Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[cubby]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-canceled.html

Dipshit maga teen refuses to be"canceled."

And the lineup of non-last-name-Trump speakers are just one bigot and dipship-Nazi after another. Covington, that FL couple, the virtue signaling (am I using that right?) is astounding.

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They are guidelines, not rules. Blue states have been doing their own thing since the beginning--as have red states, to be fair, but in a different direction. Texas has had its issues with testing, but there are varying degrees of awful and they haven't been at Florida levels of horrendous, so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt until they prove otherwise.

Is there anyway to statistically check about the accuracy of "new" cases by comparing blue states (who are theoretically reporting accurate numbers) rates and red state rates...or perhaps that won't work because the testing protocols will be off. Shoot, I know what I'm thinking here, just struggling to express it. You'd think 7 years of college/grad would help out a little....

Basically, are there states that are reporting accurately but not really following mask guidelines BUT have continued testing, that we could compare to those states we're pretty sure aren't giving us even remotely close number and/or have essentially shut down their testing.

My overall concern is that the United States numbers aren't going down at all, just the amount of testing, all in the hopes of giving Trump some kind of false victory near November.

[Draco-Onis]

Their short attention span has nothing to do with it. Trump has proven he fumbles even the easiest tests; there's no reason to think he won't fuck up again when it comes to the relief efforts in this instance. I really don't think the storms are going to "help" him to an election victory. He's his own worst enemy.

That's the hope that he keeps being incompetent and fucks this up but it is an opportunity nonetheless.

[Benggaul]

That's the hope that he keeps being incompetent and fucks this up but it is an opportunity nonetheless.

I actually hope that he DOESN'T fuck it up because that would cost more lives on top of the ones he's already killed. I think in the grand scheme of things it'll mean little to his chances one way or the other.

[Breccia]

Dipshit maga teen refuses to be"canceled."

Does anyone else want to point out the irony of Trump supporters railing against "cancel culture" while their Orange God asks them to boycott Goodyear and the NFL?

[Clone]

Does anyone else want to point out the irony of Trump supporters railing against "cancel culture" while their Orange God asks them to boycott Goodyear and the NFL?

I just thought it was funny. Kid didn't have anything to get canceled on.

[D Luniz]

I just thought it was funny. Kid didn't have anything to get canceled on.

he's playing to the typical erroneous idea that the First Amendment promises the widest audience via private platforms

[Darththeo]

he's playing to the typical erroneous idea that the First Amendment promises the widest audience via private platforms

It always amazing me that people don't understand what Free Speech means, even after it is explained so many times.

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I just thought it was funny. Kid didn't have anything to get canceled on.

Also, no one ever threatened to cancel him in the first place.

[Felya]

It always amazing me that people don't understand what Free Speech means, even after it is explained so many times.

They confuse freedom of speech with freedom to force people to listen to their speech. Even though it’s their argument saying “shut up” is unconstitutional...

[Darththeo]

They confuse freedom of speech with freedom to force people to listen to their speech. Even though it’s their argument saying “shut up” is unconstitutional...

Freedom to force to listen to their speech while not having any consequences for said speech.

[rayvio]

and of course they only want those freedoms for 'their people'

[Belize]

Stay safe, and be well.

If anyone's interested still, most of us in Beaumont (at least west of I10, the east side looks a little rougher) slept through most of it.

Storm moved east enough to not impact TX too bad. Looks like Lake Charles and it's surroundings got the worst of it.

[Felya]

and of course they only want those freedoms for 'their people'

‘Their people’ is just a moving target, with only 1 data point as a constant.

[Breccia]

So while the top news everywhere is the hurricane, makes sense stay safe people, that doesn't mean it's the only news out there.

Yesterday, Trump held a press conference at his golf club and said

Through the historic relief package that I signed into law, we saved over 50 million American jobs. They don’t like these kind of numbers because they think it’ll hurt them in the election.

Let's unpack this.

1) Why would the Democrats oppose this? Trump signed the law, but had nothing to do with it other than that. Democrats helped write the law. The judge doesn't find anything with the search warrant.

2) The House and Senate passed the CARES Act with massive majorities. Trump's signature was irrelevant.

3) Trump is wildly miscounting the numbers. Trump's own WH reports that 51 million is the number of jobs held by businesses that got PPP. Trump is making the claim that every single one of those businesses would have died if he hadn't signed the law.

4) Nobody agrees with him. The Reuters link above quotes multiple economic experts, with actual degrees and experience (not Trump), who say Trump is wrong by an order of magnitude.

