Virus thread, the political one.

[GrantM]

That's just proof that the infections started in the US in 2018, way earlier than we thought.

Also proof that way too many people with strong political opinions couldn't pass a grade 9 social studies class,
and probably would not be able to tell you the difference between quantitative and qualitative data, let alone explain
what is an Ecological fallacy.

The lack of basic critical thinking skills in society is effin' terrifying. Woman mad. Flag good. Obama bad.
At some point, someone is going to come along, tap me on the shoulder and say this was all a performance art piece, right?
This can't be real life.

-g

[j44ke]

In all fairness, I am pretty sure that photo was made not taken.

[bcm119]

so I think the post office should be privatized but this whole raise the price on packaging is a canard. Where is the government study suggesting the UPS has mis-priced the contract. Where is the study that discusses the impact on e-commerce and consumers. No this has nothing to do with any of that. Trump has a vendetta against Bezos and is looking to exact a cost on his self-declared enemies. By the way, I believe Trump has backed away from this position as its been explained if the postal service were to fail now it could be the death knell to the economy.

All for privatizing the postal service. We don't need Saturday delivery. Corporations get subsidized prices to spam the public and cause waste and litter and the services provided are way behind what's available in Europe. In any cases mail could be digitized and sent to us electronically. All for that, but I'm not going to enable a crazy President who is pretending to about fiscal discipline. -Mike G

In addition to what htwoopup said, full privatization would effectively destroy one of the last decent employers in rural areas. The USPS has already contracted mail carriers in many rural areas and the effect has been predictable: once-decent jobs that enabled rural people to live a middle class life have been converted to bid-based gig jobs that pay no benefits and don't provide a vehicle. This would certainly be the model of any fully private version of the USPS.

[j44ke]

In all fairness, I am pretty sure that photo was made not taken.

Yes, not real. Fake photo.

Is This 'Barack + Hussein + Obama = COVID-19' Protest Sign Real?

The amount of fake stuff out there is relentless. This is just the more obvious stuff. Caveat emptor.

[rydesteel]

Yes, not real. Fake photo.

Is This 'Barack + Hussein + Obama = COVID-19' Protest Sign Real?

The amount of fake stuff out there is relentless. This is just the more obvious stuff. Caveat emptor.

I keep recommending the book Mind F**k to my friends on both sides of the fence. It's from one of the founding members of Cambridge Analytica and talks in depth about Facebook, Russian interference, and the 2016 Election. I can't say that I recommend the book itself but I recommend that it get read, it's frightening, kept me up at night,
and it's happening all over again.

[j44ke]

I keep recommending the book Mind F**k to my friends on both sides of the fence. It's from one of the founding members of Cambridge Analytica and talks in depth about Facebook, Russian interference, and the 2016 Election. I can't say that I recommend the book itself but I recommend that it get read, it's frightening, kept me up at night,
and it's happening all over again.

I have enough friends in journalism to know the density is astonishing. And it is directed in every direction. There is no agenda except disorder. And it is very effective.

[Mark Kelly]

Yes, not real. Fake photo.

I apologise for posting it.

It was sent to me by my son, he's usually pretty good at spotting fakes so I didn't think to check.

[Colinmclelland]

Yes, not real. Fake photo.

Is This 'Barack + Hussein + Obama = COVID-19' Protest Sign Real?

The amount of fake stuff out there is relentless. This is just the more obvious stuff. Caveat emptor.

That just leaves me more confused. I assume a bit more thought must have gone in to it if it has been faked.

I have opened my eyes but I just don’t get it.

That said, if I did get it, I think it might cross my mind that it’s possibly a bit self indulgent to think that something that is screwing up the world was purely a US government conspiracy...

[Mark Kelly]

I think the fake is well targeted; there is a tendency on the left to think of the other side as being a bit thick. Witness many of the comments above.

A very useful counter is this paper: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/...nalCode=pcem20, unfortunately I cannot find a full text version online.

[guido]

Opinion | What Will the Coronavirus Do to Our Deficit? - The New York Times

"Almost a decade has passed since I published a column, “Myths of Austerity,” warning that deficit alarmism would delay recovery from the Great Recession — which it did. Unfortunately, that kind of alarmism seems to be making a comeback.

You can see that comeback in the gradually increasing number of news analyses emphasizing how much debt we’ll run up dealing with the Covid-19 crisis. You can also see it in the rhetoric of politicians like Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, who is blocking aid to beleaguered state and local governments because, he says, it would cost too much.

So this seems like a good time to emphasize two key facts. One is economic: While we will run very big budget deficits over the next couple of years, they will do little if any harm. The other is that whatever they may say, very few prominent figures in politics or the media are genuine deficit hawks, who are actually worried about the consequences of rising government debt. What we mainly have, instead, are deficit peacocks and deficit vultures."

[guido]

Trump used latest coronavirus briefing to push a lie about the deficit - Vox


"The president wants you to believe the deficit was falling before the coronavirus hit. In fact, it increased each year of his presidency. Though the proceedings were ostensibly about the coronavirus, President Donald Trump used Monday’s press briefing to push a puzzlingly brazen lie about his stewardship of the federal budget — an example of how consistently he just doesn’t tell the truth.

As part of his argument that he oversaw the development of the greatest economy in world history prior to the coronavirus reaching US shores and wrecking things, Trump claimed that “if you look, prior to this virus, the deficit was coming down under my administration.” He said this was due to him putting “massive tariffs on China” — tariffs that resulted in America “taking in tens of billions of dollars” from the country he’s now trying to blame for the pandemic.

Trump has a long history of telling lies about everything from Obama’s birth certificate to wind turbines causing cancer. But this particular claim about the national deficit still stands out as whopper, even by his impressive standards.

