Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[lineygoblue]

We shouldn’t have any troops in Europe at all.

I think the US has sufficiently fulfilled its role of protecting places like Germany and Japan post-WWII. Its time to start leaving. Maybe a smattering of US troops serving with other European forces as a continuing deterrent to Russia would be in order, but its time for Europe to take over defending Europe.

I wouldn't be in favor of bringing US forces home from South Korea yet. Its obvious Kim still has designs on ruling the entire peninsula someday. We can't let him do that. China and Russia sure aren't going to discourage him.

[Dr. Strangelove]

I thought it was already law.

It is. One of Trump's attempts at blowing something up, doing virtually the same thing, then demanding credit for having done something 'no one thought possible'. See also the Veterans Choice Act (originally signed into law in 2014) or, arguably, the USMCA, which is really just an amended version of NAFTA. Doing elements of Obamacare through an EO is the real outrageous part.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Interesting interview with Bill Gates on vaccines, covid testing, and the administration's response

https://www.wired.com/story/bill-gates-on-covid-most-us-tests-are-completely-garbage/

[Ghengis Jon]

We shouldn’t have any troops in Europe at all.

I don't disagree that we should significantly draw down our overseas forces, but it should be at the command of the US President, not a foreign adversary. Only six more months of this administration licking Putin's backside.

Must be election season. Russia projects Biden as the impending victor in November and so has launched a campaign against him. Not to benefit Trump but to ensure the hyper partisanship continues. A country in political disarray is easier to manipulate. Puppet Trump is on the out and an un-unified USA is in their best interest. China's rationale is a little more murky, working behind the scenes against Trump. Trump being rather erratic when it comes to foreign policy, makes it difficult for China to plan their own foreign policy and advance all of their goals. China is taking advantage of this administration's foreign policy impotence - Hong Kong security laws, repeated deep penetration into Taiwanese airspace, continued artificial island building in the South China Sea, the sinking of Vietnamese boats, concerted espionage efforts against US AI advances, etc etc etc. Tariffs have reduced demand for Chinese products but as everyone knows, the vast majority of financial payments are paid by the US, not China or it's entities. A stinging annoyance at best and China snickers.

So what will a Biden administration do? Who knows. I hope he makes Hillary ambassador to Russia. She could put her both her intellect and her boundless bitch mode to good use for a change. Russia (Putin) would be aghast and that would be a good start. China is our biggest overall threat, but Russia is the most dangerous globally. From annexing part of other nations, supporting butchers like Assad, murdering political opponents in the west, putting bounties on American soldiers, Russia is clearly run by a former KGB officer. Hopefully (desperately hoping), Biden will not be a gleeful, not-so-secret partner of Putin like Trump is.

Biden needs to hammer China. Once our supply chains have moved, close their spy nests including the expulsion of all Chinese citizens not part of a vastly reduced diplomatic corps. Prohibit US investment in China. Vastly increase counter-intelligence operations. Make it clear that cancelling US debt to China is on the table. Form China-not-allowed trade agreements to assist other regional nations in taking China's manufacturing role for the US. Start building islands in the South China Sea for military purposes. Inform the Chinese that this is just a start until there is a change in their behavior.

So what WILL happen? Repubs will try to paint Biden as Neville Chamberlain and the Dems will try with Teddy Roosevelt. And this is exactly what Russia wants, a paralyzed US. China sits back and laughs, watching others do their work against the US for them. America just sits in the corner whining about masks and social distancing.

We need a strong President with a unified Congress. Tone the goddamn politics down and focus on the common goals. Lets get our house in order before we return to infantile politics. Oh well, maybe 2024.

https://apnews.com/e98a8285f773403af163bc720d70fc2d

[Dr. Strangelove]

Trump and Sheldon Adelson apparently got into a heated phone call. Well, really a one-way conversation as Trump berated Adelson for not doing more to help him while Adleson just sat quietly.

*******************************

The 87-year-old casino mogul had reached out to Trump to talk about the coronavirus relief bill and the economy. But then Trump brought the conversation around to the campaign and confronted Adelson about why he wasn’t doing more to bolster his reelection, according to three people with direct knowledge of the call. One of the people said it was apparent the president had no idea how much Adelson, who’s donated tens of millions of dollars to pro-Trump efforts over the years, had helped him. Adelson chose not to come back at Trump.

