As mentioned previously, that comes down largely to culture. In Asia, where people in cities are typically much more densely packed than in the US, and where people are much more sensitive to combating the spread of new viruses, they are much more amenable to masks, tracking apps, and other limits to their freedoms than we are in the US.

To say density does not play a role is to have your head buried in the sand. The higher the density, the more potential people you can spread it to.

EDIT: Also, New York is one of the few metros where public transportation is the preferred means of transit for many people. Or to put it another way, mass transit is used by more New Yorkers than any other city, the only other one that would be close would be Chicago. Even there, Chicago is not as densely populated as New York City.

A pandemic has to have a strong federal response. Products are regulated by the feds, states can't just change the regulations. Federal laws limit what can be done in healthcare and the states can't just rewrite the laws. The virus crosses state borders. States have to have a balanced budget, but the federal government can run a deficit and print money. If you want an effective national response, you're always going to need the federal government to take the lead.

Trump told us directly that his priority was keeping the number of confirmed cases as low as possible. "I like te numbers where they are."

And stop with the partisan argument. Everybody here has said any competent Rep would have handled this better than Trump.

This nuanced discussion of how other presidents would have handled the logistics & timing of pandemic policy kinda seems to ignore Trump calling the virus a hoax during the crucial early days, attacking the Democrat response, promoting a drug that may do more harm than good based purely on his intuition, doling out resources to states based on who's nice to him, putting his son-in-law in charge of the response, publicly supporting protests of his own policies, and openly undermining & contradicting the doctors & experts he's put in charge of assuring the public.

Exactly. This whole you think your side would have done better is a disingenuous argument. Romney nor Rubio nor Jeb nor Cruz is on my side. I just have faith those Republican Presidents would not have decimated pandemic response nor called it a hoax early on. I have faith they would have all would have been better prepared for a pandemic.

These arguments about who would do better (which don't acknowledge all of the stuff Trump did to weaken pandemic response in addition to minimizing this particular pandemic) seem to be made in supremely bad faith.

I have very, very little good to say about the Presidency of GWB, but I'm 100% certain he would have handled this much better than Trump.

We also don't know the extent of the crisis yet, but we can be pretty sure that the protests, the early openings, and Trump's seeming dismissal of worries about a second wave will make things worse than they are now.

Are you reading the criticisms specific to Trump? Did you hear when he literally was inciting people to riot against the governments of 3 blue states? The ability to wave it away with "he just says crazy stuff sometimes" never seems to end with some of you folks. He is actively encouraging unrest and frankly viral spread.


500,000? Are you serious? Most models I saw showed that with strict social distancing it could be kept to down around 100k or even down to 70-80k. That's TOTAL, not just this first wave.

This is most definitely not a red/blue thing. I would consider voting R for basically the first time ever because of the way DeWine has handled this in Ohio. He's listening to the experts. He's trying to protect the populace. He's communicating with people like adults. There is no sugarcoating or massaging the numbers.

This has nothing to do with fucking teams, so get your head out of the sand and quit diminishing the role of the head of state in this. This is a national emergency that requires leadership and what we get instead is just tantrums and random shit.

You've become so used to dismissing any criticism of Trump as leftist hysteria, you can't even admit when he's gone a bridge too far at this point.

I think every President and Vice President (other than Cheney) in my lifetime along with Romney, Rubio, Jeb, and Kasich would have done a much better job than what we've seen.

I refuse to believe that the simple act of putting experts in leadership positions on this wouldn't have saved lives.

I think Trump has done a terrible job of being president during this crisis. He's been petty, small minded and had a complete lack of awareness/perspective. So, I agree just about anyone would do better in that regard.

There are two ways I see that a president can play a part in this (and both are on the margins). The first is assuring the public. Trump gets an F- on this as he has been terrible. The second is actual policies. As I've said above, this isn't the biggest impact (that is local policies) but he can do a bunch of harm if he does the wrong thing. If he prevents states from closing, doesn't restrict international travel, prevents states from getting supplies on their own and doesn't sign any kind of stimulus. For this, I give him a C-. He atleast passed a stimulus, shut down international travel and got out of the way of states to do their own shutdowns. In reality, any politician could have gotten this C- if they had half a brain. Could he have done more to facilitate PPE for states? Of course. Could he have not downplayed it in late Jan/early Feb? Sure, but remember both the WHO and most democrats were not prepared to make massive policy changes at that point.

