Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting!
NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source.
On August 05 2020 08:36 Acrofales wrote: Why is Trump claiming the explosion in Lebanon was an attack? Lebanese authorities are pointing towards an accident, and given the scale and location that just seems far more likely. Let's face it, if you have the capacity to build and detonate a bomb that large, you pick a juicier target than an industrial zone in the port of Beirut.
But, it is possible. Is Trump just blathering? Or is there credible intelligence that this was purposeful?
Trump said that? I mean I didn’t see it on a cursory glance of his Twitter after reading your post. Which is something I guess.
I guess well-versed in nothing conspiracy theorists are having a field day with this one on the interwebz though. God knows what craziness is being pissed out.
I’m not seeing anything other than the official explanation of an industrial accident with poorly stored explosive materials as being overly plausible.
I’m sure they may have been deployed, I’ve never seen conventional explosives cause something nearly that large in terms of a blast.
If you want to just obliterate something, well there’s nukes. For actual military purposes I’d presume it’s rather inefficient to try and deploy that much explosive material and some degree of precision is preferable.
There are videos of fireworks going off in the smoke before the giant explosion. No matter what, there was a fire before the giant boom. Just a matter of if the whole thing was an attack.
At this point there are about 20 fiscally conservative Republicans and all of them are elected officials. They are being so weirdly resistant to Democrat demands. Trump has made covid so politicized that Pelosi could run the country into the ground and people would blame Trump. Pelosi’s deal makes the economy better on Election Day. I think passing a good deal that helps a bunch of people is the only conceivable way republicans hold the senate
Find me a republican who would vote for a democrat if Trump passed a 6 trillion stimulus bill. They don't exist.
On August 05 2020 09:36 Mohdoo wrote: At this point there are about 20 fiscally conservative Republicans and all of them are elected officials. They are being so weirdly resistant to Democrat demands. Trump has made covid so politicized that Pelosi could run the country into the ground and people would blame Trump. Pelosi’s deal makes the economy better on Election Day. I think passing a good deal that helps a bunch of people is the only conceivable way republicans hold the senate
Find me a republican who won't vote for a democrat if Trump passed a 6 trillion stimulus bill. They don't exist.
Are you casting aspersions over the bona fides of fiscal conservatives when it’s outside of normality and not relating to redistributing to poor people? How very dare you!
On August 05 2020 11:47 JimmiC wrote: It really is striking isnt it.
More embarrassing that CNN is running an article on asking Trump basic questions currently. The self own that no American media could figure that out themselves over the past four years.
On August 05 2020 11:47 JimmiC wrote: It really is striking isnt it.
More embarrassing that CNN is running an article on asking Trump basic questions currently. The self own that no American media could figure that out themselves over the past four years.
It's not like people didn't point this out in 2016 either. The Fourth Estate has all but completely eroded into stenographers for the MIC combined with TMZ politics.
I mean it's worth pointing out that Trump doesn't do that kind of interview regularly. Most of his appearances in that format are buddy-buddy things with fox people, who are obviously just there to fellate him.
There would be plenty of reporters out there more than willing to try and pin him, but it requires an extended one-to-one exchange with someone who will challenge him, and he doesn't let himself be put in that situation very often. People can ask him all the questions they like from the scrum. He'll just ignore them, ask someone else or walk off the stage.
To catch him takes a miscalculation on his part, like being ambushed by a previously friendly reporter as we finally saw on fox a few weeks ago, or his own ego and his collapsing polls leading him to yolo it, as seems to have happened with Swan.
There's obviously plenty of failures in the way the media as a whole have dealt with Trump, but it's not like nobody thought of doing this. The hard part has always been engineering a situation where you can.
On August 05 2020 15:44 Belisarius wrote: I mean it's worth pointing out that Trump doesn't do that kind of interview regularly. Most of his appearances in that format are buddy-buddy things with fox people, who are obviously just there to fellate him.
There would be plenty of reporters out there more than willing to try and pin him, but it requires an extended one-to-one exchange with someone who will challenge him, and he doesn't let himself be put in that situation very often. People can ask him all the questions they like from the scrum. He'll just ignore them, ask someone else or walk off the stage.
To catch him takes a miscalculation on his part, like being ambushed by a previously friendly reporter as we finally saw on fox a few weeks ago, or his own ego and his collapsing polls leading him to yolo it, as seems to have happened with Swan.
There's obviously plenty of failures in the way the media as a whole have dealt with Trump, but it's not like nobody thought of doing this. The hard part has always been engineering a situation where you can.
