Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[Breccia]

Now he's posting all sorts of "Both sides are bad!!!" memes every day.

They don't have a choice. They are defending a lying loser. And it is no longer possible to be a Trump supporter without being a hypocrite -- if you had tried to defend Obama with "both sides do it" in 2016, Trump supporters would not accept that.

The funny part is pointing out when they bring up something relatively minor in Biden to deflect from Trump doing exactly the same thing, except on a much larger scale. 33 years ago, Biden lied about how well he did in law school, which was 23 years before even that. That was stupid. Trump lies about everything all the time, founded a fraudulent university, and Wharton is embarrassed of Trump.

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I might just be an overly cynical person

Nope.

The family opened the door to this by tweeting from his (now joint family) account. They are inviting the outcry and ridicule this brings by this action. No sympathy. No "too soon".

[Belize]

Facebook is a fascinating ecosystem.

I got a friend who was an avid Trump supporter in 2016.

Now he's posting all sorts of "Both sides are bad!!!" memes every day.

Like dude . . . lol.

Sounds pretty typical tbh
We see here basically everyday.

Trump dismantling USPS to screw over elections?
Yeah, but Obama ordered 14$ worth of muffins for a meeting, so really both sides are the same.

[Thekri]

They don't have a choice. They are defending a lying loser. And it is no longer possible to be a Trump supporter without being a hypocrite -- if you had tried to defend Obama with "both sides do it" in 2016, Trump supporters would not accept that.

The funny part is pointing out when they bring up something relatively minor in Biden to deflect from Trump doing exactly the same thing, except on a much larger scale. 33 years ago, Biden lied about how well he did in law school, which was 23 years before even that. That was stupid. Trump lies about everything all the time, founded a fraudulent university, and Wharton is embarrassed of Trump.

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Nope.

The family opened the door to this by tweeting from his (now joint family) account. They are inviting the outcry and ridicule this brings by this action. No sympathy. No "too soon".

Pretty much. It is hard to find an unironic Trump supporter in most places now, at least outside of their safe spaces. Instead, they attempt to convince everyone that everything is bad, and there is no point in trying to make anything better, and they have to vote for Trump because Biden is somehow worse.

Their "Both sides" nonsense is always ridiculously transparent "Trump spends millions of tax payer dollars at his own properties vs. Biden parked his personal car in an official government parking spot once while VP". Equally bad!

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Trump dismantling USPS to screw over elections?
Yeah, but Obama ordered 14$ worth of muffins for a meeting, so really both sides are the same.

#Muffingate #Neverforget

[Breccia]

WaPo reports that the Trump administration is seriously considering moving to a "herd immunity" position, like Sweden did, recommending lowered restrictions and looser guidelines so that people get on with their lives, and those who get sick just get sick.

"Didn't you post that, when Sweden tried it, it failed?"

Good memory, voice in my head, you can find that post here.

However, I believe this possible change in strategy is based on a mix of two things.

1) Team Trump knows there is no realistic way to get a working vaccine distributed by the election. Trump has been saying so, but his own experts join the "everyone else" who disagree, and every day that passes, he's more wrong and they're more right.

2) Team Trump is possibly counting on a massive outbreak right before/during the election time to screw things up to the point he might just declare himself the winner. Even if his supporters get sick, possibly going to the hospital and/or dying, the spread of a lehtal disease ("Oh no, how did this happen, well nothing we could have done") would give Trump the opportunity to just postpone, or even cancel, the election and just not leave.

"He doesn't have that authority. Nobody does."

It's possible he'll want things so bad, and it's possible he's counting on his supporters to be so 2A about it, that the Constitution won't matter -- like a lot of the other stuff he's done.

Herd immunity without a vaccine is an idea that will make even the numbers @Benggaul posts seem like the good ol' days. I hope the discussion ended with "no, that's a stupid fucking idea and we aren't doing it".

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The latest poll has Biden leading Trump 43-37.

"In which demographic?"

Active-duty military.

Trump, the "Republican" incumbent, has lost the military vote. He might literally lose it if these mail changes go as planned.

[beanman12345]

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/0...rt-says-406066

Not a good day for Barr and Trump's buddy.

[Breccia]

Not a good day for Barr and Trump's buddy.

"Maybe [unarmed civilian] should have obeyed the police!"
"Maybe Flynn shouldn't have lied under oath!"

