I'm not trying to be overly gracious to them. I've said repeatedly that I think they're wrong; that's just besides the point. I could define the threat more as well and have done that somewhat in other posts, but that's also besides the point, which is that society will unavoidably change and it's not inherently wrong to include those changes in the calculus of what actions are appropriate now.


Except of course that I've said nothing against those protests in this discussion, and maintained support for their choice to do what they did. Then, now, and in the future. I disagree with a sizable chunk of what the protestors stand for, while supporting others of their goals, but that doesn't matter here. They don't owe me or anyone else a justification for their beliefs in terms of them being a valid matter for protest; that's entirely for them to determine, as it should be.

I would also note that a few European cities also had massive BLM protests with little to no upswing in cases as a result. If the NE US is not enough of a counter, fwiw.

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I don't understand how criticism is different from saying it's not a valid perspective. To me, that's just extreme criticism. If you see it differently, what criticism is allowed before it jeopardizes a free society?

We're still having nightly protests in Portland FWIW, six weeks going, but that's what you get in Little Beirut. Our covid cases have started increasing statewide recently, to the point that we make some of the hype reports in terms of percentage increases, but we're still in the bottom 10 states in terms of per capita cases & deaths.

...the numbers have stayed so low in Oregon, even when Washington initially got hit hard, that I actually worry that effectively nobody has any antibodies and our first wave might have not have even hit yet.

Like a half-hour after I wrote this I just read that Oregon has today extended their mask mandate to outside "when you cannot maintain a 6-foot distance from people outside their households"

Not wearing a mask IS NOT A CAUSE. It is like people who think that freedom of speech means they should get to say heinous racist shit without repercussions.

And it's not just not a cause because I say so. The end result of a cause is generally some kind of win for society or mankind. What is the endpoint here? "We're free to kill the infirmed and co-morbid without repercussion!"?

If hyper-selfishness were a cause, maybe.

By now, many of us have seen the Facebook/Twitter post about multiple people saying that they'll never wear a mask because it's a win for the left, then when they saw Trump wearing one, they asked "how do I get one!" This is not a cause, it's politicized Oppositional Defiant Disorder run fucking amok.

And to say they're not given space to express themselves is an absolutely laughable claim. They are free to express themselves all they want, and people are free to shit all over it. It is not hypocritical in the least, because personally I expect every leftist protest to be shit on just as much at this point. It's the price of politics in the social media age.

If they can't define for themselves what their cause is, they aren't being given said space.


Already answered multiple times. It isn't necessarily what you assume it is here.

The dumbest people made it one and now we're living in a plague country that is the laughingstock of the world.

Thanks for not addressing any of my relevant points and wasting everyone's time. It's been great

Huh? I've been constantly addressing most of the relevant point I've seen, and in return have mostly gotten people shadowboxing arguments I never made. That's really a hilarious accusation. Lathum addressed the core issues early on and we agreed to disagree. That was a productive exchange. Someone else did in the other thread as well. The rest, not so much.

The WH is full of reprehensible cowards. Fire Fauci if you want, but don't smear the man while he's still running Infectious Diseases for the CDC.

Dude you're a smart guy clearly, but you're coming off as someone who likes to talk to hear themselves talk and participate in some really uninteresting mental gymnastics in this thread. Not sure what your intention is, but I made MYSELF clear that your assertion that anything can be a cause but they just have to be given space to define it is... specious, to be kind.

If you're confused about why people are making arguments against "arguments you never made" then maybe you're not being as clear as you thought, eh?

They're just trying to get him to resign, because that's the Trump M.O.

My kids went swimming after dinner tonight. When it was time to get out I kept trying to tell them and they continued to go under water so they couldn’t hear me and didn’t have to comply. I feel like that sums up this administration.

TBF I agree with your point about who decides validity (although not 100% sure how it became a topic)

However, inherent within your own argument is that you shouldn’t argue with people who disagree with it, as you are then yourself deciding whether their position is valid or not...

Plus it ends the ever decreasing circles we’re currently in

Heh sorry Lathum sorry that your kids are Republicans :D

Ivanka is starting a new ad campaign, Find Something New.

