Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[lineygoblue]

Bill Maher can be really bad sometimes. He's really good here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgrZAPUvKyA

Even a broke clock is right twice a day. He's said some horrible things in the past, but on this, he's about as right as I've ever seen him. Dems better listen to reason like this, or they're going to get smoked in 2022.

Maybe the Democratic party needs to consider a split. AOC and her fools can form a Socialist Democratic party, and the rest of them can afford an "American Moderates" party.

[Cody_Russell]

Doubt they would actually split in an election. Just complain about it ....

If you are far left (AOC-ish) or far right (Trump), you lost the 2020 election. Moderates, lean left, lean right, RINO, and establishment won the 2020 election.

[froot loops]

Yeah a Democratic party split is one of the dumber ideas I have heard. It's not a parliamentary system. AOC does rattle the sabre, but legislatively she works within the system. Stuff that she advocates are long term policy ideas.

If messaging were the only difference between Trump and Biden, it is still significant. This is the type of issue that messaging is a big deal, if Trump had forcefully and continued to talk about wearing masks it would have made a big difference. I have never met one person who wants to wear a mask.

[lineygoblue]

Then barring a split in the Democratic party, they still have a decision to make. Move more toward the childish AOC and her idiot supporters, or move closer to people like Slotkin, Dingell and even R's like Mitt, McCain supporters and Susan Collins. The more they move toward the center, the better chance they have of staying in power. Moving toward the hate-filled, prison closing, police eliminating speech of the BLM and Antifa isn't going to get it done.

But, what do I know? I'm just a retired truck driver from Shiawassee County Michigan.

[Ghengis Jon]

Lets see both parties split....and the centers merge. Loony right, loony left, and the Everyone Else Party. Right now we only have the loony parts.

[Jeff Buchanan]

It's shooting fish in a barrel with nuclear warheads.

That's true ...... the important thing is that media types, and Maher has a pretty good sized audience, are starting to make this case. I've seen this kind of sensible thinking in plenty of what you'd call liberal news rag's opinion pieces.

I'll probably not be incorporating what I identify as a single progressive D policy initiative in my political thinking. But, conservatism typically associated with the R's, has gotten screwed up and some of it has become as crazy as what the radical, even progressive wing has done to the D party. So, I don't have a political allegiance defined by what the Republican or Democratic party appears to me to be right now.

I think there are a lot of conservatives registered as R's like me.......and some of them voted for Trump because of the shit the D party could push through Congress if they gain control of the Senate ...... and no, Froot, I didn't vote for Trump. I did vote for Biden/Harris but voted almost straight R for every other candidate that matters. I think Joe Biden is the right guy for the presidency right now for a lot of reasons not the least of which is that he can be a stable influence in Washington that has lacked one for the last 4y.

I'm less concerned about Harris and her alleged attachments to progressive and radical Ds now even if the R candidates for GA's two senatorial seats up for grabs win both run-offs in January. First, because they won't and second because if they do they have to contend with Joe Manchin who is my idea of a pragmatic legislator who from his web site: "vocally opposes policy proposals from the progressive wing of his party, including Medicare For All, abolishing the filibuster, increasing the number of justices on the Supreme Court, and attempts to cut police funding. I like that.

[iam416]

The most noticeable thing about Maher’s talk is the awkward clapping from the audience. When he tears into an R it’s uproarious. When tears into wokeism it’s almost as if the audience doesn’t know if they can applaud — they’re so trained to be giant fucking pussies.

[iam416]

Also, as I’ve said numerous times, messaging and leading was the primary job of the President during covid. There wasn’t a great deal of policy choices to be made. But messaging and leadership were the job of the President and they were vitally important. And there’s no excuse for how badly PDJT failed on this front.

