EPTUS Politics Mega-thread - Page 2281
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Velr
Switzerland10716 Posts
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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Bagration
United States18282 Posts
It's critical because Trump is trying to tie Biden to the CCP and portray him as "soft on China" - this is the perfect response from the Biden camp. | ||
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Vindicare605
United States16071 Posts
If Biden's campaign was smart Psh. What has Biden done AT ALL besides make small statements once a week while Trump and McConnell say and do worse and worse shit every day? It genuinely looks like he wants to play a "play nice" campaign with Trump and the Republicans to try and win over centrists which have been his target demographic all along. Yea that's not working. We're in a crisis and he hasn't been demonstrating at all that he can be a leader during it. Trump's a shitty leader, but if history has shown us anything, it's that people will rally around the shitty leader over the passive one that does nothing during a crisis. People want to hear from Biden right now and he's been quiet. He hasn't taken advantage of ANY of the mistakes Trump and the Republicans have been making these last few months. A smart campaign would take advantage. | ||
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Bagration
United States18282 Posts
On April 25 2020 05:43 Vindicare605 wrote: Psh. What has Biden done AT ALL besides make small statements once a week while Trump and McConnell say and do worse and worse shit every day? It genuinely looks like he wants to play a "play nice" campaign with Trump and the Republicans to try and win over centrists which have been his target demographic all along. Yea that's not working. We're in a crisis and he hasn't been demonstrating at all that he can be a leader during it. Trump's a shitty leader, but if history has shown us anything, it's that people will rally around the shitty leader over the passive one that does nothing during a crisis. People want to hear from Biden right now and he's been quiet. He hasn't taken advantage of ANY of the mistakes Trump and the Republicans have been making these last few months. A smart campaign would take advantage. I can see where they're coming from though, for the following reasons: 1. It follows that old adage of "If your opponent is making a mistake, don't stop them" - Biden's team is probably assuming that Trump is going to continue to mishandle this crisis, so they'll stay quiet and keep the spotlight on Trump 2. Biden can't speak for shit - every time he makes a statement there's a 50% chance that he's going to make a gaffe Plus, this strategy might work. While polls are fickle (especially in the Trump age) and we're still very far away from Election Day, it does seem like Biden has built a lead over Trump over key battleground states. Compared to some other candidates, Biden doesn't need to demonstrate experience as much, since he has already served as VP, so why risk the inevitable Biden gaffe? | ||
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Belisarius
Australia6230 Posts
Of course, if the dems had picked literally any candidate without dementia, they would be able to do more than sit at home and hope. | ||
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RenSC2
United States1058 Posts
I'm of the belief that when I vote for Biden, I'm voting for a competent team of people with Biden as the figurehead. I'd like to see that competent team in action publicly. Putting out pre-recorded statements is good enough for me. Having said that, going on the attack in the middle of a crisis could be very off-putting to people. A positive plan forward sounds better. | ||
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Simberto
Germany11515 Posts
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GreenHorizons
United States23238 Posts
On April 25 2020 04:05 FueledUpAndReadyToGo wrote: It's completely insane that a president can, seriously, suggest injecting bleach into the human body for 'a cleaning', and still have enough support to be president the next day. There really is nothing he can do to make republican congressmen reconsider. There's this clip where you see the doctor dying inside when he asks her this. But still, she doesn't interrupt him or immediately shut down the idea. Nobody does. Everyone plays the game of not stepping on Trumps toes. He still gets to do a new talk today. It's just accepted that everyone has to work around the president not having any clue. That's the normal. Facilitating ignorance and stupidity. I always thought him for years almost never doing press conferences except the short period before entering the helicopter was a strategy to keep his flaws from being exposed too often. But now his ineptness is on full display every single day and it changes nothing. He will still get reelected too probably. Madness. It's remarkable that he was a billionaire, celebrity, that partied with former presidents before he even became president. Or rather that he did all that without having the sense to not suggest people inject lysol into their veins to cure a virus. Trump's isn't an anomaly in that way, he's the expected progression of a society he was able to be wealthy within in the first place imo. | ||
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farvacola
United States18828 Posts