In reality, there isn't a ton he could have done to directly impact the 40K recorded deaths we have. Most of the deaths aren't related to a lack of hospital beds, nurses and docs aren't dying in droves because of no PPE and we aren't stocking bodies in churches and streets like in Europe or other countries. But, he certainly could have made things a little better by taking it more seriously in mid February. I think that's a reasonable criticism.

But I think it's the F- on assuring the public that really bothers people. It makes sense, he was awful. And in order to justify the venom and hatred people have for that, I think people try to raise the stakes of that behavior in terms of causing large numbers of deaths. I don't think it did, but I also hope it leads to him losing the election in the fall.

No. For me the biggest problem is a combination of firing all the people with pandemic expertise, ignoring the plans created for how to deal with a pandemic, and working to hide the magnitude of the problem that continues even today.

Trump continues to actively incite division and unrest. He is trying to make it an us vs. them thing, when this should be everybody united in trying to defeat one common enemy. Frankly, it should be a slam dunk, as most every other president gets poll numbers through the roof during times of crisis, even ones that are otherwise unpopular. But he can't do that, because he doesn't know how to govern through criticism.

Agreed

IMO the decisions made from the start of the Trump Presidency up until this outbreak have had a larger impact on how we've dealt with this than the decisions made during.

Starting with Clinton we had 3 presidents that at least inched us forward on being a bit more prepared for something like this followed by a guy that wiped out nearly of the ground that had been gained.

Lets not forget that nearly everything Trump promised in the early days of his acceptance of this as a threat was a lie. Trump claimed you'd be able put your symptoms into a google site and then get a recommendation on whether or not you should be tested. You'd then be able to drive to CVS or Walmart and get a drive through test in their parking lot. Any other President would have received an F on their response to this just for telling that big of a lie to the public during a press conference. Trump's presidency is so bad, though, that some feel the need to grade everything he does on a curve.

Its not a partisan argument. If we have no frame of reference of what good and bad is, we can't argue anything.

If my sense of good is anything south of 1,000,000 dead while yours is anything south of 50,000, we're just not going to agree. Regardless of what Trump has done or screwed up.

My point is when this became big news, we were talking about death rates of % of the population. That has not happened, and its not because of anything Trump did or did not do. Its not deadly or virulent enough to do that much damage. The media and medical industry blew it out of proportion.

Is it a serious illness? Yes. Is it something I hope more people get? No. But the big disruption I see coming out of this is what we did to the economy. People's lives have been disrupted and not for the better. Trump's stimulus does not get to the root of the matter and will not go far enough in the way it needs to.

Should we have closed the borders sooner? Yes, but don't forget we had people crying about how it would be racist and xenophobic to close the border selectively. At the time, it made no sense to close all borders with the information we had. Later, when we were aware of this getting outside China and into Europe, we should have closed all borders, and we did not until it was too late. In hindsight, I believe that we would not have stopped this, unless we did it as soon as word was getting out of Wuhan about the virus.

Has Trump made a mess of things? Yes. But we cannot pin any deaths on him (just like he can't claim to have saved any lives). Why aren't we talking about Cuomo's response or Whitmer's response or DeWine's response, or Hogan's response, etc.?

We're ahead of where we though we would be with regards to deaths. But instead of looking at this positively, people are impotently lashing out because they're pissed. They're pissed about being home. They're pissed about the uncertainty. They're pissed about family members potentially being out of a job. They're pissed about not being able to care for sick family members. They're pissed about not being able to properly mourn deaths in the family.

This could have been a hell of a lot worse than it has been. We should be thankful that it has not been worse. The people that have had far more impact than Trump has been the state governors, for better and for worse.

The thing to blame Trump are not shutting down the border sooner (which I do not think anyone else would have done at the time either). All the other surrounding items are the same sorts of items we would be complaining about with anyone else in office. Even putting Kushner in charge of the response is the same argument we would be having with any other president. We'd be complaining about why person X is in charge, what credibility do they have, etc., etc. All these boondoggles are the sames sorts of things we'd have with any one else in office, we just have a different message because its Trump.

