Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[postman1782]

Man, I was totally ready for this to all be a bunch of bullshit Lindell but one of his security dudes leaked her location once already?

I wish I could have faith that he'd see some actual consequences for this, but I'm ready for him to flee to Mexico should anything start looking not great.

Yeah, he already moved her once, and I hope, just because he is rich, he doesn't get off, but I know he will.

[Breccia]

being hidden by Mike Lindell in a "safehouse" from the FBI

She is due to be fired and replaced.

I do not believe Lindell is hiding her in a safehouse. I believe Lindell is lying about that.

[postman1782]

She is due to be fired and replaced.

I do not believe Lindell is hiding her in a safehouse. I believe Lindell is lying about that.

Wouldn't be the first time he lied. He claimed he was attacked by Antifa during his cyber symposium, turns out it was a guy that just wanted a photo, and not Antifa.

[Edge-]

https://www.startribune.com/minnesot...dal/600089307/

State party leader creates a hostile work environment and courts scandal, refuses to resign. Eventually resigns, and is the deciding vote on a 15 vote council to grant herself 3 months severance, $38,000, for resigning for being a terrible boss.

The grift ever goes on.

[Azadina]

https://www.startribune.com/minnesot...dal/600089307/

State party leader creates a hostile work environment and courts scandal, refuses to resign. Eventually resigns, and is the deciding vote on a 15 vote council to grant herself 3 months severance, $38,000, for resigning for being a terrible boss.

The grift ever goes on.

GOP trying to give Russia a run for it's literal money on the amount of corruption in it's ranks. Can they surpass? Tune in on the next grift to find out.

[Breccia]

The next state to watch, if we weren't already: Kentucky.

A federal judge just ruled the governor's mask mandate was an overreach, because the state legislature just passed a law blocking such.

The governor is calling upon the people directly to do the right thing, because he can't do it for them.

Our hospital capacity, really the capacity that we have based on the staffing that we have, is reaching a critical point. At this rate, we are going to be out of hospital capacity very, very soon.

I hope that seeing that hospitals are to a point where they might not be able to help you if you are in a car wreck, or otherwise harmed, will somehow get through and lead to more people getting that vaccine that helps protect us all.

One of the most difficult things that we face in our fight against this virus is folks either putting out information that is blatantly false or sometimes intentionally lying.

"If he was serious, he would have called out his own state's Rand Paul."

He did.

"Did he also say how many of the hospital beds were taken up by unvaccinated people?"

He did.

"What's the positivity rate in Kentucky?"

Increased a little last week, over 12% now. To be fair, that's not a ton more than the national average, but it is higher. It's not like the national average is anything to brag about.

"How is their cases per capita?"

About half that of Florida. Again, that's not a ton more than the national average, but it's still higher and too high.

- - - Updated - - -

I just realized, Florida hit an...interesting and admittedly somewhat obscure milestone recently. Since Biden was legally and honestly sworn in as President of the United States, Florida has seen 14,800 or so deaths due to COVID. Well, those are the CDC numbers at least. We know they've been lying. But it's at least that much.

"Why is that important?"

That's the number of people murdered by firearm in 2018, the last year the CDC seems to have lying around.

"Oh, jeez, Florida's COVID has killed more in seven months than Florida's gun homicides in a full year? That really puts things in perspective."

Um...no. Florida's COVID has killed more in seven months than the USA's gun homicides. Florida's committing a violent country's murders worth of victims, all by themselves.

The total number of homicides, firearm or otherwise, in the USA in 2018 was about 20,000 people. Florida will pass that by year's end, barring a dramatic rate of change.

Now admittedly, there are other large states that are not that far off. There's also a, erm, dark little parallel between Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi homicide rates and their COVID death rates (they're both amongst the top in the country) but that's for another post.

Just though I'd put it out there that the debate about MUH GUN RITES continues to rage with regards to 14,400 (well in 2018 at least) murders per year, and a single state has already looked at that and said "hold my margarita".

- - - Updated - - -

Yep, forgot to hit "refresh".

So let's talk about Mississippi.

It's fucked.

News to me, there's something called a "level 1" trauma center, meaning they are capable of handling life-threatening injuries. Wikipedia even has a list. As expected, larger and better-funded states have more. Duh. Ohio has dozens. Utah and Delaware have eight. Mississippi has one, and...

(looks over the Wikipedia list)

Huh...

(looks over the Wikipedia list again)

Okay, well NBC News says Mississippi has one, and it's the university. Apparently they've turned their parking garage into a field hospital, and a group of Christians with a more literal meaning of "pro life" are building some tented bed setup on campus. In other words, their only useful hospital is so flooded they're duct-taping stuff together. Think Fallout 4 mods, only real people are dying.

