All purpose news and politics thread part v: The quickening

[Jackalope89]

Do they not have an online delivery service ?

No Target where I live, but the Wal-Mart here, has a pick-up thing where you can pre-order your items and pay for them online and then pick them up. But no delivery. The Safeway though, has a thing called Insta-Cart which does deliver (for a fee, of course).

[Tami]

Maxine Waters says on the floor that her sister is dying of coronavirus in a hospital in St Louis, Mo.

Twitter Link

[Tami]

Special Report: Former Labradoodle breeder was tapped to lead U.S. pandemic task force

Shortly after his televised comments, Azar tapped a trusted aide with minimal public health experience to lead the agency’s day-to-day response to COVID-19. The aide, Brian Harrison, had joined the department after running a dog-breeding business for six years. Five sources say some officials in the White House derisively called him “the dog breeder.”

[JCAll]

Special Report: Former Labradoodle breeder was tapped to lead U.S. pandemic task force

Talk about screwing the pooch /predictablejoke

[InformationGeek]

HEY WBE! Got someone for you. Not a Republican or Democrat, but maybe you can squeeze him in for April Fool's Day anyways. This guy is special.

Meet Steve Cox, running for California District 39 as an Independent. His website doesn't really seem to indicate anything particularly off... but that's when you go to his Twitter account find this.


Took pictures for future reference:

Steven Cox 01.jpg

Steven Cox 02.jpg

Steven Cox 03.jpg

What the f**k are you doing!?

[SUPERECWFAN1]

Well Trump has now moved from blaming WHO to now backing the Wuhan lab conspiracy and blaming Barack Obama's administration for money going to the lab it appears. Cause again ...this man can't accept blame.

[jetengine]

Well Trump has now moved from blaming WHO to now backing the Wuhan lab conspiracy and blaming Barack Obama's administration for money going to the lab it appears. Cause again ...this man can't accept blame.

Remember though, as President he has total authority or some shit

[Mister Mets]

Of course you weren't -- even though it does fall firmly under the "distasteful" label that you mentioned in terms of behavior.

Because that would mean holding Republicans accountable for said distasteful behavior.

Far easier to just keep claiming it's "ad hominem" even when that's not the case.

In your own words you are arguing that it's a fair "tradeoff" when Republicans actively seek to disenfranchise black voters.

You've talked around the subject and mentioned "voter IDs" as if that's the only way you party attempts to do so.

In reality you know the uncomfortable truth about your party's bigotry and you'd prefer to talk around it than to address it directly.

Even with someone like Trump at the head of your party, revealing said truth for all the world to see.

Your comments are ad-hominem. I said something, and your argument is about me, rather than the position.

I know you don't like Republicans. I don't know what you think about whether people will sometimes need to consider policy options that are distasteful and unpleasant, which was the earlier statement. Were you responding to a point you fundamentally agree with with an ad hominem, or were you responding to a point you disagree with?

If you want to embrace the ad hominem and discuss the merits of that approach, I'll be interested in that discussion about the effectiveness of that strategy in political discussions.

If you wish to discuss a potential subtext of some of the comments here, that conservatives should be dismissed and drive out of public spaces (regardless of whether they'll sometimes support Democrats in potential close elections) I'll be interested in that discussion about politics.

But I'm not going to discuss myself in response to an actual ad hominem.

I get that we're just talking here and not going to solve all the world's problems but there is a lot of defeatism and heel-dragging here. The government can set the fees for services that doctors provide, like in Australia. Now, this isn't done by some nebulous bureaucrat in a windowless room, but health professionals and experts who decide based on evidence what to charge for certain procedures. Not everything is covered in Australia, but its pretty damn good, as we can see right now. And I get following the evidence isn't America's strongest suit.

It's also a lot of work to be a doctor in Australia, and doctors can get paid a lot of money. A people who earn a lot of money can pay a bit more tax to keep people alive. Again, back to my point - people have to pay for the military to (in theory) keep them alive. Why not pay for a hospital?

I should also add that the 2% is purely for our Medicare system of rebates, not the entirety of the healthcare system like hospitals and rehab stuff. That funding can come out of general revenue. But my general point is that wealthy people can pay a bit more tax to keep people alive, just like right now where EVERYONE will have to pay to keep all these businesses alive.