Long story short, we should be thankful things aren't worse, people are pissed and lashing out, people that weren't going to vote for Trump are still not voting for Trump, people that were voting for Trump are still going to vote for Trump.

The main reason the US is "doing better" is that the virus had spread (in numbers, not a few stragglers) to fewer places before New York was spiralling out of control and that finally prompted a response and specifically halted a lot of travel. It was dumb luck and geography that mitigated this first wave to a degree.

The Lombardy region is 1/6 of the people in Italy, same with Paris region. That is why those hotspots + a few lesser ones produce a higher per capita number than New York and a few Others for the US where the virus would have to travel much further to spread more equally.
It didn't magically appear everywhere at once.

Should the US not aim a bit higher than being luckier ?

I remember earlier this thread (I think) when it was referenced that GW Bush was obsessed with a pandemic and really beefed up things - btw, I don't like GW Bush at all, but I can easily speak of the things that I think he did that were very positive (to the point where it sometimes pisses off my farther left friends who think I'm being kind of W). Clinton, Bush, Obama built up a good foundation for preparation and Trump tore a lot of it down with barely a thought.

You previously said,

Again, I think it's absurd that you're ignoring every bit of his public response. Even putting Kushner aside entirely, you think everyone/anyone would have called the virus a hoax? You think everyone would publicly support protests opposing their own policies? You think everyone would undermine and contradict the medical experts they put in charge of the public response? Or you think as long as the death tolls stay below the original projections literally nothing the President says matters?

Agree to an extent, but I do think local disaster prep by local areas in California (earthquakes/ildfires), Washington state (wildfires/earthquake) and Texas (hurricanes/flooding) helped prepare them to be ready for this. There were very early cases in Washington and California that could have easily spread if not for a quick response from their local governments.

There were initial cases in California, Washington and other western states. But, the combination of natural social distancing (not much mass transit, lower density in many areas than NY) with those areas have more disaster prep supplies/training helped keep it from spreading. That's not all dumb luck (nor is it anything Trump really did)

Again, if you look outside of the NY/NJ/Mass NE, the US has done a very good job of containing the virus. As a whole, we have a 5.5% fatality rate on tested cases. That ranks better than most of the larger European countries (only Germany is markedly better). Remember, we have 330 million people and had cases traced back to January/early February in California, Washington state, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Illinois and Texas. Yet, we haven't see massive death totals or outbreaks in those areas nearly two months later. I would say that's a pretty big positive.

Can't see any other President doing this.

well reasoned

More from Dr. Bright:

Trump is going to be unhinged

While we continue to wait for a coherent national plan to navigate this pandemic, states like Massachusetts are beginning to adopt their own public health plans to combat this virus––before it's too late. https://t.co/Eb2Hz8H8vU

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) April 22, 2020

No, my point is that it does not matter. When the shelter in place order came down in Ohio, I did not complain, I sat my butt down and outside of walking the dogs (maintaining distance, going at off hours, etc.), and going to the store roughly every other week, have stayed at home.

Trump’s messaging has had very little impact on me. I did not think it was a hoax, I thought things were being blown out of proportion. To be fair, we are worse than I thought we would be, but that is no where close to what the media and medical establishment were telling us.

The same knuckleheads that are complaining about the orders would be doing it anyway. They have been on both sides of the aisle, you just get more coverage with it regarding those on the right, because that generates more clicks.

Further, I have friends in the medical community that have been questioning other parts of the medical establishment. Masks prevent you from transmitting anything you have rather than protecting you from getting anything, the true accuracy of the tests, etc.

With Trump you know what you are getting, bluster, lies, exaggerations, etc. Is this any different than different than Obama, Bush, or Clinton? Take away the bluster, substitute platitudes, and much of it is the same. It’s why I said the messaging is different. At least with Trump I know I can’t trust him, rather than the other guys. Clinton would lie, but he had the county boy thing going for him rather than Trump’s New York asshole demeanor.

The only difference difference I feel is that one of the previous presidents would try to make me feel like they tried and things would have been better if we only pulled together a little more. It’s like the old Cold War saying, “Trust but verify” too often today we’re all about trust and no verification, and then being shocked when we find out we’ve been lied to.

The primary benefit of the government in a crisis like this is to give the states a blank check to get what they need on a local level.

