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  1. #14761

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    Quote Originally Posted by SquirrelMan View Post
    Still, one has te be proud of all those moderate Republicans who do not break with their party, because they want to work from the inside to turn it from a general death cult back to a party that mostly kills women and minorities.
    So proud of them. A reminder from yesterday's profile that Art Jones, an actual Neo-Nazi, got 26% of the vote in the 2018 elections on the Republican ticket.
    About 29% of the population is registered Republican, so only one in ten Republicans are willing to vote for a Democrat over a Nazi.

    Hypocritical death cult is accurate..
    X-Books Forum Mutant Tracker/FAQ- Updated every Tuesday.

  2. #14762
    Ultimate Member Mister Mets's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by PwrdOn View Post
    Yeah it was definitely me advocating for genocide in order to contain the virus and not, you know, just pointing out the hypocrisy of you trying to act like enforcing a quarantine for public health purposes would lead to some outrageous human rights violation, when far worse violations are happening all the time already and people like you don't see seem to be much bothered by it.
    If there's anything I've said about police shootings that you disagree with, by all means, point it out. You could use the search function to see what I've said on various topics in all the political boards.

    But your comment really has nothing to do with the policy question of how the United States government could contain our people. Are there ways to do that without the use of force?

    Quote Originally Posted by TheDarman View Post
    As of right now, The Hill’s report on the allegation mention that they haven’t “independently verified” the accusation. Unlike Ford, Reade hasn’t taken a polygraph either. I’m wondering if other news organizations are being more cautious and trying to independently verify the story before they run it.

    That being said, Sanders hasn’t lost. He just isn’t competitive with Biden anymore (barring the race being completely reoriented by the allegations by Reade). No candidate that has been down 300+ regular delegates WITH half the states still to vote has ever come from behind to win the nomination. Given that you still have delegates awarded by the share of the vote in each state, it’s really difficult to make that up with wins even like those Sanders got in Vermont.

    Frankly, the best chance for Sanders is if this whole thing blows up, people recognize it is likely that Reade’s story is accurate, and Biden drops out of the race. Barring that, I just don’t see how Sanders cleans up enough in the last 22 states to make a difference.
    I have no problem with anyone measuring anything I've said about Kavanaugh or anyone accused of sexual assault against my views on the right thing to do with Biden. This is one allegation that doesn't match up to the claims of the behavior of someone who has been a public figure for more than fifty years, and it seems to come from a political opponent (albeit within the party) with strange allies.

    However, there should be consistency or growth in views of his supporters. Biden should be held to the same standard to which one would hold a Republican at a politically sensitive time, or if the allegation against Biden makes anyone reconsider anything they've said before, they should be honest about it.

    With the Ford story, there was very little documentation about who administered the polygraph. And the emphasis on the polygraph provides intellectual cover for junk science. Most psychologists agree that they don't work.
    https://www.apa.org/research/action/polygraph

    There are some differences between Ford and Reade that make Reade look better. She is accusing of Biden of wrongdoing when he was an adult in a position of power. She knows where and when the alleged assault occurred.

    If Biden had to drop out, over this or anything else, there's going to be a messy question over whether Sanders should benefit. The voting in the primaries has demonstrated a strong preference for moderates, so why should Sanders be the second choice over someone who has backed Biden, like Klobuchar or Cuomo? The flipside is that very few people voted based on ideology, and it wouldn't be clear that a replacement has passed the tests that voters insist on.
    Sincerely,
    Thomas Mets

  3. #14763
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mister Mets View Post
    If there's anything I've said about police shootings that you disagree with, by all means, point it out. You could use the search function to see what I've said on various topics in all the political boards.

    But your comment really has nothing to do with the policy question of how the United States government could contain our people. Are there ways to do that without the use of force?.
    That's not like some ethical dilemma here, set strict guidelines for who is allowed to go outside and when they are allowed to be out, and arrest those that violate the order. If people are so hellbent on defying curfew orders that they start attacking the police because of it, you do what's necessary to subdue them. Deadly force is the last resort of course, but I don't think anyone would raise much of a fuss if someone was killed while both breaking the law AND attacking a police officer.

  4. #14764
    Astonishing Member jetengine's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by PwrdOn View Post
    e, but I don't think anyone would raise much of a fuss if someone was killed while both breaking the law AND attacking a police officer.
    Your being sarcastic right ?

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    Quote Originally Posted by jetengine View Post
    Your being sarcastic right ?
    Oh I’m sure some of those freeman on the land types would get mad, like they did when the guy was killed during that Bundy siege, but we shouldn’t take them seriously.

    I am sure some cops will use the quarantine as an excuse to be even more oppressive towards minorities than usual, but weighing that against the risk of spreading the virus I think we’d have to swallow that pill for the time being.