[arandomuser]

https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/31/polit...ase/index.html
flynn might still be going to jail

great newss

[Thekri]

The latest poll has Biden leading Trump 43-37.

"In which demographic?"

Active-duty military.

Trump, the "Republican" incumbent, has lost the military vote. He might literally lose it if these mail changes go as planned.

Irrelevant and shouldn't matter. It is a sort of interesting bullet point, but it is a very small number of people, with an incredibly varied set of backgrounds and circumstances. Since the military is politically neutral, this really only matters for votes, and there just aren't enough votes for that to matter.

As I have mentioned before, if Trump was taking steps to shore up his political support within the ranks of the US military's officer corps, that would be terrifying. But he hasn't, and with the sole exception of Vindman, they haven't been so targeted, so all is as it should be on that front, and we can safely ignore their political opinions. As we should.

[solinari6]

Irrelevant and shouldn't matter. It is a sort of interesting bullet point, but it is a very small number of people, with an incredibly varied set of backgrounds and circumstances. Since the military is politically neutral, this really only matters for votes, and there just aren't enough votes for that to matter.

The only thing I remember about the military vote, is people always tend to bring it up on election night, when the count is really close. "Wait for the absentee vote to get counted! Those are mostly military votes, and always skew republican... so that will make a big difference in close races!"
Obviously, the absentee vote will play out differently this year, regardless.

[Thekri]

The only thing I remember about the military vote, is people always tend to bring it up on election night, when the count is really close. "Wait for the absentee vote to get counted! Those are mostly military votes, and always skew republican... so that will make a big difference in close races!"
Obviously, the absentee vote will play out differently this year, regardless.

It is also abysmally low turnout. About 26% of active military actually votes. For overseas troops, that number is about 4%. I was a troop commander in Afghanistan for the 2016 election, I had 214 US troops under my command. We had 14 requested ballots, and we actually sent 5 back (As commander I had to validate the voting officer and process, I didn't handle the ballots personally, I just got the number reported). So my unit was even lower then the 4% quoted. I had to check my notes for this post, because I didn't remember the exact numbers, but remembered it being really low.

There are a lot of reasons for the turnout being that low. The fact the votes don't get counted until after the elections are decided is a big part of that. The fact that you are typically completely unaware of your down ballot local races is another big part of it. Enlisted largely don't vote because they don't care. Officers frequently don't vote because there is a popular tradition among them that you should not vote for federal offices (And a lot of them don't care).

I personally did not vote because of that tradition. The idea being that America relies on the political neutrality of its combat officers, and that voting for a federal candidate disposes you towards a more partisan view of the process. You might have preferences, but you shouldn't have a political identity, and you shouldn't get engaged in the process until you leave the military. Voting for local offices is fine, just leave the federal ones blank. I didn't submit a ballot at all, because i hadn't lived in my home of residence for years, and didn't know the local candidates well enough to be informed.

[Breccia]

Trump retweets QAnon conspiracy theory that his own CDC is lying about COVID-19 death numbers.

The conspiracy theory, and yes Twitter did remove the original because it's a conspiracy theory, was that 94% of deaths were actually something else, and that the victims just happend to have COVID-19 when they died.

Trump retweeted it.

[Thekri]

Trump retweets QAnon conspiracy theory that his own CDC is lying about COVID-19 death numbers.

The conspiracy theory, and yes Twitter did remove the original because it's a conspiracy theory, was that 94% of deaths were actually something else, and that the victims just happend to have COVID-19 when they died.

Trump retweeted it.

The whole 6% thing is unbelievably stupid. Essentially, the CDC published the list of causes on death certificates for Covid-19 deaths. This is good practice, because it helps doctors identify which conditions raise the lethality of the virus. Death certificates are supposed to list all the contributing factors for cause of death, including the significant symptoms of the underlying cause of death. The reason for this is so they can get added to a searchable database. Think of them like hashtags for corpses.

For instance, if you are healthy person, and you get shot in the chest and die, you might get the codes for "Gunshot wound", "Trauma induced Cardiac Arrest", "Internal Bleeding" and whatever other specific things the bullet did, like damage to the liver or spine. This is helpful, because treatment for some of those symptoms is similar even when they are caused by things other then gunshot wounds, so if you are a doctor looking for cases where someone died from ruptured intestines, a lot of those cases might be caused by gunshot wounds, but it doesn't particularly matter for the research.

