People that you've never heard of, people that are in the dark shadows -- US Politics September 2020

if you really believe Fauci was being knowingly dishonest, you need to show some better evidence

it also wasn't clear how the disease was spread, as we were only a few weeks removed from "don't want COVID-19? just wash your hands!!"

xxpost thanks pomenitul!

WHO only just accepted that the damn thing can spread through airborne transmission!

In more important news

https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/08/asia/xi-jinping-title-us-bill-intl-dst-hnk/index.html

there was some health expert on NPR waaayy back, can't remember her job title, I wanna say it was mid April...whenever it was when they switched the messaging to "ok mask up everyone". Flat out admitted then they knew masks would help but 1) were worried about shortages and 2) didn't want to give ppl the sense they were invincible to the virus when wearing one. Just the most foolish, condescending bullshit line of thinking.

2 seems like an eminently reasonable concern

the people that I knew that were wearing them before the guidance changed to recommend them were not at all wearing them to contain spread. they were wearing them to avoid catching it. one of my friends that advocated against them said #2 almost verbatim as her reasoning why.

and we still would have slowed the rate of transmission much more than we did if more people had embraced masks AFTER the guidance changed. we didn't have an ordinance in my county requiring them until 6/20, a full 2.5 months after the guidance began to shift.

yes it's totally reasonable to instead of telling ppl not to wear masks so they don't feel invincible (cause it's not like you could explain that it's not full-proof protection...ppl can't wrap their heads around such a concept!), tell them not to wear mask so they are totally vincible and the virus spreads like wildfire. that's some tasty logic!

I think we also shouldn't tell ppl to wear seatbelts or helmets or put on sunscreen. They'll just behave recklessly.

the problem is in the Trump era if you waffle on something even once it makes you're fake news and half the people in this country won't listen to you

xxpost you're muddling the facts of what was known at the time but w/e, go on posting to yourself

the problem is in the Trump era if you waffle on something even once it makes you're fake news and half the people in this country won't listen to you

Nah, their beliefs are fixed points and your credibility is entirely a function of how close or far you are from those points. If Hilary Clinton herself endorsed Trump and parroted his statements, she'd get instant redemption from his followers.

This whole thing about mask confusion tho, it lasted like 3 weeks. We’ve had 5 months of consistent mask messaging since then. Maybe I am especially irritable on this point because I live in a place where people come to every single public meeting and stand up at public forum and go on and on about how “they keep changing their mind about masks,” and that’s just not true. There was conflicting messaging early on, and then it became consistent and has stayed consistent. The only people who could reasonably be confused at this point are people who are just trying to find a reason not to do it.

Just watched a school board meeting where a woman stood up and said that wearing masks all day was giving kids lung infections and CO2 poisoning, and I am just over it.

Woodward describes Coats’s experience as especially tortured. Coats, a former senator from Indiana, was recruited into the administration by Vice President Pence, and his wife is quoted as recalling a dinner at the White House when she interacted with Pence.

“I just looked at him, like, how are you stomaching this?” Marsha Coats said, according to Woodward. “I just looked at him like, this is horrible. I mean, we made eye contact. I think he understood. And he just whispered in my ear, ‘Stay the course.’ ”

kiiiiiinda creeeeepy

Not kinda. Very.

lmao!! wow

"President Trump today had a great day. A day that any president could only dream of" pic.twitter.com/gUZHTqGOxF

— Jason Campbell (@JasonSCampbell) September 9, 2020

aren't there countries who still haven't really embraced them?

― Neanderthal, Wednesday, September 9, 2020 1:44 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

most people don't wear them here, other than on transit where they're mandated

jeez, this book is pretty juicy, i guess. it's just one damn thing after another

Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, is quoted by Woodward as saying, “The most dangerous people around the president are overconfident idiots,”

for once in his life, jared kushner on the fucking m-

...which Woodward interprets as a reference to Mattis, Tillerson and former National Economic Council director Gary Cohn.

ok that makes more sense

look, trump is worse than fauci. but withholding information in order to "prevent a panic" is not something that is exclusive to him. people in government were trying to manage the public reaction -- you can even see it in that fauci interview, that they were concerned that if people started wearing masks there would be other consequences, so they were hedging on their effectiveness

So do you want some Maskghazi hearings, or what?

Not trying to be a jerk but like seriously, what should we be doing now to address what wasn't done correctly five months / seemongly three lifetimes ago?

seemingly

the problem is in the Trump era if you waffle on something even once it makes you're fake news and half the people in this country won't listen to you

Exactly. I've heard ppl say exactly this wrt experts & masks.

xxpost you're muddling the facts of what was known at the time but w/e, go on posting to yourself

is this to me? I said nothing about what facts were known at the time. Just what the health expert interviewed on NPR said was their reasoning behind initially advising against wearing masks

Maskghazi, In on the Kill Taker.

most people don't wear them here, other than on transit where they're mandated

Not even at the grocery store? Rules are def more stringent here in Quebec (but that's to be expected given how lethal the first wave was in this neck of the woods).

In Melbourne theyre mandatory anywhere out of the home at present - $200 fine. Only exeptions are under 12s, if youre jogging, medical exemption and eating. Even here we're getting hysteriKarens refusing to cooperate, I hate to think how some americans would deal with our current rules (an 8PM curfew! End times!)

And yet in Sydney I'd say only 10-20% of people are wearing masks out. I went to a shopping mall yesterday where there had been a covid case only a few days ago and the whole place had been closed for a deep clean - and it was still 20% max people wearing masks

DC has required masks in stores since the lockdown started in March, and people comply. I see the occasional doofus with their nostrils out but that’s about it.

Orlando's pretty much dependent on where you go. near me, where it's younger and more boheme, everybody has em.

downtown where the dudebros thrive, yeah, people flaunt the fuck out of it.

