Vaccines, Infrastructure, and Kids In Cages: US Politics April 2021

Or shitty presidents if you will

Or just shit, shit everywhere you look, both sides, inside, outside, shitty shit shit

milo - you don't think the vaccine distribution would be more disorganized and fucked up with trump? cmon

Congress should give Biden a gold star every time he doesn't fuck up, he could trade them in at the end of the month for ice cream.

There would have been basically no difference in the public-private partnerships with CVS/Walgreens that have started out as a shitshow and smoothed out over time as supply caught up.

And when it comes to dealing with the ongoing deaths from the pandemic, let’s not forget the Republican governors, state legislatures, etc. who have gone full Trump and are making the situation worse just so they can show how Trump-aligned they are! Not sure how Biden can fix that situation other than by telling them to stop fucking around and get things back under some level of lockdown in their states, and by making the vaccines as available as possible.

otm

Man I love it when people grab little quotes from my posts and take snipes at them while doing verbal eyerolls.

you don't think the vaccine distribution would be more disorganized and fucked up with trump? cmon

question not directed at me, but the trump administration didn't even bother to put together a vaccine distribution plan. it was the same as the test "plan" - just let the states figure it out

xp hope that's not at me, epistantophus! i was on-the-money-markin you

We cornered the market on vaccine supply under Trump, that's why all of us early middle-aged assholes get to have the jab already.

Trump probably would have been a much louder asshole in refusing to loosen IP protections for the vaccines, though - Biden's doing that pretty quietly at least.

No not you Karl! That was an xp <3

hey I’m extremely glad I don’t wake up everyday and grimly open my browser to see what horrors have unfolded, but I just don’t get the angle on pursuing actively *bad* policies that virtually no one who will ever vote for you supports in any meaningful way. And in fact, millions of people who did vote for you oppose vehemently.

Obv defense spending could be the exception here (which is fucking pathetic, but both parties’ greasy little hard ons for the Trooops and empire is sadly as absolute as the sun rising).

But a lot of stuff he actively ran against, and the other bad stuff (shoveling resources towards cops which they will 100% use to murder more brown people) is never ever ever ever going to sway someone who’s a blue lives matter idiot.

So, like, just don’t.

iirc there was literally no vaccine distribution plan when the biden admin took office

if i could go back and change my vote milo i would you convinced me

xp phew! i was like, have i fallen so far that even when i otm it is perceived as a slight?!

i'm high as fuck, getting ready for a 3-week self-funded fake residency (tentatively titled The Purple Haze "Second Chances" Residency Series) in the woods. the way forward for US democracy is for everyone - and i mean every single person - to quit their jobs

OK. I'll go on. There seems to be some very bad memories here.

Trump attacked Governor Whitmer for trying to impose restrictions on public activities, approved of the mob that stormed the Michigan Capitol, and remained silent about the kidnap and murder attempt on her life. He never wore a mask, taunted those who did, and held rallies in places where there were hotspot outbreaks. He decided that the pandemic was a 'blue state' problem. When warned about it in January he decided that preparing for it would adversely affect the stock market and did nothing. He loudly complained that he wasn't being personally thanked effusively enough when he sent respirators to NY. He put Pence and Kushner in charge and when the Biden team arrived on January 22 they discovered there was no written plan for moving forward.

He politicized the pandemic at every turn and always ok the side of the worst possible public policies.

Who said anything about regretting or changing votes?

i think it's less that i want to give biden a cookie for being a good boy and more than i'm really annoyed at the total flattening out of everything via self-impressed discourse

iirc there was literally no vaccine distribution plan when the biden admin took office

yrc, iirc

if it's any consolation i have not given joe biden ANY cookies or gold stars

I regret starting this thread

Aimless otm

will's post upthread is otm to me without any willful distortions, it's good stuff

If I believed that everything that Biden was doing (or not doing) was worthy of outrage, it would be hard to imagine that *any* U.S. president would be tolerable. And I understand that a lot of people actually do feel that way (I recall Dr. Morbius labeling all presidents as "war criminals"). But I don't have the stomach to go through life in a constant state of outrage, so I choose to believe that there are some things that are "good," even if they are not perfect. I absolutely recognize my privilege in saying that, but it feels necessary when the alternative as never-ending anxiety.

