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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17747
Location: Berkeley, California
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 Posted: Tue Oct 20, 2020 7:46 pm Post subject: |
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Anyone who claims to be Christian—and can look the other way at this level of cruelty—is not really Christian. They may not even be human.
| Quote: | Oct. 20, 2020, 3:22 PM PDT
By Julia Ainsley and Jacob Soboroff
WASHINGTON — Lawyers appointed by a federal judge to identify migrant families who were separated by the Trump administration say they have yet to track down the parents of 545 children, and that approximately two-thirds of those parents were deported to Central America without their children, according to a filing from the ACLU on Tuesday.
The Trump administration instituted a "zero tolerance" policy in 2018 that separated migrant children and parents at the southern U.S. border. The administration later confirmed that it had actually begun separating families in 2017 along some portions of the border under a pilot program. The ACLU and other pro-bono law firms were tasked with finding the members of families separated during that pilot program. |
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boggsman1
Joined: 24 Jun 2002
Posts: 9120
Location: at a computer
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| Posted: Wed Oct 21, 2020 10:14 am Post subject: |
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Leslie Stahl: are you ready for a tough interview?
Super Spreader-in-chief: not really, I'll C ya. |
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17747
Location: Berkeley, California
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| Posted: Thu Oct 22, 2020 11:52 am Post subject: |
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Is this why he bailed on the interview?
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Now we know why The Grifter stormed out of the interview with Leslie Stahl. They gave her a huge book claiming it was their Health Care Plan, but it was a book of blank pages. They didn't think she'd open the book. smfh |
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nw30
Joined: 21 Dec 2008
Posts: 6485
Location: The eye of the universe, Cen. Cal. coast
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17747
Location: Berkeley, California
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| Posted: Fri Oct 23, 2020 3:33 pm Post subject: |
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From the New Yorker. The stable genius has signed up for a couple million extra deaths--unless we throw him out.
| Quote: | Nine months into the pandemic, it’s a truism to say that America’s response has been politicized. Even so, with an election looming, the virus surging, and President Trump and others in government recently infected, our divisions now stand out with a startling, even brutal, clarity. There have always been two basic ways of looking at the coronavirus crisis. The first sees the minimization of death as a paramount goal; the second holds that significant death is inevitable and acceptable. Those who take the first view, including most medical and public-health professionals, advocate a temporary, science-driven restructuring of society, designed to save lives; those who take the second view, including the President and those in his circle, say that people die all the time, from car crashes, drug addictions, diseases, and the like, and argue that we don’t stop living to prevent them from dying. “Many people every year, sometimes over 100,000, and despite the Vaccine, die from the Flu,” the President tweeted, earlier this month, after he was discharged from the hospital. “Are we going to close down our Country?” (Twitter flagged the tweet as misinformation since, in fact, far fewer than a hundred thousand people die from the flu each year.)
There are different ways of holding the we-all-gotta-go-sometime view. Someone who grasps it lightly might incline a little more toward risk-taking than caution in her personal choices. But over the course of the pandemic, the President and many of his followers have come to cling to it tightly, even triumphantly, brandishing it as a kind of ideology. In the final weeks of the campaign, they’ve taken the outlook to a new, disturbing place. Erin Perrine, the communications director for his campaign, has faulted Joe Biden for not getting infected, arguing that Trump “has experience now fighting the virus as an individual. Those firsthand experiences—Joe Biden, he doesn’t have those.” Shortly before leaving the hospital, the President tweeted that his own infection had left him feeling “better than I did 20 years ago!” Trump has turned against government scientists with a new ferocity, referring to them as “idiots” and calling Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease expert, a “disaster.” The President has always seemed not to take the virus seriously. But, in recent weeks, something has changed.
An especially telling moment occurred on October 13th. According to the Times, two senior White House officials cited, in a background conversation with reporters, the Great Barrington Declaration—a document that argues for the pursuit of herd immunity through widespread infection instead of a vaccine. Although most Americans haven’t heard of the declaration, many in the medical community have; Fauci captured the consensus view when, speaking to George Stephanopoulos, he called its core ideas “ridiculous.” Although its primary authors are three professors at Harvard, Stanford, and the University of Oxford, respectively, the declaration hasn’t received the imprimatur of a medical or scientific institution; instead, it’s been sponsored by the American Institute for Economic Research, a libertarian think tank situated in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. The declaration proposes that society should stay more or less open and that the virus should be allowed to infect the vast majority of the population while public-health officials focus on protecting the elderly and others who are especially vulnerable. (The details of the protective strategy go unspecified.) Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, told the Washington Post that, although the declaration is sometimes presented as a “major alternative view that’s held by large numbers of experts,” it is, in fact, “fringe.” Infectious-disease specialists have signed it, but many of its thousands of signatories are either unqualified or fake (“Dr. Johnny Bananas,” “Dr. Person Fakename”).
The declaration has its roots in the early days of the pandemic, when some scientists asked whether herd immunity—which occurs when so many people have been infected or vaccinated that viral spread becomes unlikely—might be achievable more quickly and less painfully than was widely supposed, and without a vaccine. Perhaps the virus had already spread more than tests indicated, in which case it was more asymptomatic than we thought; perhaps certain people, having previously been infected by other, similar viruses, had some level of preëxisting immunity to it.