This can't be real life.

I wasn't sure from this post what the context was. After finding this tweet - now it's a lot more funny (in a gallows humor sort of way):

More than ever our #PledgetoAmericasWorkers is focused on helping Americans ���� bolster skills to find new jobs + navigate career transitions.

Today we are launching the #FindSomethingNew ad campaign!https://t.co/gS1JL50lcU
— Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) July 14, 2020

I mean, really, it's not necessarily a bad message if part of a package: "We're launching our new jobs program which gives you grants for going back to school and a new, better federal job search website". It wound sound like a quasi-lovable attempt by underpaid government workers to do an ad campaign (EDIT: Looks like it is! It's from the Ad Council).

But all it looks like is just the new website and ad campaign - not a lot of actual tangible resources (grants, new federal jobs, free training, etc) for people. It's just an aggregator of a bunch of things that already exist put together in a single website. I mean, that's not nothing, but it's not a lot either. So it just comes off as cold and callous. Was #Bootstraps already taken?

SI

She just wants to keep her opportunities open for a position in the Biden Administration ;).

This is a momentous day folks, at last, a Trump tells the truth!

Bye Don Jr: Love Me, Daddy! - YouTube

I want to say this is unbelievable, but this administration has sunk so low that pretty much everything is believable.

outrage:
HHS officials on Monday finalized a new data reporting protocol for hospitals, which will eliminate the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as a data recipienthttps://t.co/xy0Z0KRdR8

— Greg Dworkin (@DemFromCT) July 14, 2020

Someone here posted an article about how an Ivanka candidacy is possible if Trump say, drops out days before the election.

Might as well get ahead of that possibility.

Not necessarily. Sometimes the clash of worldviews occurs at a sufficiently fundamental level that one side of the debate or both don't/can't comprehend that the opposition is questioning assumptions that are so basic to them that never even think about those concepts. Over the course of my time on this forum I've come to realize that many have vastly differing ideas of what basic things even mean; we don't see concepts like fairness, equality, freedom, rights, socialism, capitalism, democracy, racism, etc. in something close enough to the same way to avoid regularly crossing wires in discussion. We just think too differently.

Certainly it's very possible for me to be unclear in wording of things or to overlook a point to which the answer is so self-evidently clear to me as to be a waste of time to comment on, but when I've said repeatedly in different ways that I'm not making a specific argument and then people keep assuming that I am, it's clear a discussion can't be productive going forward. It doesn't even matter at that point how one wishes to distribute the blame for the disconnect ... there's just not enough commonality to even understand, much less agree with each other.

To level-set, my definition of American Exceptionalism is below. I posted a larger discussion in Front Office Football Central - View Single Post - The Trump Presidency – 2016 which included additional caveats from me.

American exceptionalism - New World Encyclopedia

In prior conversations in this forum, there are many who do not believe in American Exceptionalism (dead or never had it). As an immigrant I do have a different perspective and it differs from many here who I assume are native born so I'm going to organize my thoughts into (1) immigrant & wannabee POV and (2) native-born POV.

(1) From an immigrant or immigrant-wannabee perspective, I've previously shared the below report. Latest nos. are from 2015-2017. Essentially 750M people want to move somewhere. Of that, 158M or 21% want to come to the US. This is almost greater than next 4 combined (Canada, Germany, France, Australia). Note the survey factors in Trump's early year.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/245255/...e-migrate.aspx

People want to come to the US. They see something in the US.

* * * *

Gallup did not ask "why you want to move to US etc.". I did some googling and found many articles but none seemed scientific to me, they were personal opinions, others many statements but I did not see them reference a survey etc.

But to generalize, it's relative to where they are currently. They want to move to the US because they believe the US offers them/family something more than where they currently are.

