[PassedOut]

hrothgar, on 2020-May-22, 05:42, said:

What makes me uneasy is that it very much feels as if Trump will contest the election if he loses.



https://www.politico...tailgate-274416

Yes, he's been laying the groundwork for disputing a loss for a long time and is escalating that effort now. It's going to be a scary few months, and won't be pretty even if Trump gets stomped in the election -- which I, too, hope for.

[cherdano]

kenberg, on 2020-May-21, 07:44, said:

This illustrates my point. "Biden campaign on March 27, in their official response to new inquiries on the matter:" and "Biden on May 1, in an interview with Mika Brzinski on "Morning Joe":". I am saying that the March 27 response should have come, clear and unequivocal;y, from Biden himself. A personal response from the candidate himself on May 1 is way way to late.

My point was and is that Biden is not doing well in his campaign. If he thinks he is doing things just fine then perhaps he is right, he has won more elections than I have (none). I hope he is getting advice from people who are more attuned to political reality than I am and perhaps you would agree that more attuned than you are would also be good.. Neither of us are politicians in the professional sense, but what I see looks very inept. To me.The response from an impersonal "Biden campaign" strikes me as weak, a May 1 response is simply too late.

Aha, so when you wrote "Biden should have said the following:" you actually meant "Biden should have said the following right away, instead of a month later:" See, kenberg has something to hide, otherwise he would have gotten his story straight the first time!

Personally I am glad that Biden is not being advised by either of us. (I think we may agree on that one.) I think in this case you might be misjudging how helpful it is to immediately answering to an allegation that mainstream media haven't even picked up or investigated yet. And you might underestimate how much preparation this takes - it's not enough to say "Nothing like this ever happened", you also need to be prepared for any follow-up questions journalists may have otherwise the headlines will just be about the follow-up questions. "Biden responds to allegations, but cannot answer whether Reade's complaint might be found in his Senate office's files" etc. (And if you don't make Biden available to follow-up question it's better as a statement from the campaign. "Biden denies allegation, doesn't answer questions from the media" is not a good headline either.)

[kenberg]

cherdano, on 2020-May-22, 07:36, said:

Aha, so when you wrote "Biden should have said the following:" you actually meant "Biden should have said the following right away, instead of a month later:" See, kenberg has something to hide, otherwise he would have gotten his story straight the first time!

Personally I am glad that Biden is not being advised by either of us. (I think we may agree on that one.) I think in this case you might be misjudging how helpful it is to immediately answering to an allegation that mainstream media haven't even picked up or investigated yet. And you might underestimate how much preparation this takes - it's not enough to say "Nothing like this ever happened", you also need to be prepared for any follow-up questions journalists may have otherwise the headlines will just be about the follow-up questions. "Biden responds to allegations, but cannot answer whether Reade's complaint might be found in his Senate office's files" etc. (And if you don't make Biden available to follow-up question it's better as a statement from the campaign. "Biden denies allegation, doesn't answer questions from the media" is not a good headline either.)

Yes, we can definitely agree in hoping Biden has professional campaign people with greater savvy than either of us.

But here is how I think of it:

I am a reasonably normal person with a reasonably typical background. Yes, I am a mathematician with a PhD but everyone is a something with a something. I am not all that weird. So when I see something and say "Hey, that doesn't look so good" I figure I am not the only one thinking that. It isn't that Biden really needs to energetically go after the retired math profs for votes, it is rather that I am guessing that there are car mechanics, nurses and office workers that have about the same reaction I have. I could be wrong, of course, but I don't think that I am.

[y66]

Noah Smith at Bloomberg said:

An increasing number of policy makers and pundits argue that the U.S. is heading for a new Cold War. With tensions rising between the U.S. and China, the possibility of an extended great-power struggle is all too real. But would-be 21st-century cold warriors should remember how and why the U.S. prevailed in its 20th-century contest with the Soviet Union. It was a strong economy and effective institutions that allowed the U.S. to outlast its mighty foe.