These were appealing possibilities. But, as time has passed, persuasive evidence for them has failed to materialize. In New York City, the original epicenter of the American pandemic, the vast majority of the population remains susceptible to the virus, even in parts of the city, such as Borough Park, that have experienced high rates of infection. In the U.S. as a whole, as many as nine in ten people still lack immunity to the virus. In this context, the swift reopening proposed by the declaration would result in a sharp spike in cases, with hundreds of thousands dying and tens of millions suffering serious and debilitating illness. This is likely to occur even if officials try to focus on protecting the vulnerable. The problem, ultimately, is that society cannot be easily divided into separate layers of medical risk. Sweden adopted lighter restrictions while seeking to protect its elderly citizens—and yet the coronavirus found ways around the barriers put in front of it. The country’s covid-19 death rate is an order of magnitude higher than its neighbors’, and it has not achieved anything like herd immunity.
Throughout the pandemic, Trump and his team have often denied that they are pursuing herd immunity as a strategy. And yet their words and actions have belied their disavowal.
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Also to the point--people are not coming back to unrestricted activities, even in states where areas have been reopened, with or without sufficient protective measures. Much as some would wish otherwise, the vast majority of the country does not trust Trump on anything, much less keeping them safe from the virus. So they aren't going to restaurants, museums, movie theaters. That won't change by wishing it so, that will only change when confidence, rather than bravado, prevails. |
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17747
Location: Berkeley, California
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| Posted: Fri Oct 23, 2020 9:07 pm Post subject: |
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| Highest number of new infections since this all started. Trump says at a rally “We’re rounding the corner beautifully!” |
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17747
Location: Berkeley, California
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| Posted: Sun Oct 25, 2020 5:32 pm Post subject: |
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| Rounding that corner! |
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wsurfer
Joined: 17 Aug 2000
Posts: 1635
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vientomas
Joined: 25 Apr 2000
Posts: 2343
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| Posted: Mon Oct 26, 2020 10:56 am Post subject: |
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President S&M. What a joke. No, it's not that. Smoke and Mirrors!
Shortly after President Donald Trump abruptly ended an interview with "60 Minutes" anchor Lesley Stahl, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany showed up with a massively large book in tow.
"Lesley, the President wanted me to deliver his health care plan," said McEnany. "It's a little heavy."
Except it wasn't Trump's health care plan. Because that, well, doesn't exist. Instead, according to the "60 Minutes" Twitter feed, the book was "filled with executive orders and congressional initiatives, but no comprehensive healthcare plan."
Which, yeah.
The oversized book that drastically under-delivers on its promised contents is, actually, a pretty apt metaphor for the entire Trump presidency.
You can be certain that McEnany (and Trump) knew that after he walked off the set, the cameras were still rolling. And so, they went for theatrics -- a huge book that purported to be the President's (non-existent) health care plan. They liked the visual of McEnany giving Stahl a huge and weighty book on camera. Didn't matter that the book didn't actually contain any sort of plan to replace the Affordable Care Act. People wouldn't care about that! They'd remember that massive book!
Unfortunately, Trump is right -- about at least some people, like his most ardent supporters: Look at how big that book is! Man, McEnany (and Trump) really stuck it to Stahl! Fake news!
But like so much with Trump, the show and the pageantry belie the emptiness of the actual vessel. A big book filled with executive orders is not a comprehensive health care plan. Because there is no plan. |
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17747
Location: Berkeley, California
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| Posted: Mon Oct 26, 2020 12:37 pm Post subject: |
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The White Supremacist in chief, with his supporters waving confederate flags and harassing Black Lives Matter demonstrators. Proto-fascist.
Then there is he agreeing to follow health guidelines at a rally--and flouting that agreement. The most dishonest man in government ever.
| Quote: | Oct. 26, 2020 at 4:00 a.m. PDT
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GETTYSBURG, Pa. — The white GMC Acadia slowed to a crawl, windows rolled down. The message its driver had for the small band of Black Lives Matter protesters on the town square was not a friendly one.
“All lives matter, a--hole!” he shouted hoarsely before the vehicle rumbled off. From a silver SUV behind him, a passenger blared an air horn, screaming more obscenities at the half-dozen protesters holding aloft signs in the October sunlight.
“Why are they angry? That’s what I want to know,” said Irish Whaley, 61, the sole Black woman attending the tiny Saturday demonstration. “You’re going to tell me all lives matter, but you’re going to yell and scream at me like my life don’t matter.”
Nearly 160 years after a battle here helped turn the tide of the Civil War, Gettysburg is once again riven by conflict. The acrimony — including angry confrontations and arrests — has not yet led to violence, let alone the kind of bloodshed this town endured over three days in 1863.
But the divisions on display in Gettysburg are emblematic of tensions gripping Pennsylvania and the nation as the presidential election approaches. Disputes over race, social justice, identity and Americans’ understanding of their own history have played out here in vivid fashion, with Black Lives Matter demonstrators facing off against counterprotesters toting AR-15 rifles in plain view of the diners at the Blue and Gray Bar & Grill.
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The objective of these gun nut fascists is not protecting their homes, it is intimidating black voters. |
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