Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[AlabamAlum]

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[Mike]

He lost Georgia by fewer than 12,000 votes, Arizona by about 10,500, Wisconsin by fewer than 20,000. It was almost a mirror image of his win in 2016. In fact, the final score was exactly the same. So if you think Hillary lost a close one, Trump’s loss was probably even closer.

[UMStan White]

It wasn't. Time to stop drinking the kool-aid and join reality. If you really believe 2016 was a "landslide victory" as claimed by Dumpster, then 2020 was an old fashioned ass kicking.

[Mike]

I don’t know what you’re talking about, Stan. First, I voted for both Clinton and Biden. Second, they were both razor thin close elections. It’s just math.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Close in the electoral college math, which is how we decide elections. Not close if the discussion is in a more general sense of who's more "popular"

His share of the vote in 2016 is still the worst performance by any winner of a primarily 2-candidate race since 1888

[AlabamAlum]

We’re nearly in April and we’re still talking Trump. Just concentrate on the cornucopia of positives that Biden has brought us. Things are so much better now: the economy, the influx of illegals through the southern border, and Covid is a distant memory. Children laugh and play and have enough food to eat. No more kids in cages, literacy rates have skyrocketed, and Shostakovich is still a hated Stalinist.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Biden with 54% (+13) approval rating. Shostakovich's approval, incidentally is an astounding 83%. Poltroons and dotards the primary dissenters.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president-biden-job-approval-7320.html

[Mike]

Close in the electoral college math, which is how we decide elections.

Which is the whole point. I’m glad we’re all in agreement that math is real.

Now let’s end this stupid discussion and focus more on Ohio State completely shitting the bed and losing to a 15 seed. I swear those idiots could choke on soft serve ice cream if you gave them enough time.

[THE_WIZARD_]

We’re nearly in April and we’re still talking Trump. Just concentrate on the cornucopia of positives that Biden has brought us. Things are so much better now: the economy, the influx of illegals through the southern border, and Covid is a distant memory. Children laugh and play and have enough food to eat. No more kids in cages, literacy rates have skyrocketed, and Shostakovich is still a hated Stalinist.

I hear birds chirping and rainbows sprouting every morning...

...wait...no...that's CNN...

[Jeff Buchanan]

Again, while cruising is of little interest to most here, I'm making this post ...... about cruising ...... to illustrate the continuing idiocy of governments in the face of SARS-2. TBF, some governments got righ0 or mostly right. Tons of listings on that subject. I just want to focus on the CDC and it's unscientific and crippling no-sail from US ports order for all major lines..

On Friday, Royal Caribbean Group (RCG) the 2nd largest line in the industry behind Carnival, announced that two of it's brands, Royal Caribbean (RCL) and Celebrity (X) cruise lines will sail in June - out of the Bahamas and and St. Maartin in the Dutch West Indies. Last week, Crystal Cruises (a smaller lux-brand) announced it will be sailing out of Nassau in the Bahamas as well. RCG also has home ported one of its biggest and newest ships in Haifa Israel, cruise ships have been operating on a restricted basis from China, Singapore and Taiwan. A German line was operating 2 ships on short cruises and an Italian line was also sailing uneventfully until just recently. Things were looking up in Europe, especially for Greece and Italy, EU hot beds for cruise ships, until the fucked up vaccine roll-out by the EUC ruined where EU nations had gotten with keeping the pandemic at bay. Case numbers are going up along with hospitalizations and deaths. Cat is probably, one again, out of the bag and out of control. Sad.

What's happening is that the big name cruise lines that garner their highest revenues porting in and sailing from the US are telling the CDC to fuck themselves, we'll go elsewhere to restart and get our shit together to properly and safely sail in the pandemic environment. No question that the lines want to operate from US ports and will do so in time but the CDC hasn't said shit about when since they cancelled the no-sail-order in October and issued this ridiculous and convoluted plan on the hoops each cruise ship had to jump through to get "certified" to start sailing again from US ports. 4.5 months since doing that, the CDC has yet to provide the "technicals" on how the cruise lines are to comply. In a comparative way, the governments of the Bahams and St. Maartin have not only controlled the pandemic in these countries but have also worked closely with the cruise lines, unlike the morons at the CDC, to restart cruising - a life blood of income for a huge number of Bahamians, French and Dutch residents of St. Maartin. Other ports in the Caribbean to include the British Virgin Islands, Aruba and Curacao as well as Cozumel and Cancun in Mexico have had their respective governments and public health authorities working with the cruise lines to make a re-start of cruising and it's economic benefits to their citizens possible.

Meanwhile, the CDC blocks the door to millions of employees of cruise ships and the services that support cruising from US ports. It's unprecedented in the cost this continued governmental in-action has precipitated. On Friday, the Mayor of Miami-Dade County wrote a nicer than I would have written, letter to Walenski of the CDC asking for a meeting between her staff and Walneski's at the CDC to discuss allowing cruise hips to operate out of the port of Miami. She didn't phrase things like I would have but you can read, in between the lines, her contempt for the stupid shit the CDC is doing. I don't think much will come of it as the CDC has dug their heels in and committed themselves to defending their turn as indefensible as it has become of late.

So, here we are. Yes, the public health emergency regarding SARS-2 is unique and I would expect it to have some economic impact but most of us here believe that the economic and social costs of what has gone done over the last year far outweigh the benefits conferred by the multi-faceted mitigation measures advocated by the CDC - many of which made no sense at all and really didn't do shit improving public health.

The impact on the cruise industry is a microcosm of the CDC's ineptitude in appropriately dealing with the pandemic. An agency that we should trust when it comes to disease control has shown it's ass in a crisis, big time...... and none of this is Trump's fault. None of it. I've posted before on how public health in the US was eviscerated over multiple administrations. But the major problems have been the idiots running the place - an incredibly large number of them with the agency touting a 7 figure annual pay-roll. A lack of leadership, organizational skills and incompetence litters this agency. I'm throwing my hands up and just letting whatever happens happen ...... its' incredibly frustrating.

[THE_WIZARD_]

fuckin' Trump

[Dr. Strangelove]

The city of Miami Beach declared a state of emergency last night because of "overwhelming" numbers of spring break partiers descending on the city...lol

Jeff was caught on film getting a little too rowdy

[iam416]

Another chance for The Media and Fear Monkeys to look like absolute fucking fools.

Speaking of the the utter dishonesty of The Media: https://reason.com/2021/03/19/aaron-...r-cop-bad-day/

You may recall the bullshit story being spread that the Atlanta Police dude said the spa killer was just having a bad day. What is left out from that lie is that the Police dude was repeating/paraphrasing what the killer had said to investigators.

It's so fucking shameful. Like, it's malicious.

[iam416]

This is an actual CNN "news" article -- not OpEd -- on the US approach to vaccines and China's approach. https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/17/healt...eed/index.html

The Media, man. The Media. (Buchanan, it's worth the click just to see how outrageously stupid these people are).

[lineygoblue]

JMO, .. but I think the Atlanta killer was going to kill people that day no matter what their race was.

But the media and The Party will never pass up an opportunity to make it all about race. Its a winning strategy. 80 million votes worth.

Or, so I'm told.