At time of writing, there were seven ICU beds and 96 patients looking for them.

"Thank God they have enough nurses and doctors."

They don't. The state is 1,500 medical workers in the hole. The state recently allowed off-duty EMTs and paramedics to fill in.

"Why is Mississippi so understaffed?"

Well for one, the state's poor. That's a pre-existing condition. And speaking of, Mississippi ranks second-to-worst in uninsured people. Funny story: they're also second-to-worst in vaccination rates. Can't help but wonder if there's a correllation.

Hey, remember that time when Obama said "everyone should get health insurance" and about half the country said "why do I need health insurance, I'm not going to get sick" and then Trump said "then don't buy health insurance" and about half the country said "that's great, now I don't need to waste money on health care because I'm yound and healthy and there's no chance I'll get in a car accident or some other unexpected medical issue will jump up"?

Guess which half Mississippi is in.

But I digress.

Apparently there's a place called Neshoba County. In an interesting coincidence, they have both the highest per-capita rate of new infections, and the lowest vaccination rate.

"In the state or the country?"

I'm going to go with "yes". Apparently Neshoba's fair was July 22nd. And...things have not gone well since. Here's an article from a week ago.

We are overwhelmed with the surge of Covid and understaffed to safely care for our patients. Our incredible staff are holding it together but we are all at our breaking point.

That was the CEO of Neshoba General, which has 24 beds and at time of that article's writing a week ago had 30 people out sick.

"Hey earlier I asked why Mississippi was so understaffed and you said 'for one'. You never finished."

Look at the situation Mississippi has intentionally put itself in. The people have chosen not to get the vaccine, chosen not to get insurance, chosen to get into large unmasked groups --

"Whoa whoa whoa! Masking was a requirement to get in!"

Pick an article at random or do a this-year image search. Even if it was a requirement on paper, it was not applied. Anyhow, Neshoba County might lead the state, but the state has intentionally put itself in a position where everyone has a loaded gun, two bullets, and only one shoemaker in town. There's only so many bloodstains one shoemaker can remove in a day, and everyone's shooting themselves in both feet.

How long would you work in those circumstances? How long could you work in those circumstances? In my job, if someone says "fuck you, I'm not reading the material or studying for the test" I can say "well you'll fail and repeat the course, hopefully with someone else". If they complain to the dean, I show the dean their 12% test grades and shrug. But they don't die on me. If one of these students didn't read, didn't study, failed, then shot themselves and blamed me in their suicide note, in addition to any hearings or lawsuits, I'd be devastated -- even while I knew it wouldn't be my fault.

That has never happened to me, anyone I know, anyone I've met, or anyone I've heard about. I'd even say it's hyperbole. I mean, who puts such little faith in science that they'd ignore what the experts say, put in their own theories, fail and die while blaming the experts they ignored? How fucking stupid does that sound?

Now imagine that happening ten times a day, while being forced to teach a double course load. That's Mississippi.

The governor of Mississippi hasn't blocked any mask mandates, but hasn't put one of his own on the state, either. Neshoba County is also requiring masks in schools. The state is about to prove how badly they want to turn this around.

[Benggaul]

Thursday's report:

154,917 new cases; about 5k more than last Thursday.

Top 10:

Fuck Florida (over 15k cases according to worldometers, though I'm not convinced it's actually back under 20k so suddenly).
Texas: 17,752 new cases; 209 deaths
California: 14,019 new cases; 90 deaths
Georgia: 9,836 new cases; 48 deaths
North Carolina: 7,020 new cases; 53 deaths
Tennessee: 6,351 new cases; 51 deaths
New York: 5,578 new cases; 22 deaths
Louisiana: 5,550 new cases; 58 deaths
Kentucky: 4,827 new cases; 9 deaths
Mississippi: 4,807 new cases; 21 deaths

I don't really trust Florida's numbers at all (not that I ever do, but even more so now), especially given that COVID patients account for over half of their ICU beds and they set another new record for hospitalizations Thursday, so I expect those numbers will change sometime in the next week when nobody is looking. I especially don't trust their "8 deaths", but as I mentioned a few days ago their reporting changed making it difficult to get a "real-time" picture of what's going on there. Luckily we don't have to rely on those reports, because we can see how it's going there from the hospitalizations and reports from people on these very forums about the situation there:

slash cries in fetal position

So, yeah, fuck Florida. @Breccia covered most of the other things I was going to talk about. You'll note Kentucky is on my list while Illinois--a state with three times the population--is not. Illinois will probably be back on there at some point as things shuffle around, but Kentucky is fucked right now. Most of the South is.

