Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[Biglog]

China is one area where I think Trump was working on something that is important and has been brushed over by most previous Presidents red and blue. It was bumbled badly and failed to achieve what was hoped, but it's an important topic that I hope is not entirely reset with the Biden administration. Currency manipulation, expansion in the South China Sea, "bullying" of neighbor's fishing rights, treatment of Hong Kong, etc. are just the surface.

The big item is that China does need to be included in a "big 3" new START nuclear treaty with the US and Russia. The nuclear treaties between Russia and the US while China races building nukes as fast and as large as possible are pointless, and Russia was cheating the treaty anyway in missile tech exceeding it's range limits. China wants no part of a treaty, enjoying unlimited nuclear arms building while playing the "we're a developing country" (lol) card. So I'm very glad the US is finally saying no to that line.

The juvenile tit for tat diplomacy that it turned into under Trump wasn't productive. But I'm hoping to see a similar strong approach to China, but done in a bit more diplomatic way under Biden that actually results in trade and nuclear treaty agreements with China. Kind of like Iran and their nuke deal, when he left it Trump found out that taking your toys and going home can come back to bite you in the foot. No one really cares what you think or say after you leave.

[Breccia]

If I am not mistaken states like Florida had a lot of reporting issues including the standards of what they considered available beds. I even remember an official getting fired because she objected and was reporting correct numbers so may not be so far fetched.

Hmm, could be.

But it should still be a strategy easily defeated. Democrats just need to talk to a bunch of doctors and hospitals.

"How were things on Jan 1?"
"They were truly horrifying."
"Did they like double or triple by Jan 30th, the way these numbers now say?"
"No, they didn't, our reported numbers were about the same."

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So remember when Trump called Mexicans drug-using rapists?

"That's glossing over some context--"

Not enough. Anyhow, last month:

Former Mexican defense minister ordered held in U.S. jail without bond

Mexico’s former defense minister, Salvador Cienfuegos, was ordered held in U.S. custody without bail on Tuesday, pending his trial on drug trafficking charges in a case that could have far-reaching implications for U.S. and Mexican anti-cartel strategy.

Magistrate judge Alexander MacKinnon denied a request from Cienfuegos’ attorney for his release on a $750,000 bond, saying that his prominent position and ties to Mexico posed a significant flight risk.

There are “no conditions that will reasonably assure the defendant’s appearance at future court proceedings,” the judge said.

Cienfuegos was indicted in federal court in New York on four counts of drug trafficking and money laundering. Prosecutors say he took bribes in return for protecting drug cartel members, which included warning them about U.S. investigations.

He is accused of using his office to protect the H-2 narcotics cartel, an offshoot of the Beltran-Leyva cartel, directing operations against rival gangs, and finding maritime transport for the shipment of drugs including heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana.

Cienfuegos, a retired army general, served in the government of President Enrique Pena Nieto from 2012 to 2018. Several of Pena Nieto’s aides and party members have been accused of corruption.

Genaro Garcia Luna, Mexico’s former security minister under President Felipe Calderon, has also pleaded not guilty in the United States to charges of accepting bribes from Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman’s Sinaloa Cartel.

There had been no prior open probe of Cienfuegos in Mexico. The country’s armed forces have generally been perceived as less prone to corruption than the police, and Cienfuegos’ downfall has embarrassed the once highly trusted institution.

The H-2 gang grew out of the Beltran-Leyva cartel, founded by brothers from the same town as ‘El Chapo.’

Current Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador says his predecessors presided over a debilitating increase in corruption in Mexico, for years convulsed by horrific levels of drug gang violence.

For all Trump's posturing, for all his Law and Order reruns, for all his, well, blatant racism, and for all his ICE thuggery and ordering US military to Texas, he actually did manage to land a, well, Godfather-like drug kingpin! This was actually a huge win.

Good times...good times...

Anyhow, Trump let him go. And Mexico is so fucking mad, they're threatening to expel US DEA agents. Because of this.

The DOJ announced on Tuesday that it would not seek charges against Cienfuegos and return him to Mexico after it opened its own investigation.

The Times reported that the DOJ had not alerted Mexican officials when it indicted him last year, and waited until he was in the U.S. to arrest him. Normally, U.S. authorities would work with their Mexican counterparts to capture drug trafficking suspects, and they are often arrested in Mexico.

After his arrest, officials met several times in which they expressed anger at having been blindsided by the U.S. and strategized its response, two people familiar with the matter told the newspaper. The people said that the officials felt that the U.S. violated its trust over the arrest of someone as important as Cienfuegos.

