Jump to content

CR: COVID-19 --Political Talk


Mrs Whiggins

Recommended Posts

18 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

 That has to really suck for her.  My wife and I were talking about the impact to schools.  Our daughter is in 5th, and I have been telling her to expect that they won't go back even if they try to squeeze a week or two in the official calendar at teh end of may.  We started talking about the impact to Juniors and Seniors in high school. They're moving to pass/fail, and the potential impacts to rankings and GPA and what not.  Layer in all the other aspects such as the social milestones, and fuck that sucks. There will be lots of layers of ramifications for a long time after the dust settles. 

My daughter is a senior.  She is a fiercely independent smart kid who will kick ass in life, and she definitely marches to the beat of her own drum (on which she is massively proficient, as in "had offers to study percussion at UNT among other schools").

Even she is kinda wrecked over the loss of prom and graduation and the like.  I get it.  These things are a rite of passage.

She has a path forward, and will graduate from UT with what I expect will be a kickass transcript, but it IS a bummer that the uncertainty makes farther flung schools less of an option.  I have tried to turn all of this into a learning opportunity, but let's be honest -- it's new ground for me, too.  I can't exactly say "oh YEAH, well when I was a senior, we all got the clap and . . . well, we had to get a penicillin shot, and, oh never mind".  (Not actually true.  Point stands.)

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 minutes ago, Bama Chick said:


Oh man, I cannot even begin to list all the ways this sucks for them and everything they’re losing.

My daughter’s ranked 11th in her class; she is in 5 AP classes and had already worked out the math for what she needed to do to make the top ten.

Welp - class ranks frozen, fuck her and her hard work.

Still has to take the AP exams for college credit. But everything we’ve been told and heard is basically “The College Board and universities don’t have the bandwidth to deal with all that during this so expect hard as fuck exams to keep the numbers of 4s and 5s low”.

It’s a real loss for these kids and they’re grieving.

I’ve legitimately cried more about her situation than she has though lol.

She’s my last one and gotdamnit I wanted her to have her victory lap, her standing ovation, her time to shine.

It fucking sucks an orange mushroom cock.

I know it suck for her, but from the sound of it you've raised a daughter who isn't going to let this set her back by any appreciable measure. Hell, I fully expect her to use it as motivation and graduate college summa cum laude.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 minutes ago, 4th&Five said:

 

This sums it up right here. We have an incompetent narcissist moron as the president. Not sure what the point of these briefings are other than to just remind everyone as to why were in a world of shit because somehow an incompetent narcissist moron is the president.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, JimmyJames said:

This sums it up right here. We have an incompetent narcissist moron as the president. Not sure what the point of these briefings are other than to just remind everyone as to why were in a world of shit because somehow an incompetent narcissist moron is the president.

Because of his narcissism, he thinks he can say, or less likely do,  something to turn around the economy, or, failing that, blame someone effectively.  As he has made blindingly obvious, he doesn't give a rat's ass about anything other than winning the election.  RATINGS!

Edited by TwiceHorn
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I know it suck for her, but from the sound of it you've raised a daughter who isn't going to let this set her back by any appreciable measure. Hell, I fully expect her to use it as motivation and graduate college summa cum laude.

Aw, thanks that’s very kind and I need to remember that.

And she’s actually sort of lucky - she’s been doing dual enrollment through Alabama since she was a freshman and is heading in with almost 40 hours of credit under her belt. If this shit really goes sideways and freshmen get deferred until January (another rumor floating around) she won’t be losing any time.

I told her the one silver lining is that maybe friends and family will give her nicer graduation presents or extra cash because they’ll feel sorry for her lol.
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I won't lie, I'm not against the "bad" news that schools might go online, even if only through the fall.  Keeping my daughter off campus and out of dorms for a year would not only be safer but would save money.

The problem is that I know there is no way in hell online learning could supplant actual time in the classroom.  I guess if it's gonna happen, freshman year is ideal, but my performance in undergrad through grad school skyrocketed once I figured out it was beneficial to study with my peers.  There's just nothing like 3-4 hours in the library every weeknight with your classmates.  It's not gonna be as easy going forward, regardless of how good Zoom is.

I guess I just need to see it as a paradigm shift and hope for the best.

