USA Politics

[not edward]

How nice to hear this message from a non-"libtard"

And that has caused so many of my fellow conservatives to abandon the requirement of the humbling and life-enriching commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves.

https://www.youtube.com/v/HXFlyjNQbvY

It's a very biased sample, but I've noticed that amongst my American friends, those who consider themselves to be conservatives are if anything more outraged by Trump than those who consider themselves to be liberals.

[arpeggio]

Here is the good news if Biden wins.  The conservatives will still have someone in the White House that they can dislike.

[arpeggio]

CNN has an excellent breakdown of the results of the 2016 election by state and county: https://www.cnn.com/election/2016/results

It appears that the real divide is between urban and rural America.

With the exceptions of Alaska, Oklahoma and Wyoming, in every other state, Clinton won the vast majority of the urban areas.

In only seven of the most populated cities in America did Trump win the majority.

Jacksonville, Florida
Virginia Beach, Virginia
Arlington, Texas
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Tulsa, Oklahoma
Mesa, Arizona
Phoenix, Arizona
Note: Both Phoenix and Mesa are in the same county in Arizona, Maricopa.

[Gurn Blanston]

It's a very biased sample, but I've noticed that amongst my American friends, those who consider themselves to be conservatives are if anything more outraged by Trump than those who consider themselves to be liberals.

Of course. The post-Newt Gingrich "Republicans" hijacked the party and carried it to the extreme fringes. Those who weren't extreme got the boot. Not like the Dems aren't doing the same thing, if they weren't really trying to win the WH back, Biden wouldn't be the candidate, it would be someone much further to the Left. And once again the middle-of-the-roader's, who are combined as the majority of Americans, are or would be without representation.

It is damned difficult not to be outraged when your f****d up political system grants you little or no representation unless you are a wingnut.

[ritter]

That, unfortunately, is not a trend exclusive to the USA....

[Gurn Blanston]

That, unfortunately, is not a trend exclusive to the USA....

So I'm told. I considered relocation for a while, but everyone I talked to said "you don't want to come here, we are as much or more f****d up as you are!".  And further paying attention showed that to be true. Sad...

[arpeggio]

In spite of the problems I still love this country.

I have never hated Republican Presidents in the past.  I used to be a Rebublican.  There are many Republicans that I have a great deal of respect for.  I did not vote for McCain or Romney because of political differences.  I still had great respect for them.  The first Republican President or his followers that I have ever had any animus toward is Trump.

I do have problems with anyone who does not believe in evolution and thinks the world is only 10,000 years old.  The Secretary of HUD is one of them.  Maybe even Pence.

Of course the left has its share of nut jobs, but most Democrats I have met are pretty reasonable people.  When I was a younger, reminder that I was a conservative Republican until I was in my early fifties, I thought that most Democrats were unAmerican, unpatriotic, unwhatever, etc.  I ended up getting to know many Democrats and found that most of the conservative perceptions of them were bogus.

[Karl Henning]

To be a Trumpkin is to have a great (yuuuuge, even) appetite for bullhittery and opacity:

"Forget vaccines and treatments. The very stable genius has a foolproof cure for the pandemic.

"If we stop testing right now, we'd have very few cases, if any," President Trump said at the White House Monday.

Precisely! And if I stop weighing myself right now, I will gain very few pounds, if any. What we don't know cannot possibly hurt us. This is very much a part of Trump's governing philosophy."

[Todd]

From AmPo: Elizabeth Warren said fundraisers would tear 'this democracy apart.' On Monday, she raised $6 million for Joe Biden.

I guess the mere chance of being Veep is sufficient reason to tear this democracy apart.

[Gurn Blanston]

Conservatives are usually vilified as being too extreme, too traditional, old fashioned, etc, from Robert Taft, Goldwater, Reagan down to present times.

Liberals are usually vilified as being too extreme, from FDR to Kennedy, Clinton, Obama... In some cases it's even true. No matter which side of the political fence I'm on, I consider totally dismantling the government, with the exception of the military of course, as being too extreme.

[drogulus]

There were medical professionals in the beginning warning about the cover-up, like the young doctor who eventually perished from Covid-19. True to form, the authoritarians in power did everything they could to control the narrative.

     It hasn't worked. We knew about the doctor almost immediately. In fact, the story about how the local government suppressed evidence about the outbreak from Beijing is is something people who know about stuff have been following in the news since quite early in the outbreak. I don't know about "we don't know about it" people, perhaps it's different for them.

Potential second wave centered in Beijing:

https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/06/13/876544822/beijing-in-wartime-emergency-mode-amid-fresh-cluster-of-coronavirus-cases

     Did you get this from an official Chinese lie or from a source you don't know about? I only want to know how this works.

     The US has 2M+ cases and 100T+ deaths, an excellent reason to be perturbed by the far lower case/death numbers in China, and to treat belated Chinese success as false in a "we don't know about it" way. Then bad news about an outbreak in Beijing arrives from DontknowaboutitLand. OK, we can believe this bad news and drop the bullshit, just for now. We can go back to it later.

     How about this? Stop with the excuses. Outbreaks are not secret, and government secrets about them have a short shelf life. There's too much info from too many sources.

20 years from now (perhaps sooner) a future Chinese government will acknowledge the extent of the virus and it will join previous horrors, along those I mentioned in a previous post. In the meantime, some misguided western leftists will do what they have always done: defend the indefensible until the evidence is so overwhelming that they finally have to acknowledge that they were wrong.