[Insert name here], It’s already April in this important election year and we want to make sure you saw your opportunity to get your name engraved on the Official 2020 Trump Donor Wall at our office. I love visiting our office and speaking to the great people who work so hard to re-elect President Trump. That’s why when the staff told me your name wasn’t on the Wall yet, I was surprised. There is no better way to show your strong support for the President than by cementing your name in history on the Official 2020 Trump Donor Wall. You’ve always been one of my father’s best supporters since the very beginning and he REALLY wants to make sure YOUR NAME is up there. He’s asked me to let him know the moment you add your name. Next time I’m at the office, I’m going to ask the staff to show me where your name is, [Insert Name Here]. | ||
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ChristianS
United States3188 Posts
I can’t get this one out of my head. It’s so fucking crazy. It’s such a dumb thing to think in the first place (“oh, you can sanitize a countertop with this? Then why not your lungs and blood?”). Obviously he’s not a doctor, but “you can’t treat disease by injecting disinfectant” is well within the domain of medical knowledge we would expect from any adult human. It’s crazy enough that the President of the United States would lack such basic knowledge. I mean, nominally this guy is in charge of all federal agencies, including the FDA and CDC. Has he never even wondered for a moment why we can’t just inject Lysol into anybody with an infection? Why drug development even exists as a business? And he’s not just the president, he’s the president during a pandemic! He’s spent at least the last month completely immersed in discussions of pandemic response, surrounded by some of the world’s best experts, being briefed on hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin and remdesivir and everything under the sun that might conceivably help. After a full month he hasn’t even picked up enough to realize “we can just inject them with Lysol” isn’t gonna work? Maybe the worst part is that he doesn’t even realize how little he knows. He’s learned little enough to think injecting Lysol is a good plan, and yet there’s no part of his brain that thinks “hey, this isn’t my area, maybe I should shut up and let the experts make the medical recommendations.” He actually thinks his opinion is worth voicing. Not just that, he actually thinks his opinion is worth contradicting experts! “Fauci says we shouldn’t recommend HCQ just yet, but I think I know better.” I don’t know if it’s because I work in drug development that this particularly got to me. But fuck. Our political discourse is normally so focused on “gaffes.” Howard Dean yelled weird one time and that was enough to run him out of town on a rail. But this is just another day at the office? | ||
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m4ini
4215 Posts
I can’t get this one out of my head. It’s so fucking crazy. It’s such a dumb thing to think in the first place (“oh, you can sanitize a countertop with this? Then why not your lungs and blood?”). Obviously he’s not a doctor, but “you can’t treat disease by injecting disinfectant” is well within the domain of medical knowledge we would expect from any adult human. It's probably worse than that. Stupidity is inexcusable. But what if it was stupid mixed with malice? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/24/revealed-leader-group-peddling-bleach-cure-lobbied-trump-coronavirus I don't want to just throw a link in here without context, but that one is so batshit insane that it's hard to get it all into a few sentences, let me try. A few days ago, guys from an institution called "Genesis II" contacted the white house. Genesis II is a florida based outfit claiming to be a church led by "archbishop Mark Grenon" (and yes, that's real, google it), while in, in fact, they're the largest producer and distributor of chlorine dioxide bleach. They're trying to sell it as a "miracle cure", called MMS (miracle mineral solution), which can cure cancer, aids, autism and literally anything. Grenon, according to himself, sent a bottle of it to the white house ("Trump has got the MMS and all the info!!! Things are happening folks! Lord help others to see the Truth!" via facebook, also checked by me: true, and as a sidenote, jesus fucking christ i want to drink that miracle cure now, in gallons). Now Trump is hallucinating about injecting bleach into people. This isn't stupid. This is absolutely insane, and absolutely malicious. I knew that there's some charlatans in the US that enjoy respect and fame (televangelists, also batshit insane), but this is another level. This is why "exceptionalism" is bad, because exceptionally stupid, and exceptionally negligent are also part of it. | ||
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ChristianS
United States3188 Posts
The whole “Trump is a grifter” thing seems like a pretty accurate characterization of a lot of his history. But how does he also manage to be the world’s easiest mark? How rich would this guy be if he got back all the money from every time he bought the Brooklyn Bridge? | ||
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maybenexttime
Poland5559 Posts
