Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[D Luniz]

Is it still? It wouldn't surprise me, but it looks like that picture is at least a year old. Surely they've come up with new misinformation to share in the meantime.

was linked in one of the discord servers I frequent this morning

[Benggaul]

My point isn't to defend DeSantis. It's to show that the problem exists everywhere and focusing just on Florida is missing the forest for one stupid, awful tree. Everywhere has mostly given up trying to deal with this, DeSantis just gave up earlier than everywhere else.

And my point, which I've stated a few times already, is that DeathSantis has been exacerbating the problem in Florida ever since the start of the pandemic and in the past few months in particular and I will continue to point out what a fucking clown he is so long as he keeps providing examples. Also, no, "everywhere" has not given up. I gave you at least two examples of places where mask mandates are back in effect after cases started rising and they aren't the only ones, nor the only protocols being followed elsewhere (including limited capacity at restaurants, vaccine verifications and, in California at least, unvaccinated individuals over age 2 to wear a mask in indoor public spaces and businesses--this was before the latest surge).

You keep wanting to talk about their vaccination rate. Florida is currently 22nd in the nation in terms of percentage of population vaccinated (including DC--23rd if you want to include Puerto Rico). Let's take a look at the states below them: Wisconsin, Nebraska, Michigan, Iowa, Nevada, Arizona, South Dakota, Utah, Kentucky, Alaska, Kansas, Texas, North Carolina, Ohio, Montana, Missouri, Oklahoma, Indiana, West Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, North Dakota, Arkansas, Tennessee, Alabama, Wyoming, Idaho, Louisiana and Mississippi. Notice a trend? Congratulations! They're the best of the worst!

It's cool with me if you want to point out the brand of stupid in your state with respect to the pandemic, but Florida has been eclipsing that for much, much longer and, with DeathSantis at the helm, has been faring far worse than most of the rest of the country--as the numbers have been clearly demonstrating for quite some time.

EDIT: As of my writing this, Florida has posted a total for Saturday of 14,258. You're welcome to continue trying to claim Florida--or DeathSantis--is no worse than anywhere else, but they keep proving you wrong. I'm not interested in continuing this particular line with you further, so take it or leave it as you will.

[Fugus]

I can get elected Dems not wanting to print out a banner of what the GOP has said to allow COVID to persist, wrap it around a stick and use it to come a close as you possibly can to beating them with their own words over this because of the political blowback when the GOP would scream about "the cruel dems bullying them".

but seeing that this

is the shit that is getting spread around, I at the least would cover the costs at kinkos, what they do with the banner afterwards, well, Im just gonna look the other way.

Not even looking at the COVID numbers, the balanced budget lie alone was a dead giveaway, when things were good Florida was a massive welfare queen that needed 63 BILLION annually in federal funding more than they paid out to keep themselves functioning.

Ain’t no way needing 63 billion in other peoples money every year that don’t even live is considered a balanced budget.

[Benggaul]

Not even looking at the COVID numbers, the balanced budget lie alone was a dead giveaway, when things were good Florida was a massive welfare queen that needed 63 BILLION annually in federal funding more than they paid out to keep themselves functioning.

Ain’t no way needing 63 billion in other peoples money every year that don’t even live is considered a balanced budget.

And speaking of the COVID numbers, here's the current tally:

Florida: 2,525,342 cases; 38,670 deaths* (*that they've reported)
New York: 2,197,250 cases; 54,179 deaths** (**most happened at the start of the pandemic when nobody knew how to combat it)

Soooo yeah, that pic didn't age well at all no matter how they slice it.

[beanman12345]

Not even surprised that DeathSentence is a favorite in the 2024 primary.

[Nellise]

And speaking of the COVID numbers, here's the current tally:

Florida: 2,525,342 cases; 38,670 deaths* (*that they've reported)
New York: 2,197,250 cases; 54,179 deaths** (**most happened at the start of the pandemic when nobody knew how to combat it)

Soooo yeah, that pic didn't age well at all no matter how they slice it.

New York still had about 22,000 deaths after July 1st, 2020, which is higher than all but 6 other states totals. Florida hasn't had an unusual amount of excess deaths compared to other states, so I don't know why you keep implying they're hiding death numbers, especially when compared to NY which was known to be hiding covid deaths from nursing homes (they did eventually get added in). There are no winners between these two.