Cocoa Beach? HA! tell them about masks and you might as well be talking about the Manticore

The nose thing is so IA, maybe worse than no mask

I just tell myself it probably slipped down while they were talking to someone and they haven’t noticed.

i mentioned this in the other thread,but I actually met a friend of a friend that legit thought under the nose was the correct way to wear.

couldn't follow that line of thought.

ppl dumm

-Dali Lama

what the fuck

Kim Jong Un is in good health. Never underestimate him!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 10, 2020

lol it's a genius rope-a-dope. Take a bad person and treat them like a good person and ta-dah! No longer bad.

i don't think this came up in the midst of yesterdays level 5 shitstorm but wow
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/08/nyregion/donald-trump-jean-carroll-lawsuit-rape.html

The Justice Department moved on Tuesday to replace President Trump’s private legal team with government lawyers to defend him against a defamation lawsuit by the author E. Jean Carroll, who has accused him of raping her in a Manhattan department store in the 1990s.

In a highly unusual legal move, lawyers for the Justice Department said in court papers that Mr. Trump was acting in his official capacity as president when he denied ever knowing Ms. Carroll and thus could be defended by government lawyers — in effect underwritten by taxpayer money.

Just another thing that probably would've destroyed any other presidency

already paying taxes for a bunch of civilian drone murders, might as well underwrite a rape defense case as well

more and more i just get Young Jeezy's opening lines from "Soul Survivor" stuck in my head

"tonight i can't sleep
we livin' in hell"

don't worry, relief is on the way*!

The Senate is moving to a vote Thursday on a pared-down GOP coronavirus relief bill, but Democrats intend to block the measure in a move that could punt any new economic stimulus negotiations until after the November elections.

Next steps following the vote expected around mid-day Thursday are unclear. There’s no sign that bipartisan talks that collapsed last month will be revived, and it’s looking possible that Congress will adjourn later this month without passing any new economic relief.

The bill advanced by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) contains new money for small businesses, coronavirus testing and schools, and $300 weekly enhanced unemployment benefits to replace a $600 weekly benefit that expired July 31 for some 30 million jobless workers. The measure includes roughly $650 billion in total spending, but it would repurpose roughly $350 billion in previously approved spending, bringing the tally of new funding to around $300 billion.

The measure does not include a second round of $1,200 stimulus checks for individual Americans, even though that’s something the White House supports. It also excludes any new money for cities and states, a top Democratic priority as municipal governments face the prospect of mass layoffs because of plunging tax revenue. And it contains some conservative priorities that Democrats dismiss as unacceptable “poison pills,” including liability protections for businesses and a tax credit aimed at helping students attend private schools.

After Republican senators refused to rally around a $1 trillion bill McConnell released in July, he designed the new measure to attract the support of as many of his members as possible. That includes a significant group who have been reluctant to spend any more money at all after Congress dedicated an unprecedented $3 trillion to economic relief in the Spring. At the same time, McConnell was balancing the needs of a half-dozen vulnerable GOP incumbents who are eager to vote on new aid for their constituents as they campaign for re-election.

Democrats contend that the legislation, written without any Democratic input, was designed to fail and intended only to give the GOP cover for inaction. Republicans argue Democrats are refusing to agree to any new relief because they don’t want to help President Trump or bolster the fragile economic recovery ahead of the election.

“Working families have suffered and waited and wondered whether Washington Democrats really care more about hurting President Trump than helping them through this crisis,” McConnell said on the Senate floor ahead of the vote.

*relief means pain relief. pain relief not guaranteed. other restrictions may apply.

Congress does need to take some action this month, to avert a government shutdown when agency-wide funding expires at the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30. Lawmakers are in talks on a short-term spending bill that would extend government spending at existing levels through the election, although they have not yet agreed on how long it will last.

In the absence of new bipartisan talks on a coronavirus relief bill, some senators and aides speculated this week that Congress will move quickly to pass the short-term “continuing resolution” and then adjourn so lawmakers can return home to campaign for re-election.

i don't understand this, though - shouldn't democrats refuse to fund the government unless republicans agree to the green new deal? or to make abortion permanently legal and accessible everywhere? i'm confused, i've only been following us politics for 12 years now and this seems to be what the opposition does every time

oh wait, you have to do it in a non-election year, forgot

Trump on MBS after Khashoggi's murder, according to Woodward’s book: “I saved his ass. I was able to get Congress to leave him alone. I was able to get them to stop.” https://t.co/MX3mHtDlxi pic.twitter.com/LiIBUFv6kU

— Sarah McLaughlin (@sarahemclaugh) September 10, 2020

your favorite president spends eight hours a day watching fox news

"I watched Liz McDonald. She's fantastic. I watched Fox Business. I watched Lou Dobbs last night, Sean Hannity last night, Tucker last night, Laura. I watched Fox & Friends in the morning." -- Trump pic.twitter.com/ORuXQRptJf

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 10, 2020

It only took a few hours for the Biden campaign to pluck this from the President's news conference on Thursday.pic.twitter.com/fDuTx9M1C1

— Jamie Dupree (@jamiedupree) September 11, 2020

YEAH WELL WHAT’S WRONG WITH WATCHIN TEEVEE I WATCHA LOTTA TEEVEE TOO

yeah but 6% of those people didn't have comorbidities so it's more like 24.48 minutes of tv if you cross-multiply

pretty sure Fox is a co-morbidity

Is Woodward irresponsible in not coming forward with the material in his tape a lot earlier?
Was he bound up in seeking clearance for his book to be released until it was about to be. & is that an excuse?
Assume that has been asked elsewhere but does seem like something that might have made some difference if it was released at the peak of the first wave. Or would it have?