’s politics – who knows maybe he is actually that mythical sexist racist, misogynist, homophobic hateful hating hater.
But he was an actual Whistle Blower who reported real problems at DHS,
No one kept his name secret. Because there is no such provision in the law.
Now he is died – likely murdered by those on the left he pissed off.
But you want to quibble about his politics ?
Have you no shame ?
“ So because Haney had political views you do not like – it is OK to murder him ?”
How did you leap to that asinine conclusion?
Oh, right… that’s your default squat.
How did I reach that conclusion ?
I post about an actual WB that is murdered,
and you respond with crap about his politics.
You care more about his politics than his murder.
https://www.city-journal.org/pennsylvania-democratic-divide
Anything the left does not like – its nazis
And the right ignores any warnings reminiscent of Nazi behaviors… or seems they have become tolerantly acceptant of the Bund…
I could not have made my argument better than you have made for me.
Can’t wait for the “he’s all washed up as an actor” tweets tomorrow …
“ Longtime Republican Clint Eastwood is pulling support from Donald Trump in the 2020 election. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, the actor-director signaled that he thinks a different candidate would be the better choice.
“The best thing we could do is just get Mike Bloomberg in there,” he said.
https://pmcvariety.files.wordpress.com/2019/05/clint-eastwood.jpg?w=1000&h=562&crop=1
Jay do you really think Bloomberg can capture the election.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/SuperTuesday.html
This is before Nevada where he polled at 32% and he captured 46%. He leads in most all of the polls on super Tuesday. Even in N.C. where we have been bombarded with Bloomberg ads and no one else until Bernie began a couple the last day or so, he trail Bernie by 2%. And N>C> is suppose to be “moderate centrist democrats”.
And these polls dont really reflect the negative results from the debate and all the negative reports and ads on stop, question and frisk, the NDA’s with womens issues and now the one that has come out concerning the Bloomberg reporters wife in China.
If he takes 80%-90% of super Tuesday states I could see the democrat convention ending up like the one in 1968 in that the 1968 convention ended a period of Great Society initiatives and moved the country toward a left leaning McGovern nomination in 1972.. We can see that happening today with democrats moving away from Clinton/Obama 2016 pseudo liberal policies and wanting the real deal.
Sanders had an incredible night.
He put a serious dent in the “Sanders has a ceiling” meme.,
The polls you are citing not only do not yet reflect the debate. They do not reflect the outcome of NV which is likely to increase his strength in SC.
Sanders is now leading everywhere except SC where Biden is only up by 2.
Welcome to 1972 Redux.
I think it’s a long shot for Bloomy to get the nomination— but that’s what I though about Dubious Donnie’s chances too..
Jay, seems like one difference between Trump and Bloomberg. Both are outsiders from party machinery when they began campaign. But Trump was all alone in that endeavor. Bloomberg has Sanders as a competitor for the outsider vote.
My biggest fear, your greatest hope, is most will drop out after South Carolina and let Bloomberg take on Sanders one on one. If that happens, Bloomberg wins, either outright or stolen convention.
If Bloomberg runs against Trump, then I think Bloomberg wins. Dave will post 25 messages why my thinking is wrong, but I hear many GOP moderates that have voted for every republican since Reagan, and maybe before, and even Trump last time, that say they will not vote for president at all, just vote the undercard.
I dont think anyone knows the damage his constant obnoxious personal attacks are having, especially with younger and middle aged women. In surveys, they ask what Trump should do different and give “stop tweeting” as a choice, but they do no digging into that response.
I have no problem with his tweeting. The issue I have is the same issue as to why I would not vote for him in 2016 and again in 2020. Its the constant personal tweets that have nothing to do with policy.
Yes I fear Bloombergs policies more than Trumps, but I cant stand the man. Most likely I will vote Libertarian or sit out the presidential line.
My best hope is that Biden (came in 2nd in Nevada) makes it to a brokered convention and with Kamilla or Amy as his VP gets the nod.
Bloomberg my 2nd choice for the nomination.
Biden has been “Dead man walking” since the WB Complaint.
Though honeslty Ciaramello did Biden a favor – If Biden gets out now he will have poisoned his own legacy less than if he continues.
But beleive what you want.
No way anyone from CA gets the VP pick. Dems dont need to solidify MN. They will be going for someone from OH, PN or FL. And it would need to be someone with name recognition and someone that could step into the presidency. The name that comes to mind is Sharrod Brown, OH.
And that would also solidify the socialist because Brown is rated either in the top 10 or top 7 liberals, even outscoring Sanders on the progressives scorecards.
“I think your wrong”.
But this is all tea leaf reading. The only objectively correct answer is – what actually happens.
With certainty neither of us will get it perfectly correct. I do not think I am all that good at this.
But the evidence is the so called experts are pretty bad too.
I am going to skip my speculation/analysis, except to note that Bloomberg’s strength is money that is it. Beyond that he is a mess, many of his positions are too extreme for moderates, while at the same time not appealing to progressives.
Democrats are better off in the long run if they lose with Sanders, than if they lose with Bloomberg
“While he approves of “certain things” the president has done, he wishes that he would act “in a more genteel way, without tweeting and calling people names. I would personally like for him to not bring himself to that level,” he said.”
We would all like that.
I would like it if the left was not constantly calling everyone Nazi’s – including half the jews in the country. I would like it if I could be truely offended by Trump’s tweeting – because without him everything would be civil. But that is a fantasy world.
I respect Clint greatly and he is entitled to his oppinion.
But the more I learn about Bloomberg the worse a choice he gets.
Ron’s link to the post by the Chinese Journalist about Bloomberg coercing her and her family to bury a story that Bloomberg asked them to research and write – because he had made nice with China since then, was pretty bad. Far worse than anything with Daniels.
I also found it interesting that Eastwood pivoted to the Jewel Story – and the importance of “the presumption of innocence” – you know that thing that Mueller has never given anyone – including Richard Jewel. That foundational principle in our justice system that The foreperson of the Stone jury never gave Stone, that Judge Jackson did not give to either Manafort or Stone. That you never give anyone you do not like.
I am not surprised that Eastwood is not supporting Trump.
I am surprised that he is supporting Bloomberg – even Giulliani has a better understanding of the presumption of innocence than Bloomberg does.
Giuliani started “stop and Frisk” – he worked with lawyers and police to assure that it was done constitutionally – that reasonable suspicion existed before a “stop and Frisk”.
Giuliani’s “stop and frisk” Survived constitutuional challenges.
During Mayor Giuliani’s tenure murders in NYC dropped from over 3000/yr to 600/yr.
All other crime dropped similarly.
Bloomberg became mayor and untethered “stop and frisk” from the constitution.
He increased its use by 600%, he eliminated the constitutional safeguards.
During his tenure as mayor NYC murders continued dropping – from 600/yr to 300/yr.
And Bloomberg’s “stop and frisk” was declared unconstitutional – because he dropped the requirement for reasonable suspicion.
Giuliani understood that the constitution and the presumption of innocence existed for a reason. It is not getting the guns off the streets that is the objective. It is getting the bad guys off the street that is what brings crime down. And you do not get the bad guys off the street by targeting everyone. You have to identify those that are likely to be real bad guys – you have to actually do police work – observe and target those that act in a way to give the police reasonable suspicion – BECAUSE the goal is to find the bad guys – not everybody.
Bloomberg was and still is of the delusion that the problem is guns – not people. Hence he sacrified all presumption of innocence violated peoples rights, lost the constitutional challenge, and was significantly less effective against crime.
I would join Eastwood in picking a batter choice than Trump – if there was one.
Bloomberg is not it.
Jay, you keep referencing Joe Walsh. Who the hell is J.W.
Joe Walsh is a quasi Tea Party guy who won a single term in the house and subsequently because a purportedly TP talk radio guy.
His personal life has been a mess, his politics have floated through a variety of extremes.
He was an early Trump supporter, but he also flipped to a never Trumper early.
Jay likes him because he constantly sprays nasty tweets about Trump.
But he is less consequential than Max Boot – who atleast has a consistent political possition and genuine political differences with Trump.
Ron.. Dave is right in these two observations:
“Jay likes him because he constantly sprays nasty tweets about Trump…. But he is less consequential than Max Boot – who atleast has a consistent political possition and genuine political differences with Trump.”
Those are both good reasons for you to like him too.
Like you, Walsh doesn’t have a lot of political differences with Trump’s professed positions on bedrock POLITICAL issues: Joe’s pro 2nd Amendment; anti abortion, anti illegal Immigration, anti political correctness, pro religion – and he’s a VERY fiscal conservative.
His anti-Trump crusade is based on Donnie’s moral, ethical, and character deficiencies. Early on after Trump was elected Walsh recognized Trump con-artist hucksterism as detrimental to our system of democratic governance. And as Donnie daily began farting his brazen twitter messages to the nation, Walsh quickly recognized the stink. Walsh doesn’t bullshit: he tells you in no uncertain terms what he thinks… I doubt there’s much on which you’d disagree with him, except his vow to vote for whomever the Dems nominate – even Bernie.
WALSH: “ I’m a conservative. I disagree with most of the policy advanced by the Democratic candidates. But I’ll support WHOEVER the Democrats nominate because we can survive 4 years of bad policy. We can’t survive 4 more years of Trump’s attack on the very heart & soul of our Democracy.”
Aside from that, you’d likely agree with his other views, and get a laugh at his trump excoriations. Here’s a few samples today:
“ Trump is everything our Founders feared: a serial abuser of the powers of his office, a tyrant who believes he’s above the law, and a pathological liar…”
‘ Our National Security Advisor should stay out of politics. Our intelligence shouldn’t be politicized. This is dangerous. Trump corrupts everything.’’
“Trump was able to win the Republican nomination in 2016 because the Republican Party establishment was weak, arrogant & out of touch…. Bernie is on his way to winning the Democratic nomination this year because the Democratic Party establishment is weak, arrogant & out of touch.”
“Trump IS tyranny. And ignorance. And cruelty. And dishonesty.”
Your kinda guy, right Ron?
Once again you can not read.
I did not say Walsh was politically close to Trump.
I said Max Boot was politically CONSISTENT.
Walsh is NOT politically consistent.
He has called himself lots of different things – lincluding tea party and conservative.
He is neither – not because he has not at one time or another espoused Conservative, or Tea Party – or even libertarian values. But because there is little telling what values he will espouse today or tomorow.
In that he is more like you. The only consistancy in your views is – If it even looks like Trump might favor something – you oppose it. if it looks like Trump might oppose something – you favor it.
Walsh is similar – but not as consistent even in his Trump Derangement as you.
Guess you can say he is somewhat like me. But the one huge difference is he is willing to set this country on a course to socialist programs far greater than we have today. I am unwilling to vote for that. Four more years of Trump is just a ripple in the lake. Democrats in control today is a tsunami of mass distruction.
We got a taste of progressive policies with Obama with idiotic climate agreements, his support of TPP giving even greater power to China, lax illegal immigrant law enforcement, government control of labor with regulations like overtime for salaried workers, selling out to iranians and the big one, forced purchase of private company services by PPACA. Trump got rid of most, but has not been able to rid us entirely of PPACA, although the individual mandate is gone. The demwits will not be stupid enough to allow that to happen in the future
So when we get free college, free healthcare, bans on fracking, unfair climate agreements, unfair trade agreements, open borders, force purchase of sardine cans for cars, government regulations on trucks and SUV’s, wall street regulations causing significant declines in retirement values and other progressive new deals, they will never be eliminated. And I suspect most of that will happen through legislation the first year so it will be difficult to stop if congress changes hands.
Its not me I am worried about. Its my kids and grand kids future. You already live in a government controlled environment, so you wont find much different.
Walsh is not consistently anything except anti-trump.
That makes him like Jay not you.
I am sure I can find a few things at some point that I agree with Joe Walsh on.
That does nto make me “like him”
My crystal ball has the GOP either retaking the house or coming close, and Trump being easily relected, with Republicans holding the Senate.
But lets say by some miracle Sanders wins, Democrats win the house, and the Senate.
First such a victory will tank the economy BEFORE the innuaguration.
Just as Trump’s election reversed a downward Trend BEFORE innauguration.
If Sanders and Democrats govern even HALF as they promise – control of the house and Senate will flip by 2022 and Sanders will serve one term.
Democrats must not only deliver on their promises – but they must not destroy the economy in doing so.
They can keep a good economy or they can reverse Trump’s policies and keep their assorted promises to voters.
They can not do both.
“We can’t survive 4 more years of Trump’s attack on the very heart & soul of our Democracy.”
Floral rhetoric – but absent meaning.
How is Trump attacking the “heart and soul of our democracy”. ?
Presumably from his quote – Walsh has no significant issues with Trump on Policy.
At the very least his remarks allow you to reasonably conclude that he thinks Trump’s policies are less dangerous than democrats.
So that takes Policy out of the equation as Trump’s “attack on the very heart & soul of our democracy”
Technically we are NOT a democracy – and democracy is an abysmal form of government rejected by our founders. But I will let that slide and presume that Walsh (and you) mean by democracy government relatively similar to what our founders gave us.
So how is that being attacked ? Much less attacked at its heart and soul ?
Democrats impeached Trump – and found nothing of substance.
Even if you actually accepted the idiotic garbage that Trump was solely intrested in Dirt on Biden and would use his power as president to get that, and did not give a damn whether it was true or not – and that is actually bad. Still, how does that differ from actions taken by FDR or LBJ or Nixon or Clinton or Obama ?
Yes, that is actual “whataboutism” – but if you are making a claim that Trump is an existential threat – then you MUST overcome “whataboutism”.
To be an existential threat – rather than just a president whose conduct on some issues is towards the poor end of the norms for presidents, you most demonstrate that Trump’s conduct is WORSE than all prior presidents.
I recently learned that the driving force behind the Japanese interntment in WWII was policitcs not bad ideas about national security. That FDR was told by DoD that the Nisei did not pose a threat. And that FDR interred the Japanese to secure a political win in California.
Because the internment was popular there.
Does anything Trump has done come close to that ? Does anything any other US president has done come close ?
Most of the Nisei were US Citizens – born in the US. So FDR locked up tens of thousands of americans – not to win a war, but to win an election.
Sorry Jay and Joe – Trump’s actions are pretty tame compared to prior presidents.
In Dec. 1992 George Bush pardoned a raft of people effectively ending the Special Prosecutors investigation of Iran-Contra. Walsh was absolutely livid and thought the pardons were an abuse of power. During the election Bush repeatedly said he was “out of the loop” regarding Iran Contra, but in his own diary he wrote he was one of very few people who was actually familiar with all of it.
So Bush ended a special prosecutors investigation that likely would have lead directly to him, by pardoning everyone involved.
Though I expect that Trump will ultimately pardon or commute the prosecutions of almost everyone involved in the Mueller investigation – he has not do so yet.
Further we are well past the point at which we know this entire farce is a “witch hunt” – and yet it continues”. There is no “there-there” as there actually was with iran-Contra, and yet we are still sending people to jail – for the crime of pissing off the prosecutors and the courts where there was NO CRIME.
I found Judge Jackson’s comments damning – to her.
She publicly stated that Stone was not trying to protest his own innocence – he was covering up for Trump. Covering up What ? Mueller found nothing. Horowitz found the first 6 months of the investigation barely met the standard to investigate, and NEVER met the standard for a warant of spying and yet both occurred, and after 6 months – even reasonable suspicion no longer existed – and yet the investigation went on for 2 more years.
The LAWLESS investigation. So how was Stone engaged in a criminal coverup for Trump – when there is no crime ? I would further note that The standard for Jackson’s remarks is no reasonable suspicion, it is not probable cause, it is not even beyond a reasonable doubt.
Jackson’s use of Stone’s participation in the coverup of a crime in her sentencing decisions requires a CONVICTION of someone for an actual crime. We have no crime from Stone to have covered up.
So if we want an existential threat to our democracy – we need look no further than the trump haters.
Those who started CrossFire Huricane, Those that continued it long after they knew it was dead. Those who asked for warrants where there was probable cause.
Those who presided over trials rooted in crimes that we all know never happened.
The lawlessness and threat to democracy is not Trump – it is those like you suffering from TDS.
Regardless again – what is Trump’s threat to democracy ? Clearly it is not that he is lawless.
No one has found a crime – even those those hounding him have committed crimes right and left. And abused power all over.
Is it Trump’s rhetoric ?
Obama told us that we were wretches “clinging to our guns and bibles”, Clinton called us deplorables.
That is tens of millions of people. Trump’s style may be more south park – but despite the high sounding language Obama, Clinton have said things much more bitter – and not merely towards political opponents – but large blocks of americans – none of whom did them harm.
So how exactly is it that Trump is an existential threat to democracy ?
The fact is you and Walsh are ranting – you have gone orders of magnitude beyond Trump’s mild exageration into full blow flights of fancy.
The actual existential threat to “democracy” is you and walsh and your allies.
“ Trump is everything our Founders feared: a serial abuser of the powers of his office, a tyrant who believes he’s above the law, and a pathological liar…”
More of that ignorance of our founders.
Have you ever heard the things that Adams called Jefferson or visa versa ?
Sorry Jay – even Trump’s “style” is something our founders would have no problems seeing in themselves.
I have pointed out over and over that Jefferson demanded that his AG prosecute Aaron Burr – political rival. for unfounded claims of Treason.
Has Trump asked Barr to prosecute Biden for Treason ?
‘ Our National Security Advisor should stay out of politics. Our intelligence shouldn’t be politicized. This is dangerous. Trump corrupts everything.’’
That is total crap.
What Kissinger was not political ?
Bolton is “Mr. Neo-Con” his politics are who he is.
We have just been through a four year disaster – where the DOJ/FBI were politically weapononize (and before that the IRS), where a Special Prosecutor spent a year on a politically driven vendetta that failed. Where the house of representatives impeached the president over politics.
Of Course the NSA is a part of politics.
Grennel is now the highest ranking openly gay person ever in the federal government.
You would think that the woke would be celebrating.
Here is a long interview of Grennel by David Rubin.
Why don’t you actually bother to learn something about the man before spewing more nonsense.
“Trump was able to win the Republican nomination in 2016 because the Republican Party establishment was weak, arrogant & out of touch….”
Here is the 2016 GOP field
Donald Trump Sen. Ted Cruz Sen. Marco Rubio Gov. John Kasich Ben Carson Gov. Jeb Bush Sen. Rand Paul Gov. Mike Huckabee Carly Fiorina Sen. Lindsey Graham
:
Trump beat 4 of the more prominent senators in congress, 3 governor’s and a brain surgeon.
This was one of the strongest GOP fields in my lifetime.
They were not weak, arrogant and out of touch.
Republicans fully expected to win in 2016. They had every reason to beleive they would.
They brought out the big guns. ‘
Accross the entire field the policy differences were relatively small.
The Republican platform would be nearly the same regardless of what candidate won.
Nor were they “out of touch” – while Trump demonstrated political accumen the rest of the field could not match. He did not get votes because he pushed policies his opponents did not, he got votes because an awful lot of blue collar democrats BELEIVED him more than the rest of the field.
No one in the entire GOP field was Out of Touch.
The entire field was IN TOUCH with americans.
Though the election might have gone differently had the GOP nominee been Rubio or Cruz.
The outcome would still likely have been a GOP win. Possibly with a larger popular vote.
You appear to be the one out of touch with reality.
“Bernie is on his way to winning the Democratic nomination this year because the Democratic Party establishment is weak, arrogant & out of touch.”
i am not predicting winners for the DNC primary. Beyond that whoever wins, they will lose to Trump.
Absolutely Democrats are out of touch.
Bernie may be the only avowed socialist on the slate,
But like the GOP slate in 2016 – the Democratic slate is relatively homogenous.
The most moderate democratic candidate Biden ? Klobuchar ? Bloomberg ?
Is more of a socialist than Obama. and by Nearly 2:1 US voters will not vote for a socialist.
You keep claiming that Trump is a tyrant.
What is your defintion of tyrant ?
Can you name a significant socialist leader anywhere that was not a Tyrant ?
Stalin, Lenon, Tito, Pol Pot, Mao, Maduro, Chavez, Castro ?
Tyrany is built into the ideology. Each Democrat on stage in the debates has promissed trillions in benfits to one group delivered by stealing from another.