     It doesn't matter what China acknowledges now or ever. There's no point in being nostalgic for the day when Stalin could fool gullible people in the West. Stalinists may be the same, the world is not.

[ritter]

From a few years ago, this article shows that both parties have their issues with science.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/02/25/most-democrats-dont-know-it-takes-a-year-for-the-earth-to-go-around-the-sun/%3foutputType=amp

I can't read the article (paywall), but, reading the headline, one could wonder how the country that can pride itself on having many of the best universities in the world, seems to have the worst primary schools too...

[drogulus]

     Johns Hopkins probably knows more about the extent of the Chinese outbreak than Beijing authorities do. It wouldn't surprise me if ChiComs checked their own numbers against what Johns Hopkins publishes to see if their own info is correct, or what lies they can get away with. I judge there's space to undercount cases not far from what's done in other countries.

     Fired Florida Data Scientist Launches A Coronavirus Dashboard Of Her Own

     Floridian Trumpists are not undercounting so much as trying to hide a disturbing fact, that almost the entire state has ignored state guidelines for reopening.

In some ways, Jones' new portal for Florida coronavirus data looks a lot like the state health department's. But it has a few key differences that reflect just how contentious coronavirus data has become amid politicized arguments about whether it's safe for states to reopen.

Case in point: Jones' dashboard has a map that shows which Florida counties are ready for the next phase of reopening. By her calculations, only two of the state's 67 counties at the moment meet the state's criteria for further easing restrictions.

"When I went to show them what the report card would say for each county, among other things, they asked me to delete the report card because it showed that no counties, pretty much, were ready for reopening," she says. "And they didn't want to draw attention to that."

Jones says a superior asked her to open up the data and alter the numbers so that the state's coronavirus positivity rating would change from 18% to 10% — and the state would appear to meet its target to reopen.

She says she refused to do that manipulation and others she was asked to, and she was fired on May 18.

     Of course, Florida too can be part of the "we don't know about it" world. It's behind an Orange Curtain.

[Todd]

After Trump got elected California threatened Calexit.

How far did that get? 

Reconquista has been a bugaboo of right wing nutjobs for decades.  I'm more concerned about leprechauns.

[drogulus]

I can't read the article (paywall), but, reading the headline, one could wonder how the country that can pride itself on having many of the best universities in the world, seems to have the worst primary schools too...

     From the article:

What this NSF experiment suggests to me (though other interpretations are possible)  is that some standard scientific knowledge questions do not actually measure what one knows, but rather what one chooses to endorse.

     This is the best part of the article. People know things, but "believe in" opposite things, a point I raise now and then. Also, there's ignorance of the "we don't know about it" variety and an unfortunate prevalence of the genuine kind. There are many poorly educated people out there.

[drogulus]

     A White House official said John Bolton's book contained no classified info. Then Trump loyalists intervened.

     What happened is Bolton submitted his manuscript as required, and the reviewer stated there was no classified info in it. Then a Trumpist lackey intervened to say that the manuscript does have classified info in it. Instead of the obvious solution of telling Bolton what must be removed, the process was put on ice to prevent publication of the book no matter what. Now the WH is suing, which is strange because any judge will see the obvious.

     There's no way to comply with a demand that unidentified material be removed. The process has been been sabotaged for a corrupt purpose. Trump gave the game away:

At one point, he told national TV anchors in an off-the-record meeting, "We're going to try and block the publication of the book. After I leave office, he can do this. But not in the White House," according to notes from the meeting.

     Can Bolton violate national security by revealing classified information after Trump leaves office? It's a fact that he can't, and nothing suggests he'd try. He's too smart for that.

     If I bought the book it would not be to learn official secrets. I don't think anyone would buy the book thinking classified information would be in it. The book is an exposé, like others but from the perspective of a very high ranking insider with lots of wonderful non-secret knowledge of important events and the people who shaped them. It may be more damaging than previous tell-alls, but in all sincerity damage may be a shaky concept for a target that has been thoroughly obliterated several times over.

[JBS]

The excerpt published in today's WSJ includes a mention of something the review process censored from the original version


This is the same passage in which Trump gave his blessing to Xi's concentration camps.

[Karl Henning]

Former Atlanta officer who shot Rayshard Brooks charged with murder, other offenses

We need trustworthy police, we need police accountability.

[Pohjolas Daughter]

Received the following from one of my music conductors.  Might loosen things up.

Senior Mandates

#1 - Talk to yourself. There are times you need expert advice

#2 - "In Style" are the clothes that still fit

#3 - You don't need anger management. You need people to stop making you mad.

#4 - Your people skills are just fine. It's your tolerance for idiots that needs work.

#5 - The biggest lie you tell yourself is, "I don't need to write that down. I'll remember it."

#6 - "On time" is when you get there.

#7 - Even duct tape can't fix stupid - but it sure does muffle the sound.

#8 - It would be wonderful if we could put ourselves in the dryer for ten minutes, then come out wrinkle-free and three sizes smaller?

#9 - Lately, You've noticed people your age are so much older than you.

#10 - Growing old should have taken longer.

#11 - Aging has slowed you down, but it hasn't shut you up.

#12 - You still haven't learned to act your age, and hope you never will.

And one more:

"One for the road" means peeing before you leave the house.

Arpeggio,

Thank you so much for the laugh--which is REALLY needed these days.   

[Karl Henning]

That didn't take long

https://www.youtube.com/v/wuAHz4i3_x8

This former Trump voter ain't buying the "fine people on both sides" rubbish

https://www.youtube.com/v/c27unRm_iHU

America or Trump