So let me share my personal POV on why. It is basically why I think the US is "Exceptional":

1. Opportunity to do better. Study and/or work hard and with some luck, you/family have a better chance of doing better vs current/other country
2. Freedoms not found in majority of other countries (e.g. ability to say what you want, get higher learning). Relative safety, less corruption
3. Economic strength and wealth. Most things are cheaper in the US, our USD goes further in many countries
4. Diversity is accepted and discrimination as a minority can be bypassed, ignored etc. relatively easily in the "current era"
5. Leader in technological innovation (currently at least). This is where Google, Apple, Amazon, Oracle, IBM, Microsoft etc. originated. Other countries copy the US (however, I'd say we are losing this edge and we are probably not the leader in technology adoption)
6. And I'm going to toss a catch-all ... Life is relatively easy in the US as compared to many other countries

* * * *

I will reiterate, although Trump has definitely hurt the view of the US from immigrants and wannabes, I still contend he is a temporary speedbump. If he wins 2020 or his protoge in 2024, then we need to worry about a long-term Trump legacy but the odds are against it. Most foreigners I've spoken to recently make a distinction between Trump and regular US folks. Get us Joe or even traditional GOP president and things will revert back to normal.

* * * *

(2) For a native-born, much of what I stated above is not apparent and/or appreciated because they have different stories and experiences. I have the perspective of having lived in more "restrictive" countries and can compare. It would be great if everyone in the US could travel to a third-world country and see how fortunate we really are, even with all the problems we have.

So it is what it is, people will believe what they believe. My take is life is relatively easy compared to many other countries, and there are a ton of opportunities and support structure for people to do well in the US.

I'm very interested in hearing your immigrant family members' perspective on American Exceptionalism and/or Land of Opportunity.

I think Trump was on this board a few weeks ago.

JUST IN: Asked by @CBS_Herridge about the death of George Floyd, and why African Americans still die at the hands of police, Trump answers, "So are white people."

Calling it a "terrible question," Trump says "more white people, by the way" are killed by police.

— Steven Portnoy (@stevenportnoy) July 14, 2020

Is Trump actually wrong here?

I would think Don Jr has the better chance. That party doesn't like women and a certain demographic of Trump voters don't like the Jews much either.

Not so much wrong as worthless? The country is 75% white & any kind of demographic comparison of raw numbers serves no purpose. I doubt he would account for rape statistics in the same fashion.

What a shitshow of a press conference.

So much whining.

I was watching MTP and they were showing the press conference in a small box but talking, interviewing as normal.

I changed to CNN hoping to hear leadership on the second wave but instead listened to him whine about Biden for about 5 min before thinking MTP was right and turned to another channel.

Why would you think you would hear any leadership from him?

I didn't say "I thought I'd hear leadership on the second wave", I said "I hoped to hear leadership".

Trump destroying Jeff Sessions is one good outcome of this shit show.

Wait, you mean men commit more rapes than women?

Seriously, it's a complete strawman argument. Of course the majority will be shot more by Police than 13% of the population, just an obvious and overused talking point to totally marginalize the real issue and it's gotten old.

Hopefully he drags McConnell with him at some point too.

I don't hope for the impossible

I still cannot believe that all Covid data will be sent to the WH before the CDC. I mean, what the actual fuck?

But if you can't trust this administration, who can you trust?

SI

Well, I really hope that they tell us exactly what we (you pick) want/need/neither we'll take what they give us and we'll like it.

I hope to see Jessica Alba each time I open my bedroom door. I think that is a more likely occurrence than the one you are hoping for.

Meanwhile the "Fauci was WRONG on EVERYTHING" campaign continues with an Op-Ed by Navarro with USA Today that also manages to be typically self congratulatory ("working feverishly", "record time") And yes, the claim is everything that Navarro ever interacted with him on. Then going on to base it on Media Statements including an article where literally everything was spot on

And this:


becomes this:


If you don't (have to) care about large swaths of the public having a working brain, something is fucked.

And of course, Hydrochloroquine makes an apearance based on a single study (or rather retroactive tallying up) where the difference can be entirely explained by ... The better faring cohort also overwhelmingly (sth like 85% as opposed to 20 in the other grouping) getting a steroid proven to cause up to 50% reduction in a study in England.

I think the cancel culture is arguably going too far in this case but with the current environment ... whatever keeps the extremist masses happy.