So for Covid cases, if an otherwise healthy person dies of Covid, they are likely to have the specific symptoms that caused death listed in addition to Covid, so we have a better picture of how it kills. The idea that those people did not die of Covid is absurd. Now in this data set, 6% of people had no other cause of death listed, just "Covid-19". This is just shitty filling out of a form, it doesn't say anything particular about the lethality of the disease.

[Noxx79]

The whole 6% thing is unbelievably stupid. Essentially, the CDC published the list of causes on death certificates for Covid-19 deaths. This is good practice, because it helps doctors identify which conditions raise the lethality of the virus. Death certificates are supposed to list all the contributing factors for cause of death, including the significant symptoms of the underlying cause of death. The reason for this is so they can get added to a searchable database. Think of them like hashtags for corpses.

For instance, if you are healthy person, and you get shot in the chest and die, you might get the codes for "Gunshot wound", "Trauma induced Cardiac Arrest", "Internal Bleeding" and whatever other specific things the bullet did, like damage to the liver or spine. This is helpful, because treatment for some of those symptoms is similar even when they are caused by things other then gunshot wounds, so if you are a doctor looking for cases where someone died from ruptured intestines, a lot of those cases might be caused by gunshot wounds, but it doesn't particularly matter for the research.

So for Covid cases, if an otherwise healthy person dies of Covid, they are likely to have the specific symptoms that caused death listed in addition to Covid, so we have a better picture of how it kills. The idea that those people did not die of Covid is absurd. Now in this data set, 6% of people had no other cause of death listed, just "Covid-19". This is just shitty filling out of a form, it doesn't say anything particular about the lethality of the disease.

Going by the conspiracy theorists’ metrics, zero people have died from AIDS. AIDS doesn’t kill people. Resulting illnesses from a non-existing immune system do the killing.

[Breccia]

Once again, it's time to play Guess the Speaker!

I am not banning fracking. Let me say that again: I am not banning fracking no matter how many times Donald Trump lies about me.

"Joe Biden, duh."

Correct. Biden was very specific that he wanted to end drilling on public land. Naturally, the TNC speakers all chose to misrepresent that, because attacking his actual platform was much harder than going after a Strawman.

"But Breccia! Surely Biden's lying!"

And Trump isn't?

[Thekri]

Going by the conspiracy theorists’ metrics, zero people have died from AIDS. AIDS doesn’t kill people. Resulting illnesses from a non-existing immune system do the killing.

Yep, good point. I suppose AIDS is harmless then! Good news, we won! /s

But yeah, as I believe the NRA says "Guns don't kill people, massive internal bleeding and organ failure kills people".

[Rasulis]

Once again, it's time to play Guess the Speaker!



"Joe Biden, duh."

Correct. Biden was very specific that he wanted to end drilling on public land. Naturally, the TNC speakers all chose to misrepresent that, because attacking his actual platform was much harder than going after a Strawman.

"But Breccia! Surely Biden's lying!"

And Trump isn't?

Biden is not lying. Even if he wants to, he can't ban fracking outside of public land. Or to be specific, Federal land. Which only accounts for less than 10% of fracking in the US. If Utah or Colorado want to open State land to fracking. There is not a damn thing the Federal government could do about it. In some states, including California, oil drilling is written into the constitution. That's why Newsom could not ban oil drilling in California. The best that he could do was stop issuing new leases in State land.

[Breccia]

House to subpoena USPS for records on recent changes.

Simply put, "I don't know who made the changes and I can't/won't reverse them" is not an acceptable excuse from the person at the top.

[solinari6]

House to subpoena USPS for records on recent changes.

Simply put, "I don't know who made the changes and I can't/won't reverse them" is not an acceptable excuse from the person at the top.

Good luck with that, considering the appeals court saying that house subpoenas are not enforceable.

[Edge-]

I'd consider a lack of weighing in a tacit approval, personally.

He takes no responsibility whatsoever.

This is bold leadership, hiding in the presidential bunker rather than have an opinion on a recent polarizing event. What a "simp", as they say.

[Draco-Onis]

I'd consider a lack of weighing in a tacit approval, personally.

I believe he has already retweeted over the weekend a post portraying Rittenhouse as a hero. I don't think any of us should be surprised if he pardons him, the right wing is holding up this psycho as a hero.