In regards to the minimum wage. We have a national umpire... let's call it a referee, who decides how much the minimum wage goes up every year for a full-time worker. They listen to evidence (or arguments and claims really) from business groups, the government, unions and social organisations. They then come up with a figure that is supposed to keep everyone happy but generally doesn't because businesses always want a wage rise of $0 whilst unions want a more livable wage.

Wages don't have to spike, they can be gradually increased every 12 months. There's no need to put things in the too-hard basket. And we only need to go back to the ridiculous bonuses that Wall Street bros were handing themselves just before everything collapsed and they had to be bailed out by the government. I'm sensing a pattern here.

The thing with more people earning higher wages and spending more money is that it creates more jobs and people pay more taxes which means eventually you get to a point where you can CUT taxes! Yay! Surely Republicans can get behind that?

I get that your view that the wealthy should be taxed more. However, we do still want to provide incentives for bright people to be doctors, so that's part of the calculations. We should also identify how much more we can tax wealthy people.

I don't think we're just talking about "a bit more" here in terms of the costs of the health-care. This will be a massive undertaking.

The Australian system of a bare-minimum public system and a more robust private system seems like an intelligent approach. Everyone's covered for emergencies, but there are still the benefits of the private market to support individual choice, and keep the people who like their private insurance (especially anything they got through their job) happy. In order to make this work, we would need to curb costs on the bare minimum plans, so elected officials will need to be able to hold the line on what's covered.

My point on wage spikes is that the majority who want to raise the minimum wage in the United States want some form of wage spike early on, which will have impacts that you won't see in Australia with the gradual increases.

Republicans like the idea of people earning higher wages and spending more money. The main concern is that this outcome won't automatically occur. The real minimum wage is always zero, as not everyone is going to get a job.

[Mister Mets]

HEY WBE! Got someone for you. Not a Republican or Democrat, but maybe you can squeeze him in for April Fool's Day anyways. This guy is special.

Meet Steve Cox, running for California District 39 as an Independent. His website doesn't really seem to indicate anything particularly off... but that's when you go to his Twitter account find this.


Took pictures for future reference:

Steven Cox 01.jpg

Steven Cox 02.jpg

Steven Cox 03.jpg

What the f**k are you doing!?

He appears unwell.

Also from that link, the mayor of Las Vegas is a global embarrassment who should be thrown under a bus as soon as possible, and I don't mean in a metaphorical sense. I'm not happy that she volunteered my family to be the placebo group for vaccine trials, or that she is getting her data from the voices in her head.

If the state party hasn't thrown her out years ago, she'd have been a candidate for WBE's April Fools list.

What's the story there? I haven't found anything about the circumstances under which she and her husband, the preceding mayor, switched from Democrats to Independents after he won his final term, but before she ran for mayor. What was the conflict between her and the party?

Meanwhile, over with turtle boy. He is complaining about helping people.

His stated concern is that states will use emergency federal funding for non-COVID related costs. That seems easy enough to resolve.

It's worth noting this came out because his press office released the transcript. He wants to have this discussion.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren's oldest brother died from COVID-19 complications

Sad news.

Twitter Link

With the sheer numbers, there's probably a lot more of this in Congress.

[InformationGeek]

HEY WBE! Got someone for you. Not a Republican or Democrat, but maybe you can squeeze him in for April Fool's Day anyways. This guy is special.

Meet Steve Cox, running for California District 39 as an Independent. His website doesn't really seem to indicate anything particularly off... but that's when you go to his Twitter account find this.


Took pictures for future reference:

Steven Cox 01.jpg

Steven Cox 02.jpg

Steven Cox 03.jpg

What the f**k are you doing!?

OH MY GOD, it gets worse with this clown. Here's the thread, but here's some screenshots in case these posts disappear.

Steven Cox 12.jpg

Steven Cox 13.jpg

Steven Cox 14.jpg

[jetengine]

Decent public and private is fine. You just need to not actively attack the public because you have shares in the private or an ideological hatred of people "Getting what they dont deserve" which frankly seems to be a weirdly big thing in the USA

[aja_christopher]

Your comments are ad-hominem. I said something, and your argument is about me, rather than the position.

I know you don't like Republicans. I don't know what you think about whether people will sometimes need to consider policy options that are distasteful and unpleasant, which was the earlier statement. Were you responding to a point you fundamentally agree with with an ad hominem, or were you responding to a point you disagree with?

If you want to embrace the ad hominem and discuss the merits of that approach, I'll be interested in that discussion about the effectiveness of that strategy in political discussions.