I mean the 23 or so people in DC/ NoVA/ NYC who actually like this dumb cop and troop and wall shit and all write op eds for the Post or the Times are going to drop you the second the GOP manages to lock down Nicki Haley as their nominee

i bought biden some thin mints with my stimmy

will's post upthread is otm to me without any willful distortions, it's good stuff

xp times 1000: imo the one thing that people need to keep in mind is that our political system is designed to move very slowly, especially when one party's entire M.O. is now dragging everything out as long as possible to run out the clock. it's shitty but the truth is that it's much easier to break things than it is to fix them, especially when you literally have the slimmest possible majority and it consists of dipshits like Sinema and Manchin who would be considered hardline conservatives in a sane nation. like as much as I would've loved a President like Warren or Sanders I'm not convinced they could fix even a fraction of our many, many urgent problems all at once either.

as far as Covid goes, obviously what Trump was doing 13-14 months ago is exponentially more important than what Biden could do now, and it goes well beyond just his lack of action. he willingly spread misinfo and convinced half the country that we should trust him over the doctors who have been preparing for this their whole lives. he perpetuated a culture that turned a deadly pandemic and any efforts to mitigate it into a political issue. if he just shut the fuck up and let the doctors speak for him we'd probably have saved 200,000 lives. Biden can't exactly put that genie back in the bottle, especially when most prevention measures are going to be run by individual states.

This 'whatabout' tendency among some posters itt drives me up a goddamn wall.

'Thank goodness factor x is better under Biden than it was under Trump.'

'Yes, but whatabout factors a, z, and w, HUH, MAKES U THIIIIIINK'

Your points may be valid. You may find a lot of agreement here with your points when the discussion is centered around those particular points. But when your hand is just twitching over the buzzer, waiting to lob a barely-related bad faith retort back in someone's face, it seems clear that you aren't interested in actual discussion.

Lots of things are bad, we can all agree. I don't know why some of y'all insist on ensuring that others feel bad about the things that are bad literally every second of the day. I mean, have fun dying of a coronary at 46 if that's your bag but maybe allow some of the rest of us to relax our cracks just a touch now and again.

froggy otm

frogbs otm

so it comes down to personal comfort, I get it, I wish ppl were generally more open about that instead of doing the whole I'm a sensible grownup posturing

as if what you are doing is not posturing

that's the fucking point. the I'm a reasonable moderate who understands nuance shit looks like posturing from this side too

Man, some of you would be exhausting to live with.

"Oh, I'm so happy, my COVID test came back negative!"

"Oh, you are happy? What about the 1,000 people who died from COVID yesterday? Are you happy about that? Sounds like you don't care about those lives lost."

xposts It doesn't 'come down' to anything. Your intransigent ability to see any shade of gray is your own shit, and it's frankly fuckin' repugnant and (imo) nearly inseparable from hard right 'YOU'RE EITHER 100% WITH US OR 100% AGIN' US' bullshit.

Your refusal to recognize how many people here are mostly with you on most things? It's straight-up fucked. There you go.

Mom, Dad, are the white dude arguing again

fucking horseshoe theory now. fuck this

Honestly, just looking at one of the URLs linked upthread about wall construction?

construction could resume in gaps, gates, and areas where the wall had been built but planned technology had not been installed...

(Biden) halted all federal funding for the border wall on his first day in office...

Officials told Insider that a plan would come "soon" but seemed to have struggled to work out legallyhow to divert funding that had been allocated for the wall under Trump to other projects.

some has already been funded through a congressional authorization and funding allocation. But (...) it's paused while agencies are developing a plan for the President on the management of the federal funds.

This scans very differently to me than “OMG Biden admin will continue wall construction despite his campaign promises!!!” and I think it’s disingenuous at best to post it here as an example of what Biden is doing wrong.

This 'whatabout' tendency among some posters itt drives me up a goddamn wall.

what about the posters who don't do this, though?

ICWYDT

I feel the driving difference in this thread is between people who think fewer people will be hurt by effecting change via bureaucracy vs people who think fewer people will be hurt by effecting change via revolution vs people who think change is impossible and there is so much yelling because no one actually wants anyone to get hurt.

honestly I think Trump's legacy, the thing that sets him apart from any other US President, is how much he made his entire presidency about culture wars and his own ego, to the point where every single issue, from hurricanes to immigration to a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic was actually about *him* instead of the people who were suffering. his entire M.O. was to punish the people who didn't vote for him and to govern as though they didn't exist. he created a culture where his voters would get furious about people wearing facemasks because it meant they trusted science and the "fake news" over our glorious golden boy President. that culture is now singlehandedly threatening to prolong the pandemic even further because so many Republicans are refusing to get vaccinated. I have no clue how Biden can combat that.

Your refusal to recognize how many people here are mostly with you on most things? It's straight-up fucked. There you go.

Who refuses to recognize this? Is it a personal attack on you when Left calls Joe Biden a rapist war criminal?

frogbs booming today.

also <3 DJP’s very kind take

I apologize for running hot, y'all. Particularly high anxiety today. Much love, hugs, etc.

there is so much yelling because no one actually wants anyone to get hurt.