We would have been far more prepared. Tests would be more prevalent and supplies to states would be efficient. Country likely would have went into lockdown much sooner.

You could argue that right-wing media would have pushed back harder and claimed it was all attempt to take away rights. So maybe death toll from that would have been significant. Lot of states likely would have avoided a quarantine and seen massive death tolls.

McConnell announces that he'd prefer to create a mechanism for states to go into bankruptcy (i.e. screw over their pensioners) than provide them with financial assistance.

I'm REALLY upset at the GOP for wanting this and at the Dems for going along with bailout bills that didn't already include funding for states and cities.

"It does not matter who the President is or what they say" is not a particularly compelling argument.


As an aside, there is a massive mountain of evidence that these 'grass roots' local protests are organized by states' Republican parties, the Tea Party organizations and national gun's rights organizations.

The rightwing groups behind wave of protests against Covid-19 restrictions | World news | The Guardian
Who’s Behind the “Reopen” Domain Surge? — Krebs on Security
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/21/u...sts-trump.html

How many protests put on by leftist organizations have you heard of?

Donald Trump merchandise was for sale at the Harrisburg, PA protest of Donald Trump's coronavirus response:

Thanks for summing up my feelings about that particularly incoherent line of reasoning.

Yes, it is absolutely different. Trump is not the same. He lies about everything. This is his default setting. He's lied over 16,000 times in three years. If you think this is anywhere near the scale of what other presidents do, his messaging isn't going to have any impact on you but it's apparent ours isn't going to either.

(Which makes this post pointless, I suppose.)

It may belong in the COVID thread, but this is political at its foundation. This is an organized protest using kids at the park to get sympathy for their cause. The lady recording mentions the Idaho Freedom Foundation which is pushing anti-stay at home propaganda and news. The lady arrested also happens to be the founder of a Idaho Anti-Vaxxer group.

One of the best comments I've seen on these protests mentioned that one of the things zombie movies got wrong was not having people protesting their right to be eaten by zombies.

Holy crap, Trump calling out Kemp for opening too fast?! That backfired on Kemp.

Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk

Graham has been critical of it, with his state bordering Georgia, and I'm sure he got in Trump's ear.

If it goes well, then Trump can point to all the times he said we need to re-open and say, “see, I told you so!“

If it goes poorly, then Trump can point to him criticizing governor Kemp and say, “see, I told you so!”

This is definitely something Bush or Obama would have done.

HHS ousts vaccine expert as Covid-19 threat grows - POLITICO

Trump gave the most mobster answer he could find to that...

Then later on in the only part of the conference I heard he was reminding everyone that he had campaigned heavily for Kemp and that the Obamas were doing the same for Abrams, and Kemp won.

Meanwhile bailouts coming for the oil and gas industry.

Also Dems showing how completely worthless they are yet again.

I'm also constantly in awe of how awful they are at negotiating, which just reminds you that in a lot of ways, the whole game is rigged not just the GOP.

But I'm also amazed that part of the game is that one party gets to be like "hey, we believe in actual governance like including things for hospitals and local municipalities" and the other is like "nope, you're going to have to trade away something for that like, say, give us more tax cuts for the rich and let us put in a loophole for our corrupt President". And people are like "hey, these parties are somewhat comparable"

SI

What exactly do you expect the Dems, who only control one house of Congress to do? Hold up desperately needed assistance? I mean they got $200bil more money in the new spending bill than the GOP initially wanted including money for hospitals. Would you rather they hold that up for a few weeks denying desperately needed funding to hospitals?

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I don't understand why the Dems haven't used their big advantage. They can pass bills without GOP help, but the GOP can't pass anything without Dem help. Why haven't the Dems been passing the bills they want in the House and then starting negotiations from their bill? I think that gives them a better negotiating hand and allows them to show the American people what they stand for.

And the continuing refusal to conduct oversight is inexplicable to me.

Isn't there something like dozens of bills that the House has passed in the last 2 years that are just sitting in the bottom of McConnell's desk?

And didn't the House pass it's own stimulus bill (we discussed it on these forums for a while - you know the one with bailout money for USPS, the Kennedy Center, putting environmental requirements on airlines that got funds)? How far did that get in the US Senate?

The Dems in the House can pass all the bills they want but they don't mean anything unless the GOP acts on them in the senate and White House.