If you wish to discuss a potential subtext of some of the comments here, that conservatives should be dismissed and drive out of public spaces (regardless of whether they'll sometimes support Democrats in potential close elections) I'll be interested in that discussion about politics.

But I'm not going to discuss myself in response to an actual ad hominem.

There was no ad hominem.

You mentioned that people sometimes do distasteful things in politics and I pointed out that Repbulicans routinely attempt to suppress African American votes to win elections -- something that most would find "distasteful" if not downright dishonest and overtly racist -- and that you still support them despite knowing this truth.

Maybe you view this as an attack but in reality it's just the facts laid bare -- if you are going to argue ethics then your foundation is fair game.

Now you're trying to attack the messenger intstead of addressing the message because you know you have no real defense for Republican behavior.

Especially with regards to people of color and LGBT American citizens.

All you do instead is attack Democrats and when someone tells you they aren't a Democrat you still try to find a way to make it about them instead of addressing the faults within your party -- that's just how it usually plays out, up to and including this very exchange.

This wouldn't even be an issue to me if you wouldn't keep posting statistics about African-Americans without putting in context the fact that your chosen party routinely attempts to block any redress said voters might have at the ballot box -- you can easily just address said "distasteful behavior" instead of writing entire paragraphs about "ad hominems" and trying to engage in the usual semantics.

[MiddleMan]

McConnell represents a state that leads the nation (top 3) in federal subsidies

the education there is abysmal, the opoid epidemic has ravaged parts of the state, not to mention the coal mines

Mitch needs to go

support Amy McGrath - veteran, combat pilot, someone who actually cares about getting stuff done

[worstblogever]

In 2015, in 2016, and in 2017, “Crazy Stupid Republican of the Day” published profiles of Randy Forbes, the U.S. House Representative for Virginia’s 4th Congressional District and the founder of the Republican Prayer Caucus shortly after taking office back in 2001. We noted that Forbes’ religious fervor is problematic, especially because he’s a big ally of David Barton, the exposed fraud who posits an alternative history of the United States where our Founding Fathers created the country as a Christian nation. Forbes is always quick to waste Congress’ time on meaningless resolution to reaffirm the national motto as “In God We Trust”, and when the American Humanist Association sent letters to members of Congress asking them to honor the separation of church and state guaranteed in our Constitution back in 2012, Forbes declared it a violation of HIS 1st Amendment rights that they would even ask, and that they were trying to censor how he talks about his faith. As you might expect from a modern Republican, Forbes’ Christian faith seems to be greatly diminished whenever bills come up regarding helping the sick or poor, like Jesus actually talked about, but he certainly is a zealot when it social issues like abortion or gay rights are up for discussion, trying to deny both whenever possible. On the latter, Forbes argued against the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, was one of the first Republicans in 2004 to talk about a Constitutional amendment for a same sex marriage ban, and insisted on getting in the last word on the floor of the House to argue against ENDA, so that gays could continue to be discriminated against in the workplace. Not surprisingly, he now also supports measures that would allow Christian businesses to discriminate against the LGBT community based on their “religious faith”. Forbes’ paranoia and Christian victimization continued in the past year since we talked about him, most notably in October of 2015 when he spoke at a prayer rally at his home church in Chesapeake, Virginia, and he told the gathered throng about a massive conspiracy under way where funding was being funneled to systematically aim at “killing and destroying faith in America”. That of course, isn’t the only conspiracy theory he’ll beat to death, as even after four years over hearings over Benghazi hearings, Rep. Forbes was still campaigning on the “scandal”, and posting a survey on social media to his constituents if more taxpayer dollars needed to be spent investigating the non-story. And now… some good news. Due to redistricting in Virginia, in the 2016 elections, Forbes didn’t think he had a prayer of winning office in Virginia’s 4th, as it would lean far more to the left than it did previously. So instead, he chose to take a crack at challenging fellow GOP Congressman Scott Taylor over in Virginia’s 2nd District. Taylor won out with 53% of the vote, and as such, Randy Forbes was left without a place in Congress for the first time in 16 years. Frankly, we’re wondering what took so long.

[jetengine]

McConnell represents a state that leads the nation (top 3) in federal subsidies

the education there is abysmal, the opoid epidemic has ravaged parts of the state, not to mention the coal mines

Mitch needs to go

support Amy McGrath - veteran, combat pilot, someone who actually cares about getting stuff done

Twitter pointed out that NY gives the USA 116 Billion in taxes etc, meanwhile Kentucky TAKES 164 billion.