Here's a discussion of a model of excess deaths and covid and how Florida is better than average for reporting: https://www.wmfe.org/institute-estim...te-data/181393: " I think ultimately it ranked 16th-lowest among all states. And when you look at the five largest states in the U.S., again Florida was right in the middle of the pack. New York and Illinois were estimated to have slightly less underreporting, and Texas and California were reported to have slightly larger underreporting. Just to give you a point of comparison, whereas Florida’s ratio was 1.41, California’s was 1.93, 93% underreporting."

[beanman12345]

I'm not giving him credit for anything he's saying now. The article was from December when there were limited supplies of vaccine. That's when he made those comments about delaying second doses. And I'm only referring to that one article which Benggaul even admitted he included inadvertently, but Breccia purposely mischaracterized my comment about it to make it sound like DeSantis was suggesting something bad which wasn't the case.



Every state has been completely open and without mask mandates for the past month. Once the CDC said vaccinated people could go without masks everywhere dropped the requirements. I've seen commercials for a few states advertising tourism again, it's not just a Florida thing. Here's the website for Chicago tourism: https://www.choosechicago.com/plan-your-trip/covid-19/ where the first line reads: "Chicago is now fully open..."

You can't really compare Florida and Illinois. Illinois everyone lives in one tiny corner of the map and that's where vaccinations are at it's highest, and where the cases are really super high are about as far away from that tiny corner of the map as you can get, where population is low but vaccination rate is atrocious. Florida has high population but that population is spread all over the damn map with varying levels of vaccination rates.

[Breccia]

New York still had about 22,000 deaths after July 1st, 2020, which is higher than all but 6 other states totals. Florida hasn't had an unusual amount of excess deaths compared to other states

And this is where the "I'm not defending DeSantis" loses all credibility. In the time fame you yourself chose, Florida lost 35,000 lives. That's a much higher % deaths, with or without factoring in population.

But of course, you're also going back an entire year because more recent info continues to curb-stomp your argument then teabag its corpse.

Last six months: Florida lost over 13,000 people. NYState lost about 10,500. Again, this paints a poor and ongoing picture of Florida.

Last month: see my previous post. Florida lost 883, NYC lost 154. And this brings us back to the topic we stated on in this context. You are trying to defend DeSantis by saying "okay but last year--" because nothing, nothing, about the current situation is defendable.

Florida leads the nation and you're trying the "but Cuomo last year" bullshit. Florida lost twice as many people last week, as NYState lost last month.

Yesterday, Florida's seven day rolling death count average dropped from 51 to 45. Do you know what NY's was? Four. Four people.

New York's 7-day deaths per 100,000 dropped below 1 sometime in May and has continued to drop since. It's about 0.3 now. Florida's deaths per 100,000 dropped below 1 for about one week in July and, in the same time frame as NY dropped and stayed below 1, has been between 1 and 2 basically ever since. Not only is NY doing provably, objectively better in that regard, at time of writing, Florida is doing five-and-a-half times worse.

This is why you brought up the last year, because you know more recent information can't sustain your argument. At the best case scenario for Florida, what's happened recently is a spike that will be beaten back down after killing dozens of people every day for a month or so, while New York kills one. (The state reported just one death the last two days) Worst case scenario, Florida's leadership and population -- doesn't matter which one started it, they're doing this shit hand in hand -- has chosen to resume an upwards course for cases, hospitalizations, positivity and death even when compared to the rest of the country.

You want to defend Florida? Find someone they're actually worse than. Might I recommand Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama or Arkansas?

You don't want to defend Florida? Stop moving the goalposts to a position you can cherry pick from.

P.S. The DoJ chose to pass on NY's nursing home situation, so you can cross that off the list, too.

- - - Updated - - -

You can't really compare Florida and Illinois.

You know what? Fuck it, let's do that too. Why not take that other deflection argument behind the shed, I still have one barrel loaded.

Illinois' deaths per 100k fell below 1.0 in early June and is around 0.5 now. So, again, Florida is three times worse.

Illinois' 7-day rolling death average is six. Not 45 like Florida, but six. Yeah, Illinois is smaller, but even if you doubled it they're still doing far better.

New cases over the last month? They quadrupled. Okay, not ideal. Florida still sextupled, so once again, Illinois wins.