How many times did the GOP house repeal Obamacare?

The difference being there is finally something that the GOP wants. All of those messaging bills contained nothing that McConnell wanted, but now when the Dems finally do have leverage, they give it away arguing point by point with McConnell in secret.

My recollection is that they wrote a bill, but never acted on it.

Doesn't help that Chuck Schumer is about as milquetoast as it gets for a party leader

I just want to highlight this again for a second:

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/23/coro...lief-bill.html



So basically the GOP wanted a $250 billion bill. The Dems said no, blocked it from passing unless it included $60bil for small lenders, $75bil for hospitals, $25bil for coronavirus testing. Yeah, they didn't get funding for states, but only Democrats can look at this and go tHeY cAvEd!1!

What did the GOP give up? All the Dem "wins" are things that the GOP isn't really opposed to. This isn't to say that what's in the bill is bad, but when will Dems use their leverage to demand things the GOP doesn't want to do?

The GOP wants to kill state-level public employee unions.
The GOP wants to privatize the USPS and kill the union.
The GOP wants to privatize as much of the national education infrastructure as they can.
The GOP wants to make it as difficult as possible to vote.

That's what's at stake, and the Dems have limited opportunities to do anything about it. At a minimum, it would be helpful to pass legislation that shows the public what they stand for. I've been saying it for years, but it's still true, nobody knows what the Dems want to do with power.

The GOP literally fought to prevent the hospital and testing funding from being in the bill. That's why the original bill sat around for 10 days and why they were trashing Pelosi the entire time for not caring about the small businesses.

If you're talking about the 8.5 billion bill in March, I think the ground has changed dramatically since the GOP opposed that. Now I thin they are willing to spend a ton of money if they think it might boost their re-election chances. There were supposedly things they hated in the Phase 3 bill, but they had no problem smiling at the signing ceremony and bragging about it on television. Their only objection was with a couple of paltry items like the Kennedy Center funding.

They'll all be bragging about the hospital funding in this bill.

I'm talking about this current bill. Originally proposed 2 weeks ago without any hospital or testing funding - just more PPP money. Pelosi and the Dems in the House blocked it, as people on the left said they should. For 2 weeks before getting double the funding than proposed.

That doesn't mean the GOP gave up anything, though. When I start to see GOP Senators complaining about what was in the final bill, then I'll believe the Dems really got a win. The redlines for the GOP are state funding, USPS funding, and voter access. The Dems are making no headway on any of those.

They either aren't willing to use the leverage they have to get those things, or they don't care about them as much as they claim to.

Because what we really want is the House Democrats to hold up funding for hospitals and testings when they fought to get it into the bill. How many more weeks of hold up regarding that would be ok?

Are we really going to toss money at the oil and gas corporations?

I bet if we threw money at the everyday person and opened stuff up, the oil and gas companies could go back to gouging us again and making their billions in profits real quick.

No. What I want is Dems writing the bill they want, passing it, and then putting the burden on McConnell to say no. They may not win, but they'll have a clear position to negotiate from and to message with. Right now they negotiate in secret with the GOP and nobody knows what either side really wants. The Dems are choosing to repeatedly fight on ground of McConnell's choosing.

They've been constantly doing that over the last 2 years - hence the pile up of bills on McConnell's desk. Mostly things they know McConnell will never put to a vote. You remember this right?

Democratic senators tweet photos of pile of House-passed bills 'dead on Mitch McConnell's desk' | TheHill

Or maybe you don't, because passing a bunch of bills, putting the burden on McConnell hasn't really moved the needle. Some on the left still ask what the House Dems have done on, say, minimum wage, when the House passed a $15 minimum wage bill last year.

However, when it comes to desperately trying to get legislation passed to help save lives, the Democratic leadership wants to get something done. So they engage in conversation with the WH and McConnell (sometimes McConnell has actually been sidelined) so that it doesn't get added to the list on McConnell's desk, but actually passed.

Again, there's no comparison between passing bills that McConnell doesn't care about and passing bills that McConnell needs and wants.

haha nothing matters

Yes. Get on TV and explain that you are not passing a bill without assistance to hospitals and those most in need.

You'd be holding up PPP which is mostly just loans going to big businesses pretending to be small ones. And a big handout to the banks.