Not only was the deficit not going down pre-coronavirus, but the Congressional Budget Office announced about a week after the first coronavirus case was reported in the country that the deficit would top $1 trillion this year — a feat that has only been previously accomplished in the darkest throes of the Great Recession."

[j44ke]

That just leaves me more confused. I assume a bit more thought must have gone in to it if it has been faked.

I have opened my eyes but I just don’t get it.

That said, if I did get it, I think it might cross my mind that it’s possibly a bit self indulgent to think that something that is screwing up the world was purely a US government conspiracy...

I don’t think the US Government needs to have a conspiracy any longer. They just surf whatever comes out of the fire hose, same as any other first world democracy. They are all so far behind on regulating disinformation through social media, they’ll never catch up. Better just to capitalize on the power of the miasma.

Turn off Facebook, Twitter and the rest of that stuff. Just keep up with VSalon. And look at this spinning pocket watch. You are getting sleepy...

[Saab2000]

Turn off Facebook, Twitter and the rest of that stuff. Just keep up with VSalon. And look at this spinning pocket watch. You are getting sleepy...

I used to be a big FB user and had accounts on Twitter and one other one (Linkedin, though that's obviously slightly different) and deleted them all. I went through all my activities on FB and deleted everything over a few months. I know it's not really "gone" but I think it'd be hard to find for anyone outside FB. Then I closed and deleted my account. I'm sure it's not gone either but it can't be found and I had it pretty locked down anyway.

The point is that I'm really glad I'm off of FB. I got a sick feeling about it back in about 2015 and the election of 2016 validated my thinking when the news feed was full of just bizarre stories and "friends" would eat it up, both left and right.

My thinking is much clearer now that it is gone and I rarely think of returning to it. It is kind of like junk food for the mind, easy to consume and not good for us. I feel the same way about the cable TV "News" channels - junk food for the mind.

[ides1056]

re: efficiency of USPS

I understood that KBR took over the commissary during the Iraq war and costs increased fourfold.

re: states declaring bankruptcy

McConnell is using this trope to unravel Social Security.

[thollandpe]

There are enough real signs from the reopen protests to go around.



A $45,000 car with a "Keep Kids Safe" vanity plate. Nathan Hale would be so proud.

Hundreds parade through Hartford to protest Gov. Ned Lamont's coronavirus stay-at-home orders, business closures

[j44ke]

I apologise for posting it.

It was sent to me by my son, he's usually pretty good at spotting fakes so I didn't think to check.

When we lived in Prague, I'd warn our visitors about pickpockets. And yet, several people who came to visit got pickpocketed, including me. The pickpockets you could spot were no good. It's the ones you can't spot - those are the pros.

As mentioned above, these are the books to read.

https://www.amazon.com/Mindf-Cambrid...s%2C170&sr=8-1

https://www.amazon.com/Targeted-Camb...s%2C170&sr=8-2

[guido]

Trump’s Response to Virus Reflects a Long Disregard for Science - The New York Times

"The president’s Covid-19 response has extended the administration’s longstanding practice of undermining scientific expertise for political purposes.

WASHINGTON — At a March visit with doctors and researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the public health agency at the heart of the fight against the coronavirus, President Trump spoke words of praise for the scientific acumen in the building — particularly his own.

“Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability,” Mr. Trump said.

It was a striking boast, even amid a grave health crisis in which Mr. Trump has repeatedly contradicted medical experts in favor of his own judgment. But a disregard for scientific advice has been a defining characteristic of Mr. Trump’s administration.

As the nation confronts one of its worst public health disasters in generations, a moment that demands a leader willing to marshal the full might of the American scientific establishment, the White House is occupied by a president whose administration, critics say, has diminished the conclusions of scientists in formulating policy, who personally harbors a suspicion of expert knowledge, and who often puts his political instincts ahead of the facts.

“Donald Trump is the most anti-science and anti-environment president we’ve ever had,” said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University. The president’s actions, he said, have eroded one of the United States’s most enviable assets: the government’s deep scientific expertise, built over decades. “It’s extraordinarily crazy and reckless,” he said.

Judd Deere, a White House spokesman, said in a statement that Mr. Trump’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak “has put the full power of the federal government to work to slow the spread, save lives, and place this great country on a data-driven path to opening up again.”

Well before winning the presidency, Mr. Trump had publicly questioned science by expressing skepticism about vaccines and suggesting climate change was a hoax fabricated by China.

Once in office, Mr. Trump’s administration quickly began work on one of its most far-reaching policies — the systematic downplaying or ignoring of science in order to weaken environmental health and global warming regulations. Automakers, farmers and others had sought regulatory relief, saying that more flexible rules would still ensure progress on environmental protection while avoiding bureaucratic mandates. However, in implementing the rollbacks, the administration has marginalized key scientists, disbanded expert advisory boards and suppressed or altered findings that make clear the dangers of pollution and global warming."

[WFSTEKL]

Evidently, Trump is putting pressure on school systems to open. His interpretation of the science tells him that children are immune to the disease. Let's suspend our ability to reason for a moment, and agree with this assumption. Can we also assume that it will be the children who will be driving the buses, answering the phones, dolloping heaps of mashed potatoes onto plates in the cafeteria, and teaching the class?

[GrantM]

Yes, not real. Fake photo.

Is This 'Barack + Hussein + Obama = COVID-19' Protest Sign Real?

The amount of fake stuff out there is relentless. This is just the more obvious stuff. Caveat emptor.

The real version of the protest sign is even more terrifying.

-g

[Matthew Strongin]

The real version of the protest sign is even more terrifying.

-g

In this particular pandemic, she can have both Liberty and Death. Two for one deal.