THAT Is Tyranny.
What has Trump done that has taken from you something that is your by force ?
Do words have no meaning to you ?
Is Tyrant or Nazi just a bad thing you call those you do not like ? With out concern for actual meaning ?
Has Trump gotten the US into another war – in the mideast or elsewhere ?
Trump is the first president since Ford that has not invaded some country.
Carter conducted a failed invasion of Iran – justified, but failed.
Reagan invaded Granada,
Bush Invaded Panama, Iraq, Somalia.
Clinton invaded The Balkans.
Bush invaded Afghanistan (justified) and Iraq – not.
Obama invaded Libya, and Syria. North and West Africa, Nigeria, Somalia, Yemen, ….
So far Trump has not initiated a new military conflict.
He’s a tea party Republican who you’d instantly invite home for beers & conversation…
https://www.google.com/url?q=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Walsh_(American_politician)&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwjgnYvyi-jnAhXPpZ4KHduKAvcQFjAAegQICBAB&usg=AOvVaw2jKeW-fO_zknTEvuMke_9o%5D
HeHeHeHe😁😁😁😁, Internet liberals at it again! The first time ever getting a warning page telling me I have clicked on a link the previous page that is taking me to Xxxx and then I have to confirm I want to go there.
The Russian are coming, the Rooskies are coming!
Thanks for the info.
???
I couldn’t link you directly to Wikipedia from Wikipedia, Ron.
So I linked you there from Google.
The link I sent you first took you to Google, which offered the link to Wikipedia.
It gave you the choice to go there or not.
Your paranoia clicked in, and you clicked out.
Here’s the opening of the Walsh bio there:
(WARNING: read with one eye shut to avoid secret brain-wash infiltration!)
“William Joseph Walsh (born December 27, 1961) is an American politician, conservative talk radio host, former social worker, and former 2020 Republican presidential candidate who served one term in the United States House of Representatives representing Illinois’s 8th congressional district…’
Direct link to Wikipedia – not so hard.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Walsh_(American_politician)#Controversial_statements
Jay, I linked over and read it. But its not paranoia, its reality. I shared an article on Facebook that concerned Bloomberg, the debate and much of the issues that Warren brought up concerning Bloomberg. I received a comment from Lead Stories that a warning had been sent to those receiving my comment and link to the story stating that information in the article was not completely accurate. Since that was sent, more info on the NDA’s has been released and nothing I can find was incorrect.
Paranoia is thinking others are against you. Reality is knowing there are those opposing you. That is vety different.
Virus News;
WSJ: “ The Dow industrials fell more than 900 points as the spread of coronavirus outside China deepened concerns about the outbreak’s economic impact”
Fox Business host Charles Payne: “The Bernie factor is finally rearing its head in the stock market…there’s absolutely no doubt.”
“President Trump wants to slash funding for the CDC. His new budget proposes a 16 percent cut at the agency.” @SenSchumer
NYT: “ State Department officials say that thousands of Russia-linked social media accounts are spreading disinformation about the coronavirus, including a conspiracy theory that the United States is behind the outbreak.”
Trump: “Germs are BAD!”
Is there something that the US government has done to thwart the spread of Corona to the US that you feel is inadequate ?
Most of the criticisms I have heard is that Trump has spent TOO MUCH money stopping Corona, not too little.
The CDC’s budget hasn’t got much to do with this stuff at all.
Vaccines will likely be available for Corona by Mid May – the US government has been an active impedimenbt to the development of new vaccines and despite wonder new means of developing vaccines – almost all vaccine work is done “the old way” because of government.
We have the same problem with “anti-vaxers” – though a small portion are total die hards, the vast majority are opposed to the MMR vaccine or to the use of mercury in vaccines.
Both of those are trivially solveable problems. My daughter only received a partial MMR vaccine – because she was vaccinated in China and tested and was resistant to measles.
So she just got Mumps and Rubella. All a large portion of anti-vaxers want is to get the vaccine in 3 parts separated by 6 months. Who cares if that is “stupid” why do we have to force people to do things the most convenient way for government ? Other anti-vaxers would be happy to get their kids vaccinated by vaccines that do not have mercury. We can do that.
But again we do not give a shit about parents preferances – once government decides their concerns are unfounded.
Further there is separate work on Corona as a result of DNA sequencing, it is expected that soon we will have anti-virals for Conrona – not a vaccine, but injectable antibodies that thwart the Corana virus from “peircing” cells to gain entry.
Pretty much all of the stuff I have described is happening OUTSIDE of government. Though government still gets in the way.
The CDC does not need more money. The US government needs to get out of medicine.
It is not very good at it, it is not able to move quickly.
And those are problems that can not be fixed.
NYT: “ State Department officials say that thousands of Russia-linked social media accounts are spreading disinformation about the coronavirus, including a conspiracy theory that the United States is behind the outbreak.”
Again – outrside of left wing nut control freaks “who cares” ?
Lots of people – including left wing nuts are susceptible to stupid conspiracy theories.
You can not combat those by attempting to supress them.
Look at yourself – you actually beleived – and probably still do the “conspiracy theory” that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia. One of the problems with the Stone Trial is that it is clear from Judge Jackson’s public remarks that SHE beleives that debunked conspiracy theory.
So why is it that I am supposed to go ape shit because you are bothered by stupid stories spread by Russia ? BTW those stories would have alot less traction – if the US had NOT in the past done some of this stupid shit. Read up on the Tuskegee experiment.
Or all kinds of nonsense the CIA experimented with in the 60’s
My daughter is chinese. She works at Target while going to college, in customer service. Right now customers will not get near her. She is chinese – she is dangerous. Of course she has not been to china in 20+ years. and is no more likely to have Corona than you or I
People beleive stupid shit – they need no help from Russians/
The stock market is going to respond to both the possibility of Sanders getting elected and the Corona Virus.
The behavior of the stockmarket is complex as though it is a leading indicator, it does not predict the future health of the economy it predicts the future health of the stock market. Those are ALMOST congruent. but stocks rose during the Obama administration in excess of the growth in the economy, because Obama’s policies encouraged companies to shift from investment to stock buy backs as an example.
The stock market hiccuped when Trump was elected – very briefly dropping and then it shot up.
There are lots of factors including Corona that are negatively impacting China. Xi’s shift to a more authoritarian regime is a strong negative economic impact on china.
Nothing correlates stronger to economic growth than freedom.
I addressed that in my exchanges with Ron on Reducing healthcare costs – while he is right on some of the cost information he provides – absent sufficient freedom efforts to cut costs fail. This is a significant part of why government fails at so much of what it does – why the VA does not work well. It is not because it does not know what the tools are to reduce costs,
It is that the tools work poorly in a top down structure. Freedom is the secret sauce.
If you take an automobile engine and you apply every trick in the book to boost its performance – but the flow of fuel to the engine is limited, all your efforts will have minimal performance benefit.
Well Jay you are right!
The Corona virus is a major contributor for the downturn. But why is this any worse than the flu. According to medicinenet.com seasonal flu kills 291,000 to 646,000 people worldwide each year,
But the news that the big healthcare for-profits being down 3%-4% is also an indication that there is a reaction to Sanders winning overwhelmingly in Nevada and making him the overwhelming favorite going forward. As he wins more primaries and becomes the leader with a large lead going into the convention, I suspect you will see further declines in the markets in other sectors that his candidacy will have a significant negative impact. Banking will take a huge hit as will others like Amazon, Google, etc that will fear an anticipated government involvement into their operations.
Now for the CDC budget. You react just like most Americans. MY GOD THE SKY IS FALLING! The president is cutting the CDC budget.
But go to the actual budget and see what is being cut. For instance of the $1.2B, $200 million is for cross cutting activities.
So what is cross cutting activities.
From the CDC website. “PSE(Policy, systems and environmental) approaches can make healthy living easier and provide sustainable cancer prevention and control improvements where people live, work, play, and learn.We can make communities healthier by supporting changes in—
Policies to protect communities from harmful agents or elements (such as indoor tanning policies to limit exposure to ultraviolet rays or smoke-free policies to limit exposure to secondhand smoke).
Systems to increase the use of client reminders to get people screened for cancer, or to increase access to healthy food choices in schools and workplaces.
Environments to encourage communities to be active (such as pedestrian-and bike-friendly streets).
Is this really the best use of $200M. Telling people to avoid tanning beds and reminding people to be active? And other activities of this nature? That is almost 20% of his suggested cuts.
Get the damn government out of those things! You might also want to look up the line items CDC budget to see how vast the changes in line item amounts are and how insignificant some are, but added up they are real money.
Yes, Russia is messing around in Facebook, Twitter and other social media outlets. They are doing that to undermine peoples confidence in our government. And the politicians that are making a political issue of it are falling into Russia’s trap. They could care less who the hell the president is, they just want Americans to not have confidence in any of our government. If elected officials would address the issue from an election and confidence angle and not a political angle, then maybe the Russians may not do as much of it because the political uprising would be less. And you have fallen hook, line and sinker due to your TDP.
CDC – just get rid of it.
I am tired of this delusion that if government does not do something it will not get done,
Or that the amount we spend on an issue controls the results we get.
Corona is not likely worse than the Flu – but we are inured to the Flu.
The 1917 Spanish Flu originated in the US midwest, and was unusual because it killed those with STRONG immune systems.
Absolutely we should do what we can – Corona appears to have a 2% mortality rate. If large populations contract it, they could result in very large numbers of deaths.
But this is not “the plague” – which killed 50% of those who got it.
Corona is unusual – we freak out over the unusual.
The Flu is not unusual.
The stock market is going to fluctuate from now to the election.
There is not a current democrat including Bloomberg that is not likely to negatively impact the stock market compared to Trump. But the negative impact of Sanders will be greater than any other democrat. The market will respond to the odds of Sanders being elected. The greater the odds the more the Market will fall.
The greater the odds of Trump being re-elected the stronger the market will be.
Regardless this is an election year and it is rare to have a strong market in an election year.
The market does not like uncertainty and elections are giant gobs of uncertainty.
Nor is Sanders the most important impact on the market – just one of many.
Corona is a negative impact,
There is a strong shift of production from China – for alot of reasons – Corona being one of those. That will be a short term negative but a long term positive.
Xi, Corona, HK, the trade war, Manufacturing restructing in asia will all impact the market – atleast initially mostly negatively.
Growth in China is almost certainly going to take a significant hit.
And what happens to China effects the world. The US less than Europe, but it will still negatively effect the US.
Long term alot of this is actually good. Particularly if it forestalls China’s regression into authoritarianism. But short term it is not.
On the positive side Brexit will shortly mean Trade negotiations with the UK.
Those can not take effect until 2021. But just the news of progressing trade deals with the UK will be a strong positive for the US economy.
One of the significant factors in BRexit was Britians Trade was shifting from Eu centered to more global. The UK is returning to a trading role like it had near the start of the 20th century as the worlds pre-eminent global trader. Britian is looking for deals with the US, with CA, AU, BZ, India China, and the rest of Asia. Joining the EU actually negatively effected British Trade with its former colonies.
“ Corona is unusual – we freak out over the unusual.
The Flu is not unusual.”
Tell it to your pal Trump, the germaphobe.
He’s the one freaking out over it
Lots of people are freaking out.
Corona has killed alot of people.
But it is still not as deadly as the ordinary flu.
Russia is “meddling” with Facebook.
Who Cares and why ?
The internet is global. It is not the exclusive domain of the US.
If Russia and Russians wish to post on facebook – SO WHAT.
The entire Russia Social Media nonsense is just an excuse for those like Sorros to demand even more censorship of the internet – either privately – Sorros wants Zuckerberg to resign, or via Government.
There are lots of conservatives who are pissed – and many of them – Like Sen Hawley are NOT looking to end social media censorship but to impose new censorship of their own.
I do not give a rats ass whether Google and Twitter and FB are censoring conservatives, or pro-choice groups, or antifa, I do not want certain republicans controling internet censorship any more than democrats. At the moment the greatest threat is from the left – but things can change.
I am not opposed to private censorship – though I would strip Section 302 protections from those who do.
I am also not worried about Google or Twitter or FB. Private censorship is a self punishing act. I do not think we are very far from the Googleopoly taking a huge hit.
As I have noted before – a 5% drop in FB use would sink the companies stock like a rock.
And shifts on the Internet can occur suddenly.
Regardless, I do not give a fork what the Russians are doing on FB.
If you are scared of the free speech of others – even Russia – your nuts and your dangerous.
Censorship is far more dangerous than bad speech.
“ Russia is “meddling” with Facebook….Who Cares and why ?”
It’s chilling that you don’t know why you should care…
Jay,
I know exactly why I should NOT care.
The only thing Russia or anyone else can do via FB is SPEAK – Persuade.
That is it. That NEVER should be illegal. Not if the left does it. not the right, not if catholics do it, not if Nazi’s do it, not if Russians do it.
The only people on the entire planet who MUST not engage in free speach in US elections is the very government whose leaders we are trying to elect.
Russian’s have a voice in what US government should be
Nazi’s have a voice in what US government should be.
Progressives have a voice in what US Government should be.
Moderates, Libertarians, Democrats, Republicans, … have a voice in what US government should be like.
The US government does NOT have a voice in what US government should be like.
That is the ONLY thing that is actually dangerous.
It is especially dangerous because the US government administers the election.
No one but US citizens have a vote.
All those with a voice have no power beyond persuasion.
If you do not beleive that people are capable of chosing what voices to listen to and making their own choices regarding who to vote for
Then you do not beleive in voting, and we might as well quit pretending.
If you are demanding that some voices be silenced – then you are after control of the outcome, you do not trust voters.
While I think there are all kinds of problems with voters – after all you are a voter, and you buy all kinds of idiot conspiracy theories that make no sense, I trust voters.
Further the constraint on voters, elections and government is NOT restricting who can speak.
It is limiting the power of government.
If we have a real constitutional government that protects individual rights by limiting the power of government – it would not matter is Chairmen Sanders is elected, he would be unable to fork things up – because the power of government would be limited.
The objective of the design of government is NOT to prevent bad people from getting elected. That is what is so stupid about all your ‘the founders would be rolling in their graves” nonsense. The founders KNEW that bad people would occasionally – even often lead us.
They designed a limited government so that we would survive that.
You have slowly disassembled the limits such that who is elected matters too much.
Regardless, you are demanding control of what no one should control – speach.
While failing to control what must be controlled – power.
Yep. Agree. But not about meddling for Trump or Sanders. Russians just want to plant the seed of no confidence in anyone in government and the politicians have fallen for it hook line and sinker. We planted that same seed in the soviet union with radio free europe, helping to create an environment that brought down the iron curtain. They are looking 10 years, 20 years into the future. What happens next year is unimportant.
But if you believe they are really interested in who is president, look no further than energy policy. Who benefits most if fracking is shut down in America.
“Yep. Agree. But not about meddling for Trump or Sanders. Russians just want to plant the seed of no confidence in anyone in government and the politicians have fallen for it hook line and sinker. ”
Neither the Russians nor anyone else can own space in your head that you do not freely give them.
I agree with you that the Russian’s seek to sew discord. But they can do their damdest to do so, they only succeed when WE choose to be persuaded by them.
Pretty much the worst thing we can do is freak out over “russian influence”
I would not care if russian efforts were large – but they are not, they were tiny. Russia does not have the resources to operate on 1/100th the scale Bloomberg does.
But in 2016 they succeeded far beyond anything bloomberg has any hope of – not because they actually had any effect on the election. But because the left entirely bought the nonsense that they did and freaked out.
This is atleast in part because of bad ideas core to progressivism.
The presumption behind the cancel culture, safe spaces, trigger warning, the idea that all speech is not allowed – is that speech – in particular bad speech is unbelievably powerful.
The reality is that so long as speach is free, we are reasonably good at separating truth from fallacy over time.
White supremecy is dying slowly not growing. Russia did not tip our election,
Even though I did not vote for Trump I am increasingly convinced that the outcome of 2016 election was what we needed at the time.
I do not think that a free people with free speech always get it right. But they rarely if ever get it radically wrong.
It is always the supression of speech that is most dangerous.
Or as 2nd amendment supporters sometimes put it, the purpose of the 2nd amendment is to safeguard the first.
“We planted that same seed in the soviet union with radio free europe, helping to create an environment that brought down the iron curtain. They are looking 10 years, 20 years into the future. What happens next year is unimportant.”
What we did took so long BECAUSE there was restricted speech behind the iron curtain.
What we did worked – because over time in the market of ideas, better ideas prevail.
Eastern Europe was persuaded – not because the US was good at deluding people,
but because the ideas were actually persuasive.
Russia can not influence the US consequentially via speach except through persuasion.
And the majority of people are not easily persuaded to bad ideas.
Trump has universally done what he beleives in is the US best interests.
We can argue over whether he is always right about that, but it is always what he does.
He does not care if what benefits the US screws Russia or benefits Russia.
Trump’s policies foreign and domestic rest on a single principle – what is good for the US.
And honestly that is ALWAYS what every country should do.
Quite often what is good for the US is also good for other countries – even the world.
SOME of Trump’s policies have advantaged Russia – though most often the left and the media are straining very hard to reach that – often deliberately bending the truth past breaking.
Many of Trump’s policies have disadvantaged Russia.
But whatever the effect on Russia – the reason for them was the benefit to the US.
Trump did not open up fracking to screw russia – even though it does, but to benefit americans.
Dave, PLEASE read what I write.
Yes, no one can get in your head unless you want them to. But I said when the idiots in Washington make Russian meddling a huge deal, every night for years the news is full of Russia messing with the election and supported Trump, people begin to believe that crap.
Not everyone is like you and I who dont pay attention. There are a huge number of people like Jay that believe Trump is only president because the russians supported him. He has little faith in government and is willing to sell his sole to the devil if that would get rid of trump
So stop thinking like you and begin thinking like 40-45% of Americans that believe Trump is an illegitimate president due to the Russians and have little faith because if that. Then you will understand my concerns.
The democrat politicians are planting the seeds of distrust and the liberal press is watering and fertilizing the crop.
Ron,
Absolutely there is a serious issue regarding this nonsense of Russian influence.
Yes, the press is having a field day, Yes, politicians and others in government are using creative leaks do drive a narrative that is meaningless and false.
A huge part of the problem is that any of us think it matters.
I stress over and over and over that we can not know what is in others heads.
And even god does not judge that. We must work from peoples acts.
I am conflicted over whether the IC should even try to decide whether Putin or any other country/world leader has a preference regarding our elections.
Of course they actually do, but devining that is mind reading. Further I am not sure that guesses regarding Putin’s wishes have any meaningful import regarding US foreign policy.
Conversly should Putin ACT that MIGHT have more consequence – depending on that action.
Regardless, I would note this entire area is extremely problematic.
Neither you nor I get to decide what matters to voters. If people want to vote for or against Trump or Sanders based on assessments – bad or good of what is in Putin’s head. That is their business.
Generally it IS the role of the IC to try to ferret out what foreign leaders want, what motivates them, what their intentions are.
But that is a black art – it is mind reading as much or more than actual intelligence gathering.
It is highly prone to error. Presidents should want to know what the IC thinks on those issues, but no one should consider what is essentially official tea leaf reading to be fact.
Consider this is a different context.
The US is in a conflict with Russia that involves choices about the use of force – our military.
One factor is whether Putin will respond by using nukes.
Intelligence regarding whether putin will respond by using nukes is mind reading.
I absolutely think that is an assessment the IC should make.
The president should also consider it before acting.
But too what extent should the IC assessment control the Presidents choices ?
Should the US not defend NATO from Russian invasion if the IC decides with 60% confidence that Putin will respond with nukes ?
BTW I am NOT asking for an answer. I am pointing out that this entire area of what some foreign leaders intentions are is extremely problematic.
The IC SHOULD try to assess the intentions of foreign leaders – those assessments SHOULD be highly classified, The President SHOULD consider those assessments in making decisions, but he SHOULD NOT be constrained by them.
“So stop thinking like you and begin thinking like 40-45% of Americans that believe Trump is an illegitimate president due to the Russians and have little faith because if that. Then you will understand my concerns.”
I do understand that. But it is not moral to act based on fear regarding the poor thinking of others.
A significant portion of our current political problems are due to the poor public education of the past 50+ years.
I do not think education is the role of govenrment.