At some point you have to stand up for yourselves.

U.S. Citizens Married To Immigrants Are Blocked From Getting Stimulus Checks:

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/u-ci...145343198.html

THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT THEY FUCKING DID. The bill now has assistance to hospitals and testing, which was not in there before. It's $200 billion more than the bill the Republicans proposed on April 9 because of Democratic efforts to hold up the bill (leading to Republican Congresspeople blaming her for shutting down small businesses, but they kept blocking it until they got hospital money and testing money in there).

I just can't. People on the left get hardons for McConnell's tactics, but McConnell would have gotten $10bil more and proclaim it as a victory and the right AND left would say McConnell won. Pelosi gets $200billion and the right and left are saying... oh, she caved. WHAT THE FUCK?!

This more goes back to what I was saying before. Why is it that the Dems are having to argue for money for the hospitals? How is that not bipartisan?

It feels like the GOP sets up these artificial goalposts ("we're not giving any money to hospitals"). And the Dems are like "damn, we have to give up something else to get them like trying to fund free elections or the USPS" (again, things that shouldn't be partisan to begin with, but here we are).

SI

Because the GOP doesn't care. It's not artificial goalposts, they wanted more money for businesses to prevent a deeper recession - that's it. Hospitals and testing, most of them probably half-agree with the Administration who seem to think it's a state problem.

And the GOP REALLY does not want free elections or the USPS - that's definitely not an artificial goalpost any way you slice it. They think it'll cost them elections. Far right people are decrying Pelosi every day for 2 months for wanting vote by mail. I see Facebook posts that go "SAY HELL NO TO PELOSI ON VOTE BY MAIL".

Though in this case, the Dems didn't give up anything else - they just blocked the legislation for 16 days until the GOP caved on the additional spending.

All she got was $75 billion for hospitals and $25 billion for testing. Hospitals which I should add that are mainly private which I was told by her is way better than a public health care system (so why are taxpayers paying for that anyway?).

Otherwise it's $60b for banks, $250b in PPP going to mostly medium to large businesses, $60b for disaster relief which again, ain't going to small businesses.

No money for states, no vote-by-mail, nothing for food banks, people out of work, etc.

But she is keeping Donna Shalala on to oversee that bailout money.

NEW: Miami Democratic Rep. Donna Shalala violated federal law when she failed to disclose stock sales while serving in Congress. https://t.co/rdPu6tV2vr

— Miami Herald (@MiamiHerald) April 21, 2020

But they did give things up. They didn't fight for vote by mail. Or the USPS. Or funding for states.

I'll give you that they're in the more difficult position as the GOP can achieve their goals right now just by doing nothing, but at some point the Dems are going to have to fight for these things if they really want them. So the question is, when do you fight? Dems seem to be willing to wait until they have no leverage, and that won't work.

I don't believe McConnell will ever see the wisdom of these bills, so when and how will the Dems fight to get them?

She got a big bailout to our private health care system. That's somehow a win in Democrat circles these days.

Food bank lines, USA. https://t.co/JvDjIXOCK3 pic.twitter.com/WqBgHuAzk1

— Andrew Stroehlein (@astroehlein) April 20, 2020

While getting $200bil in additional funding - what in the world is this nonsense that if you don't get 100% of what you asked right away when you have very little power, you've caved. And this is assuming this isn't going to come up again. Considering Pelosi is currently saying right now that vote by mail is going to be in the 4th COVID bill. Which is what she's being attacked all over the place by right wing sites.

McConnell is getting dragged today because of his states should go bankrupt comments in response to House Dems wanting to see it in a stimulus bill.

But the Dems by blocking were able to get $60B in the PPP for small lenders (which will go to small businesses), $60B in the SBA fund that's completely depleted, $75B for hospitals, $25B for testing... while only having control of one house of Congress. Do you mean to tell me that they should have kept blocking for 2 more weeks preventing hospitals from getting needed funding now? And so more small businesses can fail because they got locked out of the original PPP process because the funds ran out?


While McConnell is willing to play with people's lives for it, Democrats should not - if you can at least get hospital funding and testing funding, you get it done and then get try to get the other things done in the next bill, which you know is going to happen. Get the most important things done and through. I am not surprised when Republicans don't give a shit about delaying funding to overworked and underfunded and understaffed hospitals which are trying to keep people alive, but when Democrats do, it makes me livid.