When word of the call circulated afterward, Republican Party officials grew alarmed the president had antagonized one of his biggest benefactors at a precarious moment in his campaign. They rushed to smooth things over with him, but the damage may have been done.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/0...ne-call-392688

[AlabamAlum]

It is. One of Trump's attempts at blowing something up, doing virtually the same thing, then demanding credit for having done something 'no one thought possible'. See also the Veterans Choice Act (originally signed into law in 2014) or, arguably, the USMCA, which is really just an amended version of NAFTA. Doing elements of Obamacare through an EO is the real outrageous part.

When you posted “Yeah, that’ll hold up.” it implied that he was doing something that had not been done and that he did not have the power to enact via an executive order (or at least that’s what I took from it).

[AlabamAlum]

FWIW, policies before 2010 with pre-existing limitations were grandfathered in and allowed to keep said limitations. So, older policies were excluded from following ACA law. I don’t think that’s been changed (or I am unaware of it if it has). Maybe the EO is supposed to close that loophole. I don’t know, and with Trump, no one really has any idea what he meant, including himself.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Fair enough, I don't really know what he meant.

[Dr. Strangelove]

To say he speaks imprecisely is an understatement. Likewise he said he's gonna sign an EO eliminating the payroll tax. Every indication is that he meant he was going to defer the payment until a later date. But that's not the splashy and dramatic language he likes to use.

[lineygoblue]

We need a strong President with a unified Congress. Tone the goddamn politics down and focus on the common goals. Lets get our house in order before we return to infantile politics. Oh well, maybe 2024.

You finally made the correct point, because when Biden is elected, we won't be getting "our house in order". It will be open season on anything conservative, Christian, or Republican. Pelosi and the squad will run the House, Chucky Shumer will have full control of the Senate, and Kamala Harris, Gretchen Whitmer or some other Democrat female with an axe to grind with white American men will be sitting in the Oval Office. Joe won't last more than 18 months. His health won't allow it.

Oh, and the USSC will be permanently swung to the left when Joe's VP gets to pick three (3) justices. Won't that be fun? Strangelove will be dancing in the street in his UndeRoos...

I'd almost take some comfort at an impending Biden win if we were getting 2009 Joe. I'd grit my teeth like I did during Barack's reign, and hope that he doesn't sell us out completely to the radical left. But, its not going to be that Joe. Its will be his VP.

I wonder if Canada George has a sofa in his basement that I can sleep on for a few years ....

[Jeff Buchanan]

On the with or from thing with C-19 ...... I'm not trying to not recognize comorbidities and most medical experts agree that in the simplest of terms, diseases of all types along with unhealthy life-styles, produces inflammation, inflammation blunts the immune system's ability to perform it's protective function. WIth an impaired immune response, you get COVID, your risk of dying from it goes up independent of age.

The problem is that some people with a comorbid condition known to have, in general, a deleterious affect on fighting off the virus, have a robust, innate and adaptive immune response and fight it off just fine. It's not easy to flesh that out and physicians really aren't interested in doing that for the dying. Post mortems aren't going to catch this phenomena. So, it happens, researchers know it happens. There is probably a mathematical way to model the impact and that is what some are calling for to obtain a more representative CFR and IFR.

The bottom line is that death is complicated. Death rates from or with COVID are probably inaccurate because of multiple factors in how they are arrived at and if anything they are lower than published by responsible sources, possibly a lot lower.

[Jeff Buchanan]

On the link to the Bill Gates interview ...... he's one of the good guys in the world. I don't always agree with his takes on the climate for example but he's a straight shooter. The interviewer asked good questions. I don't think he said anything that I wasn't already aware of. The CDC being "muzzled" isn't new news but it is a critical factor in measuring how the US responded then and is responding now to the pandemic. This is 100% on the Trump administration from January 22nd onward but, as Gates' points out, the writing was on the wall as early as 2015 when pandemic things that ought to be worked on weren't being worked on despite the CDC having, according to Gates, the smartest people in the world working within it. Water over the damn.

His testing rant though was good. I did not know, in the general terms Gates described it, that the "deep turbinate" big ball swabs aren't necessary and to keep using them and instead substituting regular cotton swab tests which may be just as accurate if not more accurate and can be processed faster, has more to do companies making these kits grabbing millions. Inertia is hard to change with millions are involved.

One can't stress enough how important testing and tracing is ....... the US suckks at it and that it does suck at it has a lot to do with why the R factor in the US - how many people one person infects - is as high as it is and why community spread is as common as it is. There was a an article in Saturday's Sun Sentinel asking how save is it to work out in a gym? It was actually pretty balanced with the most important aspect of it saying that of the 2500 gyms in the tri-county, S. FL region, only one in Miami Dade had been identified as a possible place where someone had caught COVID. No other gyms - 2499 of them - could be pointed at as being a place where the virus spreads at any greater rate than other places. When the mayor of Broward County was interviewed for the article he said, "we don't know where the virus pops up because we don't have enough contact tracers and the tech infrastructure to support that effort to know." Wow, just wow ..... not that I didn't know about it but he's the first public official to acknowledge this and begets the question, well then, what are you basing mitigation measure decisions on?