The U.S. and the USSR never went to war directly. They did engage in a series of proxy conflicts and interventions, but ultimately the Cold War wasn’t decided on a third-world battlefield. Nor was it James Bond-style spycraft that ultimately made the difference or soaring speeches about liberty. Simply put, the U.S. won the Cold War because its economic and political system produced broadly shared prosperity and the USSR’s system did not.

The U.S. was always wealthier than the USSR. Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev was reportedly impressed by a San Francisco supermarket in 1959, and President Richard Nixon bragged about high U.S. standards of living in a debate. But by the 1970s, the two countries’ economies began to radically diverge. The USSR became sclerotic and dependent on oil, with a closed trading system, inefficient factories and chronic shortages of food and household necessities. But the U.S., despite stagflation in the '70s and high unemployment in the '80s, continued to grow wealthier. By the time Russian President Boris Yeltsin reprised Khruschev’s supermarket tour in 1990, there was no doubt which system was superior.

But the divergence didn’t just happen because Soviet socialism failed; the U.S. had to prove that it could succeed. Nor was it simple free-market, laissez-faire policies that produced that success. The U.S. made huge and important government investments during the early stages of the Cold War that paid off big in the later stages.

The first big investment was in infrastructure. The U.S. interstate highway system and other road networks built in the mid-20th century was one of the great public works accomplishments of all time, and it brought lasting economic benefits. Road construction allowed goods and people to be moved around the country more efficiently, and allowed cities to spring up and flourish. Public investment complemented private construction.

The second big investment was in science. The Soviet space program and other military advances galvanized the U.S. into spending much more money on science. In their book “Jump-Starting America: How Breakthrough Science Can Revive Economic Growth and the American Dream,” economists Jonathan Gruber and Simon Johnson detail the history of how U.S. government research efforts complemented private business and led to the spinoffs of huge and profitable industries. The internet is the most well-known example. The U.S. in that era also beefed up its STEM education to create a workforce of scientists and engineers that would keep the country ahead in the tech race.

Infrastructure, research and education built on the U.S. system’s basic foundation of sound legal institutions, independent businesses and democratic politics. But the prosperity this system generated would have seemed hollow if it hadn’t been broadly shared. Not only was wealth more evenly distributed then, but the social programs of the 1960s and 1970s helped to reduce poverty and narrow the glaring racial gaps that had characterized the U.S. economy in the 1950s: [chart omitted]

In addition to broadly shared prosperity, the U.S. government also showed competence in dealing with natural threats, including infectious diseases, eliminating polio from the country and halting the 1957 flu epidemic in its tracks. This contrasted with the USSR’s failures in the Chernobyl nuclear accident.

In sum, the U.S. won the Cold War because its system worked on many levels. That allowed the U.S. not just to outspend the USSR in a military sense, but to win over wavering countries in Europe, Asia and elsewhere.

Unfortunately, the U.S. of late has not shown a determination to make similar efforts to win a new Cold War. U.S. infrastructure is mediocre, thanks to high costs and intermittent budget cuts. Government research funding has fallen a lot as a share of the economy [chart omitted]

And the country’s mathematics education is lagging. Inequality has risen, leading many to question whether the country’s prosperity is being hoarded by a small slice of the population. Large numbers of Americans lead precarious, unstable lives. And relative poverty rates remain higher than in other developed nations: [chart omitted]

On top of all this, the coronavirus pandemic has revealed glaring weaknesses in U.S. government competence.

If the U.S. is going to have any hope of prevailing in a new Cold War, it can’t simply rest on its laurels from the last century. It will have to prove that its system is the best -- that it generates broadly shared prosperity while protecting the populace from natural threats. The U.S. system must not simply be OK; it must be significantly and visibly better than the Chinese alternative of authoritarian state capitalism. But because the U.S. now is so deeply wrapped up in culture wars and partisan media posturing, it looks as if the country isn’t even trying very hard.

[hrothgar]

Anyone who claims that the US "won" the Cold War has a very short sense of history.

It took longer for the US to collapse under the weight of its military spending, but we really screwed ourselves over

[Winstonm]

hrothgar, on 2020-May-22, 12:10, said:

Anyone who claims that the US "won" the Cold War has a very short sense of history.