On April 25 2020 08:21 ChristianS wrote: In some ways it would actually feel better to me if Trump was just trying to sell some snake oil. Malice is worse than ignorance, but at least I would have an easier time conceiving of the headspace someone would have to be in to say something like that. But what’s even the angle here? Secret payoff from Genesis II? Just doing a solid because grifters gotta look out for each other? The whole “Trump is a grifter” thing seems like a pretty accurate characterization of a lot of his history. But how does he also manage to be the world’s easiest mark? How rich would this guy be if he got back all the money from every time he bought the Brooklyn Bridge? I think this might be an example of something people hypothesized about for a while - Trump being convinced by whoever spoke to him last. LOL | ||
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m4ini
4215 Posts
On April 25 2020 08:21 ChristianS wrote: In some ways it would actually feel better to me if Trump was just trying to sell some snake oil. Malice is worse than ignorance, but at least I would have an easier time conceiving of the headspace someone would have to be in to say something like that. But what’s even the angle here? Secret payoff from Genesis II? Just doing a solid because grifters gotta look out for each other? The whole “Trump is a grifter” thing seems like a pretty accurate characterization of a lot of his history. But how does he also manage to be the world’s easiest mark? How rich would this guy be if he got back all the money from every time he bought the Brooklyn Bridge? Snake oil usually isn't deadly though. Homeopathy could be considered snake oil, or sugar water. This is deadly, and not just "potentially", like his peddling of hydroxychloroquine (sidenote, trials in spain have stopped because people died). As for the why.. I don't know. I guess that's where the stupidity comes in, or maybe ignorance. Maybe, and that's a very careful maybe, he actually believes that it'd help. I doubt it very much though, i think it has more to do with "earning a favour". That's much more like trump, and since MMS is connected to quite a few people (Alan Keyes too, for example), there can certainly be quite the payoff for just dropping a line on camera. As we can clearly see, it doesn't cost him anything. At all. He just says his line, the US sucks it up, a few intelligent people raise a brow but the majority goes "well, that's trump for ya", and a few actually start googling where to get injection needles for the bleach. Sounds like a pretty good deal (ironic) to me. edit: correction, not spain - brazil stopped the trials. | ||
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Simberto
Germany11515 Posts
So he gets an idea that is superficially sensible in some way, and because he thinks of himself as a genius, he doesn't even consider that other people might have thought the same thing and discarded it for some reason. He must be the first person in the world to have this idea, because he just had that idea, and he is smarter than anyone else (and thus no one could have had the same idea before him). The idea is very superficially sensible. Bleach kills viruses. There are viruses in people. Put bleach into the people to kill the viruses. It misses the obvious problem that killing viruses isn't hard. Killing viruses while keeping the person they are in alive is. But a person with an ego as gigantic as Trumps is constantly going to believe that he just came up with this amazing smart and simple solution that other people simply didn't see. | ||
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ChristianS
United States3188 Posts
This feels kinda like that. | ||
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GreenHorizons
United States23238 Posts
On April 25 2020 08:41 Simberto wrote: Could simply be the case that he believes himself to be this genius who is smarter than anyone else and comes up with genius solutions. From what one can see from the outside, that seems to be a major part of his self image. So he gets an idea that is superficially sensible in some way, and because he thinks of himself as a genius, he doesn't even consider that other people might have thought the same thing and discarded it for some reason. He must be the first person in the world to have this idea, because he just had that idea, and he is smarter than anyone else (and thus no one could have had the same idea before him). The idea is very superficially sensible. Bleach kills viruses. There are viruses in people. Put bleach into the people to kill the viruses. It misses the obvious problem that killing viruses isn't hard. Killing viruses while keeping the person they are in alive is. But a person with an ego as gigantic as Trumps is constantly going to believe that he just came up with this amazing smart and simple solution that other people simply didn't see. I remember having a similar one around the age of ~4 when I thought bleach might not taste as bad as robitussin. Then I watched an episode of magic school bus and apparently developed a deeper understanding of how the human body combats viruses than the President has in 70+ years and with a team of experts explaining it to him. | ||
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Belisarius
Australia6230 Posts
On April 25 2020 08:30 m4ini wrote: Snake oil usually isn't deadly though. Homeopathy could be considered snake oil, or sugar water. I've seen cancer patients reject chemo in favour of tumeric. Homeopathy absolutely is deadly. However, yes, the president of the united states suggesting people inject bleach is a level of stupid I thought unachievable even six months ago. | ||
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Starlightsun
United States1405 Posts
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