I believe I posted here that I had written Mayor Holness, after the imposition of a the requirement to mask while working out, previously not required, why I had to wear a mask while I was indoor cycling when there was no data to support that measure, i.e., has there been an outbreak in any gyms offering indoor cycling classes? I did get an answer from his COS who said, two mayors within Broward County thought gyms were high risk places for COVID spread. Clearly they aren't. Sure, there could be becasue the mayor already admitted he doesn't know but, bikes are 10' apart head to head, ventilation is present and adapted to deal with COVID, I just rode my 25th cycle class since the studio reopened about 7w ago. I wear a face shield because that's what the studio has settled on as adequate "face covering." I'm well.

Anway fix testing. This thing is going to be around for a while so, it's never too late.

Vaccines? Yeah, Bill is optimistic that we'll have the virus controlled by the end of 2021. He's more into making sure everyone gets something that's safe and affordable (like free) and he questioned "other countries" (that would be China, Russia, NK and any of those types) the vaccines would be safe. TBH, none of those countries care if they are safe or not. Just start inoculating and deal with the bad outcomes. He did praise the FDA for holding the line on the tough drug approval process despite what he imagines is a lot of pressure from the administration to get something out the door.

We'll be fine, it's just going to take more time than any of us, except AA, thought it would.

[Whitley]

You finally made the correct point, because when Biden is elected, we won't be getting "our house in order". It will be open season on anything conservative, Christian, or Republican. Pelosi and the squad will run the House, Chucky Shumer will have full control of the Senate, and Kamala Harris, Gretchen Whitmer or some other Democrat female with an axe to grind with white American men will be sitting in the Oval Office. Joe won't last more than 18 months. His health won't allow it.

Oh, and the USSC will be permanently swung to the left when Joe's VP gets to pick three (3) justices. Won't that be fun? Strangelove will be dancing in the street in his UndeRoos...

I'd almost take some comfort at an impending Biden win if we were getting 2009 Joe. I'd grit my teeth like I did during Barack's reign, and hope that he doesn't sell us out completely to the radical left. But, its not going to be that Joe. Its will be his VP.

I wonder if Canada George has a sofa in his basement that I can sleep on for a few years ....

lol....You need to stop watching Fox News.

Pelosi wants nothing to do with anything progressives. She and Schumer are very much corporate Dems. Harris and Whitmer are firmly establishment Dems.

This is what you can expect out of Biden Administation:

No M4A (they will play around the edges of Obamacare)
Will rejoin the Paris Climate Accord (but little else in the way of the environment absolutely no Green New Deal)
Will continue the endless wars that have been going on since Bush 2 (Getting Susan Rice as VP would be double down on that)
Very Wall Street friendly (nothing but around the edges of doing anything about income inequality)
Nothing on Student loans or making college more affordable
Will look to make deals with the Republicans
Good chance he will listen to Republicans as they hand wring about the national debt (and cut into the social safety net---remember the Grand Bargain?)
Will not address the underlying issues that led to Trump getting elected (and some of them were on Obama's watch)
A much more competent administration

[lineygoblue]

Will look to make deals with the Republicans

Why?

They'll have the House, they're going to regain the Senate, and for at least a few months, Joe will be in the WH with pen in hand.

The USSC will be permanently swayed to a 7-2 liberal slant when Ginsberg, Alito and Thomas retire. Gretchen Whitmer may actually choose their replacements. Maybe she'll nominate her pal Nessie?

There will be absolutely no way to stop anything they want to do.

What would they need the Republicans for?

[Ghengis Jon]

Oh the sky is falling. We're doomed. (Funny me criticizing hyperbole, eh?)

Because Trump has given the GOP nothing to stand on, they fall back to dog whistles for the masses. You cite one of the Limbaugh talking points, open season on Christianity. How might Joe Biden, a fairly devout Catholic, implement this? Rhetorical question, the point is it's a dog whistle. That's all you're going to hear from the GOP. The Dems won't use their particular dog whistles as all they have to do is silently point at Trump. I'll bet the negative campaign ads outnumber the positive ones 50-1.

Perhaps the Lincoln Project types will be the Tea Party of the 20's. If the GOP flames out badly, there will be an opportunity to have adults return to the room and tell the (former) Trumpanzees to grow up and come along or go elsewhere. One can hope.