But to the extent it is, that government education should be limited to History and the 3R’s
It is not that people have no need for other knowledge. Just that such knowledge should not come from government.
The fundimental flaw here is that our teachers for decades have taught us to fear.
Fear most everything.
We get through school inculcated with myriads of malthusian fears – Global Warming population, fossil fuels, … all this fear taught to us by our own government and all of it false.
Because the sky is not falling. that is not to say that everything is perfect.
I would not the 40-45% of people who beleive Trump is illegitimate – are the same ones who:
Belive the US is more racist than ever
That CAGW is an existential threat
That in the future we will be unable to feed the world
That we will run out of fossil fuels soon.
That it is OK to restrict speach based on the listeners emotional response.
That the answer to all problems is government.
I would further note that these 40-45% are a significant portion of the most highly educated people in the country.
Our education system is a collosal failure – we are litterally PAYING to screw up a significant portion of the best and brightest of us.
Anyway the Core problem is not that 40-45% of americans beleive something stupid.
It is that ANY of us – right or left, are prepared to use force to act on such beleifs.
I have no right to use force against them – because 40-45% of americans beleive something stupid.
THEY have no right to use force against me – because they beleive something stupid.
Sewing seeds of distrust in government is a GOOD thing – even if it is democrats doing it based on false premises.
I think that the fears of 40-45% of us are false.
But their lack of faith in government – and their beleif that the power of government could be abused in the wrong hands is to be encouraged.
There is only one solution to that problem – disempower government.
There is no means to assure that only the best and most well intentioned will hold power.
As Lord Acton noted
Power Corrupts.
We should ALWAYS be suspicious of our leaders – including Trump.
You are worried about the motives of those fanning these fires – I do not know that you are right. But I agree that we should be concerned.
And the only way to address our fears of abuse of power is to limit power.
Call him – or any of the tweets or comments you post whatever you wish.
They are all fallacies – either slurs and insults – your norm and that of most of those you cite,
or appeals to emotion and authority, like your eastwood link.
Regardless, they are all devoid of facts and valid arguments.
We could have a real discussion about dozens of issues.
About the role of government
About US foreign policy
About economics
About regulation
About law
About …
But you have zero interest in any debate about any issue.
Everything is some visceral emotional response to a person.
Constant insults, slurs, appeals to authority.
You make moral pronouncements – this person is evil, but you never buttress those with facts, logic reason – argument.
And the same is true of all the authorities you appeal to.
I like Eastwood – alot.
He did not resort to your typical barage of slurs.
But he made no argument.
He provided no rational basis for his support of Bloomberg over Trump.
There are plenty of good criticism’s of Trump.
The problem is that however good they might be – they are not existential crisises.
They are the ordinary criticisms of ordinary presidents.
If we address Trump on the facts, he falls far short of his own self agrandizement.
but he has inarguably done better than the past two presidents.
Does healthcare have to cost alot ?
https://gen.medium.com/my-journey-through-tijuana-for-the-best-surgery-2-000-can-buy-be51f1bfcffd
Dave I could write you a long dissertation as to why healthcare in the USA is so much more expensive. but I will spare you all the details and just provide a few.
1. Capital expenditures..UK facilities do not all buy the latest a greatest in technology. That cuts depreciation cost and cash flow. You might wait months for an MRI
2. Maintenance cost of facilities. Most hospitals in the UK are still double rooms, some still with wards, but in the last 5 years there has been a movement to private rooms. The double room and wards cuts maintenance cost, HVAC cost, housekeeping, etc. That represents about 25% of hospital cost in America, so reducing that is significant.
3. Pharamist, Nurses and other professionals make 60% to 75% of what American counterparts make. And they are government employees, not hospital employees.
4. Doctors make 75% or less that american counterparts. They are also part of the national health system.
5. Everything is standardized in UK. Doctor A who does othro surgery can not demand brand X, while Doctor B demands brand Y for the same surgeries. Cuts inventory costs and provides competition to suppliers.
6. And I will close with this. They do not have insurance executives leading insurance companies making almost $10 million a year, not including stock options taking a huge part of peoples premiums. Other insurance executive make about the same. They do not have hospital CEO’s making $20 million or more like Kaiser’s makes, or $13-$14 mil like Advocate Aurora healthcare. Most hospital CEO’s are make $5M to $7 a year, the Chief Financial officers not far behind. And being from the upper management side of hospital management, those people do nothing to deserve that high a salary. Its the good ol’ boys network where Joe is hospital CEO and also sits on the compensation commitee for company Z in town. Guess who sits on the hospital compensation committee? Yep, the CEO of company Z. You scratch my back, I scratch yours!
And I would suspect the differences in mexico are more than even the differences with the UK.
I also suspect that mexico has no requirement for nursing rations. in 2012 it was reported on general floors they have a ratio of 1 nurse to 20 patients. In the United States it is no more than 1 nurse to 6 patients. That cuts their nursing costs, which is 50% of salary costs in the USA by almost 70%. They have a ration of 1 to 4 on intensive care, we have 1 to 1.
Why the difference. Regulation, liability insurance, patient expectations.
I will give you a single reason – the only real reason.
The US Healthcare system is NOT a free market.
That is it.
There is a long list of why Free Markets will always be cheaper in the long run.
As to your list:
1) Capital expenditures – I beleive the cost of LASIK is down to $250/eye. That is close to what I pay for a pair of glasses.
The most affordable LASIK providers are using the “latest and greatest” equipment.
Capital expenditures are NEVER a reason things cost more.
In an actual free market capital expenditures are used to DECREASE costs – by trading upfront fixed capital costs for increased efficiency – reduced labor or materials costs or cost reductions in other areas.
If capital costs drove price increases we would still farm with our hands.
2). Maintance costs. Mislabeled. Also somewhat incorrect.
Rising standard of living LITERALLY requires delivering more value at less human cost.
That ALWAYS means humans have more wealth to spend on something “new”.
They might spend it on bigger homes, fancier cars. They may also spend it on creature comforts – including in the healthcare sphere.
You are correct that wards tend to be cheaper. Further US overall life expecance has changed very little since the 50’s when hospitals were all wards.
The quality of US healthcare has dramatically improved – but most of that quality is to improve our comfort and experience, and not make us live longer.
Just as we are buying fancier homes, because we can afford it many of us buy better healthcare.
3 & 4). Wages are irrelevant in a free market. Productivity is what matters.
Who would not pay a pharmacist twice as much – if he managed to do 3 times as much work equally well ? Which loops back to capital expenses. We use capital to improve efficiency – to REDUCE costs AND increase individual WAGES while decreasing labor costs overall.
5). All you have to do to understand that is wrong is go to a US grocery store Cereal aisle.
There are hundreds of choices all afordable, many cheap.
While there are economies of scale and standardization. They do not scale linearly. It may cost have as much each to produce 100 identical widgest as to produce 100 widgets one at a time, But economies of scale have a diminishing ROI and eventually the benefits of customization exceed the economies of scale – and sometimes the cost actually goes down.
Also see #2.
Further – we are seeing SOME manufacturing returning to the US from China. There are many reasons for this. ONE of those is that China enjoys a 15% cost advantage AT the point of production for mass produced goods driven primarily by lower labor costs.
BUT the cost at point of sale is NOT the same as at point of production. Further China’s cost advantage comes with numerous disadvantages. China has enormous supply chain problems, deliveries are not reliable, quality though improving over time is inconsistent, customization options are virtually zero.
Increasingly US made goods are cheaper at the POINT OF SALE.
The major way US businesses – from Amazon to Walmart hit higher profits today is by reducing “turn time” – Walmart turns the store once every 90 days – EVERYTHING in the store is sold every 90 days. The average Return on each sale is 1.5%. But if they turn 4 times a year – that is a 6% return on Capital. Chinese supply chains are very long and time from order to sale is much longer. That means that the rate of turning goods is often lower, and the return is lower. A slightly higher price from a US manafacturer with a shorter supply chain and a quicker turn time may be the more profitable option.
US factories are increasingly automated. Insteal of 10,000 workers making $25/hr.
There are 10 workers making $100/hr and a couple of million in machines.
That automated nature of the US plant means that custom manufacting is easier.
Quite often an automated factory can produce 10 different variants of the same product at no additional costs.
6). The insurance problems you mention do not exist in an actual free market.
————————————————–
While I have addressed each of your assertions – it is NOT the specific rebutals that are important.
The reasons that free markets always deliver greater value at less human cost, Is not economies of scale or supply change management or ….
It is because what they are designed to do – is deliver more value for less human cost.
And whoever figures out how to do that will be rewarded. Precisely HOW they do that – is up to them. But even the rewards are fleeting. If you build the better mousetrap – you will profit – until someone does better still. But consumers will benefit PERMANENTLY.
Every improvement in LASIK as an example provides a temporary windfall to those who concocted the improvement. but a premanent benefit to consumers who will see their value increase when the next entrepeur beats the last.
Dave you are right about lasic surgery.
But TOTALLY WRONG about most everything else in hospital costs.
Lasic surgery is profitable. Years ago it was performed in hosiptals. That profitable service offset losers like ER’s. Over the years, many other profitable services have been cherry picked, leaving more unprofitable services in community hospitals. Cancer hospitals, cardiac hospitals, imaging centers. Hospitals are 24/7/365. ER’s are staffed at a certain level to cover minimal trauma, regardless. They could be busy, they may only have one patient during an 8 hour shift. But do you want to be the heart attack entering an ER when they are understaffed and they have twice too many patients?
That same thing holds true for the ancillary departments that provide services to all direct patient care areas. They might be at 120% productivity one shift and 70% another, but they need to be staffed for expected activity so patients do not die.
Next time you go to your local CVS, Walgreens and tell them that their nonstop filling of scripts is not 100% productive. You will get a boot up your ass. I have friends who are pharmacist and they work nonstop from start to finish.
I dont plan to respond any further to your comments about healthcare costs since you know everything there is to know. I just spent 35+ years in healthcare finance and just found out everything I inew was wrong.
You are completely missing my point.
You are fixated on the mechanics.
Lasik is not magically cheap
It is not cheap because it moved from Hospitals.
It is not cheap because of economies of scale
or ….
These and many many other things may well be true.
but they are not WHY, They are a part off HOW.
It is the WHY that is important.
I have repeatedly provided the data that countries with smaller government have higher rates of increase in standard of living.
The same is also true of countries with greater freedom
Why ? Because less government and more freedom are essentially the same thing.
Rising standard of living – which means more than we value for less human cost, requires FREEDOM.
The USSR was able to impliment just about every single mechanism of capitalism that purportedly lowered prices and raised standards of living.
But it is NOT mass production – or whatever other mechanism that you come up with that actually drives prices down and value up. It is FREEDOM.
There are only two ways to profit in the world – deliver more value to people – and that REQUIRES Freedom, or rent power – and that reduces freedom and lowers standard of living.
Lasik, Plastic Surgery, every single area of our economy where greater value has been delivered for lower human cost have ALL occured proportionate to the degree of freedom afforded those endeavors. ‘
Conversely the rate of improvement in value delivered is INVERSE to the degree of regulation or government control.
I do not care much about your arguments reguarding mechanisms.
Without freedom – the same approaches that work in free markets will fail.
It is not the mechanism that increases standard of living, it is the environment of freedom.
If the markets are free – they MIGHT reduce costs and increase values – by the mechanisms you cite – or they might do so by others.
But absent freedom the mechanisms will not work.
Nor is this binary. The greater the freedom the more value will rise while cost declines.
Nor is this some flight of fancy of mine. We actually KNOW this.
And if it were not so – Socialism would work.
In the 40’s and 50’s the key flaw in socialism was identified in a series of debates on “the economic calculation problem” This is why socialism fails – it can not solve the “economic calculation problem. In fact there exists only ONE functional way to solve the economic calculation problem – and that is free markets.
Further this is not just about the Freedom of one actor. Free markets solve the economic calculation problem via “spontaneous order” – which is not exactly spontaneous, but it is really through myriads of free actors working from the bottom up.
The core of the economic calculation problem is that everything in an economy – even something as simple as making a pencil is so incredibly complex than no single person can possibly know or control the whole process.
If I am going to provide Lasik services profitably and affordably – that is beyond my ability as an individual unless i can depend on thousands – millions of others to deliver their tiny peice of the final product – profitably and affordably. There are billions of parts in delivering quality affordable Lasik (or anything else). Getting ONE or 100 right will have minimal effect.
To deliver profitable and affordable – to raise standard of living the entire economy must coordinate EVERYTHING – the supply of every single product and every part to every product and every part to every part. Rigth down to the coal and iron being mined, Everything must move together toward the ends, and not even towards one end – but to myriads of competing ends. All the paices that make affordable Lasik are also peices of other things. Every Transistor or IC ever gram of steel has multiple competing uses.
Everything must be produce and distributed fairly optimally from top to bottom.
Affordability and profit only occur when all inputs and resources find their way to their best uses.
Socialism can not do that Government can not do that. No computer is even close to being able to do that.
But 7Billion free human brains none of which really know more than their own small part of the whole using the price system of free markets to work out resource allocation can solve the economic calculation problem – bottom up – not top down.
If we ever find a top down solution to the economic calculation problem – socialism will work, and it will do so better than free markets.
But that will never happen – because over time – as standard of living and societal complexity rise the problem becomes even harder to solve top down.
This is also why ultimately libertarianism will prevail, because no other system can work as society becomes ever more complex.
Ron,
No i do not know everything there is to know about healthcare costs.
What I do know is that there is nothing that is special. that healthcare is not “different”.
That what works and what does not work are fundimentally the same across all domains.
Further – if you made healthcare a perfectly free market tomorow – I would not know how to make it better more affordable, …. It is likely that you would more than I.
But I do know that the techniques the mechanix, the methods – and there is not just one or two of them, there are many, they work better the freerer the market is and worse the less free it is.
This is not a case of my “knowing everything” – but it is a case – more than a case, we are dealing with some fundimentals of economics that have been know for almost a century, some parts longer.
Make the market freerer and someone like you who understands the mechainx of your market will figure out how to make care better and cheaper. But without that freedom, the same mechanix will work poorly – if at all. I also know that if the market is free enough – even if you are wrong – someone else will figure it out get it right and drive value up and costs down.
There is not one answer or a few, there are many many many answers – some better than others, but they will not work without the freedom to try them – and probably fail many times before succeeding.
You keep trying to explain healthcare to me as if there are absolute known single answers to every problem.
There aren’t – and that is why freedom is critical. The more freedom there is the more people will try different things. Most of those will fail. Possibly the best answer to some problem with be found by the experts in the field. Occasionally it will be found by someone who it makes no sense that they would have the best answer.
And once the problem is “solved” – we start over again – because there is no best answer – just constant refinement – usually iterative, but once in a while a dramatic rethinking of everything.
You said look at Walgreens or CVS. Do you have the slightest doubt that in a free market in 10 years however walgreens and CVS do things today – they will be done differently in 10 years – or there may not even be a walgreens and CVS in 10 years.
You keep trying to say “this” is the answer in this area, or that is the answer in that area.
Maybe, but there is no area of the entirety of human existance where there is one and only one right answer never changing. There is no absolutely right answer, though there are lots of wrong ones. There are many many right answers – some better than others some that compliment each other and some that are mutually exclusive. But even though the set of right answers is infinite the set of wrong answers is much much larger. We fail more often that we succeed. But failure is part of how we get to success.
And there is not an end. When we finally succeed in making things better, lowering cost, raising value, we start all over to do it again, and again and again.
You say I am right about Lasik. I am not sure what that means. The cost of lasik has dropped and the value increased – stepwise over a long period of time.
That BTW is not abnormal – except in healthcare and regulated markets – it is the norm.
Long ago I told you that if you wanted to look at the way the prices of things change over time that you should always express a price in terms of the value of labor at the time.
which is just saying that Standard of living rises as more value is produced with less human effort. the “price” in currency is just the ruler that we use to measure, but it is a ruler that changes over time.
I have said again and again that you can look at all markets. Generally the less regulated a market is the more likely that over time prices will drop and value will increase in nominal dollars, but almost always the price in terms of the labor needed to purchase the same value will drop.
And the most important factor in the rate of increase in value and decrease in human cost is the degree of freedom.
“I dont plan to respond any further to your comments about healthcare costs since you know everything there is to know. I just spent 35+ years in healthcare finance and just found out everything I inew was wrong.”
I am not writing about “healthcare costs”. There is no market that has entirely different rules of economics that apply only too it. Every market has its own unique traits. but the laws of supply and demand are not immutable in the automotive market and ineffective in healthcare.
Oh, one more thing. If one of your daughters has a baby at 23-24 weeks gestation and that child is in the NICU, do you want them in an American NICU where that baby is cared for 24/7 by a nurse one on one for most of their hospitalization, or in Mexico where the nurses have 3-4 babies assigned to them. Who covers one that goes bad when that nurse is covering another that goes bad?
“Oh, one more thing. If one of your daughters has a baby at 23-24 weeks gestation and that child is in the NICU, do you want them in an American NICU where that baby is cared for 24/7 by a nurse one on one for most of their hospitalization, or in Mexico where the nurses have 3-4 babies assigned to them. Who covers one that goes bad when that nurse is covering another that goes bad?”
My ability to even have that choice at all rests almost entirely on my standard of living.
That incredibly expensive NICU that does something impossible in most of the world and impossible everywhere a few decades ago, only exists because of our higher standard of living. And that higher standard of living MEANS producing the nearly everything that is more critical. more fundimental, more basic for less human cost than we were able to do before.
If our standard of living today was such that 50% of our time had to be spent producing our food – there would be no NICU. We would not even try to save 24week premies. They would die as they have for 99.99% of human existance.
I do not know what the next great thing beyond that NICU you are celebrating is – actually there will be many many many of them. But I do know one thing – we will not have that thing that is even harder and more expensive than the NICU until we figure out how to make that NICU cheaper and better.
I keep expressing the definition of standard of living very nearly the same way all the time.
I do so fairly carefully – it is more than a definition, it is actually a fundimental axiom of life and economics.
Standard of living = human value produced / human effort to produce that value.
To increase standard of living you MUST either
Increase the value produced without changing the human effort needed,
Or decrease the human effort, or BOTH.
‘
And until you increase the standard of living – you can not have MORE.
You can not have that NICU
This is actually a mathematical tautology.
BTW this is not an all or nothing choice between mexico and the US – which is precisely why freedom is important.
If all americans (in the US) actually had the choices that the couple in mexico had – and there is not any reason they can not, some of us would sometimes choose the $2000 clinic, sometimes the $3500 clinic, sometimes the 10,000 hospital, and sometimes the 27,000 hospital. Each of us would choose differently – given the choice – based on our standard of living – and other sometimes transitory factors. Each of these choices would be picked in differnet frequencies by different people. The really expensive excellent care facility would be working both to improve care and lower cost, and the cheap fascillity would also be working to improve care and lower cost.
I do not recall who exactly said it recently – but one of our democratic candidates said something nonsensical – like we need to make the excellent mental health care available to the super rich available to everyone.
The most certain way to assure that the cost/value of something – our standard of living, will stagnate or drop is to take a market where there are multiple choices – some too expensive for most of us, and attempt to reduce that to one choice that is available to all. If you are LUCKY you will be able to give everyone what the super rich have – and quality will cease to improve, and cost will cease to decline. More likely you will end up with more midling care for all, with higher cost, and again stagnation.
All improvement requires freedom.
So we know we have an IC Leak that almost certainly came from the gang of 8,
Why aren’t we investigating that ?
This is what happens when governments enter into free and unfair trade agreements driven by government subsidized manufactured products that drive companies out of business that do not have state backing. I doubt the new agreements will make much change, but in the future someone needs to pay attention.
But then, this does not fit with the Libertarian traders or capitalist free traders unlike my “fair trade” positions that might make it harder for China to own trade.
And maybe instead of this issue, Millenials and Gen Z’s might pay attention if and when they cant buy their annual new Iphone because Apple cant get parts or cant manifacture them.
Yes, this is Breitbart news, but there are other articles with much the same info. This was just much more detailed.
https://www.breitbart.com/asia/2020/02/13/coronavirus-outbreak-exposes-chinas-monopoly-on-u-s-drug-medical-supplies/
Just get government out of it. The problems will take care of themselves.