The military was particularly upset, according to the newspaper, and pushed the government to take action.

Mexican officials had publicly expressed these frustrations, and Mexico’s foreign minister Marcelo Ebrard said there would be “a revision” of Mexico’s collaboration with the DEA.

“There will be cooperation, but it will have to be on a different basis,” he said in an interview with Proceso magazine, according to the Times. “Everything should be different.”

U.S. District Judge Carol Amon of the Eastern District of New York on Wednesday granted the Department of Justice's motion to withdraw the case, which prosecutors had previously characterized as "strong."

There is no valid defense for this. Cienfuegos, until recently, was charged with using his power and murderous violence to traffic drugs into the US -- something Trump has very publicly taken a stance against. He wanted to build a Wall over this. He gets a major arrest working with an until recently friendly country and just throws him back with no charges filed.

Well you know what this means. But you know what, I'm done giving our own resident members the chance to defend this. The most action we've seen was a ban-evading alt troll in the last two weeks. That's like going to the grocery store with a list of items for Thanksgiving dinner, and coming back with a can of Hormel's turkey chili without beans. Hey, the stuff is good, but it's not particularly satisfying to share with 12 people and it just ends up being a wet fart.

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WH COVID task force to hold its first meeting in months.

Months.

Plural.

This is where @Benggaul 's work really shows how important it is. The very minimum "months" would be Sept 19, because the article doesn't say I'll use that.

51,345 new cases, 958 deaths; not a substantial difference from two weeks ago..

And what did we see late last night?

173,632 new cases...1,956 deaths

In the last "months" plural, cases have tripled, deaths have doubled. Maybe yesterday was a spike but the deaths have been over 1,000 for a while now, enough to make the seven-day averge...

(checks news)

1248 now, 796 Sept 19. That's not double, but that is +50% in two months.

Related: Trump's own CDC says don't travel for Thanksgiving.

Yep, Trump's CDC.

Let's see what the rabid fanbase say about that one.

- - - Updated - - -

The NYTimes did an analysis on the states by
1) number of cases per capita
2) strength of those states' COVID restrictions.

The results are 100% what you'd expect. The Dakotas are at one end (until recently minimal restrictions, highest cases per capita) and New York at the other (strong restrictions, nearly lowest cases per capita).

[Crissi]

Texas as a whole is kinda fucked. Our county judge ordered the local sports arena to be converted to a makeshift med center, and has put hotels, HOTELS, on standby for when that gets full too

Stay safe, fellow Texas bro! Cause who else can I joke "I have been inside you" with?

[Thepersona]

Stay safe, fellow Texas bro! Cause who else can I joke "I have been inside you" with?

You can kill the Covid virus with your AR-15!

Oh, you cant? OH, you need to listen to science? Well, fuck.

[Belize]

You can kill the Covid virus with your AR-15!

Oh, you cant? OH, you need to listen to science? Well, fuck.

You jest, but an AR-15 would solve the issue of the virus spreading...

[Breccia]

Approximately 12 million Americans will lose their jobless benefits the day after Christmas.

I just want to take this opportunity to remind everyone who is holding up the COVID relief bills.

It's McConnell.

Even Trump says he wants something at this point. McConnell is just not willing to spend what's required.

"But Biden--"

Biden spent today talking to governors and also said he'd sign the second relief check personally if he had to. There is no "but Biden!" here.

- - - Updated - - -

It looks like I misspoke earlier.

It's not that the COVID task force hasn't met, it's that they haven't talked to us.

That's a key distinction, they apparently at least met Tuesday, and I apologize.

The link to start watching their briefing which begins at 4:00 Philly Standard Time.

[DarkTZeratul]

You can kill the Covid virus with your AR-15!

Oh, you cant? OH, you need to listen to science? Well, fuck.

I mean, in theory, you technically COULD, just not in a way that's at all helpful with regards to the goal of saving lives.

Also, this:

[PhaelixWW]

<sigh> Over 1k deaths by noon on the west coast again. Here's hoping that we slow down more and that yesterday was still some kind of correction.

[passingthrew]

So CNN had a report that claims Trump knows he lost the election but is mad about the Russia investigation and blames the democrats. He now wants to drag this out and delegitimize the Biden administration as much as he can. It also claims people are asking him to let the transition begin and he 100% refuses.

[Templar 331]

So CNN had a report that claims Trump knows he lost the election but is mad about the Russia investigation and blames the democrats. He now wants to drag this out and delegitimize the Biden administration as much as he can. It also claims people are asking him to let the transition begin and he 100% refuses.