  6. #14766
    Astonishing Member jetengine's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by PwrdOn View Post
    Oh I’m sure some of those freeman on the land types would get mad, like they did when the guy was killed during that Bundy siege, but we shouldn’t take them seriously.

    I am sure some cops will use the quarantine as an excuse to be even more oppressive towards minorities than usual, but weighing that against the risk of spreading the virus I think we’d have to swallow that pill for the time being.
    You literally have no idea about human psychology or history then. Cause Rodney King ? Yeah he tried to assault police and got his ass kicked as a result, riots ensued. Michael Brown stole **** and (potentially ???) tried to assault police and was killed for it. Violent protests ensued.

    As soon as someone gets killed all hell will break loose

  7. #14767
    Uncanny Member XPac's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by PwrdOn View Post
    That's not like some ethical dilemma here, set strict guidelines for who is allowed to go outside and when they are allowed to be out, and arrest those that violate the order. If people are so hellbent on defying curfew orders that they start attacking the police because of it, you do what's necessary to subdue them. Deadly force is the last resort of course, but I don't think anyone would raise much of a fuss if someone was killed while both breaking the law AND attacking a police officer.
    In many instances I do actually imagine there will be a fuss. Whether that fuss has any legitimate substance or not I suppose will have to be taken on a case by case basis.

    But in the least yeah... if one does attack a police officer one should not expect it to end well for the guy attacking the police officer.

  8. #14768
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    Quote Originally Posted by jetengine View Post
    You literally have no idea about human psychology or history then. Cause Rodney King ? Yeah he tried to assault police and got his ass kicked as a result, riots ensued. Michael Brown stole **** and (potentially ???) tried to assault police and was killed for it. Violent protests ensued.

    As soon as someone gets killed all hell will break loose
    Yeah but it’s one thing to be retaliate against police brutality, it’s quite another to go waving around your AR-15 proclaiming no gubmint goon is gonna stop you from going wherever you please, which is what Mets was insinuating and what I was addressing. If people start rioting over the quarantine order then they only have themselves to blame if they get infected.

  9. #14769
    Fantastic Member MacrossPlus's Avatar
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  10. #14770
    Invincible Jersey Ninja Tami's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by MacrossPlus View Post
    We are in the middle of a Pandemic, no one can muster enthusiasm for anyone or anything right now.
    Original join date: 11/23/2004
    Eclectic Connoisseur of all things written, drawn, or imaginatively created.

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    Quote Originally Posted by MacrossPlus View Post
    It should surprise nobody even Biden’s mist stringent supporters. Early on in this race it was clear his voters were a coalition of people who were more interested in getting away from Trump and something more normal than actual enthusiasm for the man himself. That’s fine if it translates to a win. I’m just not sure enough of the people that swing general elections for Democrats are amongst that group. It looks more and more like this will be a down to the wire election.

    Also Tami has it right about the pandemic. Not a single average American is thinking about 2020 right now. Trump might continue to be a **** show and by November people could be rioting for Biden. This is a volatile time

  12. #14772
    Ultimate Member Mister Mets's Avatar
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    The Guardian and the New York Times both look at why the US is so late on testing. Both pieces are rather informative.

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...ealth-disaster

    The controversial China travel ban bought the US time, but no one used it.

    Jeremy Konyndyk, who led the US government’s response to international disasters at USAid from 2013 to 2017, frames the past six weeks in strikingly similar terms. He told the Guardian: “We are witnessing in the United States one of the greatest failures of basic governance and basic leadership in modern times.”

    In Konyndyk’s analysis, the White House had all the information it needed by the end of January to act decisively. Instead, Trump repeatedly played down the severity of the threat, blaming China for what he called the “Chinese virus” and insisting falsely that his partial travel bans on China and Europe were all it would take to contain the crisis.

    If Trump’s travel ban did nothing else, it staved off to some degree the advent of the virus in the US, buying a little time. Which makes the lack of decisive action all the more curious.

    “We didn’t use that time optimally, especially in the case of testing,” said William Schaffner, an infectious diseases specialist at Vanderbilt University medical center. “We have been playing reluctant catch-up throughout.”

    As Schaffner sees it, the stuttering provision of mass testing “put us behind the eight-ball” right at the start. “It did not permit us, and still doesn’t permit us, to define the extent of the virus in this country.”
    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/28/u...-pandemic.html

    The CDC was slow to fix errors in the US test, or to conduct community-based surveillance.

    Dr. Robert R. Redfield, 68, a former military doctor and prominent AIDS researcher who directs the C.D.C., trusted his veteran scientists to create the world’s most precise test for the coronavirus and share it with state laboratories. When flaws in the test became apparent in February, he promised a quick fix, though it took weeks to settle on a solution.

    The C.D.C. also tightly restricted who could get tested and was slow to conduct “community-based surveillance,” a standard screening practice to detect the virus’s reach. Had the United States been able to track its earliest movements and identify hidden hot spots, local quarantines might have confined the disease.