In the original stimulus plan they did pass a $10bil loan for USPS, which Trump is now trying to leverage for USPS changes - but when you have the White House you can do that. Congress can't make Mnuchin distribute the funds absent a lawsuit (and even then Courts generally side with the Executive Branch on the execution of laws - remember GW Bush's signing statements?).

Yes, of the ~$200B she was able to wring out of the party that controls the Senate and White House by delaying voting on a $250B PPP bill only about half is for hospitals and testing. And right, the $60B for small lenders as part of the PPP process and $60 to SBA disaster relief program (which includes economic disaster relief) isn't going to help small businesses. Do you even think before you post?

I don't think they have very little power, at least they didn't as long as the GOP needed things. I still don't understand why they don't pass what they want in the House and start from there. Their biggest advantage is that they can pass bills without GOP help, but they instead insist on negotiating in secret and never presenting what they really want.

Each bill passed makes it less likely that the next bill will pass. What's the GOP must-have in the next bill? Maybe the PPP runs out and we're back to where we were last week, but maybe it doesn't. At that point what do the Dems do? Then they really are back to messaging bills with no hope in the Senate. There are limited opportunities, and the Dems have let two big opportunities go without even passing a bill showing their priorities.

But they did present what they want with the CARES bill. Yes, you are right, they did not get it to a floor vote, but it was a fully fleshed out bill. There was likely a concern that the money had to get to people right away and it probably wouldn't be a great idea to grandstand with a bill that included controversial things (we discussed them here).

Which leads me to:


It is almost a given that CARES2 is going to happen. McConnell has been discussing the need for it even. Trump definitely wants it. And Pelosi has been discussing what needs to be in CARES2, including vote by mail. I'm pretty sure they are working on the bill.

I'll also post this article about a Slate columnist who sees the bill as a disappointment, but also looks to see why:

The new coronavirus relief bill is a disappointment.

Perhaps follow the news on PPP and EIDL. It ain't going to small businesses.

Sorry I forgot that the banks made a lot too. Much more important than the 6 hour waits at food banks or being able to actually vote.

Report: Banks earned more than $10 billion in fees processing small-business loans | TheHill

Right, because some of the PPP went to public companies, lets ignore the the rest of it, 87.5% going to companies asking for less than $350,000 in loans, 75% going to companies asking for less than $150,000 - average loan of $208,000. Screw those small businesses, right? Even if SBA issued new guidance to try to prevent the same abuses in the original PPP (and hopefully they do). Not to mention that PPP part was literally the only part that was in the original bill and Pelosi got the other parts, which is what I mentioned. The EIDL is administered directly by SBA and generally goes to smaller companies, and smaller lenders as part of the PPP will definitely have smaller clients. So blaming her for the PPP portion means either you either haven't been paying any attention or are being deliberately obtuse.

Keep defending it.

Crony Capitalism: Why The Best-Connected Businesses Got Much Of The SBA Coronavirus Cash

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/21/larg...oll-loans.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/b...ronavirus.html

Keep ignoring that was the only part of the bill before Pelosi held it up.

Not to mention I will defend it overall because I don't make the perfect the enemy of the good. I don't get want to junk welfare because of welfare fraud after all, nor Medicare over Medicare fraud (which is quite large fwiw).

Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk

Hopefully, there is another bill where the GOP wants to pass something. Hopefully, when that day comes the Dems will fight for voting access, state funding, and USPS funding.

I just know they haven't yet. All of those things the GOP isn't just ambivalent about but is actively opposed to. Getting them will be hard, but you can't ever get them if you don't ever try.

I need the people who said there is no difference in Trump and Clinton managing this pandemic to comment on today's press conference.

Also boomers can never make fun of young people for eating Tide Pods again.

I think anyone can make of a person who ate a tide pod.

Holy shit I just saw the quotes. Is he seriously suggesting injecting bleach and and putting an ultraviolet light inside the body to treat COVID?

In fairness he said disinfectant, so maybe just 409 or Lysol.

Not all boomers are created equal my friend, or in this case even created on the same planet.