There is nothing that China has some monopoly over that actually matters.
We went through all this over rare earths – when it looked Like China would leverage the world:
We found substitutes and we found sources outside of china.
There is nothing China makes for the US that can only be made in china or has no substitute.
Markets are incredibly resilient.
In the 16th century England was a backwater, and Spain controlled pretty much all the gold in the world and was the worlds sole super power.
Spain focused on controlling that gold and gathering it all to spain. And the more Gold spain accumulated the poorer Spain became.
England focused on Trade, and eventually supplanted Spain as the worlds sole super power.
The US with 330m people produces about 1/4 of what the world values. The Eu produces almost the same value – with 550m people, china produces almost the same value with 1.6B people.
The amount of value produced is what matters.
Interesting.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/president-obamas-golf-trip-tiger-woods-cost-taxpayers/story?id=43132865&fbclid=IwAR2kPiI1NnK613e1dSXd7W1_Lb72fjYlPjFsitTQMER3lqZ4m3C6n2u7T60
I do not care any more than I care about the cost of Trump’s golfing.
I do think that we should substantially cut back the presidents protection detail.
But not Trump’s or Obama’s – but the presidents – whoever that is.
Dave, that was for Jay’s benefit. I know you don’t care.
Watching business news.
Trump asked for $2.5B for corona virus research and development.
Queen Nancy says grossly underfunded
Shumer says it should be $3.5B
Cant anything be done in this country without politics?
How about $1.5B now and as they need more, come back and ask for more. Are they going to spend a Billion in a month?
And some will say, keep government out of it completely. Never happen, so that is not a viable option. I want something the majority of Americans can agree on.
How about $0.
There will be a vaccine for Corona by June.
There will likely be Antivirals targeting Corona before that.
None of this money will be available to spend before that.
Regardless, the problem is not within the domain of govenrment – and should not be, government can not possibly react fast enough.
I strongly oppose government research and development – particularly in applied rather than pure science.
There is very little evidence that government research si not all fundimentally waste.
We have been inculcated today to beleive that our present and future are the benefit of government research – this is garbage.
Why do you or anyone else beleive there is a knowable “right” number ?
The “right” answer, is zero govenments spending, because only free markets can arrive at the actual right amount of research spending whatever that is.
70 Senators From Both Parties Say The Present Senate Is FUBARed Beyond Belief.
They say:
“An open letter to the U.S. Senate:
Congress is not fulfilling its constitutional duties.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/former-us-senators-the-senate-is-failing-to-perform-its-constitutional-duties/2020/02/25/b9bdd22a-5743-11ea-9000-f3cffee23036_story.html
The following signers are all former U.S. senators: Dean Barkley (I-Minn.), Max Baucus (D-Mont.), Mark Begich (D-Alaska), Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), David Boren (D-Okla.), Bill Bradley (D-N.J.), Bill Brock (R-Tenn.), Hank Brown (R-Colo.), Richard Bryan (D-Nev.), James Buckley (R-N.Y.), Roland Burris (D-Ill.), Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-Colo.), Jean Carnahan (D-Mo.), Max Cleland (D-Ga.), William Cohen (R-Maine), Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), Jon Corzine (D-N.J.), Jack Danforth (R-Mo.), Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), Mark Dayton (D-Minn.), Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.), Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.), Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), David Durenberger (R-Minn.), Daniel Evans (R-Wash.), Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), Wyche Fowler (D-Ga.), Slade Gorton (R-Wash.), Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), Gary Hart (D-Colo.), Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), Gordon Humphrey (I-N.H.), Tim Johnson (D-S.D.), Bennett Johnston (D-La.), Ted Kaufman (D-Del.), Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.), John Kerry (D-Mass.), Paul Kirk (D-Mass.), Robert Krueger (D-Tex.), Mary Landrieu (D-La.), Carl Levin (D-Mich.), Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), Carol Moseley Braun (D-Ill.), Frank Murkowski (R-Alaska), Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), Bob Packwood (R-Ore.), Larry Pressler (R-S.D.), David Pryor (D-Ark.), Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), Donald Riegle (D-Mich.), Chuck Robb (D-Va.), Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), Ken Salazar (D-Colo.), Jim Sasser (D-Tenn.), Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.), Gordon Smith (R-Ore.), Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), Bob Torricelli (D-N.J.), Mark Udall (D-Colo.), John Walsh (D-Mont.), John Warner (R-Va.), Lowell Weicker (I-Conn.), and Tim Wirth (D-Colo.).
Have you ever see a WARNING as disturbing as this from former US Senators in your lifetime?
This SEVERE party divisiveness is Trump’s legacy to America.
THE DYSFUNCTION IS GENERATED BY TRUMP! And perpetuated by those of you who keep defending him.
Can’t read, pay wall
I told you how to sidestep the pay wall with duckduckgo.com
In one ear and out the other?
This entire article is quite bizzarre.
First:
There is no problem unique to the Senate. And in fact – whether controlled by Democrats or republicans the Senate is functioning CLOSER to constitutional expectations than the house.
But absolutely we should return to more constitutional limits.
But the assessments of what those are and what the problems are is full of shit.
The constutition was deliberately constructed to thwart the use of power – both by the legislature and the president.
The constitution was deliberately constructed to encourage GRIDLOCK.
The constitution was designed so that the power of government could only be excercised when there was a super majority consensus to do so.
That is the OBVIOUS design of the constution – but even if you do not agree with my judgement it would be the effect of returning to constitutional governance.
As to the specific assertions in the article.
Many are wrong.
The constitution gives near infinite power to the president as commander in cheif and in the areas of foreign policy. With only the following limits – all spending must be authorized by congress. War can only be declared by congress, and treaties must be ratified by the senate.
WE know that our founders intended the president to have broad emergency powers and broad military powers and broad ability to act in foreign affairs – because early presidents did exactly that.
Washington raised an army of 13,000 and put down the whiskey rebellion without authorization from congress – this occupied almost the entire 2nd term of Washington.
If you beleive in different limits on the presidents military and foreign policy powers – I could be persuaded to agree. I actually think that circumstances are different today, and some thought should be given to limiting the power of the president to engage in military conflict short of war.
But you can not do so through legislation. You must amend the constitution.
And I would be extremely careful doing so.
I would further note that claims that something the president are doing are unconstitutional are inherently dubious – when the courts have found them constitutional.
The only aspect of Trump’s use of emergency powers is the fact that there was significant political opposition to what Trump did. The courts ultimately ruled in favor of Trump – because Trump’s use of funds did not actually violate congressional authorizations for those funds.
Put more simply – congress has the power of the purse. It allocates funding. As a rule congress does so GENERALLY delegating the detailed allocation of funds to the executive.
Congress has the power to allocate funding in greater detail – excercising greater control.
but it is not improper for the executive to excercise its own discretion within the scope left available by congress. The courts found that Trump’s re-allocation of funding did not violate the broad funding provisions congress budgeted.
Put simply Trump acted constitutionally, and the Congress continues to have the power to prevent him from acting as he does. Failing to choose any of the myriads of ways available for congress to do so – does nto offend the constitution.
All that said – congress has abdicated its legislative function.
There is no provision in the constitution to delegate law making to the executive.
The entire regulatory state is unconstitutional. Any regulation MUST be enacted by congress, not by some executive agency.
There is alot in this article I agree with.
But there is absolutely no claim that is new or unusual or unique to Trump.
The actual problems raised have existed since FDR – some since Wilson, a few since Lincoln, and a small number since our founding.
“Have you ever see a WARNING as disturbing as this ”
Constantly – all the time – libertarians have warn of the excessess of government for more than 100 years. There is nothing new here.
As I noted previously George Washington raised an army of 13,000 lead them himself, and put down the whiskey rebellion – without congress.
The broad powers of the president over the military – even in violent conflict short of war are constitutional. If you do not like that – change the constitution.
The presidents power to spend money in emergencies and what constitutes and emergency is actually set by legislation. There is a reason that Trump has won court challenges to his use of emergency funds to build the wall – because they are constitutional. It remains within congresses power to limit the president’s emergency spending and his allocation of funds to do so. Having failed to do so is NOT a violation of the constitution.
DHS Secretary Chad Wolf claims the mortality rate for coronavirus is similar to the flu, both at about 2%.
WRONG.
The seasonal flu mortality rate is generally 0.1%. But still 500,000 or more people globally die from it every year. Unlike the coronavirus, a vaccine exists for the flu. The 1918 flu pandemic, with 2% estimate death rate, killed a couple of million of people. With a much larger world population now, it could wipe out tens of millions if they don’t come up with corrective vaccines soon.
Get the government out of testing, verifications, trial groups, etc and there probably would be a vaccine on the market within weeks. With our current systems in pkace, I have heard 18 months to 24 months before it could be made in volume enough for the worlds needs. That includes the USA.
That damn Trump creating all these government FDA regulations is going to cause the deaths of millions.
There are scientists working on it around the world.
If the Chinese come up with a cure they’ll be testing it full force in hours.
Time for you to develop a panoramic point of view
There are groups arround the world working on this – most are private there are several vaccines in the development – the first likely to market with human trials in mid may is from a private company in the US.
Chloraquin has already been found to be an effective anti-viral.
I have more interest in an accurate point of view.
Technology is rapidly improving and the time to develop vaccines is decreasing.
But there is no quick fix for Corona. It takes months to create and produce large qualities of vaccines.
One thing that is new that might give us a leg up on Corona is our genertic engineering capability. The Corona Virus DNA has been completely sequenced. More specifically the “spike” that enables it to infect a cell has been identified, and there is some expectation that an antiviral can be developed quicker than a vaccine.
But the big deal is that because Corona came from outside the normal pathway that we prepare for, it got a jump on us and we are playing catchup.
We need to do our best to ccontain corona for a few more months, after that will will be able to deal with it exactly like the flu.
Ultimately rising standards of living in China will end the threat of the Flu (or move its source probably to Africa).
The development of these pandemic (and seasonal) viruses requires humans and an assortment of livestock living in close proximity. That typically ends as standard of living rises.
At the same time there is a caveat. The more rare a disease becomes the more dangerous it becomes. We already see periodic re-emergences of diseases we thought we had eradicated and we no longer have much immunity to them.
Conversely DNA sequencing is allowing us to produce antivirals much faster.
There were 28K cases of ebola – and 13K deaths for a near 50% mortality rate.
MERS is a Corona Virus. There were 2000 cases, and a 36% mortality.
There is now a vaccine.
There were 9000 cases of SARS with a 10% mortality rate. SARS was also a corona virus.
Most common Colds are a Human Corona Virus.
Several factors effect the spread of a disease.
The mortality rate – the higher the mortality rate the harder the disease is to spread.
Ebola almost always burns itself out fast. Killing people before it spreads far.
The incubation period – the longer the incubation period the more widely a disease spreads before the infected person develops symptoms.
The Flu is wide spread and kills more people because the incubation period is long and the mortality rate low.
About 18% of people infected show no symptoms ever – and this is a serious problem as they spread the disease.
At the same time for the majority of infected people the symptoms are mild – less than the flu or cold.
The Mortaity rate is being re-assessed – as it is now beleived that we have significantly underestimated the number of people who have been infected.
Further there is almost no mortality in otherwise healthy people.
There already appears to be an existing Anti-viral that is effective at mitigating the symptoms.
Wake up!
https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/25/health/coronavirus-pandemic-frieden/index.html
God save us from stupid.
In the US this year just under 700,000 people will die from Cancer.
How much do you want to bet this will not reach that level ?
How much do you want to bet that there will not be 700.000 SARS-CoV-2 deaths globally ?
You and the places you cite are just feeding panic.
Depending on numerous factors – this could get much worse than it is or die out shortly.
But the odds favor neither
It will scare us – some more than others.
It will kill some people. Well people die all the time.
People die of the common cold, and this is just a more virulent common cold.
it kills those who are already weak. Something ALWAYS eventually kills those who are already weak. We do not live forever and eventually something kills all of us.
Jay,
What is your point ?
You have already “blamed Trump” – as you do with everything.
Earlier I beleive you posted that the 100M Trump had spent was too much.
Now 2.5B is too little.
How much should we spend ? More than we spend on Cancer ?
While you fixate primarily on Trump, mostly you just seem to be unhappy, full of outrage and railing against the world, blaming the fact that there is no such thing as perfection on whatever your enemy is at the moment.
SARS-COVID-2 will pass.
But your outrage at most everything will not.
“ God save us from stupid.
In the US this year just under 700,000 people will die from Cancer.”
First step: try to save yourself from abysmal stupidity.
In the US 1.25 million people die in road crashes each year- wtf does that have to do a new virus spreading cross the world? That you don’t know how seriously addled your thinking is on this topic shows how seriously your thinking is addled.
Second step: admit your problem.
“In the US 1.25 million people die in road crashes each year- wtf does that have to do a new virus spreading cross the world?”
It is called perspective. And on issue after issue – you have NONE at all.
Only a minisclue number of people are killed by “mass shooters” each year Any act you take that MIGHT reduce that number with near certainty will have ripple effects elsewhere that DWARF the deaths by mass shooting. It your regulation that succeeds in reducing mass shootings increases the number of deaths by 1% of people who are now less able to defend themselves – you will not notice statisitcally the change in that, but it will dwarf the number of lives you saved.
This is why we do not take draconian actions to solve small problems.
Nor is this the only issue.
Nixon implimented gas rationing to deal with an oil embargo and made a bad problen an order of magnitude worse. Every study of “cash for klunkers has found it was counter productive, making the problems it was trying to solve worse.
ARRA killed commercial construction that had NOT been harmed by the housing crisis.
And the negative effects preceded any positive effects because there is no such thing as “shovel ready”
We hear rants every day about Global warming – yet you have to use ludicrously stupid discount rates to get a negative net impact of CO2 even at maximal values of warming. On net a warmer planet is a better planet – for plants, animals and humans.
But again you look to kill a flea with dynamite and wonder why you have killed everyone in the room.
“That you don’t know how seriously addled your thinking is on this topic shows how seriously your thinking is addled.”
I absolutely agree – the YOUR think on this topic(and myriads of others) is seriously distorted.
There are approaching 8B humans in the world – that is the limit of our brain power and all human effort. When you top down direct those resources at a small problem – they are not available for a larger one.
The entire purpose of free markets – what they do better than anything else – inarguably is direct the allocation of scarce resources. It is outside the computational power of any single human, any small group of humans, any super computer – and will always be outside that power to efficiently allocate resources. This is what economists call the economic calculation problem. There is no top down approach that can allocate resources to all competing needs as wisely as the spontaneous order of free markets.
That applies to our debate – because government can not possibly determine the relative importance of fighting the Corona Virus Vs. Fighting cancer, vs. any other use of the same resources. Nor is this resource allocation problem confined to just a few diseases.
How much human resources should be directed towards the food supply ? The water supply ? Making these more affordable ? If fighting the corona virus results in a 1% increase in food costs – you could have more people die globally than die from Corona.
I am not claiming my specific hypotheticals will come true.
What I am claiming – is that neither you nor government even pretend to take into account the costs of your actions – only the often assumed benefits.
There is some portion of our resources that should be directed towards corona viruses.
If govenrments stay out of it, that amount will not merely be much close to the best choice than government can manage, but it will also dynamically adjust to changing conditions in real time. Which government never does.
Government provides you with nearly nothing of the most critical things for your life – for survival., In fact it interferes with your getting most of those.
If government can not manage the critical things – why do you think it will get something less important – like Corona right ?
Regardless, the point is that you do not know – not even approximately what the best amount of human resources to remove from other problems and move to corona virus is.
That is the definition of lack of perspective.
WRONG
There is no fixed mortality rate for the Flu. There is no specific creature “the Flu”.
“the flu” is a disease caused by any virus in the influenza family – myriads of new ones form every year. Most never spread to humans, and few spread far. Regardless, they vary in morality.
The Spanish Flu of 1918 infected 500m people world wide killing somewhere between 40 and 100m – that is a mortality rate of 10-20% – that is 10 times the Corona Virus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu
If a simialrly virulent Flu Virus emerged today the estimated deaths are about 18M – because we are much better able to cope.
Globally there are 3-5million cases of the flu per year with about 650,000 deaths
That is a 13% mortality rate
A vaccine is being developed for the Corona Virus and will be available my mid may.
Our genetic technology will likely result in an effective anti-viral targeting Corona before that.
There is no generalized Flu vaccine, new flu vaccines are created every year.
We have substantially shortened the development time for a flue vaccine because we have a good understanding of how new strains of the flu start so we can start the process of creating vaccines before the Flu reaches the US. The Flu mortality in the US (and the west) is lower than the rest of the world because the Flu does not reach the US before the Flu Vaccine is available.
The issue with the Corona Virus is much like SARS – it is not that it is somehow especially dangerous, it is that it emerged in an unexpected way that gave it a jump on our vaccine production process.
“ There is no specific creature “the Flu”.”
You’re the one who used the generic term ‘flu’ presenting your spurious reasoning, so are you taking back your faux comparison?
Yes, I used the generic term the flu. But you claimed a specific mortality rate for a near infinite class of viruses which have had vastly different historic mortality rates.
Worse to the extent that such a thing as a generic mortality rate exists for a broad class of viruses with widely varying mortality – you got it wrong.
The US has started human testing of a drug to treat the novel coronavirus.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/26/us/coronavirus-us-american-treatment-trial/index.html
Scum Trump Maneuver
As wrong as it gets.
Interfering To re-elect a shit-head President.
For those too brain-dead to understand, Republicans are trying to SABOTAGE the primary voting process.
😖😤🤮
Jay, give it up with this crap. How many times since 2016 have I said states need to close their primaries because too many people crossed over and stuck the GOP with Trump? How many times has Dave said he didnt care what the states do with open and closed primaries? There have been many studies even showing numbers.
So big f’in deal. The democrats crossed over and stuck me with a choice I could not vote for. The bitch and the NYC asshole.
So paybacks are a bitch. Your party did it last time, the party if my registration is doing it now.
Maybe the jack legged idiots that run the party primaries will wake up and finally close the primaries so democrats choose the democrat nominee, the republicans choose the republican nominee and independents get to hold their noses voting for the party choices.
So your TDP is settling on deaf ears, not because its right, but because it is fair. Turn about is fair play in politics. You play dirty, I play dirty.
I have minimal interest in primaries. They are not in the constitution.
My concern is the general election. I am offended by the laws that both parties have agreed to, to disadvantage other interested candidates from running in the actual election.
Parties can choose their candidates however the please
But the requirements to get on the general election ballot should be exactly the same for all.
The rules for democratic primaries are the business of democrats.
If they allow republicans and independents to influence their election – that is their choice.
I actually think that is a wise one – even if it fascilitates “sabatoge” as Jay calls it – persuasion as it actually is.
Bottom line Ron, you avoided CRITICIZING this chicken-shit sabotage.
The GOP is fucking voters in BOTH parties.
They prevented alternate candidates from running against Trump in numerous state primaries; now they’re advocating cross over votes to undermine the will of Democratic voters in choosing a candidate.
You seem like a nice man, Ron- but nice is not nice enough. That you’re not speaking out against either of those GOP MANEUVERS tells me your about as moderate as Dave and Priscilla -meaning you’re skewed right .
Jay, sorry you think what you do, but I look for the cause and not the effect of the problem. While you seem fine with the democrats doing this while having an anal hemorrhage over the GOP doing the same, I have been consistent in my criticism of the process that allows this to happen.
So tell me this. In 2016, a PAC that supported democrats filtered money into an extreme right candidate in one of our swing districts. Cant remember if it was a state or federal position. So this year, Senator Tillis is up for relection. There is an AOC democrat running against what I define as an Obama democrat for the democrat nomination. Its been reported that a GOP pac is filtering money into the AOC’s democrats nomination through ads, etc. Not direct support, but other support.
So I think this is wrong for both sides. I would like to see it eliminated. But if the Dems did it, should we be having a cow now that the GOP is following their lead? And how do we eliminate free choice of spending money?
But just because I am not blinded by the hate you possess for Trump does not mean I am in the Dave camp where Trump does no wrong. As I said before, I support most all his policies, I cant stand the man. And as in 2016, it will take a Sanders for me to vote for Trump, else I am sitting this one out.
Ron,
I think Trump does far more wrong than you do.
I disagree on Immigration, and Trade at the minimum.