    Dr. Stephen Hahn, 60, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, enforced regulations that paradoxically made it tougher for hospitals, private clinics and companies to deploy diagnostic tests in an emergency. Other countries that had mobilized businesses were performing tens of thousands of tests daily, compared with fewer than 100 on average in the United States, frustrating local health officials, lawmakers and desperate Americans.
    Information from China was limited. The CDC rejected a WHO test in favor of their own test, which should have been more precise, but was often inaccurate.

    Assessing the virus would prove challenging. It was so new that scientists had little information to work with. China provided limited data, and rebuffed an early attempt by Mr. Azar and Dr. Redfield to send C.D.C. experts there to learn more. That the virus could cause no symptoms and still spread — something not initially known — made it all the more difficult to understand.

    To identify the virus, the C.D.C. test used three small genetic sequences to match up with portions of a virus’s genome extracted from a swab. A German-developed test that the W.H.O. was distributing to other countries used just two, potentially making it less precise.

    But soon after the F.D.A. cleared the C.D.C. to share its test kits with state health department labs, some discovered a problem. The third sequence, or “probe,” gave inconclusive results. While the C.D.C. explored the cause — contamination or a design issue — it told those state labs to stop testing.

    The startling setback stalled the C.D.C.’s efforts to track the virus when it mattered most. By mid-February, the nation was testing only about 100 samples per day, according to the C.D.C.’s website.

    Dr. Redfield played down the problem in task force meetings and conversations with Mr. Azar, assuring him it would be fixed quickly, several administration officials said.
    The WHO test would have faced bureaucratic hurdles from the American regulatory process.

    The C.D.C. gave little thought to adopting the test being used by the W.H.O. The C.D.C.’s test was working in its own lab — still processing samples from states — which gave agency officials confidence. Dr. Anne Schuchat, the agency’s principal deputy director, would later say that the C.D.C. did not think “we needed somebody else’s test.”

    And the German-designed W.H.O. test had not been through the American regulatory approval process, which would take time.
    The FDA Commissioner was new on the job. The methods for approving medical screening were cumbersome. An Emergency declaration by the HHS chairman had some benefits, but also created a new burden by requiring hospitals to make emergency use declarations.

    Dr. Stephen Hahn’s first day as F.D.A. commissioner came just six weeks before Mr. Azar declared a public health emergency on Jan. 31. A radiation oncologist and researcher who helped turn around MD Anderson in Houston, one of the nation’s leading cancer centers, Dr. Hahn had come to Washington to oversee a sprawling federal agency that regulates everything from lifesaving therapies to dog food.

    But overnight, his mission — to manage 15,000 employees in a culture defined by precision and caution — was upended. A pathogen that Mr. Trump would later call the “invisible enemy” was hurtling toward the United States. It would fall to the newly arrived Dr. Hahn to help build a huge national capacity for testing by academic and private labs.

    Instead, under his leadership, the F.D.A. became a significant roadblock, according to current and former officials as well as researchers and doctors at laboratories around the country.

    Private-sector tests were supposed to be the next tier after the C.D.C. fulfilled its obligation to jump-start screening at public labs. In other countries hit hard by the coronavirus, governments acted quickly to speed tests to their populations. In South Korea, for example, regulators in early February summoned executives from 20 medical manufacturers, easing rules as they demanded tests.

    But Dr. Hahn took a cautious approach. He was not proactive in reaching out to manufacturers, and instead deferred to his scientists, following the F.D.A.’s often cumbersome methods for approving medical screening.

    Even the nation’s public health labs were looking for the F.D.A.’s help. “We are now many weeks into the response with still no diagnostic or surveillance test available outside of C.D.C. for the vast majority of our member laboratories,” Scott Becker, chief executive of the Association of Public Health Laboratories, wrote to Mr. Hahn in late February. “We believe a more expeditious route is needed at this time.”

    Ironically, it was Mr. Azar’s emergency declaration that established the rules Dr. Hahn insisted on following. Designed to make it easier for drugmakers to pursue vaccines and other therapies during a crisis, such a declaration lets the F.D.A. speed approvals that could otherwise take a year or more.

    But the emergency announcement created a new barrier for hospitals and laboratories that wanted to create their own tests to diagnose the coronavirus. Usually, they faced minimal federal regulation. But once Mr. Azar took action, they were subject to an F.D.A. process called an “emergency use authorization.”

    Even though researchers around the country quickly began creating tests that could diagnose Covid-19, many said they were hindered by the F.D.A.’s approval process. The new tests sat unused at labs around the country.
    Sincerely,
    Thomas Mets

  13. #14773
    Invincible Member numberthirty's Avatar
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    MSNBC just made sure to cut Cuomo off when he was breaking down the issues with the package Schumer/Washington passed.