967 deaths is around 150 more than last week and brings the total to 643,112. Texas passed 200 deaths, and who knows how many actually died in Florida. California remained below 100 at 90 as their case counts appear to be slowing their increase further.

Related news:

'You're crying': Mississippi's fourth Covid wave is its worst

Three hours north at the Children’s Hospital of Mississippi in Jackson, Rosie Barlow has spent days worrying over whether her son Donovan, 11, will wake up, each time he drifts off to sleep. Instead of dancing around the house and playing video games with his older brother, he is hospitalized and receiving breathing treatments. Donovan is among 28 patients confirmed or suspected to have the virus at the state’s only children’s hospital.

Once again, important to note that adults refusing to get the vaccine or mask up are endangering children who can't yet get the vaccine.

GOP Sen. Wicker of Mississippi tests positive for COVID-19--He's fully vaxxed, so he'll probably be fine, but given the state of his, well, state, it would be nice if this gave him a bit of perspective. Nah, who am I kidding?

Experts say we're likely undercounting Covid cases right now.--This has been true the entire pandemic, but it's becoming more true as several states skimp on testing--looking at you, Florida. The death count is also woefully undercounted and we're likely creeping up on a million if we haven't passed it already.

Stay safe, folks.

[D Luniz]

in typical GOP fashion, blaming brown people for COVID's recent surge wasn't working
so blame black people

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick falsely claims ‘African Americans who have not been vaccinated’ are driving covid surge

[Casterbridge]

in typical GOP fashion, blaming brown people for COVID's recent surge wasn't working
so blame black people

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick falsely claims ‘African Americans who have not been vaccinated’ are driving covid surge

This is generally when we use the shocked pikachu face correct?

[PhaelixWW]

This is generally when we use the shocked pikachu face correct?

Is there a meme past shocked pikachu? Because I think... yeah, we're definitely there.

[swiftowner]

in typical GOP fashion, blaming brown people for COVID's recent surge wasn't working
so blame black people

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick falsely claims ‘African Americans who have not been vaccinated’ are driving covid surge

Without clicking the link, I certainly hope he has data to back up those claims, otherwise he’s looking pretty racist at this point

Edit: After reading, to give him what little credit is possible to give, the black population is a higher share of the Covid cases vs their population %, but they are still a small share of the overall Covid cases, in Texas. Now his claim was for *most* states. That site doesn’t list that data, so would need to look it up, but I would doubt that it would be much different than those stats.

[Belize]

Without clicking the link, I certainly hope he has data to back up those claims, otherwise he’s looking pretty racist at this point

I'll let you guess.

We were talking about it in the pandemic megathread, with associated data, and let's just say it's not a good look for Ol' Danny here.

[gondrin]

Man, I was totally ready for this to all be a bunch of bullshit Lindell but one of his security dudes leaked her location once already?

I wish I could have faith that he'd see some actual consequences for this, but I'm ready for him to flee to Mexico should anything start looking not great.

So he is going to pull, what is it called? A Ted Cruz move.

Or is it Lindell Cruzed on down to Mexico for a "vacation"?

[Ivanstone]

Without clicking the link, I certainly hope he has data to back up those claims, otherwise he’s looking pretty racist at this point

Edit: After reading, to give him what little credit is possible to give, the black population is a higher share of the Covid cases vs their population %, but they are still a small share of the overall Covid cases, in Texas. Now his claim was for *most* states. That site doesn’t list that data, so would need to look it up, but I would doubt that it would be much different than those stats.

Many minorities within the US have higher covid rates than white people. Generally if you're poor within the US you can't take time off work, you have poor healthcare access and your boss might be the kind of asshole who donates to people like Patrick or takes bets on how many employees they can get infected while ignoring safety protocols.

In spite of all that Black Americans have higher vaccination rates than Republicans.

[Breccia]

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick falsely claims ‘African Americans who have not been vaccinated’ are driving covid surge

"Oh my goodness! You mean Texas' high rate is only contained within its 13% as-of-last-census African American population? Because if, say, Texas' 78% white population was the same infection rate as the USA in general, that would mean Texas' minority population would need to have a case/100k amount that's literally higher than Florida and if it was a country fourth largest on the planet."
"Well, not only contained, of course. Clearly the African-Americans are spreading it to others."
"OH GOD! African-Americans can spread COVID to vaccinated white people?"
"Well, they're probably not vaccinated."
"So what you're saying is, COVID is spreading through Texas' white people at a higher rate too, and it's because they're not vaccinated."
"Well, yes."
"...would you care to revise your earlier statement?"
"Not really, no, I need to be relected and need Trump's support."

