The Florida governor today said that FL is, "God's waiting room," because of all of the nursing homes.

I've heard of people being fired from their jobs for saying that out loud as being incredibly rude and unthinking.

My answer is neither. There's a disagreement on how to handle the pandemic. Different states have different demographics, casualties, ideologies, and so on and are handling it differently. I mean, the Iowa governor saying something seriously means nothing by itself in terms of how the nation is feeling. Poll just within the last couple days in Texas - not New York, California, Mass, etc. - has 77% favoring the stay-at-home continuing even with hundreds of thousands unemployed.

Some are freaking out, but an overwhelming majority are saying 'this is the right path, let's keep doing it'.

Of course, despite that 77%, we're opening up the state on Friday.

SI

Thats the real problem here, the minority of the country holds a lot of powerful positions and is fucking the country over for their own benefit or in support of some sort of "anti-blue" battle cry.

its pathetic.

Many of us here suspected that when Justin Amash started getting all anti-Trump and left the Republican party he was trying out a run for President-looks like we were right:

Amash for America

Amash was anti-Trump long before he left the Republican party. He's just a conservative who stayed that way.

Or they just disagree with the current approach to the pandemic. There's a number of people I know personally who are typical apolitical but very upset about the shutdowns. Not to mention that the Republican party is hardly a minority in places like Iowa and Texas.

Not everything is some grand conspiracy. Sometimes well-meaning people simply disagree.

Great. *sigh*

It is always humorous to see how many politicians look at the world's problems, give them very serious thought, and decide that the most efficient and logical solution is "become President."

So what does an Amash run do? Pull enough republican votes to give Biden Michigan or pull independent votes and give it to Trump?

I'll give it some time, but I'm a motivated voter in a non-swing-state. I would be very open here to working out a deal to vote for Amash with my inconsequential ballot, in exchange for a swing state FOFCer who might do so otherwise agreeing to vote for the most viable non-Trump candidate.

If the idea is to help promote a viable libertarian party, without messing up this particular general election, I am totally down for that. I'm not wild about Amash top to bottom, but he's on a hot streak of being right when the chips were down, and if that can transfer to the LP, I'm game.

Not as catchy as "Nader Traders" - maybe we need a snappy hashtag. "Amash Wash" is a low bar to clear.

If he got the Libertarian nomination (and like Molson alluded to a few days ago he would still have to beat out Vermin Supreme :) ) he would as far as I know at least have "Not accused of rape" as a selling point that the two major party candidates don't have.

Yeah my plan for about the past 2-3 years has been to vote whoever the Democrats throw out but absent some sort of Kevin Costner movie scenario my vote might be better to Amash. My thing has always been about getting them in the debates anyways the pipe dream of them actually winning seems fairly unlikely.

The Justin's Credibles.

Am I correct in my recollection that to get federal money in the next election, a party has to do better than X% of the vote in this election?

5%, though the Libertarians taking federal funds would have a hint of irony.

Then isn't the long-game play for a 3rd party to go into an election openly shooting for that?

Say "Hey, if you are in a swing state, vote for whichever of the 2 major candidates you hate the least."

Then go to non-swing state areas with big populations (D.C., Maryland, Massachusetts, Illinois, Texas, NY, California) and run an explicit "Hey, your vote won't count if you vote for one of the two major candidates, but if you do want your vote to count, vote for me and help us get above 5%. Then, next election, we will have the funds to start building something).

As they would tell you, they pay their taxes so why shouldn't they get their share of government waste?

Kushner might as well have been standing in front of a Mission Accomplished banner.


and more

So much winning:

Kevin Hassett: Unemployment could hit 20% by June

Did I miss the oath of enlistment/commission that the meat plant workers took in service to the country?

It's probably somewhere in the Constitution. Right to have plentiful meat available.

Really, nothing matters:

It meant that the rally round the flag that governors and other foreign leaders got for huge boosts is good for about 3 points for him. When every play is to please your base, 42 up, 53 down is where you always are.

I kept thinking that Trump's best play would have been to actually be competent.

But he's better at politics than I am. He realized that he just needed to stand up and decree himself competent, and he could keep that 42% he needs to win the EC

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

"According to the poll, Biden beat Trump by 12 percentage points head-to-head, but when Amash was added to the field, his lead dropped to 6 percentage points."https://t.co/6zDvN7JWy1

Third-party candidates help Trump. Sadly, they just do. https://t.co/x222fdsLS3

— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) April 29, 2020

This is probably the depression talking (been a rough few days), but I'm looking to November with dread.

If Trump wins, we might as well start preparing for the USA to break up into smaller regional blocs. (which I'm sure would be fine with Putin and China). We're getting to the point that our system can't take another four years of this.

Part of it is I don't trust Trump (well, on anything), but specifically on how to build a stable pattern of growth at the end of the pandemic. It seems more and more we're getting into a hyper late-stage capitalist breakdown where all that matter's is the Stock Market average. Not the general quality of life among Americans. Not for wealth inequality. Not for people to have to choose between working in an unsafe environment (where steps COULD be taken to improve the environment) and losing all benefits and ability to survive.

Throughout the last few decades, we've been told "The Free Market will fix this (for example, the unsafe working environments). People will go out of business, but people will rise up and take their place.". Here's the thing. The Free Market doesn't fix this. Why? Because when the "Free Market"decides something should go out of business, our politicians (mainly R's, but a lot of D's too) decide that having the Free Market fix it would be too dangerous so they step in.