Unanue has the right to say what he said. People have they right to boycott if the wish. Ivanka technically made a bad as a government official but I had a good chuckle. Wonder what Smuckers thinks about this?

If it’s Goya, it has to be good.
Si es Goya, tiene que ser bueno. pic.twitter.com/9tjVrfmo9z

— Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) July 15, 2020

It is crazy that I still see Facebook posts that say, the Flu is deadlier and the only reason this is so bad in the US is to get Trump out of office. Greatest global conspiracy ever SMH.

It's unbelievable. Some people I really like(d) were talking this crazy crap months ago and I stopped following them, including a really good CFB talk show host in TN. I just have no patience for willful stupidity. The "numbers are overblown, this is a hoax" crowd can go to hell.

Well, apparently Kanye got his quick shot of attention and can go back to his genius lair for the time being.

I don't think Jones can win, but I look forward to months of these kinds of tweets.

You, scared of your own shadow: “Can an incumbent Democratic Senator win a red state?”

Us, ready to storm hell with a super-soaker: “Tuberville couldn’t score a TD for 2 weeks with 4 first rounders on his offense. He also lost to Vanderbilt.” #OneAlabama https://t.co/JsPkNu4uAe

— Alabama Democrats (@aldemocrats) July 15, 2020

I just want Jones to run a pro-Alabama campaign. Maybe barnstorm the state with Saban, LOL.

In Trump's rambling, incoherent mess of a speech yesterday he apparently complained that China was given most favored status but the U.S. wasn't.

Let that sink in for a while.

The country wasn't ready yet

Hours after calling coronavirus a hoax, Chuck Woolery’s son tests positive for it. pic.twitter.com/8UdpDJ557C

— Hoodlum 🇺🇸 (@NotHoodlum) July 14, 2020

Who knew Chuck Woolery was such an asshole? Or that he was even still alive?

This isn't the first time he's said some stupid stuff, but it's been a while since I'd seen anything from him.

Yeah going to be tough for Jones going up against a Alabama football coach, but I hope the Democrats don't just write it off as a loss. Tuberville is already a Trump butt licker and I think Jones can use that and the fact that Tuberville has no political experience what so ever and can show that in a debate.

Also I hope the "retiring from public life" speeches are very common in November. Glad Sessions is going out in disgrace.

My point was Jones should subtly use that Tuberville coached Auburn, which is a decidedly less popular team in the state ;).

Anything that works :)

Holy SHIT pic.twitter.com/SlztuxewtY

— 𝕤𝕥𝕖𝕖𝕝𝕪 𝕕𝕒𝕕 (@HaitianDvorce) July 15, 2020

Wasting no time

Oklahome Governor has tested positive for the virus. Gee I wonder if he was at that Trump rally?

With Lou Saban?

SI

I can appreciate this

According to my calculations @kanyewest’s presidential aspirations lasted one full Scaramucci

— Anthony Scaramucci (@Scaramucci) July 15, 2020

SI

Vandy weighs in:

While we appreciate the congrats on beating Tommy Tuberville, that Vanderbilt team won 7 games and went to a bowl game for the first time in 26 years and we do not appreciate the implication that this was somehow worse than the time he lost to UConn. https://t.co/00MySM33bu

— This is fine (@anchorofgold) July 15, 2020

I believe that's Vandy's SBNation site, for the record

SI

Saw an article today on CNN about how a Democratic group in Kansas has been paying for ads supporting Kris Kobach for Senate. They think Kobach would be the best opponent to the person running for the Dems there. Be interesting to see if it works (and yeah Kobach would for sure be the best chance for Dems to take the seat)

So on the social media front today: my liberal friends and family are posting variations of the COVID-19 death numbers and pointing out how they feel scared and helpless.

My conservative friends and family are posting photos of shelves of sold out Goya beans with some version of “suck it, Libtards!”

Fuckin 2020, man.

The President comes to Atlanta to announce a big infrastructure project. What was it, you ask? To add a "trucks only" lane to one interstate between Atlanta-Macon. That, and they are going to cut back on environmental impact studies to speed the process of getting this one lane. Yay.
We need rapid rails. We need mass transit. We need to cut the number of vehicles on the road. Instead, we get one truck lane.