[unfilteredJW]

Many minorities within the US have higher covid rates than white people. Generally if you're poor within the US you can't take time off work, you have poor healthcare access and your boss might be the kind of asshole who donates to people like Patrick or takes bets on how many employees they can get infected while ignoring safety protocols.

In spite of all that Black Americans have higher vaccination rates than Republicans.

Let’s not forget the terrible history of our government using African Americans as test subjects.

[PhaelixWW]

Because if, say, Texas' 78% white population was the same infection rate as the USA in general...

Keep in mind that that 78% is pretty much evenly split between Hispanic white and non-Hispanic white. Only about 41% of the population of Texas is the tradition "white person".

[Breccia]

Keep in mind that that 78% is pretty much evenly split between Hispanic white and non-Hispanic white.

While this is a valid point, I'm also not the one who said "African Americans" on FOX News. If it's a slow ball right over the plate, you know I'm going to swing away.

[PhaelixWW]

While this is a valid point, I'm also not the one who said "African Americans" on FOX News. If it's a slow ball right over the plate, you know I'm going to swing away.

Valid data is always important. Just sayin'.

[Breccia]

So Trump is...having issues.

He's supposed to go to Cullman, Alabama, to have a rally tomorrow. Gracious hosts they are, Cullman responded by declaring a COVID state of emergency. It might have something to do with the hospital being overcrowded, old news of course, and then Trump showing up and therefore demanding extra resources.

"Surely such a huge, bustling city as...Cullman?"

Yeah, the population of Cullman sometimes hits 16,000 if a passing bus stops too long at a gas station. They are not equipped for this. So the hospital is subcontracting some of its non-COVID issues to...a 20 foot by 40 foot tent staffed by firemen. No, really.

For added fun, pre-rally, Trump called into the Rick and Bubba radio show --

"Har har. What's the show really called?"

Here's their home page.

"Oh, shit."

Anyhow, Trump insisted that the move of his famous Space Force, Coast to Coast from its former Colorado location to Alabama was entirely his idea.

"That sounds about right. Trump would do something like that."

Yes, but, the problem is the Pentagon isn't supposed to. That's why the Senate is looking into the decision. So is the Pentagon, and the GAO. Also, almost everyone with @Skroe -level knowledge immediately said the move was poorly-thought-out and didn't make any sense.

"Well Trump was very proud of the Space Farce when he brought it up in Dec 2019. Surely a year's planning was enough."

Maybe? But the move was announced Jan 13, a week before Trump left office. That's one of the reasons it's being looked at -- it's very similar to an out-the-door pardon, except it can be reversed.

I'm not sure which laws are broken when you order the Pentagon to make a move purely for political reasons, whether they obey you or not. But I'm pretty sure the order can be undone when it's revealed there was no logical basis, research or demand for the move. Or...Biden could just reverse it out of spite, since apparently, ordering the Pentagon around out of spite is something the US is doing now.

Unrelated:

Mississippi's department of health sent out a letter saying "for fuck's sake, stop taking ivermectin already, it's a deworming drug for cattle, it doesn't cure COVID".

Owen Shroyer has been charged with being a murderous insurrectionist. If the name sounds familiar, it shouldn't, he's an Infowars host and Infowars has one of the most comical descriptions of Infowars as I've ever seen them give anything.

In review, InfoWars is a Tin-Foil Hat Conspiracy multimedia source. Alex Jones has become famous for selling fake stories and debunked claims to a large audience. There are simply too many crazy conspiracies to list, and with that in mind, here are some of his more famous/infamous claims:

The list starts with "9/11 was an inside job".

Alabama and Georgia are expected to appeal the recent CDC eviction ban to SCOTUS. The previous ban was found illegal there, but Biden's recent move was not technically an extension.

That guy who had a bomb in his truck, we covered him recently, is being charged with using a weapon of mass destruction. The less formal definition is "terrorism". The even less formal term is

And before you go crackin’ any pop on me, you better get your military experts out, ask them motherfuckers what a 7 pound keg of gun powder will do with 2.5 pound of Tannerite on that motherfucker.

-- the terrorist in question, in his YouTube video where he publicly states his desire to blow up President Joe Biden

The terrorist in question is following a recent trend and pleading "not guilty by reason of being too fucking stupid". No, really. @cubby should write a paper.