It took longer for the US to collapse under the weight of its military spending, but we really screwed ourselves over

And look no further than Ronnie Reagan for the real rot. His faith in unbridled capitalism to crush the Soviets worked - until it didn't.

[kenberg]

hrothgar, on 2020-May-22, 12:10, said:

Anyone who claims that the US "won" the Cold War has a very short sense of history.

It took longer for the US to collapse under the weight of its military spending, but we really screwed ourselves over

Won or lost is too simple. There were countries such as Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and others that had been under Soviet control and then no longer were. So surely there was substantial change and it was a change desired by many people. Did the US cause this? Well, surely the US played a role. Should it be called winning? I would prefer saying that the US played a role in some very significant events . Of course this was also the beginning of involvement in Afghanistan. That has not done us any good.

The US played a role in the coming apart of the Soviet Union, it led to some opportunity, probably we could have done a better job of dealing with the aftermath.

Probably the sentence in the article I agree with the most is "If the U.S. is going to have any hope of prevailing in a new Cold War, it can’t simply rest on its laurels from the last century. ". In fact, this should have been said long ago.

[johnu]

johnu, on 2020-May-04, 19:16, said:

Mea Culpa. I have to admit that my prediction in this post was 1000% wrong and totally off base. The Clown in Chief absolutely did not revised his estimate to 70-80000 deaths as I stupidly predicted.

Trump warns coronavirus death toll could reach 100,000



I am now totally confused after being so wrong before. My best guess is that in 2 or 3 weeks as the death toll approaches 100,000, the Grifter in Chief will revise his death estimate to 200,000. As long as the death toll in the US is less than 2 million, the Grifter will have claim he has done a sensational job. Even if the death toll is millions more than 2 million, the Conman in Chief will proclaim he did an outstanding job that nobody else was capable of and that only he was capable of leading the country through this crisis despite the fact that Obama did not have a vaccine in place to prevent COVID-19.

With the US death count from COVID-19 passing 97,000 United States Coronavirus Cases: on May 22, it is time for the Grifter in Chief to increase his August 1 expected death count once again. I wonder if the British bookies have a line on what this new and probably totally unrealistic number will be??? Last time he raised the estimate by 30,000 US lives lost. I would say an increase of 50,000, making the new estimate 150,000. There is also a strong chance he takes out his sharpie and x's out one of the zeroes, and predicts only 10,000 deaths in total because according to the right fringe conspiracy sites there has been an incredibly large overcount of coronovirus deaths reported.

[johnu]

johnu, on 2020-May-09, 15:05, said:

More criminal incompetence from the Grifter in Chief and his little grifters.

U.S. Turned Down Offer To Manufacture Millions Of N95 Masks As Coronavirus Spread


Who needs N95 masks? Who needs any masks at all? Certainly not anybody in the White House.

Former Trump Official Won Contract To Give Masks To Navajo Hospitals. Some May Not Work.

At least somebody is doing well in the coronavirus depression we are currently in.

Quote

A former White House aide won a $3 million federal contract to supply respirator masks to Navajo Nation hospitals in New Mexico and Arizona 11 days after he created a company to sell personal protective equipment in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Zach Fuentes, President Donald Trump’s former deputy chief of staff, secured the deal with the Indian Health Service with limited competitive bidding and no prior federal contracting experience.

The IHS told ProPublica it has found that 247,000 of the masks delivered by Fuentes’ company — at a cost of roughly $800,000 — may be unsuitable for medical use. An additional 130,400, worth about $422,000, are not the type specified in the procurement data, the agency said.

Quote

Fuentes’ contract price of $3.24 per mask is more expensive than the pre-pandemic rate of about $1 per mask, but far less than what some government entities have paid at the height of the crisis. Mask costs can vary widely depending on availability, demand, quality and exact specifications.

By failing to invoke the Defense Production Act for PPE's, the Grifter in Chief has enabled and encouraged reprehensible price gouging by unscrupulous middlemen. If the Defense Production Act had been invoked for surgical/N95/N100 masks, the federal government could have required companies to supply masks at wholesale or near wholesale prices and could have required an increase in production capabilities that would have greatly alleviated the mask shortages.