I also oppose Trump on a few of Jays other issues – though my disagreements with Trump are NOT binary – they do not require supporting democrats on the same issue.
But I am not going to listen to lies about ANYONE without comment – just because I think they are wrong on some issues.
Nor am I going to start frothing at the mouth because I disagree with Trump on maybe 10 issues, and still grasp that he is the best president we have had since Clinton – and possibly Reagan.
I do not like Bill Clinton. I think his character is an order of magnitude worse than Trump.
But in numerous areas he was a better president than Trump.
I am not going to buy lies about Clinton just because he was an actual liar.
Some Troll on Twitter who might be a republican – is NOT the GOP.
Regardless, I do not care – no force is being used.
If the democratic party wants to pay Sanders voters to stay home on primary day – I am OK with that too. So long as no force is used.
If some persuasive tactic you do not like is sufficiently offense – public displeasure will thwart it.
If it does not and force is not involve then the persuasion is legitimate.
There is no strongly supported move to primary Trump. Just as there was not to primary Bill Clinton or Obama.
Regardless, parties get to make their own rules – I do not care if they bring back smoke filled rooms. The DNC is answerable to democrats, as the RNC is answerable to republicans.
I care more about the general election – the requirements to get on the general election ballot should be the same regardless of party.
As Ron noted – he and I have fought over this before. What you are claiming regarding Sanders actually happened in 2016 to help elect Trump.
I do not care that Hillery tried to get democrats to vote for Trump in GOP primaries – because Trump was her prefered candidate.
I do not care that Hillary colluded with real Russians to dig up faux dirt on Trump.
I do not care that she fed it to the Federal government
BuI care greatly that the FBI bought it.
I do not care that Trump sent Giuliani to Ukraine to get dirt on Biden.
I have no problem with the media reporting these acts, and I have no problem with voters deciding they do not wish to elect candidates that engage in these behaviors.
But there is no role for govenrment or law.
Jay, I recall Ron criticizing this exact practice, of allowing open primaries.
And if you think that you don’t skew left, you are very seriously self-unaware.
I am not sure where Jay lies on the political spectrum
He is not especially pro or anti anything regarding issues.
He is anti Trump – because of feelings, not issue.
Walsh and Boot are not flaming lefties. But they are so anti-trump they will disown any position they have ever held to disagree with Trump
Jay is the same.
That is not left/right.
It is TDS
Then I guess you think Hillary is scum – because she did the same thing – ecouraging democrats to vote of Trump where they could because she thought Trump would be the easiest opponent to beat.
Regardless, Why does this bother you ?
Are you saying that people are not free to vote as they wish for whatever reason they wish ?
My Grandmother voted for the most handsome candidate.
Atleast so long as there has been television the tallest candidate has always won.
If voters regardless of party wish to cast a primary vote for the person of the opposite party they would most wish their candidate to oppose – what is wrong with that ?
And last – aside from Krystol tweeting this – what is your evidence this is real ?
So many of these election stories have gone down in flames – both in the past week and the past 4 years.
The DNI is denying that they ever said Putin was actively aiding any candidate – Not Sanders Not Trump.
Regardless, you can game any such claim anyway you want.
Lets assume there was evidence that Putin was actively aiding a candidate.
Putin could actively aide Sanders – because he wants Sanders as president.
Or he could be sure that his aide to Sanders was found out – because he really favored Trump and by getting caught Aiding Sanders he would help Trump.
Or he could be doing so covertly because Sanders is the weakest candidate to face Trump.
And you can take evidence that Putin was aiding Trump and game it in the same way.
My point is “YOU CAN NOT READ OTHER PEOPLES MINDS”
You can directly address the legality or illegality of the acts people perform,
But when it comes to Why – Intention, you are guessing – and even if they tell you why, you can not know they are being truthful.
In the latest round of polls purportedly Sanders was the only democrat beating Trump in the popular vote.
If Republicans are trying to assure Sanders is the nominee wouldn’t that mean Republicans are assuring Trump will face the strongest rather than weakest opponent ?
I have been critical of the democratic field from the start. There are many paralells between the GOP in 2016 and Democrats in 2020.
But one that is missing is that the GOP field was STRONG. Trump did win in the same way that Sanders appears to be winning now, by leaveraging a very strong base in a very divided field. It is near certain that Trump would have lost the GOP primary had he faced any of the top 5 republicans ALONE.
The same is True of Sanders right now. But the difference is that all of the top republican contenders had an excellent shot at beating Hillary. All were strong candidates. All were more likely to beat Hillary in 2016 than Trump.
Sanders opponents are not.
Sanders is a “fringe” candidate – he is both Trump and the anti-trump at the same time. Sanders is authentic and trusted by his base. He can not back away from even damaging controversial statements, because that will cost him credibility with his base.
Several pundits are now running analysis claiming Sanders might actually be able to beat Trump.
I do not agree, but that does not mean there is zero merit – almost no one predicted Trump beating Clinton. I certainly did not.
You claim that the GOP is trying to sabotage democrats, because some unheard of on Twitter is trying to get Republicans to cast votes in democratic primaries to assure Trump gets to face Sanders.
The same claims were made more credibly in 2016 with Democrats trying to assure that Hillary got to face her hand picked prefered opponent – Trump.
How well did that work out for democrats ?
I have told you repeatedly We have a RIGHT to free elections, and free speach.
Bloomberg can spray us with anti-trump adds. Some guy on Twitter can ask republicans to vote for Sanders in the primary. Chris mathews can have his thigh tingle. Short of force candidates, their supporters and even foreign powers can say whatever they wish.
If Some republicans want to “sabotage” the democratic campaign by voting for Sanders – I think that is stupid, but it is their legitimate free choice.
The PRC which we claim is not doing enough – has recommended the use of Traditional Chinese Medicine to Treat the Corona Virus.
There is no reason to beleive it will work. There is also no reason to beleive it will cause harm.
So one of the most totalitarian governments on the planet has not problem staying out of the way of experimental treaments, but the US government does.
BTW aside from Chinese experiments with TM, there are also multiple Chinese efforts to develop a Vaccine – though it is likely that absent FDA interferance a US company will get have a vaccine 6 months before anyone else.
The Specific UN tests you cited are using existing Antiviral drugs NOT a vaccine.
The chinese have been actually USING those antivrials for several weeks.
They too may not work, but they are highly unlikely to cause harm.
That is what is being Tested by UofN – because they can do human trials an an already FDA approved drug, but it takes years to get FDA approval for a new Drug.
I am glad as your article noted that SOMETHING is being tried in the US – But the crime is that the best people in the field – the best anti-viroligists, the Best at synthesizing vaccines are being slowed down by the US FDA. While China who has F’d this up in numerous ways has ZERO problem trying experimental treatments on Humans – especially those that have little odds of harm.
So I am not even slightly impressed by the CDC or NIH or FDA – THEY are the problem, not the solution.
Just to be clear – there are atleast a dozen existing anti-virals – all approved for human use.
Anyone of them can legally be used in the US by any doctor or hospital to treat anything.
Though the treatment would be “off label” which the FDA frowns on but fortunately does not stop.
China has been trying all of these for several weeks and has had some success at reducing symptoms with one of them. It is not a cure and the Chinese are just trying to save lives – studying the results in perfect double blind studies to perfectly resolve the effecacy is a luxury the chinese have forgone.
Today would be a good day for Devious Donnie to show us his taxes as promised;
“New York District Attorney Cyrus Vance filed a brief to the Supreme Court in the case seeking the enforcement of a grand jury subpoena for President Trump’s financial records as part of an investigation into potential financial and tax-related crimes. The brief argues that the president’s Article II immunity extends only to official acts and provides no immunity for private conduct, and that “immunity from investigation for private conduct runs counter to precedent, the structure and operation of the Constitution, and the bedrock principle that no person is above the law.” “
https://www.lawfareblog.com/new-york-district-attorney-files-brief-supreme-court-case-seeking-access-trumps-financial-records
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
If Vance can meet that criteria – then he has an enforceable subpeona the documents he wants. If not he is abusing his power.
Maybe Vance knows something that has not been otherwise made public – past experience suggests that is highly unlikely.
But unless Vance has something that has not been made public – then he should not be able to subpeona anything.
It is not relevant to the 4th amendment whether Trump is president or a pauper.
Absent probable cause that a crime has been committed, and that what you are seizing will expose that crime, no search or seizure is constitutionally permitted.
Not of Trump, not of you, not of me.
Thus far i have heard no allegation of a crime. Much less probable cause.
Vance can argue all he wants about Article II powers, no probable cause no search of seizure.
I have no idea how the 2nd circuit will decide, but the supreme court will require Vance to meet the standard of the 4th amendment before considering arguments about Article II.
When you have an unprincipled lying fu*k as president, things go bump bump bump during emergencies.
Remember when Jay had his panties in a bunch over the Trump Foundation?
How about the Bloomberg Foundation? I’ll bet he thinks it’s just dandy for a gazillionaire to use his “charitable” foundation to buy elections…
https://noqreport.com/2020/02/26/breaking-gao-calls-on-irs-to-investigate-mike-bloomberg-using-charities-for-political-gain/
Ah, Trump Grunt spouting.
If Bloomy did anything legally wrong he should pay for it.
If the story is accurate (skeptical), Bloomy gets the middle finger.
Unlike Trump floozies and Trump rump kissers I call out wrong doing no matter the party.
But if it ends up an election between Bloomy and Trump, that’s an easy choice: Bloomy the real billionaire with real experience governing, gets my vote.
Again, unlike you, from day one of his presidency I’ll put country over party.
I have zero interest in the story and did not read it.
The only issue I am interested in is whether Bloombergs foundation is a closed private on or a public one.
All charities have a fidiciary responsibility to those who contribute.
In a private charity contributions are limited to specific people and so long as they approve of the charities spending I do not care how the money is spent.
It is not yours or my or governments business to second guess our personal spending choices.
The GAO is a non-partisan organization, although they typically go after Republicans.
I’ll bet that you’re never skeptical when that happens, lol. Remind us again when you took a Democrat to task. ( Calling Warren ugly doesn’t count)
Dave, I understand and somewhat sympathize with your ideological point, but 501(c) (3) charities are prohibited from participating in political activities. As the Dems are fond of saying, “no one is above the law.” If we want charities to support political candidates, we need to change the tax code.
“Under the Internal Revenue Code, all section 501(c)(3) organizations are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office. Contributions to political campaign funds or public statements of position (verbal or written) made on behalf of the organization in favor of or in opposition to any candidate for public office clearly violate the prohibition against political campaign activity. Violating this prohibition may result in denial or revocation of tax-exempt status and the imposition of certain excise taxes.”
https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-organizations/the-restriction-of-political-campaign-intervention-by-section-501c3-tax-exempt-organizations
“501(c) (3) charities are prohibited from participating in political activities. ”
Incorrect. They are prohibited from endorsing or supporting candidates.
They are free to engage in issue advocacy as well as issue education.
501(c)3 was thoroughly scrutinized – HERE during IRSGATE.
The Actions Lehrner and the IRS under Obama would be legitimate – if your statement was true.
I would note that your except – which is not the law, but an IRS oppinion about the law, confirms to what I stated.
Regardless, I will go a step further.
There are a series of SCOTUS cases establishing that laws and regulations can not limit political speech. SCOTUS has not yet completely grasped that ALL campaign finance law, and ALL IRS code that has political proscriptions in it violates the first amendment.
BUT they are slowly getting there.
Congress can MAKE NO LAW that restricts political expression.
The provisions of 501(c)3 that restrict political activity are unconstitutional.
Look at this a different way.
“Under the Internal Revenue Code, all section 501(c)(3) organizations are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any religious advocacy on behalf of (or in opposition to) any religion. Contributions to religions or Public statements of position (verbal or written) made on behalf of the organization in favor of or in opposition to any religion clearly violate the prohibition against religios activity. Violating this prohibition may result in denial or revocation of tax-exempt status and the imposition of certain excise taxes.”
Do you think this would be constitutional ?
Hopefully the answer is obviously no. Substituting politics for religion does not make the regulation less unconstitutional.
In fact substituting ANY viewpoint would still result in an unconstitutional law.
Government can choose to have or not have 501[c]3 status.
But it can not confer or deny that status based positively or negatively on any aspect of free speech.
Most of the tax code is unconstitutional.
All charities should be tax exempt – not because they are charities – but because they are corporations not individuals. There should be no corporate tax of anykind.
Not for churches, not for apple. We tax the income of individuals.
Though a better altrernative would be to elimitate income taxes and tax consumption.
Those taxes would apply to equally. Consumption taxes have not been polular int eh past because they were difficult to impliment. But that is less so now, They are among the simplest of taxes. And prior to prohibition the US government was funded primarily on excise (consumption) taxes on alcohol
There is a reason that the 16th, 19th and 18th amendments followed each other closely
I presume that the implication from the GAO Is that Bloomberg’s charity is supporting organizations that then support his candidacy.
You are probably correct in saying that this is technically not a violation of the tax code.
But, it’s pretty shady.
Are you arguing that Bloomberg should be prosecuted ?
Or that I should not vote for him ?
I did not vote for Trump because of the Access Hollywood tape – and because that was consistent with lots of the other stories and information regarding his conduct with women.
None of that was illegal. None of that was the business of government. But it was the job of the press to ferret that out – whether they did so in a biased fashion or not.
There is no way I am voting for Bloomberg.
I expect that you are not either, I hope that neither Ron, nor Jay, nor Robby, nor Rick do either.
I’m not suggesting that he be prosecuted. But for a guy that has more money than God, conflating his candidacy, and those of the Congressional candidates that he favors, with “charitable” contributions, is shady. Maybe not shady for you or me, but for a guy who is already very powerful, and wants to become more so? Yeah.
I am not voting for Bloomberg. Is this even more reason not to vote for him sure.
If his actions are a crime – they should not be – atleast not unless this charity is a public charity – in which case he has a fiduciary liability to his donors.
but so long as he is spending his own money – even if it is money he put into charity, I am not going to micromanage it.
But then I would not allow you to deduct charitable contributions from your income.
You can do whatever you want with your income – but you should have to pay taxes on ALL OF IT.
That would drive incentives for both politicians and voters to assure that taxes are low.
Max Boot – need I say more ?
Regardless, Trump’s cuts at CDC/NIH were exclusively for political garbage that Obama had fallaciously dumped onto them – like researching whether guns could be regulated under health policy. CDC and NIH are not back doors to circumvent the constitution, and their efforts to do so were properly defunded.
But I will go further – lets just get rid of CDC, NIH, FDA.
Contra Boot – they make little if any positive contribution to healthcare, and certainly are net negative. return their budgets back tot eh people who will spend the money more wisely and accomplish more with it – between 2-3 times more per dollar.
If its a public utility, you regulate it. Once its regulated, you can control content. Venezuela, here we come!!!!
https://www.businessinsider.com/bernie-sanders-internet-as-utility-plan-explainer-2019-12?amp&fbclid=IwAR28ffE9v9LVV5w3iK9d6ZZVq7Jui_Rs2SQeey93SaR5D90E4vzZQQZ9z58&__twitter_impression=true
When Joe Biden wins the SC primary, it will be covered exultantly, as if he won the presidency itself. I don’t think that Bernie can withstand the overwhenlming opposition within his own party, and his candidacy will start to fade. Even in 2016, he was very strong in caucus states like Nevada, not as strong in voting primary states.
The real question, at least in my mind is: do the other candidates support many of Bernie’s socialist positions, and merely oppose him, because they think he will lose in a landslide? Are there any truly moderate candidates?
I’m pretty confident that Bloomberg is not a socialist, but he is an authoritarian nanny-stater. And I think that Klobuchar is about as moderate as a Democrat can be these days ~ she seems to be a pretty standard-issue liberal. Biden is hard to read, because he babbles on half the time, without making sense, but I assume he’s slightly less left than the rest of the pack. But they all, (except Bloomy) support Medicaid for All (not a typo)and the Green New Deal, they all want to re-enter the Paris Climate Accords, and most have professed to support some form of reparations, student loan forgiveness, and gun confiscation etc.
Not all of these are socialist policies, but they all require a bigger, more powerful federal government than we have now.
Priscilla, the difference this election is the states in super Tuesday that moved from later dates. Alabama, Arkansas California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, and Virginia all moved. Sanders leads in all of these except MN, AR and OK. What happens in SC will have little impact three days later. Previously super Tuesday was basically limited to the south where far liberals got knocked out when money dried up before states like Califorhia and Texas that created a situation like you discuss.
That could still happen. But a Sanders sweep could also make him almost unbeatable for the nomination. AND, we might also see the markets decline another 5%-10%, just adding to Trumps black swain event.
Good point, Ron. Since Biden is pretty much out of money, I wonder if Bloomberg would drop out and bankroll him, if he wins big in SC. Even though Super Tuesday is only a few days later, Biden might be able to squeak out a few unexpected victories, and force Bernie to go to the convention with less than a majority of delegates, at which point I think there would be no way that he gets the nomination.
Most of the Bernie bros would be furious, and would likely sit out the election, but I think that the Democrats would rather take their chances with Biden. Even if he loses, the Dems would likely hold the House, and maybe take the Senate. With Bernie, it would likely be a total wipe out, plus, the Democrats would have gone down to defeat with an anti-Semitic communist at the top of their ticket.
I think that there is a decent possibility that the covid-19 virus will be less than the disaster that the Democrats are hoping for, and a Trump victory over Bernie could be a knockout blow for the party for the foreseeable future.
Interesting thought. I would think Bloomberg would wait until after super Tuesday. If he does as poorly as the polls indicate, then I can see him lulling a plug on an active campaign. But if after super Tuesday Klubuchar, Warren and Steyer drop out, he may just go back to NYC and wait for a contested convention thinking the dems might compromise on him as their choice. They all support socialist positions, it is just to what degree.
But now I am conflicted. We now have a candidate stating in an ad that he will change the marijuana laws and legalize it. Sanders! What do I do?😲
The big deal at this moment which will be answered immediately after Super Tuesday is can Sanders outright win.
We could sort of see what happened with Trump – sanders emerges from Super Tuesday in a position that even a consolidating field will take him to the convention either with an outright majority or a commanding lead.
If Sanders reaches the convention with 40% of delegates and no one else with more than 20% – Democrats can not deny him the nomination.
Finally, the longer the conflict continues the better off Trump is.
To have any hope of defeating Trump in November Democrats must STRONGLY unify behind whoever is nominated – that seems highly unlikely.
If he goes in with 40% of the delegates that means he will have 80% of the 1900+ he needs to win. Even if he has 70% or around 1400, I wonder how many would get up and walk out if someone else is nominated
There is zero chance of ANY democrat winning against Trump without the support of ALL democrats.
What should be crystal clear right now is that a sufficient portion of moderates will sit out the election or vote for Trump if Sanders is the candidate, and if anyone else is then many Sanders supporters as well as those in the 18-35 crowd will sit the election out.
Further there is this very weird phenomena where several percent of Sanders voters voted for Trump is 2016 I can not make any sense of that at all, but it is real and it is significant.
There is no democrat road to victory. Biden was the Dem’s best shot – and he was ALWAYS a poor one. I do not know if he will survive to the convention, regardless, he is still dead man walking. Even if he somehow manages to be the Democratic nominee – he will not be able to defeat Trump.
The reasons for each are different – but barring some disaster – the economy tanking or Corona killing millions in the US, Trump is getting re-elected.
The open quesiton is have democrats destroyed any hope of gaining ground in the senate, and have they actually cost themselves the house.
The political impact of Corona is complex.
It will have some effect on the economy – that hurts Trump in November, even though he did not cause that harm.
It draws attention to our borders and that helps Trump. Everyone is MORE Xenophobic, one of the consequences of “Open Borders” is greater ability to spread disease.
To some extent Trump will be held accountable for failures of government. At the same time the more openly CDC and FDA resist the development of vaccines and antivirals the better that is politically for Trump.
Trump is the incumbent running AGAINST the “deep state” The CDC and FDA and NIH are his natural enemies. If they appear to have failed to do as Trump has directed – this could politically backfire on Dems.
The odds still favor this fizzling, and no matter what it will burn our before the election.
If it Fizzles that favors Trump. It makes him look good, even if he is not really responsible.
Being president means getting credit and blame even for things you had little to do with.