I expect there is much truth in what you say. I just wish revolutionaries produced their intended consequences with a much greater record of success.

thank u I’ve never been otm before feels good

I would also like to point out that will has been good and otm in this thread recently

Lots of things are bad, we can all agree. I don't know why some of y'all insist on ensuring that others feel bad about the things that are bad literally every second of the day. I mean, have fun dying of a coronary at 46 if that's your bag but maybe allow some of the rest of us to relax our cracks just a touch now and again.

― You Can't Have the Woogie Without a Little Boogie (Old Lunch)

Your refusal to recognize how many people here are mostly with you on most things? It's straight-up fucked. There you go.

― You Can't Have the Woogie Without a Little Boogie (Old Lunch)

This whole digression started with unperson posting something that nobody objected to, and crowing that loser lefties itt would scream that it wasn't good enough.

Trump actively subverted the expert dvice of Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx. He constantly claimed hydroxychloroquine was a miracle cure. He promoted conspiracy theories about a 'plandemic' and 'China virus'. He told the nation the pandemic would disappear, then it was about to be over, then it was getting better, then the numbers were being "fixed" to make him look bad.

I could go on, but why bother.

― sharpening the contraindications (Aimless), Thursday, April 15, 2021 4:42 AM (fourteen minutes ago)

that's me thoroughly telt oh wait none of those are administration policies, and all of them come under tweeting and holding press conferences about how it’s nbd.

The Kent variant is now the most prevalent in the US, found in every single state even AK and HI, and nearly 100% of infections in MT, ND, WY, NM, IA, LA,WV and VT.

Alaska U.K. variant/Brazilian/South African
Arizona U.K. variant/Brazilian/South African
California U.K. variant/Brazilian/South African
Colorado U.K. variant/Brazilian/South African
Connecticut U.K. variant/Brazilian/South African
District of Columbia U.K. variant/Brazilian/South African
Florida U.K. variant/Brazilian/South African
Georgia U.K. variant/Brazilian/South African
Illinois U.K. variant/Brazilian/South African
Indiana U.K. variant/Brazilian/South African
Maine U.K. variant/Brazilian/South African
Maryland U.K. variant/Brazilian/South African
Massachusetts U.K. variant/Brazilian/South African
Michigan U.K. variant/Brazilian/South African
Minnesota U.K. variant/Brazilian/South African
Nebraska U.K. variant/Brazilian
New Hampshire U.K. variant/Brazilian
New Jersey U.K. variant/Brazilian/South African
Ohio U.K. variant/Brazilian/South African
Oklahoma U.K. variant/Brazilian/South African
Oregon U.K. variant/Brazilian
Pennsylvania U.K. variant/Brazilian/South African
Rhode Island U.K. variant/Brazilian
Tennessee U.K. variant/Brazilian/South African
Texas U.K. variant/Brazilian/South African
Utah U.K. variant/Brazilian
Washington U.K. variant/Brazilian/South African
Wisconsin U.K. variant/Brazilian/South African
Alabama U.K. variant/South African
American Samoa none
Arkansas U.K. variant/Brazilian
Delaware U.K. variant/South African
Guam none
Hawaii U.K. variant/South African
Idaho U.K. variant/South African
Iowa U.K. variant
Kansas U.K. variant/South African
Kentucky U.K. variant/Brazilian
Louisiana U.K. variant
Mississippi U.K. variant/Brazilian/South African
Missouri U.K. variant/South African
Montana U.K. variant
Nevada U.K. variant/South African
New Mexico U.K. variant
New York U.K. variant/South African
North Carolina U.K. variant/South African
North Dakota U.K. variant
Northern Mariana Islands none
Puerto Rico U.K. variant
South Carolina U.K. variant/South African
South Dakota U.K. variant/South African
U.S. Virgin Islands none
Vermont U.K. variant
Virginia U.K. variant/South African
West Virginia U.K. variant
Wyoming U.K. variant

There would have been basically no difference in the public-private partnerships with CVS/Walgreens that have started out as a shitshow and smoothed out over time as supply caught up.

Jared would almost certainly have tried to get a PPE-style battle royale happening between states in order for middlemen to siphon millions out of the process - there's no way it would have gone as fast or smoothly as it has under the previous admin, even if the process had been broadly the same.

Trump probably would have been a much louder asshole in refusing to loosen IP protections for the vaccines, though - Biden's doing that pretty quietly at least.

yeah this sucks, but there are various cases that could be made (eg the US has the worst outbreak of the pando globally so we're holding off until it's under control here, or we're still learning side effects so don't want to let the 'ccines loose willy-nilly into third-world countries), convincing or no - it's the quiet that's most alarming.

I’m ok with Biden so far but if anyone wants to talk about the shit that’s going to go down once the 6-3 Supreme Court starts to REALLLLYYYY make itself heard, I will be all anxiety in here with you.

not sure how “revolutionary” it is to question draconian and ghoulish and unpopular moves like mandatory minimums and giving cops more money. in 2021.