Florida is objectively doing badly. Over the last day, week, month, or six months, they compare unfavorably to anywhere a Florida defender might point to on the map and say "But! But! But!" This is not just because of a few days recently, not that that's helping. Florida has proven, consistently, that they are simply not interested in handling things any better than Arkansas.

There is no honest, genuine defense of Florida. Even from people who claim they aren't doing that.

Incidentally Bean Man, I'm actually curious to see more from your line of thinking. How would, for example, Chicago fare against Duck Hunt County FL? Yeah, cities are more compact, but Chicago is filled with Democrats and hospitals, while central Florida is...not. Sadly the CDC doesn't have those figures for me, so I'm left with speculation.

[beanman12345]

Incidentally Bean Man, I'm actually curious to see more from your line of thinking. How would, for example, Chicago fare against Duck Hunt County FL? Yeah, cities are more compact, but Chicago is filled with Democrats and hospitals, while central Florida is...not. Sadly the CDC doesn't have those figures for me, so I'm left with speculation.

Duck Hunt Florida is seeing numbers they were seeing just 6 months ago. Chicago is trending up, but, we're still at about 10% of the numbers we saw in January. Unless it mutates again, I just don't think we'll see those numbers here again.

[Darththeo]

I can get elected Dems not wanting to print out a banner of what the GOP has said to allow COVID to persist, wrap it around a stick and use it to come a close as you possibly can to beating them with their own words over this because of the political blowback when the GOP would scream about "the cruel dems bullying them".

but seeing that this

is the shit that is getting spread around, I at the least would cover the costs at kinkos, what they do with the banner afterwards, well, Im just gonna look the other way.

What's funny is that a budget can both be balanced and the state can have debt.
And Florida does have a debt.

Having debt does not mean you don't have a balanced budget ... one does not relate that way.

While they are related (having an unbalanced budget can lead to debt, but also could lead to surplus), it is akin to saying because a person isn't hungry, they have a full fridge. Or because a person is at a location, they drove there. It ignores other possibilities.

[Elegiac]

What's funny is that a budget can both be balanced and the state can have debt.

Cool, Florida is not one of those states considering it has a deficit in excess of 2 to 5 billion dollars.

[Darththeo]

Cool, Florida is not one of those states considering it has a deficit in excess of 2 to 5 billion dollars.

Yeah, that isn't surprising to me.

[Elegiac]

Yeah, that isn't surprising to me.

Yeeeeep. The irony here is that because Florida is legally required not to have a deficit, they're going to have to end up cutting services which will cause the economy to tank even further.

You want Kansas? Because this is how you get Kansas. Lol.

[unfilteredJW]

Yeeeeep. The irony here is that because Florida is legally required not to have a deficit, they're going to have to end up cutting services which will cause the economy to tank even further.

You want Kansas? Because this is how you get Kansas. Lol.

Cue Rick Scott bragging to a bunch of young Republicans about how much money they saved cutting unemployment benefits.

[Fugus]

Cool, Florida is not one of those states considering it has a deficit in excess of 2 to 5 billion dollars.

So they take in over 63 billion in welfare to keep their state running and even running like a lazy frat kid off his parents money they still have a 2+ billion deficit. And the guy causing it has aspirations of being president…..

[Bodakane]

So they take in over 63 billion in welfare to keep their state running and even running like a lazy frat kid off his parents money they still have a 2+ billion deficit. And the guy causing it has aspirations of being president…..

That’s not the shitty part, the shitty part is that he’s still more fiscally responsible than the guy they are all taking marching orders from.

[Biglog]

What's funny is that a budget can both be balanced and the state can have debt.
And Florida does have a debt.

Having debt does not mean you don't have a balanced budget ... one does not relate that way.

While they are related (having an unbalanced budget can lead to debt, but also could lead to surplus), it is akin to saying because a person isn't hungry, they have a full fridge. Or because a person is at a location, they drove there. It ignores other possibilities.

This "banner" is a great example of why the right is so misinformed. The numbers on this are completely false. The *correct* Florida Covid # is that there have been 2.48M Covid cases. But in a post that is meme-level it's very easy to cherry-pick or manipulate #'s since most on the right are more interested in spreading a message supporting their political stance then sharing factual info. It is very consistent that these meme type shared posts from the right literally fail even the smallest 5 minute fact check every single time, yet they get parroted day after day. People that fact check unfollow/unfriend them, people that don't look for others with similar misinformed knowledge, and it becomes a clique of people agreeing on false facts like a flat earther club.