Todate there has been a single case of domestic transmission – and it is likely that number is reasonably close to solid.
If the US is to avoid a significant Corona outbreak it must stop any exponential increase in the US as quickly as possible.
Thus far we appear to be doing that. So long as the domestic cases are few, our corona efforts will focus on quarantining and treating those arriving from elsewhere with infections.
Those cases will run their course in a few weeks at most.
But we will have to continuously deal with new cases coming from elsewhere.
There will always be a few domestic cases, but so long as we effectively shut those down quickly our fundimental efforts will be at the borders.
The border problem with get vastly more difficult – if Corona gets into Mexico in any significant scale. Today we are dealing with passengers from China. very soon several other countries will get added to the list. But so long as we are dealing mostly with airline passengers from less developed countries we will manage.
Keeping Corona from crossing the mexican border is nearly impossible. Even at drasitically reduced levels illegal immigrants could bring it into our cities quickly, and outside of any ability to control.
That is what you should be concerned about.
Starbucks is re-opening stores in China – they beleive the epidemic is winding down.
Well that might be so. But lets say there are 25 cases develop in San Francisco. Do you think those people in Frisco are going to let Trump send in troops, close down the roads in and out, restrict people to their homes and make SF a ghost town for 14+ days like the did in Wuhon?
Hell no, “WE HAVE RIGHTS” That will be their response. Americans want safety untl it imposes restrictions on them.
I give this a good chance of making Trump a one term president. Too many people looking for a reason not to vote for him like me.
“I give this a good chance of making Trump a one term president. ”
You are correct – in the sense that if Trump botches this he is toast.
But the converse is also true. If he manages this with minimal problems and outrage it will increase his shot at re-election.
The big deal is stoping Transmission within the US.
We will tollerate draconian quaranteens of people returning from Wuhan – especially those testing positive.
But as you correctly note, once this goes significantly past a boarder control issue, we are in trouble, and Trump is in trouble.
I would also note this is a time game.
We have to stop this at the boarder UNTIL we have effective vaccines or anti-virals.
After that it does not matter.
I would not be surprised if we see an executive order reigning in the FDA and CDC’s ability to stall vaccine and anti-viral development and testing.
I would also note – that even if this escapes into the general population – so long as it really has closer to flu like mortality – Trump will also manage fine.
Dave, if this goes out into communties, the media knows what we know. This is Trumps Black Swain. They will make it so! They will not make any death a footnote on the news like they do with the flu. This year 115 people have died in NC from the flu. Most reporting is on a weekly basis. Usually back page news or if TV, just before sports or weather.
This will be reported as headline news with every new death and case reported. They know Trump is vulnerable and will tie every misstep to the virus. He can recommend cutting testing of toe jam to determine its impact on yellow toe nails by NIH and that cut will be responsible for corona virus deaths. They have already made a huge deal about cutting funding for tanning bed education and bike trails as detrimental to communicable disease control.
But at my age I could really care less who gets elected. The impact of any program going forward will take a few years. I wont have that many left that will impact me for long. If people want Sanders, fine. If they want Trump, fine.
So far there is ONE case of transmission from a person infected in china to a person infected in the US.
There are ZERO US deaths and just under 400 people who we are tracking – only some of whom are known infected.
The process of stopping something like this – dealing with those numbers is not that hard.
The danger is that you miss one person who is infected and THEN you miss the next five generations from that person until the infected population is beyond your ability to track.
Absolutely missing one infected person is a problem – but if you miss someone and they infect 5 others before you discover your error – you still have a manageable problem,
You have likely added 50-100 people to the list you have to track.
Next we only have to contain this until we have working antivirals and/or vaccines.
Those are already in the pipeline.
I have in another posted noted – while there are negatives to this for Trump – there are also positives.
This absolutely positively reinforces one of the reasons we have borders.
At the moment there are no cases in Central american and only 1 in all of south america.
But if this flairs in Mexico and is a threat to come accross that border – do you think people are not going to demand a fracking wall ASAP, and infinite detention of everyone crossing the border – preferably on the mexican side
Yes, there are risks to Trump from this, he has to be careful, and he faces a hostile media and a hostile left. But this is not an infinitely hard task – at the levels we are dealing with now.
In fact if the recent data from Wuhan is correct and new cases are down – this is effectively over. It will take a month or two for it to completely burn out. But it has been contained and we will not loose control.
The more immediate concerns are Itally and Iran – which might have lost control.
That still does not threaten the US, but it is far harder to regain control than to maintain it from the start.
Anyway you are correct this could take Trump down, but the odds are against that.
Trump does not have to deal with this perfectly.
Further we will have the rest of the world to compare too.
Trump will not get alot of blame unless this gets out of control int he US but NOT in the EU, Canada, …..
Dave “So far there is ONE case of transmission from a person infected in china to a person infected in the US.”
Please document. Every report I have heard says they have no idea where and when this person was affected. They were still searching to find the source.
Do you have actual data or just assumed infection from someone coming from China?
Ron – what are the alternatives ?
Either there is one person who was infected in the US by a person infected in China.
Or there are ZERO known people in the US infected by someone infected in china.
No matter what SO FAR the US is not allowing this into the GP.
There MIGHT be a leak or two. But so long as those are caught fast this is under control in the US.
That can not continue forever – if this turns into a global pandemic.
But so long as we are dealing exclusively with infected people coming from outside the US from countries where we KNOW there are infections and traveling primarily via airplane we can likely keep this out of the GP for months.
The problem comes if this gets into Canada or worse mexico and we have to deal with a porus land boarder.
Then we are screwed. It is not stoppable.
And we only have to stop it at our Borders until it burns out.
ALL Epidemics burn out – that is their nature.
As i have said repeatedly EARLY indications are China has peaked. That is not certain, but it is probable. If this is true, the next issue is can Iran and Italy gain control.
If you can identify all infected people and control their movement, you can end this in about 1 month. the weaker your control the longer it takes.
Control does NOT have to be perfect, it just has to be good. A few leaks caught quickly is not a problem. But if you miss a leaks for 2 months your F’d.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/drugmaker-moderna-delivers-first-coronavirus-vaccine-for-human-testing-11582579099
Dave, this does little to nothing for any cases that develop this year except for the few in testing.
Cant get past paywall. And Jays duckduckgo alternative does not work for me for NY Times, so didn even try with this.
Both the US and China are already using existing anti-virals – Off label. I have no idea what the law – if any is in china, in the US that is legal and commonplace thought he FDA does not like it.
One existing antiviral as I understand appears to seriously mitigate the symptoms. It is likely production of that is already ramping up.
Mitigating symptoms means most of those it would have killed – about 14% of those over 80 survive.
All that is with drugs already available.
But there are antivirals in development right now specific to Covid-19.
Antiviral development (today) is not like other drugs or the past.
These are developed using the DNA model we already have and they stimulate the production of the specific antibodies that fight off Covid-19. The Genetic engineering means they can be developed quickly and tested quickly – that does not mean the FDA will approve them quickly.
We also have vaccines already approaching human testing in the US. as well as several places in china that expect to have vaccines by July.
If China has vaccines in July – they will likely just use them.
There are questions about how fast the FDA will approve a vaccine in the US.
The FDA fast tracked a Swine Flue vaccine, it was widely distrributed.
As a result 490 people were permanently paralysed.
And to make it worse Swine Flue Fizzled so the vaccine was never really necescary.
What the FDA learned from that is – do not fast track no matter what.
Congress has passed numerous laws enabling FDA to fast track for orphan diseases or emoergencies or for treating terminal illnesses.
Congress could pass such laws til the were blue in the face – the FDA ignores them.
Congress has not said the FDA MUST fast track anything, only that they can.
With extremely rare exceptions THEY DO NOT.
A Covid-19 vaccine will not be available in the US before this time next year absent an executive order. With an executive order – it could be available in a month or two.
So you tell me – at what point is fast tracking a vaccine justified ?
If Covid-19 gets into the general population in the US and we are facing the prospect of deaths in the thousands. Should Trump sign an EO forcing the FDA to approve a vaccine that might save thousands, but might also do something like paralyze a couple of hundred ?
Of course there is no guarantee – it is not likely, but it is possible that the vaccines harm will exceed its value.
More probably Covid-19 seems to be burning itself out. That is an early assessment right now. But the last round of new cases was down from the prior week.
That is the usual sign that you are past the peak and have gained control.
After many comments on the news this morning about the virus, I have no more confidence this illness will not become an issue here, especially with the unexplained case from California.
But I find the despicable behavior of Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Shumer using this situation to stoke fear within the country to further divide the nation for political reasons completely unacceptable. I have little doubt that this will become Trumps black swain. This has the excellent possibility to create financial issues with corporations that impact earnings, stock market values and jobs. Confidence in the future will suffer. All specific issues that create administration changes. (Jay, your prayers are being answered)
But this is not Katrina and “Brownie, your doing a heck of a job” like Bush not really being engaged. trump is engaged, has been since the beginning.This is a health issue that may or may not be a significant problem in this country. Only time will tell. But NIH IS funded! It HAS money for issues such as this. It CANT spend $2.5 billion overnight. $2.5 may be enough, may be more than enough like the money left over from the Ebola funding or might not be enough and more might be needed that congress can authorize.
The issues that this virus exposes is our reliance on Chinese shit. Our supply chains for critical products do not just run through China, they begin and end in China. I could care less if Apples sales decline 50% because they cant get phones, games, etc since all their products are Chinese. But when 90% of penicillin and amoxicillin comes from China, 70% of all antibiotics are Chinese or have significant percentages of Chinese chemicals and 75%-80% of all generic drugs come from/or have Chinese ingredients, that impacts Americans health.
Yes Dave, I know you dont care. Being a free trader, freedoms from regulations is more important than public safety. But when companies make decisions for profit reasons only, leaving the country dependent on others close to being enemies with no other immediate sources of products, to me that is unacceptable. You will say the companies are free to find other sources of chemicals and other plants to produce drugs. But this does not happen overnight. How many are negatively impacted until the new supply chain is created.
This also opens up questions on how much Chinese products are included system critical operations from medical equipment to defense systems.
Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Shumer and others need to shut their damn mouths, stop creating fear and dividing the country over health scares and begin doing their jobs, one being how to help get us out of this supply chain mess.
Ron, I care a great deal, but that does not make it governments business.
Reliance on a single source regardless of the source is a bad idea.
We have for sometime seen lots of MFG moving out of China – not all of it, and not for the same reasons.
As Chinese standards of living rose their cost advantage has declined.
This triggered some manufacturing to return the the US and some to other low wage countries.
Hiccups in the Chinese economy, Chinas reversion to totalitarianism.
The mess in Hong Kong, the mistreatment of ethinc minorities, the US Trade war and now Corona have all caused various different companies to look at more diversified sourcing arrangemnts.
I am absolutely completely in favor of this.
I have never said China should be protected for undesirable conduct.
Only that the markets, not government should make those decisions.
AND THEY ARE
The ONLY reason a company should make a decision is profit!!!!
But Profit is inseparable for all the things you think are somehow divorced from it.
If a company treats workers badly – unions will form, there will be strikes, possibly customers will boycott, … PROFITS will drop.
If a company poisons customers – profits will drop
It is not the profit motive that distorts businesses, it is short term thinking – and that effects us everywhere – not just business.
Those already dead from poisoned products will rejoice from the grave when those profits fall!
You get four out of five Smuck Stars for that one 🤬🤬🤬🤬
The a prior requirement that an action must be profitable means a business does not do something that will kill customers – because it is not profitable.
Only you would twist that into a business does as it pleases until it has killed of its customers.
This is also why torts exists – to assure businesses that bad conduct will result in losses.
Nor does anything I have asserted preclude criminal punishment for deliberate harms to others.
“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages”
― Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature & Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol 1
It is the pursuit of profits that feeds us, and provides our homes and medical care.
It is the self interest of others that drives them to fawn over our needs and wants.
The Butcher does not merely seek to assure we do not starve, he seeks to provide us what we want the most, because THAT is in his self interest. We profit by giving others what they value most.
You do not understand the world at all.
And yet in the past you have claimed all this business experience.
Businesses profit by providing people the most value for the least cost.
Jay, on this one I agree.
And will add, when you gave me the desire to look at the NIH budget, there were some huge amounts for funding research and development of drugs for specific diseases.
I wonder if they refund the government those funds when they start selling those drugs for amounts that drive some into financial distress and make billions? Many studies indicate up to 48% of drug research is government funded. Why are we doing that and then getting shafted with outrageous drug cost.
In the OECD (developed countries) 60% of all research fo all kinds is corporately funded.
20% is funded by universities, 10% is funded by government. wikipedia
My guess would be that in terms of RESULTS there is about 3:1 greater efficiency for privately funded research – i.e. that Government research producing results of value is about 3% of all valueable results produced
The simple solution is just to end government funding of research – with the very limited possible exception of government funding of military research as that is targeted at a unique government need.
Specific To drugs I am finding all kinds of conflicting information. From government funds less than 1/6 of drug research to government funds 50% and no new drugs have been approved since 210 that the government has not been involved with.
Alot of this depends on Terms.
Government funds alot of Basic science – as an example until very recently there was pretty much no such thing as private space science, astronomy, ….
It is probable that the basic research funded by the government contributed in some small way to every single drug approved in the past decade.
That is NOT the same as nothing would have happened without government funding.
Orphan drug research and developement is almost entirely priviate – often through private charities receiving contributions from those with the diseases or family and friends or the contributors they solicit.
Conversely Government has almost no financial involvement in the process of getting a drug through trials and to market – and that now costs about $2B/drug.
To those who beleive otherwise – that is pretty trivial to disprove.
If getting a drug approved was cheap there would be far more drug companies and most of them would be small. The natural structure of a free market is a pyramid. It is typical – in fact it is a law of economics (and other things) that the top 10% of that pyramid will deliver 50% of products (by value not numbers)
regardless, Drug companies exist to provide drugs, if government does not do something for them for free they will do it themselves.
Short term thinking driven by current thinking profit
Does anyone ask ” what happens if China decides to limit the drugs being exported due to some political or environmental issue in 5-10 yrs”?
Below are the 15 countries that exported the highest dollar value worth of drugs and medicines during 2018. China is not on the list.
Germany: US$62.3 billion (16.8% of total drugs and medicines exports)
Switzerland: $45.3 billion (12.2%)
Belgium: $27.8 billion (7.5%)
France: $25.9 billion (7%)
United States: $22 billion (5.9%)
Ireland: $21.7 billion (5.8%)
United Kingdom: $19.7 billion (5.3%)
Italy: $19.6 billion (5.3%)
Netherlands: $16.8 billion (4.5%)
India: $13.1 billion (3.5%)
Denmark: $13 billion (3.5%)
Spain: $9 billion (2.4%)
Canada: $6.8 billion (1.8%)
Sweden: $6.7 billion (1.8%)
Austria: $5.5 billion (1.5%)
By value, the listed 15 countries shipped 85% of all exported drugs and medicine for 2018.
It is near certain that anything China makes can be replaced by other countries producing drugs,
https://www.newstarget.com/2020-02-18-97-percent-antibiotics-made-in-china.html
I can confirm that several different reporters say this.
But I can not find a single data source that confirms this.
Further some of the reporters confirming this are NOT saying antibiotics are made in china – but critical components.
Regardless the 15 western countries that produce 95% of all drugs know how to produce antibiotics. It is unlikely that in a crisis there would be more than a short term disruption.
I also expect to see places like Philipines, Malaysia, India, Vietnam stepping in to numerous supply markets to compete with China.
I do not know that is happening in drugs – but it is happening in many other areas.
Ron.
While I absolutely support the Asian shift – that started a decade before Trump, but is hiding underneath alot of the Russia, Russia, Russia nonsense in State, the IC and the military.
If you built a carreer on the Russia Desk and the US focus is shifting to China and Asia – making Russia look like a threat is in your personal interest.
When we talk of the Deep State – one should remember.
Something like 95% of government employees are democrats.
95% of their contributions go to democrats.
Beyond party – these people protect their jobs. They beleive in the importance of what they do.
Anyone proposing to shrink government is a threat to them.
Threatening to change policy is a threat to them.
The shift away from Russia is a threat to many of them.
These people do not have to be die hard left wing nuts to hate Trump and even if they do not hate him to see it as in their interests to undermine Trump.
Why does’nt China/Trump collusion catch on ? Or China/Biden ?
It is not because China does nothing.
It is because there are a huge number of people in govenrment whose value an expertise are tied in some way to Russia being the world dominant threat.
Why are all the leaks about Russia or the Ukraine ? Because that is where the leakers have their expertice and that is where US carreer bureaucrats are most threatened.
Regardless, I think we need to watch China. I think we need to prevent China from dominating Asia.
But I do not think the rest of Asia wants that and they will work with us.
I also think China under Xi is headed in the wrong direction and that ultimately is not sustainable. Either Xi will reverse course, be replaced by someone who does, or China is going to come unglued – face serious difficiulties and unrest.
I think Global companies see that and are hedging their bets now in other asian countries. or elsehwhere – like the US/
Just as you want your 401K diversified, you want your drug sources diversified and your manufacturing of all kinds diversified.
Free markets do that automatically.
If government regulations did not dictate that it cost $2B to get a drug to market most of the existing Drug makers would still exist – supplimented by a pyramid of competitors of smaller size and increasing numbers. That is the natural structure of free markets.
Over time slowly the giants die – and are replaced by those on the next tier down.
As you climb down the pyramid volatility increases, the rate of failure increase but the rate of growth also increases.
Regulation creates a floor – an initial size that you must start at to even exist.
This is not unique to drugs it is true of everything.
fragility caused by lack of diversity is one of the many flaws in central planing/socialism.
Sanders makes no secret of the fact that he beleives that for most everything – there should be a single provider – that it is wasteful to have a dozen different sneaker makers or deoderant makers and that but for that “inefficiency” everyone would have free eduication and free healthcare and ….
And I am not exagerating even a tiny bit he has frequently said these things.
Ultimately his preference is that government deliver these services.
Sanders and his supporters do not really care about the claims that things like M4A will bankrupt the country. They do not beleive that. And to an extent they are right.
If government takes over healthcare it will “control costs”
But we know what happens when government does that – shortages, rationing, long waits, no innovation.
Rest easy, Ron – I’m sure you’re glad to know going forward all information we get from government officials about the virus will be under the control of the VP:
(NYT): “Pence Will Control All Coronavirus Messaging From Health Officials…
Government health officials and scientists will have to coordinate statements with the vice president’s office, one of three people designated as the administration’s primary coronavirus official.”
When asked why Pence was put in charge of the information flow, Trump reportedly said “he’s got nothing else to do.”
Dr Anthony Fauci, Presidents Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush and Obama’s trusted top adviser on infectious disease, and the nation’s most trusted government communicator to the public, was instructed not to say anything more about the disease unless it’s cleared by Pence first.
Since Pence has nothing else to do, we can rest assured Fauci will receive quick approval to inform us about any uptick in cases….
The limited role of the vice president is defined by our constitution.
All vice Presidents have the same problem.
For the most part what needs done here is NOT some top secret.
Governments primary role is to stop this at the border as long as possible.
While Ron is correct – this could blow up in Trump’s face,
the opposite is also true.
This absolutely totally completely makes clear in the minds of voters the importance of BORDERS.
Keeping this out of the general population as long as possible. means BORDERS.
It appears for the moment that we have done about as well as possible at doing exactly that.
This has not in any appreciable way gotten to anyone except foreign travelers.
Right now we are almost exclusively dealing with those from PARTS of china.
But over time more and more of the world will be a source.
Things get really hairy if and when this gets into mexico. We can not stop it from coming north. Again reinforcing our lack of border control.
The fact this appears to have peaked in China is a good sign.
There are 3 fuindimental scenarios.
We are at or near the peak. It will slowly fizzle in China, we will have to be vigilant for a while. It will flare and fizzle in some other countries – like Iran.
Before completely fading.
We are not yet at the peak, but we are significantly slowing the spread.
In that case vaccines and working antivirals will be found. The only question is time.
The more we slow the spread the more time we buy, The faster we find effective antivirals and develop a vaccine – the less time we need. Regardless, when we get effective anti-virals and vaccines this is effectively over.