[Winstonm]

johnu, on 2020-May-22, 18:13, said:

Former Trump Official Won Contract To Give Masks To Navajo Hospitals. Some May Not Work.

At least somebody is doing well in the coronavirus depression we are currently in.




By failing to invoke the Defense Production Act for PPE's, the Grifter in Chief has enabled and encouraged reprehensible price gouging by unscrupulous middlemen. If the Defense Production Act had been invoked for surgical/N95/N100 masks, the federal government could have required companies to supply masks at wholesale or near wholesale prices and could have required an increase in production capabilities that would have greatly alleviated the mask shortages.

And of course the Don get his tribute, I'm sure.

[y66]

Homo Erectus @PlioceneBloke said:

Donald Trump not invent yet, so just listen to random baby orange bum piglet make big pointless dumb squeak grunt of self important for now.

[Trinidad]

kenberg, on 2020-May-22, 15:21, said:

Won or lost is too simple. There were countries such as Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and others that had been under Soviet control and then no longer were. So surely there was substantial change and it was a change desired by many people. Did the US cause this? Well, surely the US played a role. Should it be called winning? I would prefer saying that the US played a role in some very significant events . Of course this was also the beginning of involvement in Afghanistan. That has not done us any good.

The US played a role in the coming apart of the Soviet Union, it led to some opportunity, probably we could have done a better job of dealing with the aftermath.

Probably the sentence in the article I agree with the most is "If the U.S. is going to have any hope of prevailing in a new Cold War, it can’t simply rest on its laurels from the last century. ". In fact, this should have been said long ago.

From my, Western European, perspective:
It started in Poland with Solidarność. It was followed by Gorbachev realizing that there were more ways than the communist ideal and that individual freedom was important too. He saw that the cold war was: a) stupid madness and b) not sustainable.

Gorbachev simply decided to reform the Soviet Union and he realized that for that the cold war needed to end. So he decided, unilaterally, to stop the cold war. That meant that a big reorganization was needed in the Red Army and military industry where quite a few people profited from the cold war. So, he used all the power he had to realize this reorganization.

In my view, nobody won the cold war. Two sides lost it because of all the resources, including human life, that were wasted on building and maintaining this conflict. In addition, I think that in a few hundred years the history books will look a little bit different at the 20th century. I think that school kids will learn "World War II: 1939-1991".

Rik

[cherdano]

kenberg, on 2020-May-22, 08:22, said:

So when I see something and say "Hey, that doesn't look so good" I figure I am not the only one thinking that.

Do you believe the allegations?
If so, does it give you pause that Tara Reade made a number of material false statements about her CV under oath as an "expert witness" (or as part of the CV submitted to defense)? (Lied about her degree; lied when asked whether she had ever taken the bar exam?)

If you don't believe them, we are left with Ken Berg's sense of the optics of how Biden responded to a false allegations. Who thinks that others share his sense of the optics. And that these others might not vote for Biden even though they also don't believe the allegations?


"I don't like that politician X did Y. Politician X lost the election. Therefore, X lost the election because he did Y." is probably the purest form of the pundit's fallacy.

[kenberg]

cherdano, on 2020-May-23, 09:01, said:

Do you believe the allegations?
If so, does it give you pause that Tara Reade made a number of material false statements about her CV under oath as an "expert witness" (or as part of the CV submitted to defense)? (Lied about her degree; lied when asked whether she had ever taken the bar exam?)

If you don't believe them, we are left with Ken Berg's sense of the optics of how Biden responded to a false allegations. Who thinks that others share his sense of the optics. And that these others might not vote for Biden even though they also don't believe the allegations?


"I don't like that politician X did Y. Politician X lost the election. Therefore, X lost the election because he did Y." is probably the purest form of the pundit's fallacy.