Or, to put it in a pithy way.. "We socialism the losses away, but we capitalism the profits".

Get your official White House Corona Virus Commenerative Coins today while sale prices last!

https://www.whitehousegiftshop.com/p...vid-heroes.htm

While the use of past tense just makes me angry as hell, the one on the left is just an Extension of those bloody cheesy "america is so awesome, that is why we fight so well and would you look at that navy ship, isn't it glorious ?" videos they publish, but the Task Force one :lol:

I mean, according to Trump this is his war. It's just, ya know, you usually commemorate something after it's well behind us. Not in the middle of something that's already killed at least 50,000.

But this all makes sense as a political move.

The story now is that this is over and we won and it was because Trump was such a good leader.

And if that is your story, then you just keep telling it over and over until the media starts repeating it.

And if you can make a few bucks selling coins on the side? Why not?

I'm very curious where the White House gift shop money goes.

FYI, that huckster website is not affiliated with the hucksters in the actual White House. They just got a clever url and fool gullible people.

I missed that.

Makes my comment above not quite relevant.

Thanks for the catch.

WTF Is The White House Gift Shop? A TPM Special Report | Talking Points Memo


I love the USA.gov logo at the bottom of the website to make it look authentic. And looking at the differences in the gift pages for Trump vs Obama is interesting. A Melania Trump bobblehead?

The guy behind that is making a killing. These things cost at most a couple bucks to make each.

Also guessing all these "signed items" are forgeries.

WTF, wow

Is Amash officially in the Libertarian Party now? He would be the first I believe ever in Congress.

Listening to his interview, it's clear what path he is going to take. Basically shredded the latest bills as a massive giveaway to big businesses by both the Democrats and Republicans.

No chance he is competitive but I can see him pulling a few percent. Especially if the economy is still in the crapper and all the public has seen is a $1200 check while big businesses are rolling in cash.

Modern day Tesla

Based on current trends, probably close to zero new cases in US too by end of April

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 19, 2020

Trump keeps saying the virus is going away.

Clap hard enough and Tinkerbell won't die.

A lot of you guys are smarter than me. So, tell me if I am right or wrong here.

We have 4 times as many people with this virus than any other country. That seems like a lot to me. If we had reacted to the warning signs sooner, things would be much better.

So, I can only think that our government failed us. Had Trump taken this more seriously in the Jan/Feb, I won't think we would be in this boat.

I believe I would feel the same way if the situation was the same and Hilary was POTUS.

I also believe if anyone else was POTUS, it wouldn't be this bad.

How can any sane person think he should be POTUS for 4 more years? It puzzles the hell out of me.

Since you seem to be genuinely searching for a response...


I think this is the weak link in your train of thought, as far as the answer to your question. See, you have Trump Derangement Syndrome, and you see everything he does as wrong and evil, because (I presume) the lamestream media has poisoned your mind, or because you attended college classes or... well, something akin to that.

Once you understand that, the entire chain of logic falls apart, and your opinion may be jettisoned without any further thought.

And it's how we went from "death panels" to "how much longer do you expect to live anyway?" in 12 years.

We don't know this. We might have 30x as many as any other country. There also might be 10 countries with more than we do. The state of testing here and worldwide does not allow for any confidence in the current amount of confirmed cases being remotely accurate.


I agree with this, but it's on the states as well as Trump (though somewhat more on him). Our response has been all over the map.


Nah. Look at what's happened in Spain, the UK, Italy, etc. Maybe others would have done better, but I think it's easy to second-guess what we should have done (decades ago frankly). 90% + of the whole world was unprepared, and that's true of nations of every imaginable ideological bent.

In terms of the wanting Trump to stick around thing - as I've said before, there are a number of normally apolitical people I know who are really, really upset about the shutdowns. And not just because of how it affects them, they think it's fundamentally immoral and unAmerican to forcibly put people out of work, take away their rights to manage their own risks, etc. I'm not with them at all as I've said, and the polls have shown most people think these actions are necessary - but those who don't aren't just a little ticked off, they're freaking furious. Then there's a whole other group of people who care about nothing but the economy and (wrongly) think Trump is responsible for it being relatively good up till now. And then there's other classes of people who think Trump's better on their issues …

like most things, it's a lot more complicated that 'Trump screwed up the virus response' - even though he most definitely did

There is a bogus coin site that operates under a really similar name to the US Mint as well that I have been nearly tricked by due to his site set-up, location after a google search etc.

There was a period of time between late Jan (or Feb 2 or 3 when NYT and WP said it was going to be a pandemic, essentially MSM warning the country) through 3rd week in March (soon after his Wed "I can't read speech") where I think he really failed.

During that 4-5-6 week period, he could have mobilized the "troops" better and been more empathetic, prepared the country. Instead he was denying and adding to the confusion.

The big miss to me was the lack of testing kits. The story is somehow CDC messed it up but I haven't really read what happen, who is accountable, and (most importantly) could Trump have made a difference if he had really taken it seriously.

He does get blame. He doesn't get all the blame.

On the off chance you wanted to be even more confused.

Trump perceived as abnormally sadistic and narcissistic by both conservatives and liberals, study finds

"He's hurting the people who deserve to be hurt"

A Trump voter hurt by the shutdown’s incredibly revealing quote - Vox

Yeah, the sadism is what they like.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...-point/572104/