Last this is able to overcome our efforts to stall it before we develop antivirals and vaccines.
The disease runs its course and possibly as many as a million people in the US die.
More likely only a tiny fraction of that, but still alot of people.
“This does not happen over night”.
It happens surprisingly fast. But even if that was not true. Concern about long term profits drives a wise company to have multiple sources.
As the business manager for my family business – which 55 people depended on, every year I solicitied quotes for health insurance, business, insurance professional liability from multiple sources. Myriads of factors effected our decisions – both long term and short term.
But we always made sure that we had good relationships with multiple alternative sources.
Maybe the Scotts can get to see President Money Launderer’s taxes—
“It is Mr Trump’s own actions that prompt legitimate questions about his income which, if left unanswered, would call into doubt the Scottish Government’s determination to confront the spectre of money laundering.”
https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/scots-ministers-told-seek-unexplained-wealth-order-donald-trump-resorts-2001733
Scottland has absolutely no jurisdiction over anything Trump related outside of Scottland.
It would be nice if people would stop misusing money laundering.
And if Scotland finds definitive evidence of money laundering by Trump to finance the Scottish property, you’ll say that has nothing to do with his fitness to govern here because it didn’t happen here.
“And if Scotland finds definitive evidence of money laundering by Trump to finance the Scottish property,”
I am not going to comment on Scottish law, But you expose exactly why we have a 4th amendment.
“Sentence First–verdict Afterward”
Alice in Wonderland.
In the US to conduct a search you must already have probable cause of a crime.
You can not go – “I hope Trump laundered Money, lets go look for the evidence”,
You have to provide the court with probable cause that a crime actually occured – not wishful thinking, and further probable cause that your search will provide additional evidence to get from probable cause to proof beyond reasonable doubt.
“you’ll say that has nothing to do with his fitness to govern here because it didn’t happen here.”
I am not going to have to say anything. You are clueless as to what money laundering is.
What do you think Trump is financiing his purchases by running Drug money through his casino’s – Oops Trump has no operating casino’s.
Regardless, I am not concerned – the probability of finding anything is near zero.
Your engaged in wishful thinking. People do not get to the level of success of Trump (except in the movies) by committing crimes. It is generally easier to make money at their level legally. It is also less risky.
You keep rushing down this cul de sac on Trump’s taxes – it is not going to get you where you hope.
You keep up this odd game that you can read my mind – and that tomorow will bring the proof you are right about Trump, proof that it is my head in the sand not yours.
But that ship has sailed. We are well past any reasonable probability, you are throwing one hail mary after the other, fumbling and getting intercepted.
And you are incapable of accepting that you have been wrong over and over and over.
What do you need to do – shoot Trump and dissect him in the hope you will find something ?
When do you get that your BELEIF is not reasonable suspicion, it is not probable cause, your curiosity and hope is not sufficient to justify using force to pry into someone else’s life.
BREAKING: Whistleblower claims she was reassigned by Trump Administration after highlighting the fact that workers without protective gear were sent to receive Americans evacuating from Wuhan.
What, she didn’t anticipate she needed Pence approval?
“ Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services sent more than a dozen workers to receive the first Americans evacuated from Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, without proper training for infection control or appropriate protective gear, according to a whistleblower complaint.
The workers did not show symptoms of infection and were not tested for the virus, according to lawyers for the whistleblower, who is a senior HHS official based in Washington who oversees workers at the Administration for Children and Families, a unit within HHS.
The whistleblower is seeking federal protection because she alleges she was unfairly and improperly reassigned after raising concerns about the safety of these workers to HHS officials, including those within the office of Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar. She was told Feb. 19 that if she does not accept the new position in 15 days, which is March 5, she would be terminated.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/02/27/us-workers-without-protective-gear-assisted-coronavirus-evacuees-hhs-whistleblower-says/
Reminder Ron: DuckDuckGo
She clearly was unhappy with her job and working conditions.
She was offered another. Given that she only wants her original job under her terms, and she has another job she can take – I think she has been given a reasonable choice.
She can take the new job she was offered. If she is terminated – it is by her own choice.
I have no idea why she thinks she is entitled to some special protection.
The only threat she faces is being moved out of a job she did not like to another she may not like either. No boss anywhere is required to give you the job as you want it.
No one has threatened her with violence, and being given a choice between a new job and being terminated – is NOT being fired. Her employment is in her control. There is not self evident retaliation here.
As to her complaint it sounds like a normal WhistleBlower complaint.
In a perfect world the thngs she asked probably should have been done.
Guess what – the world is not perfect.
I have no problem with her complaint.
But I do not have a great deal of problem with what actually happened.
If she contracts covid-19 – she probably has a tort claim against the government.
Though I would note that her complaint does not seem to have a thing to do with her job.
I would further note that actually senior federal government staff can be fired at the pleasure of the president. Civil Service protection do not extend to people who are actually senior.
Actually senior people can also be trivially re-assigned at the pleasure of the president.
They generally have more power and authority but they have no job security – ask John Bolton or Kelley.
So this is being misrepresented.
But going further, while the complaint is legitimnate – that is NOT the same as correct.
US Personal were evacuated from Wuhan. All that we know here is that some HHS staff – HHS does not operate outside the US who had to work with these evacuees sometime AFTER they got back to the US from Wuhan were not trained or tested.
You nor she has no idea whether these evacuees were themselves tested, or whether they were situated such that it was unlikely they had been exposed.
You and she are making the same mistake that customers in target make when they refuse to allow my chinese daughter to serve them. you are presuming that american citizens who were evacuated from Wuhan – a city of 11m people of which only 80K are infected – TODAY, and probably less than 20K were infected at the time of the evacuation. You are presuming that just because these people had been to Wuhan that they were exposed and infected.
We do not treat every person coming from China as if they have Covid-19. We do not even test every one.
The objective is not to spend vast amounts of limited resources trying to acheive theoretical perfection.
Absent some indication of a reasonable probability that some of the evacuees were infected, it sounds like the process followed was proper.
Jay, I dont care which search engine I use, when it opens the Washington Post website and loads article I hit the pay wall.
I read this from another source. Something seems fishy to me.
1. This person a senior official with NIH.
2. Most all NIH healthcare workers ( not administration people) involved with health issues have infectious disease training
3. NIH trains all other agencies in infectious disease prevention
4. So here is an article showing that plane and passengers
https://www.the-sun.com/news/326083/coronavirus-flight-americans-wuhan-military-base/
5. So given the fact that doctors were in hazmat gear, what was this persons role?
6. Was she in a support role? If so, did she have direct contact contact with passengers? Why would they allow support individuals contact when they were isolating passengers and docs were using protective gear?
Jay, this may have happened. But the left has run around like Chicken Little so often with articles like this that provide no details, hoping that TDS makes it go viral and people believe the sky is falling. Before I believe this, I want details, not just ” she said”. You can drink the cool-aide early if you want. I will wait until the investigation is complete so it eliminates the possibility that they wanted her to go, she refused, they reassigned her and she got pissed.
“I read this from another source. Something seems fishy to me.
1. This person a senior official with NIH.
2. Most all NIH healthcare workers ( not administration people) involved with health issues have infectious disease training
3. NIH trains all other agencies in infectious disease prevention”
From Jay’s article this person is from HHS not NIH. I am guessing that HHS provided assistance to americans evacuated from China AFTER NIH dealt with them.
My “Guess” is that her workers were not “trained” because these americans were people who NIH found no evidence of infection, but who they wanted monitored
There are 389 people in the US now who came from China but at this time do not appear to be infected. These are being monitored.
“Jay, this may have happened. But the left has run around like Chicken Little so often with articles like this that provide no details, hoping that TDS makes it go viral and people believe the sky is falling. Before I believe this, I want details, not just ” she said”. You can drink the cool-aide early if you want. I will wait until the investigation is complete so it eliminates the possibility that they wanted her to go, she refused, they reassigned her and she got pissed.”
I am sure this DID happen – though not as described. Again the odds are this is HHS workers serving people removed from china who NIH cleared but wanted monitored.
Demanding training to be arround these people is not quite as bad as trying to avoid my daughter – who has not been in china for 20 years.
So the Russia is helping Trump (or Sanders) stories are disinformation leaked by democratic congressmen
How should we deal with that ?
If the leak was truthful it would be a violation of the espionage act.
But how can you prosecute someone for a false leak of information that would have been classified if true ?
When are reporters going to learn they are being lied to ?
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/democratic-officials-may-have-pushed-bogus-intel-alleging-the-russians-want-to-re-elect-trump
How can Bernie Sanders get away with fawning over socialist and communist dictators ?
Because our education system has failed.
This blog is supposed to be “moderate” – yet over time and even now a majority of posters have advocated for policies that are socialist. These are people who do not consider themselves socialist, even oppose socialism and Sanders sometimes virulently.
Even some “conservatives” find some socialist policies acceptable.
This despite the fact that at ever level Socialism has failed.
The history of Socialism is a history of bloodshed that is unmatched – starting with the French Revolution.
Nor are there good examples of socialism – the socialism of Castro, Pol Pot, Mao and Stalin has been brutal and disasterous, But nordic socialism chocked previously prosperous countries who are now trying to extricate themselves from the harms of two decades of “democratic socialism”,
Socialists lost the economic calculation debate 75 years ago. They also lost it in practice in the real world.
When we look at the left 25% of the country today – we hear the same rhetoric that the bolsheviks were selling 100 years ago. And much the same as the french revolution 200 years ago.
What doubt do you have that the very same people who will cancel you ban you from speaking at colleges, get you kicked off social media, who call you racist, mysoginyst, homophobic, transphobic hatefule hating haters – because you disagree with them, will behave exactly like the communist party aparaticks did 100 years ago.
Fortunately I think we are not yet to a point where Sanders and his people can both win and actually excercise power. But should we ever actually get there – why would you expect Sanders government to be different from that of Lenin or Mao ?
These are people who already engage in all the most heinous practices of the soviets and chinese communists. We can expect gulags, show trials and humiliating public self criticisms for those who have opposed them.
https://thefederalist.com/2020/02/27/dear-joe-scarborough-more-americans-hate-america-than-you-think/
Two takeaways – like the good little socialists that they are – climate alarmists blacklist, and silence anyone who does not think as they do – to the point of threating to investigate and jail them.
Second, research into topics that might contradict the warmist narative can not get funded and that which supports it gets billions.
We had a discussion of Government funding in the area of health related to Covid-19, Why should we think the government does a better job of funding research in medicine and health than it does in climate ? We already know that in major areas of government food policy 5 decades of policy and research have been politically distort and are either outright false or far less consequential than assumed. Basically you can not trust anything you have been told by government over the past 50 years regarding diet or many areas of health.
https://issuesinsights.com/2020/02/28/the-academic-blacklist-climate-alarmists-dont-want-you-to-know-about/
Dave, your position, right or wrong depending on peoples perspective, is get government out of public safety issues. All it is is a waste of money.
Others will say like the Democrats have said that more and more money is needed, as with the $8.5 billion they say is needed for the covid-19 research. Government needs to be the leader in medical research.
So, yes, we can debate, but yours will never happen and I doubt the massive spending the democrats want will happen either.
So what do we do? continue arguing like we have for years about government involvement, or do we reach some common ground in what the roll of government WILL be?
I commented that maybe the government fund research and any drugs that comes out of that research, the government receives a percentage of revenue, just as any investor would receive a return should they provide a company with funding a new product and that produce became profitable. Again, hard to see that happening due to divided politics, but just a thought.
And the one thing I do agree on with you is way too much money is wasted by government that they should not be part of.
And another one bits the dust.
https://jonathanturley.org/2020/02/28/precedent-over-perceptions-d-c-circuit-dismisses-case-against-trump-hotel/
Not important. According to all news reports, we are all going to get covid-19 and die anyway.
The mortailty rate is somewhere between .1% and 3%. Which is similar to the flu which occurs every year.
We are not all going to die.
It is actually possible to moderately accurately model the spread of Covid-19 and the effect of countermeasures. The likely progression of this is reasonably well understood.
The effect in the US will likely be minimal, unless it escapes into the general population in a significant way – a few minor escapes are likely but can be contained.
The problem occurs when it appears to be getting ahead of us each week.
The Chinese lost control – but there are indications to the extent that you can trust information for China that they are regaining it. New cases last week were less than the prior week.
South korea, Italy and Iran may have lost control.
The rest of the world has not.
Well who are people believing. Someone like you or the government leaders and the news? When beer companies like Corona have information reported on TV business networks Friday that sales of their beer is down 16%, you cant find medical face masks anywhere ( even though few models will work from exposure) and Home Depot is limiting sales to ten for the construction masks ( that sure wont work for germs), I have a thinking they are believing government and the news.
So again, if you get it you die or never recover! Thats the daily news and if its in the news it has to be true, right?
Who people beleive only effects the short term.
It is pretty common for people to panic over the unusual – that is precisely what Trump Derangement Syndrome is – anxiety and panic over a president whose actions are pretty normal, but whose persona is radically different.
But the progression of the disease will be determined by the facts – not what we beleive.
Unfortunately many of the facts are not established very well yet.
But they are well enough know to dictate how we must respond – which is what we are doing.
The really really big deal is containing this at the borders. Which we are doing – effectively, but not perfectly.
It would be prefered that there are no “leaks” but containment can work with a few leaks .
If this breaks into the GP, there is no government in the world, no medical system in the world that can cope.
Right now ALL govenrment is RIGHTLY focused on containment.
The Chinese are taking draconian steps that can not be done in the US – if we had 80K cases we would not be closing cities of 10M people and locking people in their houses.
We would wait for the disease to burn out – which it will do in about 6-8 months – just like the flu and the common cold.
China as an authoritarian power has the ability through draconian measures to attempt to thwart a disease that has infected 80K people – and their steps though offensive appear to be working.
Most of the rest of the world is working on containment of much smaller numbers.
That is inside the resources of all governments. And it is likely that with some hiccups they will succeed.
If Containment in the US fails – there are not and can not ever be enough masks on the planet, There will be very little we can do beyond treating as best we can the most severe cases, and rushing the development of new anti-virals and vaccines.
Outside the FDA and CDC and NIH we are very very very good at that. But it still takes time.
Further even vaccines have risks. A tiny portion of people die or are harmed by reactions to vaccines. We rushed the Swine Flu vaccine to market – Swine Flu fizzled, by almost 500 people were paralyzed by the vaccine. FDA remembers this and has dug in on expediting vaccines ever since.
We already have an experimental vaccine. But it will take a month of two to manafacure quantity, and it could take many months to get through FDA testing.
You may see Trump issue an Executive order on Vaccines and Antivirals.
It is likely if we rush a vaccine – that people will be harmed by the vaccine.
But it is probable that more will be harmed without it.
BTW there are MANY places working on vaccines. There is a global infrastructure for vaccine development – primarily driven by the flu. It is certain that we will have MANY vaccines for this in time. With different businesses predicting delivery anytime from NOW, through next January.
There is one existing anti-viral that works This is a really really big deal, it will not slow the spread but it will likely radically lower the mortality rate.
There will be better antivirals over time.
We are also seeing technology work in new ways – the free market work in new ways.
The virus has been sequenced and scientists accross the world are working based on that genetic information to come up with vaccines, and anti-virals. This is a new and faster way to fight viruses and something not available 5 years ago.
American government involvement in Corona Virus.
Doctor, “Joe you are very ill, you need to go to the isolation ward in the hospital.”
Doctor next day ” Joe, unless we find something that works, I am afraid you will die”
Joe ” there are no drugs? ”
Doctor, “No not right now”
Day 2. Doctor “Joe we have good news and bad news. The good news, they have announced a drug they believe will cure your desease. The bad news is they are afraid it will kill you, so they have to test it and it will be almost a year before approval is made. Your going to die from the virus”.
OMG! And they vote!
https://www.businessinsider.com/corona-beer-coronavirus-sickness-misinformation-2020-2
Sheesh! Hope there’s no Miller Lite virus, coming down the pike.
By the way, after this, will Democrats say the New England Journal of Medicine is incompetent:
“If one assumes that the number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases is several times as high as the number of reported cases, the case fatality rate may be considerably less than 1%. This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively.2”
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2002387?query=RP
Well its the lack of information as well as the over abundance of one side of the information that is scaring the poop out of many and increasing the anxiety of others.
So we keep hearing there are now 82,000+ cases world wide. I guess when you get this you never recover because there are still 82,000 cases and the first case was reported in December. Unless you die, you have it😈!
And the Queen and Chuck are doing anything to stoke this fear with crap like “President Trump should have learned the lesson that China did: Hiding the truth makes things more dangerous.The American people need to hear the unfiltered truth from health experts”
Long gone are the days of telling the truth but giving people reasons not to panic. Today its how to get your party in power anyway you can, short of a revolution. I’m glad I am the age I am as this country is headed for the trash heap with the political parties driving the trash trucks!
Here is a reasonable good place for tracking Covid-19 globally.
Globaly there are 86K cases of which 40K have recovered.
You can also look at the progression curve and it has flattened. That strongly suggests this coming under control – though not in every single location yet,
The Chinese had fewer new cases this week than last. Of course that must be qualified by questions regarding the accuracy of chinese numbers. Still China could not hide it if this was still spreading at an exponential rate.
There are still places this appears to be out of control – Iran, South Korea.
It is not impossible that the fear mongers are right – but it is increasingly unlikely.
The big threat is as the JAMA article suggested – that there are far more people with minimal symptoms that we have missed. That would make gaining control nearly impossible,
But it would make this less significant than the flu.
https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
Yep just as I thought. We have 86,000 confirmed cases. And no one has recovered!
I am being sarcastic, but why the hell doesnt any news cover 86,000 confirmed cases, xxx recovered cases, xxx active cases, xxx deaths. Even for just the USA. Maybe there have been 86,000 total cases, but maybe also the high number any day was 60,000 and now it may be 55,000.
Would that not calm nerves of those going nuts over this thing? Our news is doing a piss poor job and the democrat leaders in congress are doing nothing to help. They only want to make Trump look as bad as possible so Sanders or whoever gets elected.
Why don’t people cover ### – I do not control the media.
At this moment of the 86K known cases of Covid-19, almost half have “recovered”,
There are only about 46K ACTIVE cases.
Every single day more and more people will have recovered.
Those who get Covid-19 and recover are IMMUNE – atleast for several years.
This actively SLOWS the spread of the disease – you can not get it twice.
I keep trying to say you can simulate this.
Right now we are either at or close to the tipping point where the number of people who recover each day exceeds the number of new infections. That is the point at which the disease slowly dies out.
There is no absolute certainty – China appears to be gaining control through draconian measures. Most of the world has control because they have issolated incoming cases at their borders and they are either quarantining or isolating those likely to spread the disease.
That isolation does NOT have to be perfect. Imperfection – such as the two cases that have emerged unrelated to immigration mean that all those who contacted those people have to be identified, monitored, possibly tested. and some of them isolated.
It takes SEVERAL generations before spread into the GP is uncontrolable.
BUT each step into the GP requires more reasources and more draconian measures.
The US is not going to take the steps that China has taken.
If the US has 1000 cases not highly concentrated and not from travel – we will have lost control and probably not be able to regain it.
But TWO is not 1000. Five is not, 100 is not, but it gets harder with each increase.
Dave, stay on point. Try to avoid your A.D.D. this time.
I know everything you commented about concerning cases. That was jot my point.
MY POINT! The news is not reporting this nor is NIH. All they report is negative crap stoking fear. Long forlorn faces like a family member just died telling us how many cases, but nothing positive like many cases so mild people dont know they have it. Nothing about active cases.
And why isn’t the administration giving updates except for the NIH director running around telling everyone nothing but negative news. Today he talked about increasing the supply of masks. WTF does a few thousand masks do other than his comments convincing more people to panic and buy more mask? Why are they not telling people unless they have weaken immune systems that masks are not required and may not help anyway?
I know you have no idea, just like myself, why they are communicating as they are. I can understand Queen Nancy and Shumer. They want their candidate elected. They want the fear needle busting the lid. That goes for the left media. I understand why NIH is communicating like they are. They are use to telling people with medical backgrounds information on how to react and the worst case risk factors so everyone is prepared. But that doesnt cut it with the medically uneducated. It only creates fear. Trump and his task force is f’ing this up totally!
The news has nearly ALWAYS stoked fear.