The uncertainty surrounding the 51 million figure was fueled by a discrepancy between the information the SBA asked lenders to gather from borrowers and the information it asked those same lenders to enter into its loan processing portal.

The SBA asked lenders only to gather each borrower’s number of employees, but when lenders subsequently processed the loan in the SBA portal, the agency also asked for the “number of jobs retained.” Lenders often put the number of employees into the portal’s “jobs retained” box, according to numerous people familiar with the process. Skewing the numbers in the other direction, some lenders left “jobs retained” blank or put in zero, the people said.

Both the SBA and Treasury made officials available to speak with Reuters about the PPP on condition that they not be named.

The senior Treasury official said the 51 million figure was not just a sum of the job totals at recipient companies; it was supported by economic modeling as well. However, he added, “we can’t with any kind of certainty say that all 51 million of those would have otherwise lost their job.”

Because the figure isn’t a count of jobs saved, the official added, “we’ve been careful to always use the word ‘jobs reported’ or ‘jobs supported’ by the program.”

The SBA official confirmed that, when borrowers filled out their applications, they supplied “just the number of employees. It wasn’t jobs retained.”

Also on Aug. 21, the Small Business Administration reissued the full PPP dataset, fixing some of the problems that appeared when it was first made public in July. But the data still had holes. About 84,850 loans for amounts at $150,000 or above, had a zero in the jobs reported column, or the column was left blank. That problem applied to about 13% of loans at that amount.

The administration will have to wait until businesses apply for loan forgiveness to get a solid estimate of how many jobs were saved, economists and officials said.

5) If Trump is so happy about saving so many jobs, why did he end the program by refusing to negotiate? Remember, McConnell is no longer doing anything. Pelosi went to Trump directly, offering to meet in the middle between her $3 trillion plan and McConnell's $1 trillion plan. Trump counter-offered with an even lower plan, ending the negotiations with such an insult, then signed some E.O.'s that had no PPP in them.

And all of the above ignores how many jobs Trump cost us in the first place. If you set fire to a museum with 10 paintings, and carry five of them out of the fire, did you save five paintings, or destroy five paintings?

[Odinfrost]

And all of the above ignores how many jobs Trump cost us in the first place. If you set fire to a museum with 10 paintings, and carry five of them out of the fire, did you save five paintings, or destroy five paintings?

Destroyed five, burned down a place to storage the five that was saved and he would probably use one of them to eat his burgers on, so let us add another to the destroy list. Then he will throw a tantrum that the democrats didn't rush into the burning building to save the remaining five.

[masterhorus8]

Destroyed five, burned down a place to storage the five that was saved and he would probably use one of them to eat his burgers on, so let us add another to the destroy list. Then he will throw a tantrum that the democrats didn't rush into the burning building to save the remaining five.

More accurately that the democrats were going in to save the first five already, and while they were in there, told them to go in, and claim all the credit after they come out with the five.

[ohtlmtlm]

it's a good thing FEMA has a lot of money on hand to deal with this hurricane... oh wait nvm. what a fuck up this man is.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politic...laura-1047210/

[Edge-]

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/n...al-with-pelosi

Pack it in, y'all. No more relief needed due to the coronavirus. Larry Kudlow's tie has spoken, we won the economic battle!

Fuck. These. People.

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https://thehill.com/policy/energy-en...cious-loophole

Environmentalists won their battle challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) regulation of Pennsylvania’s air quality, with the court ruling the agency used a “pernicious loophole” when greenlighting laxer standards for coal-fired power plants.

The suit from the Sierra Club against the EPA and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection challenged a permit governing the state’s air quality standards. The group argued power plants in the state were capable of meeting much tougher standards than what had been agreed to by the two agencies.

The court called the reasoning behind different elements of the permit “questionable individually,” adding that “joined together they are decidedly worse than the sum of their parts.”

Trump continues to try to destroy the planet, and thankfully the courts aren't having his illegal attempts to do so.

[Breccia]

So what else happened today?

1) The White House flat-out admitted they are building up a dossier to discredit journalists. They named one in particular, who wrote a story about how taxpayers spent $900,000 at Mar-a-Lago.

2) This GAO report, as in "gao.gov" so there will be no blaming fake news today, says that Trump's actions to cut the census short will make it inherently inaccurate.

3) Tucker Carlson said the 17-year-old who drove to the rally, fatally shot two people, then drove home, acted in self-defense.