Quite the breech on Twitter today.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/15/tech/...tes/index.html

Last I saw, it's up to 5400+ transactions and $7.8M. If you wondered how we could be so stupid to find ourselves where we are in 2020, this just confirms your answer.

Chuck Woolery suspended from Twitter for posting false information about CV. He''ll be back in 2 and 2.

Apparently all verified accounts were shut down at one point.

What a strange world we live in.

I didn't watch the whole infrastructure speech today, he was a bit livelier than the Rose Garden, but still pedaling a bunch of bullshit.

Looks like Twitter got hacked

https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/15/tech/...tes/index.html

Nigerian Prince got a hold of all verified tweeters' accounts and a bunch of idiots sent him money.

They should shut Twitter down.

Verified Twitter still down but they can retweet so many are sending coded messages through retweets.

Brad Parscale out as Trump Campaign Manager. Guess they didn't like those empty seats in Tulsa after all.

Can't wait to see who the replacement is, but holy shit, how bad of a look is this just over 3 months from E day?

Wonder if Parscale will start singing to the media now.

Bill Stepien has been announced as the new guy. Name is not familiar, but I'm sure he's as lovely as any other guy who's worked for Trump

I'm sure Parscale has an NDA.

Dola, just saw he was retained as a "senior advisor" so in other words keep him close to keep him quiet.

I can't wait for the fucking train wreck to derail once and for all.

apparently the new guy was an advisor to Chris Christie. Should sit well with Kushner.

Stepien is the asshole that shut down the GW bridge to punish the mayor of Fort Lee.

Not sure I've ever seen a campaign that relies so much on the words of the opponent.

Omg pic.twitter.com/5fOEzQr0WQ

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) July 15, 2020

Lincoln Project out with a quick burn on Parscale. A Picture of him with the caption: Find Something New :)

Ah yes yet another example of "only Hire the best"

Bill Stepien has to be related to Ted Stepien? The guy who was such a shitty owner they named a rule after him?

Cause we all know how beloved Christie was when he left office as Governor of NJ. Let's make one of his people campaign manager!

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Hopefully he's as competent as Ted Stepien was. I know it's easy to pile on the idiot du jour, but is there any reason I should've known who Chuck Woolery is? "Pre Pat Sajak Wheel of Fortune host" is something to lead with at a cocktail party, not sure why he'd be someone we're surprised is an idiot.
I know it makes me seem heartless, but what death numbers are people pointing to that make them feel scared and helpless? There have been 169 in a county of 2 million, 1600 in a state of 10.5 million. This is a bad thing, the trajectory isn't great, we need to/really really should be protecting elderly people, but if myself and 100 of my friends - let alone kids I coach - get it, chances are at most one of us would be hospitalized or in danger of dying.

Shurg, people's MMV, but if my chance of being hospitalized by something is under 1% I'd rather adapt around it instead of hiding and being quarantined.

(I've also had Goya beans like twice for burritos, remember using about 1/3 of the can, thinking they weren't great and deciding to throw the rest out instead of wrapping it up, but still saying hey, I got my money's worth!)

The beans thing is so weird and other countries have to be so confused.

I don't know if the death numbers, per se, should be a driver there.

'cept.

The right is gleefully seizing on the narrative that "oh, we've probably had 4x the number of infections that's actually reported, which means the death totals aren't nearly as bad as the media is making them sound!"

While at the same time ignoring an unusually high spike in "pneumonia" deaths over the last three months, particularly at the start of the pandemic when we weren't testing shit. You don't get to claim underreported infections and handwave away underreported deaths.

We've got 25% of the planet's reported fatalities with 5% of the world's population; we're in the middle of a resurgence in infection rate; some states are seeing their hospital bed capacity zero out again; we've got half the population beating the tribalism drum for 'send the kids back to school,' ignoring that a significant percentage of the nation's teachers are going to falll into one at-risk category or another; it's not so much the death rate *right now* that's scary, it's that the perfect storm is gathering for something that makes the last three months look trivial by comparison.