I think I will just state the obvious: In a presidential election we should not underestimate the importance of optics. It's not the whole thing, but it is far from nothing. People, many people, expect that if a candidate has a good case to make then he will welcome the opportunity to present that case clearly and emphatically, and quickly. Biden might well say that's just what he is doing. I am skeptical. It is difficult to present an airtight case to justify skepticism. I don't think elections are won or lost via airtight analysis.

I think that we, as a country, are out of our collective minds if we re-elect Trump. I just wish I felt better about how Biden is going at this. He seems like a guy who is my age trying to cope with a world that has changed a great deal since he and I were young.

[y66]

Laurence Tribe @tribelaw said:

Good point

Edan Clay @EdanClay said:

Not wearing a mask in public doesn't make you look strong, it makes you look like a dick.
(Also, FYI, @realDonaldTrump, you will literally look better with your face covered.)

[y66]

Noah Smith @noahpinion said:

Hoooooooly sh#t.

Ricky Gervais @rickygervais said:

The fact that there are warnings like "Do not drink" on bottles of bleach makes me realise that Donald Trump can become president. (Tweet dated March 6 2016)

[kenberg]

Trinidad, on 2020-May-23, 08:01, said:

From my, Western European, perspective:
It started in Poland with Solidarność. It was followed by Gorbachev realizing that there were more ways than the communist ideal and that individual freedom was important too. He saw that the cold war was: a) stupid madness and b) not sustainable.

Gorbachev simply decided to reform the Soviet Union and he realized that for that the cold war needed to end. So he decided, unilaterally, to stop the cold war. That meant that a big reorganization was needed in the Red Army and military industry where quite a few people profited from the cold war. So, he used all the power he had to realize this reorganization.

In my view, nobody won the cold war. Two sides lost it because of all the resources, including human life, that were wasted on building and maintaining this conflict. In addition, I think that in a few hundred years the history books will look a little bit different at the 20th century. I think that school kids will learn "World War II: 1939-1991".

Rik

Well, the results probably were different for the USSR than for the USA. There is no more USSR, there is still a USA. But still, I generally agree that won/lost is not the right way to look at it.

I remember the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, I remember a discussion with someone who escaped and was in the US, that was maybe 1957. But that's a lot different from saying I could write a book about what happened. Same goes for most of the events during the Cold War. I remember this and that and if someone reminds me I can remember a few other things. But how should we look at it historically? That's asking a lot. And how does it apply to today's world? That's asking even more. We might have been naive about problems and opportunities after the Soviet collapse..


I expect any substantial conclusion would require more thought than I have given to it.

[johnu]

Trump Promotes Posts From Racist and Sexist Twitter Feed

I expect nothing less from from the Imperial Wizard in Chief.

[Cyberyeti]

Quote

Ricky Gervais @rickygervais said:
The fact that there are warnings like "Do not drink" on bottles of bleach makes me realise that Donald Trump can become president. (Tweet dated March 6 2016)

TBF this sort of thing has been around a long time. In 1984 I had a job in the city of London, working for a merchant bank that made their own computers. There was some plastic that you put round wiring and shrank by blowing hot air on it. To blow the hot air, we had a small hand held device that looked a bit like a hairdryer but much hotter. It had the warning "This is not a hairdryer" on it.

[Winstonm]

Things are looking up when the GOP begins eating its own children:

Quote

Ann Coulter went on an early Sunday morning Twitter tear, calling President Donald Trump “the most disloyal actual retard that has ever set foot in the Oval Office.”

The far-right media pundit and former Trump defender was triggered by the president’s Friday tweet in which he called for Alabama voters to “not trust Jeff Sessions” and instead put their support behind Sessions’ Republican Senate seat challenger, football coach Tommy Tuberville.

“3 years ago, after Jeff Sessions recused himself, the Fraudulent Mueller Scam began. Alabama, do not trust Jeff Sessions. He let our Country down. That’s why I endorsed Coach Tommy Tuberville (@TTuberville), the true supporter of our #MAGA agenda!,” Trump tweeted.

And that set off Coulter, who called Trump a “moron,” “retard” and “lout,” who was incapable of “pretending to be” a “decent, compassionate human being.”