Not sure what passes as "regularly" but it's far from his first. He's had long-form interviews with potentially hostile interviewers from WaPo, the NYT, CNBC, C-Span, The AP, and more.
Also I should apologize to TMZ's paparazzi, they are actually pretty good at follow-up questions.
On August 05 2020 15:45 120720 wrote: People should stop bashing Trump, what about the millions that voted for him, think like him, do worse than him?
Trump did not stole and election and made everyone racist, he stole an election while everyone was racist.
Look at your two candidates right now, 80 years old had a stroke guy or 80 years old representation of half the population guy.
Other guy everyone regrets is 80 years old want to change the whole country against the views of half of them.
Your country can hardly be united since you have such different views...
I don't understand why we can't bash trump. Because 50 percent of the population voted for him? Because the country is racist? Because Biden is equally old? People are criticizing trump for the job he is doing, for his personality and for his policies. None of that can be dismissed because of any of the points you brought up.
On August 05 2020 15:45 120720 wrote: People should stop bashing Trump, what about the millions that voted for him, think like him, do worse than him?
Trump did not stole and election and made everyone racist, he stole an election while everyone was racist.
Look at your two candidates right now, 80 years old had a stroke guy or 80 years old representation of half the population guy.
Other guy everyone regrets is 80 years old want to change the whole country against the views of half of them.
Your country can hardly be united since you have such different views...
I don't understand why we can't bash trump. Because 50 percent of the population voted for him? Because the country is racist? Because Biden is equally old? People are criticizing trump for the job he is doing, for his personality and for his policies. None of that can be dismissed because of any of the points you brought up.
Actually Clinton got roughly 3 million more votes than Trump in 2016. So he is representing some more dirt in Colorado, but not the 50% of the US-Citizens
........................Trump....................Clinton Popular vote___62,984,828_____65,853,514 Percentage ____46.1% __________48.2%
On August 05 2020 17:17 Biff The Understudy wrote: Just because it's actually quite funny, here is Trump arguing against the notion that you should look at COVID death per ratio of the population:
USA does have a lower CFR now, but I think that is mainly due to the fact that the case load in Germany now is way down. So their peak in CFR comes from a time from before testing capability was ramped up, and all countries were severely undertesting, meaning CFR is far far far greater than IFR. Meanwhile, now that testing is ramped up, we still overreport severe cases slightly as there will inevitably be infected who don't ever get tested, but right now CFR is only slightly greater than IFR. That means that countries that are now living through peak infection, are identifying far more infected people per severe patient than those who were living through peak infection in April (like, Germany). CFR as an average over time means nothing. The meaningful comparison of CFR is using a window, in which case CFR in Germany is waaaayyyyyyyy down right now (over the last week it is ~1%, as opposed to the total average CFR of over 4%), but because there are comparatively few cases, that doesn't bring the overall average CFR down very much.
Anyway, CFR is not a meaningless statistic: it gives you an idea of how well your healthcare system is dealing with the worst cases. However, deaths as a % of the population is obviously a better metric of how the entire system is dealing with the pandemic as a whole.
On August 04 2020 18:37 zatic wrote: Can someone explain to me the whole Tiktok thing? I am baffled.
I get that the state could potentially ban an app if there is sufficient reason for it. I get that the potential of data being handed to Chinese intelligence could be considered such a reason.
I don't get how the government can force the sale of an app to a domestic competitor. And I absolutely don't get how the government can demand that they get a cut from that coerced transaction. Pardon me saying that, but that just feels incredibly ... un-american.
Man, that's totally american.
I'll, again, take the example of the collusion between DOJ pressing charges on european companies, with insider knowledge of US competitors that then buy them as a discount since there are billions in fines to be levied, and the DOJ subsequently dropping the charges once the company is american.
I mean, this is the country that refuses that its big tech companies get fairly taxed abroad, only because those are american. It makes sense that a foreign competitor gaining steam gets pressure from the government, and "not banning it if it gets bought" is as naked as it gets, while it's usually more... covert, but that's business as usual.
To make it even more American. Tiktok is getting sued in a class action from parents that it is stealing their children's data and sending it to China.
This will be sort of interesting if it is not settled, how will these parents prove it and if they can't what will that say about the ban?
People should know by now that actions against Huawei and Tiktok are not about spying, stealing personal data or national security risk that's just a pretext. The actions are political and are the next step in the economical and technological war that the US has waged on China.
EPT