I mean, I do know it's nothing but beating a dead horse at this point, but it's crazy that we're in the middle of a literal global crisis and the leader of the free world is out here talking about fucking injecting light & disinfectant (and 40% of America is cool with that).

Most of them will play mental gymnastics with how he was really owning the dems with that statement.

Pat Robertson and Alan Keyes are already selling bleach cures anyway, right? Maybe Trump wants in on the action.

Posted in wrong thread
 

My parents, god bless them, called me this evening and during the conversation my dad proceeds to tell me if I saw that Trump had another scientist, specifically mentions not Fauci, who said sunlight can kill the virus. Knowing that they likely heard this from Fox News and or Limbaugh which they watch/listen to religiously I decided to do a quick check on things.

First stop, Fox News website. Sure enough, the main headline and talking point is how heat can weaken the Coronavirus. Ok. So now I know where they got this from, let’s check on this “scientist who isn’t Fauci”.

https://www.dhs.gov/science-and-tech...illiam-n-bryan There isn’t a single thing in this guys bio that tells me I should listen to anything he has to say as it pertains to a novel coronavirus. But hey, he isn’t Fauci and Trump says Fauci is bad so we’ll take this “scientists” word at face value.

This whole scenario has played out over and over again on so many topics. It just amazes me how much power Fox and Trump have over 40%+ of the population.

I going to go out on a limb and say the FDA Commissioner never imagined scenario where he had to tell the public not to ingest disinfectant in the middle of a pandemic.

States should always plan for a rainy day just like any business. I disagree that states should take Fed money or be bailed out. This will lead to taxpayers paying for mismanagement of poorly run states. States need to tighten up, make some cuts, and manage.

— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) April 23, 2020

Honest good-faith question for the fiscal conservatives in this thread (who have valiantly stayed in a Trump thread to try and provide some small amount of balance to the force).

Nikki Haley says that the Feds should not bail out the states because the states should have rainy day funds to prepare for disasters like this.

How is that a conservative position? She says that states and counties and large cities across the country should have what would amount to hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer money just sitting in rainy day funds.

Isn't the conservative position that if a state is running a consistent budget surplus that it should cut taxes and give that money back to the citizens? Do we really want the stewards of our public money building lots and lots of slack into the system to create these emergency accounts (which, let's be honest, would just become slush funds as soon as anyone without scruples got elected anyway).

This is not a question over how much a state/city/county government should do. I am sure we disagree over that. This is a question over how efficiently that government should run--regardless of its size. And Haley seems to be saying that they should all run inefficiently so that there's a lot of room there to absorb a once-in-a-century pandemic.

It seems like the real conservative approach should be to tell states/counties/cites to run very efficiently and to respond to budget surpluses with tax cuts. And, in exchange, the fed will have your back when there is a COVID, Katrina, etc. type situation.

Personally, I think that this is simply the GOP using COVID as an excuse to cripple state budgets.

But I am very open to being convinced otherwise. What is the non-"drown it in the bathtub" justification for not bailing out the states?

dola: I see she didn't say "rainy day fund." But she either means that or that states should intentionally be performing pointless services that they can eliminate to save money. So it's kind of the same thing.

That clip between him, Cooper, and Gupta is so cringe-y.


SI

At least on this topic she's consistent. The few and far between non-hypocrites.

Hey guys. We're saved! Injecting Lysol will save us from the Coronavirus.

Oh, he said to inject it? I just drank a bottle. Oh crap...

Better wash that down with some bleach.

He's actually not wrong...

hXXps://local.theonion.com/man-just-buying-one-of-every-cleaning-product-in-case-t-1842493766

I hxxp'd the link b/c The Onion links have broken the board in the past.

This was written a month ago.

You guys laugh at it, but ...

Poison control sees spike in calls for cleaner, disinfectant accidents amid COVID-19 pandemic | Live Science

And the real number might be higher if you add the people who were 50/50 on seeking help and didn't that might have done so in normal times.

And that's just people screwing up or overreacting due to confusing information. So you better hope people do not interpret an insanely muddy message by the fucking president.

It's fine, Trump says he was just being sarcastic.

Fox News now in a dizzying spin on how everyone hosting tonight will scrap their circa 10am "yes, everyone should immediately go drink bleach" scripts, and instead go with the "come on, everyone can tell it was all just a joke" scripts.

Trump was outthinking all of us.