[CGVT]

How some of those stupid-assed "dead voter" claims are generated.

https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-54874120

[Jeff Buchanan]

If you're paying attention, you'll have heard that Minks in Denmark have become infected with a different strain of SARS-CoV-2 and that it is thought that this mink virus can be transmitted to humans. Once it's there, vaccines might not work against this mutation. So, Denmark's officials told mink farmers to cull their minks..... until someone called bull-shit and government officials backed off.

Look, SARS-CoV-2 mutates and animals, just like we know they are now, are vectors for whatever virus happens to be out there. Also, this is really complicated stuff that journalists ought to stay the fuck out of. I'm going to link you to a couple of pubs that get into the nitty gritty of the most common and suspect mutation if you're interested. That's the first link (read the summary).

To summarize, yes, SARS-CoV-2 mutates and the current state of the research thinks this is beneficial to the survival of the virus. Caveat, more study is needed, as usual so, it's not time to panic about mutations. They happen, naturally. Nonetheless, how the thing mutates is interesting ..... to me. YMMV.

https://science.sciencemag.org/conte...cience.abe8499

Now comes the other news that this beneficial mutation process might make vaccines MORE effective, not less. Again you have to read the details to understand it so, typical journalists facing deadlines don't do that and you won't here about this in the press ..... you will hear about SARS-CoV-2 is mutating and "we all gonna die."

To summarize, the spike protein that allows the virus to attach to a cell has what researchers (micro and cell biologists) call a "flap." That flap is believed to enhance attachment and therefor more rapid proliferation of the virus within the target tissue. Fine. However, researchers also note that when this flap opens it exposes the virus to the antibodies that a vaccine stimulates the immune system to produce. The net results is the antibodies get inside the virus cells and kill them. This isn't a research paper but it explains how all this works - both the improved survivability mutations and the weakness of it to vaccines.

https://bgr.com/2020/11/14/coronavir...614g-mutation/

Like I've said, you have to dig for this stuff - the good news about the pandemic.

[lineygoblue]

MINK season!!

[Hannibal]

R0QB5cWIGU.jpg

[iam416]

Lol

[froot loops]

Then barring a split in the Democratic party, they still have a decision to make. Move more toward the childish AOC and her idiot supporters, or move closer to people like Slotkin, Dingell and even R's like Mitt, McCain supporters and Susan Collins. The more they move toward the center, the better chance they have of staying in power. Moving toward the hate-filled, prison closing, police eliminating speech of the BLM and Antifa isn't going to get it done.

But, what do I know? I'm just a retired truck driver from Shiawassee County Michigan.

They actually don't have to do anything, a split gets you no power at all. You just lose seats. Pay attention to what AOC does in congress, they are kind of more important than comments after an election.

[Whitley]

I believe if Trump handles Covid 19 well he would have landslided to reelection. But instead he ran away from any responsibility and missed the opportunity.

A lot of people feel that the government does not work for them, or even cares about them (especially in the working class and lower economic tiers). Trump, the first time around, played on that talking about how these trade deals were awful for them (same thing Bernie talked about as well) and screwed them over. He tapped into the anger that is out there. 4 years in Washington really dulled his political instincts and Trump became a standard establishment Republican (with the exception of his tweets).

Using the same playbook that they used against HRC didn't work this time for a couple reasons:

1) Biden is a likeable guy. He is very human and empathetic in ways that is just not in HRC. You may disagree with his politics, but not many people are going to say that he is a bad guy. Now, Biden is not at the top of his game and his policies (Over the course of his career) have not been very good for middle class or lower but he still has that patina.

2) Biden was part of the team that helped the country out of the Great Recession (you can argue if they did enough---I don't think they did) so the rust belt states have a much higher opinion of him than HRC

3) While Biden lacked a ground game--- he was much more judicious on sending people to the right spots. I mean HRC sent Bill Clinton into Michigan which was about as tone deaf as you could be considering that NAFTA really cost a lot of auto jobs throughout the rust belt.

4) Biden projects competence and calm (for the most part) after the chaos going on with covid 19---a lot of people just wanted the fires put out.