Imagine if they stopped asking and did it anyway. Once the election has been certified there's really no reason to listen to Trump. I know Trump will fire them for doing their jobs but they're on the way out anyway. Why not go with your head high knowing at the end you did something good? Like Krebs?

[Kaleredar]

Imagine if they stopped asking and did it anyway. Once the election has been certified there's really no reason to listen to Trump. I know Trump will fire them for doing their jobs but they're on the way out anyway. Why not go with your head high knowing at the end you did something good? Like Krebs?

They probably either have aspirations of going into politics or following trump to his news network, and so want to curry favor with Trump and his sycophants.

[wunksta]

Man, what happened with Hunter's laptop? It's almost like it didn't fucking matter.

[passingthrew]

Man, what happened with Hunter's laptop? It's almost like it didn't fucking matter.

I think the caravan at the border took it.

[Breccia]

Remember how earlier I posted we might see 300,000 deaths by the end of the year?

UPDATE: It's by December 12 now.

[Benggaul]

So, uh, just a bit of a warning...it's looking like the death numbers from yesterday weren't a fluke. Hey, @Breccia you might want to skip it tonight until you get that pint of Ben & Jerry's.

[Breccia]

Hey, @Breccia you might want to skip it tonight until you get that pint of Ben & Jerry's.

Yeah, we're going to have to table that discussion anyhow. More details later. But um...yeah, that's really not great news.

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A win for Trump: in 2020 air quality significantly improved --

"Woohoo! MAGA!"

Because of the pandemic.

"Oh goddam steam".

The U.S. is on track to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels by more than 9% in 2020 compared with last year, according to research firm BloombergNEF. The last time yearly emissions were this low was 1983, nearly four decades ago.

While the reductions were driven by a combination of decreases in various sectors, including power and industry, the largest drop was transportation, which declined 14% from 2019.

Reductions like this — if sustained — help fight climate change by trapping less heat in the atmosphere. More heat trapped leads to higher global temperatures.

"Well I guess we can give Trump's leadership credit for--"

But the report also contains bad news: Emissions from the historic wildfire season in the western U.S., which is partially driven by climate change, have been four times higher than the yearly average.

That jump in wildfire activity will offset the U.S. economy-wide emissions drop by about 3%. But the U.S. should still post a 6.5% total decrease in emissions this year, according to the BloombergNEF report.

One disaster Trump ignored is directly fighting against another disaster Trump ignored.

[PhaelixWW]

One disaster Trump ignored is directly fighting against another disaster Trump ignored.

Too bad they're also directly fighting against the people of the US, as well, otherwise that might really qualify as a silver lining.

As it is, it's more like a sooty, plague-filled lining.

[Breccia]

Too bad they're also directly fighting against the people of the US, as well, otherwise that might really qualify as a silver lining..

Oddly enough, the smoke probably...oh. Anyhow yes, Trump's America is like Mr. Burns having every single disease and claiming he's indestructible.

[postman1782]

Man, what happened with Hunter's laptop? It's almost like it didn't fucking matter.

I think when Fox News found out the information they got was from a literal fake person that was created by an AI, then they quietly dropped it after someone tried to steal their fake information.

[Breccia]

A second local prosecutor on Thursday asked the U.S. Justice Department to have his name removed from a controversial report on policing reforms, saying he feared it would fail to address systemic racism in the criminal justice system.

So we're clear, they wrote the report, he read it, he didn't like it, he wanted his name removed from it.

In October, a federal judge temporarily stopped the Justice Department from publishing the commission’s report, saying it had violated federal open meetings laws.

The ruling came after the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (NAACP LDF) sued the panel, alleging it lacked diverse membership, allowed police interest groups to have undue influence on the commission’s work, and failed to give ample access to open meetings.

The commission had planned to deliver a slate of proposals recommending sweeping new powers for police shortly before the November presidential election.

Earlier this month, the judge told the Justice Department it could only release the final report with a disclaimer saying it was written in violation of federal open meeting laws.

Trump is just the absolute worst.

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So before Benggaul hits us with the numbers...ugh, wishing i had that pint after all...it's worth pointing out that the Trump administration has gone from "hoax that will vanish after the election" to "follow these guidelines for Thanksgiving or you will die".

It is far too late for Team Trump to get any credit for stopping or even slowing this. Trump's actions, and inactions, are leading us back into April levels of deaths per day.