  14. #14774
    Mighty Member TheDarman's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mister Mets View Post
    I have no problem with anyone measuring anything I've said about Kavanaugh or anyone accused of sexual assault against my views on the right thing to do with Biden. This is one allegation that doesn't match up to the claims of the behavior of someone who has been a public figure for more than fifty years, and it seems to come from a political opponent (albeit within the party) with strange allies.

    However, there should be consistency or growth in views of his supporters. Biden should be held to the same standard to which one would hold a Republican at a politically sensitive time, or if the allegation against Biden makes anyone reconsider anything they've said before, they should be honest about it.
    Honestly, the turning point for me was my belief of Amber Heard falling apart. I was hurt by blindly believing the situation and ignoring the evidence to the contrary of what she was saying. When Depp released clear evidence that their relationship just was toxic and they both had a history of violence with one another (with her being the aggressor, it seems, most often), I couldn’t believe that I’d let myself fall into this trap.

    That being said, I still think that these accusations are serious and warrant sincere efforts to investigate them. While it does seem inconsistent for Biden, we’ve seen these kinds of things be revealed before about people we would’ve trusted. Just like with Kavanaugh, I think that these should be thoroughly investigated completely. Hopefully, it demonstrates a truthfulness in Biden’s account, but I’m preparing for the possibility that real investigations discover the opposite.

    With the Ford story, there was very little documentation about who administered the polygraph. And the emphasis on the polygraph provides intellectual cover for junk science. Most psychologists agree that they don't work.
    https://www.apa.org/research/action/polygraph
    I understand that they aren’t full-proof. I merely meant to communicate that it did lend to her credibility that she could point out that she was able to pass such a test. Someone who has a SAG membership being on camera and acting believable about a set of allegations, meanwhile, I think means a little less than that.

    There are some differences between Ford and Reade that make Reade look better. She is accusing of Biden of wrongdoing when he was an adult in a position of power. She knows where and when the alleged assault occurred.
    I’m fairly certain that we were able to establish that the assault would’ve taken place on a particular day on Kavanaugh’s “evidence” calendar that had him at a party that Ford says she was at. But, regardless, Kavanaugh’s accusations (plural) all came from when he was a High School and/or College Student. This is also true, but I don’t think that means that Kavanaugh should’ve been rewarded with a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court given that behavior. But, frankly, his reaction to the news is what I find plainly to be more disturbing than the news itself.

    Kavanaugh had multiple accusers during this time. I think that there was one account that seemed to be debunked quite obviously out of the four, if I recall correctly. Biden just has Tara Reade. I think there is strength in numbers in establishing a pattern of behavior. A person who is willing to use his power in the way Biden did, while he is married and has children of his own, would likely have attempted to do what he did to Reade multiple times. The alleged serial nature of Kavanaugh’s behavior lends credibility to the accusations in a way that I don’t think has happened to Biden yet. Should he get multiple accusations of the same behavior from other sources, it’ll be at that time that I would likely re-evaluate my “reasonable doubt” position, even barring other evidence from Reade coming or not.

    But, truly, I was profoundly disturbed that Kavanaugh didn’t want an investigation and would actively side-step the question. Biden has stated that he would like a thorough investigation of these charges because, he states, they are false. The fact that Kavanaugh was trying to prove his innocence by NOT asking for an investigation gives me pause. Then came his furious bluster that reeked of pure partisanship after Ford’s testimony. That, in and of itself, was unbecoming of a Justice. While I think people wrongfully accused probably do feel some sort of anger about it, I think that it is inappropriate for a Supreme Court nominee to conduct himself that way, especially when the only consequence of not getting the spot is maintaining a Federal Judgeship. These things, I felt, added more credibility to these allegations than any one of his accusers did. Should Biden react the same way, I will also end up re-evaluating my position.

    As of yet, though, little has happened and it hasn’t gotten to the level Kavanaugh’s accusations have. They haven’t been independently verified and I’m guessing that is what the New York Times and Washington Post are waiting for anyway.

    Admittedly, though, this was stuff that I stand by that transpired later in the process. My mind had been made up earlier than this and I think that was perhaps inappropriate. It wasn’t Biden’s accusation that changed my tune though. It was the Heard/Depp stuff. It became clear to me that it was ultimately harmful to real survivors to believe all women, in spite of the evidence to the contrary, because it would hurt my credibility on the issue. When I said that I believed the next accuser wholeheartedly, my stamp would mean nothing. I’ve learned to be more cautious about this. That being said, my profound disturbance with Kavanaugh’s later behavior remains the same.
    With Great Power, Comes Great Responsibility

    Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

  15. #14775
    Invincible Member numberthirty's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by MacrossPlus View Post
    The poll is from today, and Biden just had a week with a few stumbles in it.

    Not much of a shocker.

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