The adage “if it bleeds it leads” predates strong claims of media bias.
The only thing that somewhat counters the radical left tilt of todays media is that it is very close to impossible for them to NOT report dirt about anyone – not conservatives, not liberals. Though even that is slowly changing and the left wing nut media is reporting less and less of the stories damaging to the left. That is likely because the new crop of journalists as not liberals of leftists, they are progressives and a more prepared to silence things they do not like.
Regardless, it should be a given the Media is going to report Covid-19 in the scariest way.
The coverage would be nearly the same if Obama was president – except maybe less blaming Obama. Still it would be reported as scarrier than it is.
The media can not help itself there.
As to Why does’nt the administration ….. ?
I strongly suspect they do. It just gets little coverage. Less with Trump as president. but good news or even just unscary information is not getting reported by the media. They do not see that as their job.
And some of what you are calling negative is just spin.
Lots of what NIH etc. is saying is just to show they are trying to do something.
I would further note, though the incentives are different those in government are still incentivized to scare you. Better to scare everyone about a pandemic, and then have this fizzle – then they will get praise for doing a great job, and more important MORE MONEY.
We should never forget – that whether it is congress, or the administration, the incentive to spend MORE MONEY is enormous. When those in government succeed – they demand more money for doing a good job. When they fail they blame lack of money for everything.
In government money = power. Government agencies have power – not because of the job they do, but because of the money they can spend.
This is a big part of why it is damn near impossible to balance the budget.
But in the end it will not matter what the NIH says, or what the media says or what Trump says.
I keep telling you all over and over – it is what is DONE that matters.
If Covid-19 becomes a serious US problem – if 100,000 americans die. Trump can probably kiss a 2nd term good bye.
If it triggers a global recession that hits the US hard – Trump can probably kiss a 2nd term good bye
But anything less than a disaster is likely a win – possibly a huge win for Trump.
As I noted Covid-19 is drawing attention to our borders. Reality is rearing its ugly head and telling us that borders actually do matter, and that border control is important.
As much as much of government might hate Trump, they too can not Fork this up.
They can scare us, but if they fail lots of heads will roll – of course the new guy will have lots more money to play with. Or maybe like the VA no heads will roll. Though with Trump – probably heads will roll – lots of them.
Further there are enough people in government who know what the hell they are doing and in the right circumstances can make the right things happen – that is usually in crisis, when so many in government sit on their hands unwilling to make a decision.
There were stories during the shutdown of large parts of government working better – because the “essential people” could get things done and the “non-essential people” were not their to thwart them.
Though this is worse in government – it is true in Every organization.
I beleive I have cited “Price’s law” before – in any group 50% of the work is done by sqrt(groupsize) – and that is recursive – so in a group of 256 people 16 people do 50% of the work, of those 16 4 do 50% of that work, of those 4 2 do 50% of that work,
There are about 3,000,000 people in the federal government – about 2000 do 50% of the work.
The US is monitoring about 400 people who traveled who MIGHT have been infected.
There are 25 know US cases – 2 of which are not connected to travel.
There have been 0 deaths, and of the 25 14 have recovered.
But this gets harder as we have to deal with travelers from Italy, South Korea, …
And probably impossible if this goes uncontrolled in Mexico.
In this case we do not know all the facts.
However the higher the proportion of asymptomatic cases the more likely we will be unable to contain this, and the less likely it will be very severe.
I would further note according to the John Hopkins Data mortality rates are inconsistent.
In South Korea Mortality is running at 0.5% in Iran it is running at just under 10%.
In Italy it is running at just over 2%.
It is highly likely that the moratity rates will be much lower in developed countries with effective medical systems.
Thus far this has not gotten into South and Central america, India or Africa.
Africa and India are particularly big deals.
Africa does not have any consequential health care system capable of handling even a small outbreak, while India’s population is like China’s
I would also note that So far, the geographic dispursement resembles that of the common cold – which should not be surprising a substaintial minority of common colds are caused by Corona Virus’s. It is possible this will not effect Africa, South America, … for the same reason that the common cold is not prevelant in those regions.
Yes it has.
https://apnews.com/a7d2aaac19fc3022ba686ba91e7d4395
If Corona goes out of control in Mexico – That will be a BIG political force FOR Trump.
Corona getting in the GP in the US will be politically damaging to Trump.
UNLESS, it is arguable it came from a weak souther border because Democrats thwarted the wall.
To be clear – what matter is PERCEPTION not reality.
But If Covid-19 cases start showing up in NM, AZ, TX – democrats are in trouble, not Trump
I do not drink beer.
Sales are still strong. That is a better measure of what people really think than a poll.
What they will do with their own money.
Oh My, what a loss!
February 28;
“I don’t even give [the secret FISA Court] a 50-50 chance” of survival in its present form, Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) told Just The News. The office of Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) told Just The News that Wyden “has long fought for fundamental reforms to surveillance programs to better protect Americans’ rights. [Wyden] believes there should be more transparency … and better protections for due process.”
We can only hope. Ron Wyden has talked big on this. We’ll see if he actually supports real reforms, when he has a chance….
Democrat court rules again for open borders. Great decision🙈! Just leave them in California so the liberals out there can support them!
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/federal-appeals-court-rules-against-trump-two-major-immigration-cases-n1145141
I believe Turley has recently commented on this.
SCOTUS already upheld the public charge rule.
SCOTUS has fairly strongly supported Trump on immigration.
This decision prfetty much runs affoul of existing SCOTUS decisions.
At a time when Roberts is trying to persuade the country there are no Obama Judges and Trump Judges, This court (as well as Sotomayor and Ginsberg) are doing precisely the opposite.
BTW Ginsberg’s comments were out of line – but that was not recent. Sotomayor’s disent is no different from many of Thomas or Scalia’s scathing disents – except I am more inclined to agree with them
Nor do I have a problem with Trump’s criticism of judges and Decisions.
Obama did that from the SOTU – THAT was actually inappropriate.
Bujt criticising judges and justices decisions in a presser – the republic will live through that.
Trump has absolutely changed the unwritten rules for presidential behavior.
But I am not entirely sure that is not a good thing.
In the past we MOSTLY expected the president to combat biased press coverage through the remarks of underlings who were not obligated to behave with the same dignity.
Trump has destroyed the presumption that the president is dignified and above the political fray and is as willing to mix it up with those politically at odds with him as any other senator or representative.
Maybe I would like to go back to the old days – where the press did not engage in politics, where Oppinion peices were on the editorial page not the front page, Where not only the president spoke with the dignity of the office – but congressmen did too, Where talking heads were not pit bulls.
But it would require much much more than Trump changing to go back, and these changes have taken decades, Trump did not start them.
Frankly looking over US history – cordial politics has been the exception not the rule.
This is an unbelievably stupid decision at this moment.
First it is pretty much certain to get overruled by SCOTUS – if it makes it that far.
Next – most americans are actually happy that detentions take place in Mexico.
But it is especially troubling in the midst of the Corona Virus.
While South and Central america are not yet threats.
Exactly why does any Judge think that americans who are now seeing a really good reason for border security want to see potinally infected foreigners being detain INSIDE the US were they can infect CBP agents and their families and the rest of us.
To be clear – right now that is not going to happen. But the same people who beleive that you can get Corona Virus from Corona Beer, are going to want our borders secure and outsiders detained OUTSIDE.
As I noted in another post. Covid-19 is increasing US Xenophobia, AND increasing our real understanding of what borders are for.
If Trump contains Covid-19 this is a major disaster for the democrats. It politically decimates the Open Borders argument.
Even though there is not a relationship to “the wall” at this time, many are going to make a connection.
BTW Trump’s support among hispanics is polling 10% higher than 2016.
This should put the nail in the coffin of everyone who has claimed that Trump refusing to honor a House subpeona was obstruction.
The DC court of appeals has just ruled AGAINST the House in a HUGE way.
While Like Turley I actually disagreee with some of the oppinion (I think that priviledge likely applies to McGahn and Bolton outside of a criminal investigation) The court has overly broadly sided with the executive in refusing to cooperate with congress.
I can disagree with the decision of the courts while Still sticking to the fact that the final authority on conflicts between congress and the executive rests with the COURTS.
Even if congress choses to appeal this and is successful in the supreme court. that would STILL make the House Impeachment article for obstruction of congress itself an ABUSE OF POWER.
Congress is free to demand what it wishes of the executive, and the executive is free to resist. Neither action is improper until the final decision of the courts.
Neither the president nor the congress are dictators. Neither have absolute power.
Finally, Turley notes this might lead to more interest in reviving the independent councel act.
Throughout this mess that has been resting below the surface. There were lots of problems with the IC act that need to be addressed – as it was constituted in the 20th century it was likely unconstitutional. But what we have had since has been worse.
Special Consels – which are purportedly part of the executive and under the AG and therefore more constitutional have actually proven much worse. There has really been no consequenctial oversite of any SC since the act was first created, and clearly zero meaninful oversight of Mueller. Given that the Horowitz Report has just undermined the foundation for ANY further investigation after Jan 2017, it is crystal clear at this time that Rosenstien and Mueller were acting outside of the law. No one was asking them to justify their investigations, warrants and subpeonas.
Starr and Ray, and the IC’s were supervised by a 3 judge pannel, everything had to get the approval of the court. For all its flaws that was less bad than what we have now.
I would further note there are parts of this decision that the DC circuit got right.
Congress is NOT a criminal investigative body, it does not have the same procedural safeguards, it does not have the same rules of evidence.
Fundimentally the court is saying that congressional subpeonas are ALWAYS subject to court review – because congress is political, and the powers of criminal investigation can not be used for political purposes.
The more fundimental question is the impact of this on congresses executive oversite function. That IS a political function, and it is one in which procedural protections are less important. But it is also one in which claims of executive priveledge have more merit.
Executive oversite should be constrained by what the executive DOES, not what it SAYS.
https://jonathanturley.org/2020/02/29/d-c-circuit-rules-in-favor-of-white-house-in-barring-mcgahn-testimony/
“ This should put the nail in the coffin of everyone who has claimed that Trump refusing to honor a House subpeona was obstruction.”
Blah blah. Will be appealed. Was decided on abstruse technicalities and mind bending constitutional reasoning by 2 of 3 judges.
“Blah blah. Will be appealed.”
At this point even if you appeal and win – you have still LOST the impeachment battle.
The fact that the DC court of appeals found STRONGLY against the house. means the claim of abuse of congress is complete nonsense.
The court has PROPERLY just said the decision as to the enforceabitlity fo a congressional subpeona rests with the COURTS. Not with Congress.
This court could have found AGAINST Trump and STILL undermined the House impeachment.
You can not claim that Trump’s conduct was worthy of impeachment – without damn near the unanimous agreement of the courts.
MANY presidents have resisted Congressional subpeona – and some have LOST, and they were not impeached. Trump resisted and WON.
Look I think on the details this decision is wrong or more accurately overly broad. It was correct to prohibt McGahn from testifying, it is likely correct to prohibit Bolton from testifying,
But the executive is not free to bar everyone from testifying, nor to bar congress from access to documents.
Though there is one very important message in this decision – the court came very close to saying that absent procedural due process the house has no legitimate power to subpeona.
Or put differently – so long as the house is going to allow hearsay testimony, and prevent cross examination and rebutal witnesses, then they are not entitled to subpeona witnesses.
The house is free to behave as a political body. It is NOT free to use the FORCE of government – powers of compulsion – like subpeonas for Political purposes ABSENT due process.
The big deal in this decision is its attack on the process in congress.
” Was decided on abstruse technicalities and mind bending constitutional reasoning”
That would be false.
While this is a broader decision that I would have expected – and SCOTUS may choose to narrow it.
The reasoning is not Abstruse, based on technicalities or mind bending constitutional reasonaing.
The 4th amendment is NOT a technicality, or abtruse, or mind bending.
There are some complications – because the 4th amendment is an INDIVIDUAL right – it does not apply to government – the executive does not have RIGHTS it has powers and priviledges.
But when the House shifts from “oversite” to impeachment, it becomes a quasi judicial body and INDIVIDUAL rights apply.
All of that is independent of the part of the decision based on executive priviledge.
Executive priviledge applies to McGhan and Bolton – they are probably the two people in the whitehouse with the strongest executive priviledge claims.
Congress can not o vercome those executive priviledge claims absent a criminal claim. And a criminal claim means that the 4th amendment comes into play.
SCOTUS probably will not hear this.
If they do they MIGHT narrow it.
They are unlikely to reverse,
But even if they did, you have still lost the fundimental issue.
The legitimacy of a congressional subpeona is a question for THE COURTS – not congress, and therefore the house impeachment charge of obstruction of congress was political bullshit.
I am not happy about the breadth of the decision.
I beleive in strong congressional oversight.
I beleive in WEAK executive priviledge.
But I STRONGLY support the 4th amendment portions of the decision.
Congress can not conduct a quasi criminal investigation without due process.
Without honoring the 4th amendment.
“ Most people who contract Coronavirus experience a flu like situation, Dr. Fauci says, and will be OK…15-20% of those who contract will need hospitalization.”
How many hospital beds will that require? In secure facilities where the flu won’t spread to other patients & staff?
“How many hospital beds will that require? In secure facilities where the flu won’t spread to other patients & staff?”
None if this is stopped at the borders or with only small incursions into the GP.
More than exist if this infects every man woman and child in the US.
The goal at the moment should be preventing Covid-19 from getting out of control.
So far it is not. To prevent that we have already spent 115M on about 400 people only 25 of which actually contracted Covid-19.
If we stop it – that will be a bargain.
If it goes uncontrolled the cost will be Billions.
But before you completely whig out – the cost of the common cold is billions a year, the cost fo the Flu is billions a year.
The worst case scenario is a mortality 2-3 times that of the flu.
The best is somewhere from the same to 1/10 that of the flu.
The higher the percentage of “asymptomatic” cases the less likely we are to be able to control this but the smaller the actual impact is.
Guestimates based on the data from China suggest that this spreads SLOWER than the Flu or Colds. That means that far fewer people will be effected.
Regardless current indications are that even if these gets “out of control” – it will be at worst – 2-3 times worse than the flu, and more likely equal or less.
Even today – we can not control the flu – we can mitigate the symptoms and reduce its spread, and it still kills people.
We can not control the common cold – we can not even really mitigate its symptoms or limit its spread. And it still kills people.
No matter what we are NOT talking about something like the 1918 Flu.
We are certainly not talking about something like the Black Plague.
We are over hyping this – partly because that is what people do, and partly because there is alot of money involved. We are already talking about dumping 1.5-8.5B into NIH CDC FDA.
Do you think there are not lots of people trying to scare us to make that number higher ?
What I am seeing from this is the strengths (and some weaknesses) in our system.
It is absolutely certain that we will have a vaccine for this.
Ultimately many different competing vaccines.
At the same time this has exposed a weakness in our vaccine system.
With the normal progression of the seasonal flu – we have sufficient time between its first appearance in China and it reaching the US to develop an effective vaccine – and we get that right most of the time. Once in a while we get hit with an extraordinary flu season where we miss on the vaccine.
We are near the point where the time frame needed to develop a vaccine is a few months not 9 months to a year, but our governments are not up to that yet.
We will never be able to effectively deal with something like Covid-19 that short circuits the process and gets into the GP faster than the Flu normally does, without changes in government.
Next we have effective anti-virals that we did not have a couple of decades ago.
But again while we can develop targeted antivirals quickly now, we can not get them through government approvals rapidly enough.
Put simply – we can not prevent “pandemics” in the future with government having the heavy role it has today. Government can not move fast enough. But medicine and science and markets can.
You are worried about hospital beds and doctors and resources.
In reality we do not have the “resources” to deal with the flu. This is no different.
There is no medical system in existance that could have dealt with the black plague.
There is no medical system in existance that can deal with a few percent of the population being sick.
The Chinese system has nearly collapsed with less than 100K cases for a nation of 1.6B
That is less than 1/100th percent of the population. They have run out of almost everything, and had to resort to draconian measures.
I would note that the Chinese have focused almost exclusively on contain rather than treat.
They have used methods that we can not and will not do in a western country.
But it appears they have succeeded.
Another reason to mourn for the death of reason: this Trump trollop running for office in California’s 34th District:
“The Corona virus was man-made. Bill Gates is one of the financiers of the Wujan lab where it was being developed. I wouldn’t put it past them and by “them” I mean everyone from Adam Schiff to George Soros, Hillary Clinton and the Pope.”
-Joanne Wright
There are all kinds of stupid stories out there – The CIA is being blamed, as are the Russians.
Further there is an enormous amount of fear mongering from intelligent people.
It remains in the realm of possibility that we will lose control of this.
But for the moment that appears NOT to be the case.
Yet, much of the country is near certain that it will be in their neighborhood next week.
Despite the fact that todate there are only 2 cases of spread to the General Population in the US.
https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2020/02/29/five_reasons_you_dont_need_to_panic_about_the_covid-19_coronavirus.html
https://humanevents.com/2020/02/25/how-to-bridge-americas-growing-partisan-divide/
When America voted on the national language, English won by only 1 vote; we could be speaking French today! How many Europeans who came to this land ever bothered to learn any of the indigenous languages?
And if French was declared the national language, and the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights were written in French, and generations of Americans considered it the national language, would there be any less outrage among the majority of French speaking Americans to see it usurped by Spanish (The official language of a bordering nation) across large swaths of the country?
CAT’s premise is false.
The US never voted on an official language. English is the defacto language.
Nor has there ever been any other likelyhood.
Colonial america included dutch and german speakers, but very few french.
Teritories with significant french speakers were not added until the lousiana purchase.
When was this “vote” ? There was none. The US has no “official langauge” unlike other countries, we have just always conducted ourselves primarily in english.
My apologies, I stand corrected. The Legendary English-Only Vote of 1795 was in Congress & was German – not French. And by the way, I never said I was for, nor against, the use of any other language. I simply put out a couple thoughts. Here’s another, since no one’s mentioned it. Are people so afraid of other languages, because of the horrible assimilation procedures used on indigenous people might, in some way, be used on them?
“The Legendary English-Only vote of 1795” is legendary because it is not an established fact.
It is speculation. There is n o actual record of such a vote. We do not know if it happened, if it was a vote of Congress or the Pennsylvania legislature, if the year was 1795.
If it was real it was not consequential enough to leave a record. What appears to be the most likely truth is that German speaking representatives moved to have a proposed law translated to german, and either lost the vote or lost because the measure was not acted on before congress ended and was not taken up by the next congress.
But even that is speculation.
Are people so afraid of ___________ because blue unicorns might rain hell fire and pomegranits down on them ?
If you are going to speculate, you need to lay some foundation for your speculation
Is there some significant group of english speaking americans with some fear that hispanics are going to treat WASP’s the same way early colonists treated indians ?
That is your premise, So shouldn;t we be able to find evidence of the existance of atleast a few of these people ?
In logic once you accept a premise that is false, you have the ability to prove anything.
That is why it is critical to assure that your premises are true.
Dave, CAT,
Now this is a very interesting conversation, thanks for the change of pace. Nice to be off ppolitics!
I can only offer my own family stories concerning language.
I think one of the reasons (not all) of our country today is not more multilingual is due to people like my grandfather. My grandmother, swedish, was first generation born in American. My grandfather immigrated from Sweden in the 1890’s . They were married late 1890’s. When my grandmother did not want anyone to know what she was saying, she would speak swedish. My grandfather would ignore her and finally say, “Anna, I am in America now, speak English! ” None of their kids learned Swedish enough to converse.
The difference today is those coming to America today are not like so many like my grandfather, Now they seem to expect those already here to take special steps to communicate with them, even years after living here. And there are many who have difficulty accepting those immigrants that expect America to change for them instead of them changing to become American.
As for the Europeans changing to an indigenous language, each tribe had their own, so there was not one to learn.
There is private value to learning other languages. But there are serious public problems with multilingual government. Canada has had serious problems with a dual language legal system. And the absence of a single language is one of the fault lines for the EU.
Further a shared language – whatever it is, is one of the ties that binds a country together.
If you immigrate to the US it is reasonable to expect that you will be disadvantaged if you do not learn english.
Just as it is reasonable to expect problems in Sweden if you do not learn swedish.
Sorry, wrong word, not multilingual..I meant bilingual family.