The "banner" highlights 2 problems. For one, whoever found and shared this should be aware that the source they got it from passed them false info. I would consider a source passing false info not credible and wouldn't use it again. But for some reason the right doesn't mind if sources aren't credible and goes right back to them. And no cherry picking #'s to support a false narrative even from Reuters doesn't make the case. The actual fact is that Florida has had more Covid cases than New York. Cherry picking 1 day where Florida was lower than New York even if the # is from Reuters is also intentionally misleading, especially when trying to use it in the context of comparing overall performance of governors.

Also, it doesn't take much thought to understand that since that # is wrong, all this banner is saying is a population and state income tax, which is a law DeSantis had nothing to do with putting in place. Why is the banner trying to argue that DeSantis is somehow a good governor because in *2007* Florida instituted a 0% state income tax. DeSantis not only was NOT Florida Governor then (2018), he wasn't even in politics yet lol. But sure put that down as an achievement of his because it's assumed no one will fact check that either. And even that's without folks understanding that states without income taxes still get their money through other taxes that they people that live there are quite aware that they pay; sales tax, property, vehicle, toll taxes, etc. Like Texas, Florida can't magically pay for roads, schools, infrastructure, etc. without taxes. Not having a state income tax (federal is the big one anyway and still have that in Florida), is just a shell game since the revenue still comes in via other taxes that are generally proportionally higher than states without state income taxes. It's not hard to get rid of the state income tax if you simply increase sales tax ~3%. The money out of the pocket of a person living there will be the same. But I guess it sounds better if you don't think it all the way through.

Second, it's an example of most of the attacks from the right in that they are extremely concise. Like meme/twitter/fb sharing in a picture short. This is because it's easy to make a claim that sounds appealing to the majority as long as they don't fact check or think too much about the post. It also can be consumed by folks that are not terribly educated or exactly experts at critical thinking. They tend to write these aimed at folks with that won't fact check or put a lot of thought into what's being claimed. It might be worth pondering why that is.

[Nellise]

...whole bunch of stuff....

Did you have fun rebutting an argument I wasn't making? I remembered why I usually give up discussing things with you because you make up your own arguments and claim you win. I was specifically responding to the comments made in the quote I had in my post. The only comparison I was making between NY and FL is that neither did a good job over the last year, unless you think 20,000 deaths is doing a good job (and yes, before you even start Florida did an even worse job, two things can both be bad while being unequally so). And Florida has been repeatedly accused of doctoring its death numbers even though there isn't really evidence of it and I was giving evidence they're their death number reporting isn't unusual compared to other states.

[Bodakane]

Did you have fun rebutting an argument I wasn't making? I remembered why I usually give up discussing things with you because you make up your own arguments and claim you win. I was specifically responding to the comments made in the quote I had in my post. The only comparison I was making between NY and FL is that neither did a good job over the last year, unless you think 20,000 deaths is doing a good job (and yes, before you even start Florida did an even worse job, two things can both be bad while being unequally so). And Florida has been repeatedly accused of doctoring its death numbers even though there isn't really evidence of it and I was giving evidence they're their death number reporting isn't unusual compared to other states.

Its been explained numerous times by numerous posters and you just keep ignoring it.

- The FL numbers are a lie, DeSantis did much worse. There has also been significant evidence they've been doctoring the numbers and much of that evidence has been provided to you.
- NY has NYC which is the most densely populated place in the US (and waaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyy more than anywhere in FL) and most of their numbers came at the beginning of this.
- NY has tried to do everything it can to get a handle on this while DeSantis, just said fuck it.
- Desantis has politicized this by attacking Fauci and sucking off Trump.
- FL never shut down. I live here.

[Breccia]

And Florida has been repeatedly accused of doctoring its death numbers even though there isn't really evidence of it

This is a lie. You are lying.

First of all, there is an entire thread on it on these very forums.

Second of all, even if we hadn't discussed it on these forums before, which we have, here's an article from the Miami Herald from a month ago.

The Orlando Sentinel also had some articles.

You said they didn't doctor their numbers, you lied. You said there was no evidence, you lied about that too. And yes, I had so much fun ripping your "I'm not defending DeSantis but isn't he just the best" argument to shreds in broad freaking daylight.

Genuine posters don't come here to spout misinformation and objective falsehoods. Please post constructively.