And this thing is crazy infectious. With it spiraling out of control in Florida and putting serious strains on other population centers such as CA and TX, even if the death rate is low, the pure numbers have the potential to be soberingly high *because* of the infection rate.

Not that 130k reported dead (and, again, that's likely an undercount) isn't a gut punch, but we're one of the few developed countries in the world where the caseload is spiking. That 130k isn't the end, or even the middle. It's the beginning. And with Trump and Republicans pushing for in-person school reopenings, what you're talking about is children taking their natural germ factory status and turning it to 11. We were seeing near 3,000 deaths/day in April with everything shut down.

When the red states insist the kids go back to school and that the economy not shut down a second time? 3k/day is gonna be the floor, not the ceiling.

Not more than usual ;)

So is this Goya beans thing a sign that Trump believes he will not be re-elected, has abandoned any remaining pretence of not being corrupt, and is advertising that he is available, ready & willing to milk as much as he can out the last few months of his presidency?

A lot of people want to do that, but the right doesn't even want to adapt, They want to go on business as usual because adapting is too much work and indicates that King Trump may have been wrong and made some mistakes. We can't get them to even adapt to wear a mask to the grocery store. Can't have that.

Lets also not forget death rate isn't the be all end all. there are a lot of indications pointing to long term health complications. We haven't even scratched the surface. Look at a disease like Lymes and the problems it causes later in life.

I'm old.

Seriously, I don't know anyone outside of my kids who doesn't know who Chuck Woolery is.

Funny enough, I had no clue he hosted Wheel of Fortune. He became famous for Love Connection - hence the "2 and 2" comment I made in another post. "We'll be back in 2 and 2" was his line going to commercial break.

I didn't know the thing about Wheel of Fortune either. I remember him from Scrabble.

SI

First, this is a liberal subset, and liberals tend to feeling scared the way that conservatives tend to feeling oppressed.

But in this instance, I think that there is some there there. The more we learn, the more we see that this virus does not fall into the "you either die or you're fine" group. There seems to be a lot of possible long term damage. See, e.g., COVID-19’s consequences for the heart – Harvard Gazette

The hopelessness comes, I think, from the realization that, as Sack notes, this isn't our peak. As case numbers rise, one of the two major political parties in the country is demanding that we don't continue to balance economics with safety, but that we simply declare ourselves "open" on the assumption that if the virus just watched enough cable news, it would understand that it should stop infecting people.

The President is either posing with cans of beans or actively trying to strip powers from the CDC b/c he wants more control over the numbers being reported.

My analogy: If you have a two-story house with an attached garage, and an outlet shorts out in the garage and starts a small electrical fire, you could say that there's not much to worry about inside the house at that point. But if, in response to the fire, you refuse to move the gas cans out of the way. And refuse to call the fire department. And decide to leave the door between the garage and the house open for "ventilation," and take all the smoke alarms down b/c "if we didn't have so many alarms, we wouldn't have so many fires," and then a bunch of people showed up insisting on their constitutional right to store old dry newspapers in your garage, then you might start to worry.

Not to mention Bishop seems to regularly trivialize the fact that the virus has killed enough people in the U.S. to fill Michigan Stadium and then throw in another small school stadium on top. "I don't mean to sound heartless." Too late buddy.

The other thing that's missing is the acknowledgement that if you and 100 of your friends get it, you (a) might not know it for awhile and (b) might infect people who are at an increased chance of hospitalization or death. I think this is the biggest issue with school openings - you have a lot of older teachers/administrators, not to mention family members, who could be drastically affected even if an 8 year old gets it and recovers quickly.

The theme in all this seems to be "IT'S NOT JUST ABOUT YOU!" which goes not just to wearing a mask but the consequences of being infected.

Knowing they are targeting their ads at an audience of 1. (though many of us appreciate their brilliance) The timing of Parscale being let go, citing disappointment in the Tulsa rally attendance, is suspiciously close to the Lincoln Project ad mocking the large number of empty seats in the arena there.

May be coincidence, but pretty sure the 'ads' are finding their target.

One story claimed Trump saw and was pissed about the Lincoln Project ad on Parscale getting rich off of Trump.