Side note: hey @cubby if you leave the scene of a fatal shooting without calling the police, can you still claim self-defense?

4) In addition to the NFL, Trump is now talking trash about the NBA, accusing them of shutting down as part of a political movement made to make him look bad.

"What did he say about MLB? Didn't some of--"

Yes, Trump talked about the NBA.

"But if he didn't mention other sports he's being a hypo--"

He mentioned the NBA only, next topic!

5) Pelosi issues a statement saying, basically, "Hey Trump, we came to the WH and I agreed to meet you in the middle. You threw me out. Basketball's in your court, bitch, call me when you're ready to save lives."

Here's an actual quote:

This is not about dollars, this is about values. These investments will not only help crush the virus, they will also help bolster the economy.

6) The CDC seems to be backing away from their own fucking changes they made at Trump's request.

6) The list of former McCain, Romney, and/or W aides/admins has grown by hundreds, as you can see from this letter, this letter, and this letter.

While we all may have our differences of opinion on specific policy matters with the Democratic Party, we firmly believe that Joe Biden can bring us together to help heal the divisions in our country and find solutions to our problems. “Donald Trump has failed to keep Americans safe during this pandemic, but Joe Biden will listen to our scientists and doctors when making life or death decisions. With lives and livelihoods at stake, our nation needs a leader with the experience, competence and character of Joe Biden.

-- two hundred thirty W admin officials


7) In Syria, a Russian tank basically ran over a US Jeep and then blamed US.

8) Pence calls Biden "a Trojan horse for the radical left".

"I mean, I would know," he should have continued. "I backed Trump and he was a Trojan horse for Nazis."

9) Trump is still pushing his plan on the Palestinians for some reason. "Come on, guys, we took away Jerusalem, we agreed Israel could annex whatever they want," Trump basically said. "What more do you want? Because we can take that away, too."

Remember, the key part of Trump's plan was to take away what the Palestinians wanted, and in return, hand them money. There is no money. It was supposed to come from nearby countries and they have not provided.

It should be noted that, at this point, Russia is making a peace plan with better hopes of survival. "After all," Russia said, "you can't fall out of a window if you don't have a house."

10) Lindsey Graham calls QAnon "bats" and "crazy" and "it's even less credible than claiming you're banging my wife in the shower".

"Har har. What did he really say?"

QAnon is batshit crazy

[Thekri]

7) In Syria, a Russian tank basically ran over a US Jeep and then blamed US.

By which you mean a smallish Russian armored truck sideswiped a much larger US armored truck while both maneuvered in an open field. Facts still matter.

The relevant point here is not really what happened yesterday (Which is unimportant), it is the dangerous, volatile, irresponsible, and pointless position we have placed our soldiers in. US Soldiers are guarding the oil wells, which we were not asked to do by anyone. Meanwhile, the Kurds sold rights to those oil wells to Russia after we betrayed them, and the Syrian government, which are the people that the Kurds took the wells from in the first place ALSO gave the Russians the rights to those wells.

The Russians feel entitled to the wells, because both the state government and the Kurdish militias that took them agree they should have them, but Trump sat our troops on top of those oil wells, just to thumb it in everyone's noses. He doesn't make a secret of the reasons he did it. He has said "We are keeping the oil" out loud, and said it repeatedly. This is illegal, and irresponsible.

So what happened yesterday is the Russians attempting to drive off US patrols, because the US patrols are blocking their access to the oil wells they believe they own. A situation Trump caused, and stuck the US military in the middle of. We have no goddamn reason to be there, and pretending this is a big mean Russian tank running over a US "jeep" is not helping the situation. We need to either man up and actually do the right thing by our allies, or get the fuck out and stop stealing the oil.

[Benggaul]

Not the sharpest tools in the shed, indeed...

Smash Mouth Sturgis show connected to 100+ Covid-19 cases

As reported by Brooklyn Vegan, Smash Mouth is connected to approximately 100 new cases of Covid-19. The band recently played the Sturgis motorcycle festival with other bands including Night Ranger, the Kenny Wayne Shepherd Band, Buckcherry, Lit, .38 Special, Quiet Riot, Reverend Horton Heat and Bone Thugs-n-Harmony.

During the Smash mouth set (and the festival as a whole) attendees ignored social distancing guidelines, including getting close to each other and refusing to wear masks.

During the Smash Mouth set, lead singer Steve Harwell said: “Now we’re all here together tonight. And we’re being human once again. Fuck that COVID shit.”

So happy Trump normalized this anti-intellectual bullshit.