Edited by jimmyjazz
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I hope this is OK posting this and I'm not sure what the policy is. So forgive if I'm posting something I'm not suppose to post. I thought this was well said. It is an opinion, btw, written by the Dallas Morning News Editorial Board.

https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/editorials/2020/04/08/trump-is-responsible-for-the-navys-broken-chain-of-command/

Trump is responsible for the Navy’s broken chain of command

The weeklong drama that ended Tuesday with the resignation of acting Navy secretary Thomas Modly is all the more tragic because it didn’t have to happen.

None of it.

Not the firing of USS Theodore Roosevelt Capt. Brett Crozier for a letter he wrote about a coronavirus outbreak on his ship. Not the subsequent tirade aboard the Roosevelt that led to Modly’s resignation. Not the fear and uncertainty among military families, nor the outpouring of support for Crozier that followed his April 2 firing.

Before you choose sides about who was in the wrong here, you should first ask yourself how we arrived at this broken chain of command and what it says about our commander in chief and, by extension, the morale of our 2.2 million active and reserve service members who are under unimaginable stress in often close quarters with little room for social distancing or quarantine while deployed.

Modly, you might recall, was an “acting” Navy secretary because his predecessor, Richard V. Spencer, was fired for trying to prevent President Donald Trump from once again intervening in the military justice system’s handling of a war-crimes case involving a Navy SEAL who was acquitted of murder but convicted last July of posing for photographs with a dead Islamic State fighter in Iraq in 2017.

Spencer was eventually fired for not including Defense Secretary Mark Esper in his attempts to convince the White House to not intervene in whether the SEAL should be demoted, as the jury in his military trial had ruled, or be allowed to keep his trident pin, an insignia SEALs wear denoting their membership in the elite force.

All this, Spencer said in an op-ed after being fired, was highly irregular. “Normally, military justice works best when senior leadership stays far away,” he wrote. “A system that prevents command influence is what separates our armed forces from others. Our system of military justice has helped build the world’s most powerful navy; good leaders get promoted, bad ones get moved out, and criminals are punished.”

Fast-forward to last week’s firing of Crozier, a Naval Academy graduate and respected captain of a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, and you’ll see that good leaders don’t always get promoted. To the contrary, in this administration under this commander in chief, they often get fired.

On April 1, Modly said of Crozier that “The fact that he wrote the letter up to his chain of command to express his concerns would absolutely not result in any type of retaliation.” Yet the very next day, the acting Navy secretary did an about-face, saying Crozier was fired for sending a letter asking for help to better contain a COVID-19 outbreak aboard his 5,000-crew ship in a “non-secure, unclassified” email that he should have known would be leaked.

In the letter, Crozier said nearly 100 of his crew members had tested positive and he called for “decisive action,” removing all but some 500 essential crew members from the ship so they could practice social distancing on the ship’s close quarters.

“Sailors do not need to die,” Crozier wrote in the letter. “If we do not act now, we are failing to properly take care of our most trusted asset — our Sailors.”

In a video that has since gone viral, his crew appeared to appreciate his efforts, chanting his name and applauding as he left the ship after being relieved from duty.

After firing Crozier, Modly made the misguided decision to board the Theodore Roosevelt on April 5 in Guam and say of the ship’s former captain that if he didn’t think his letter would be released he was either “too naïve” or “too stupid” to be the ship’s commanding officer. Modly apologized, but then resigned not long thereafter.

Since leaving his command, Crozier has tested positive for the coronavirus and the number of his former crew that have tested positive has risen above 150. Importantly, the Navy says it now has plans to quarantine all but 1,000 crew members in Guam, where the carrier is docked, about 500 more than Crozier argued were needed aboard the vessel.

What’s most disturbing about all this is that it reflects the chaos emanating from the White House and our commander in chief at a time when what we need is a steady hand and trustworthiness. The unprecedented number of acting secretaries in this administration and the incredibly high turnover rate in nearly every department is also a sign of poor leadership.

Modly’s performance aboard the Theodore Roosevelt was, in our view, more than enough for him to tender his resignation. But then, we place responsibility for the entire episode on the desk of the president. It’s up to him to create an administration where competent leaders and the systems they oversee, both in the military and the government, work properly.

What’s incredibly telling, and sad, in all this, is that two decent and well-respected Naval Academy graduates and military leaders are now sidelined at a time when we need them most.

Tragically, all three men, Spencer, Crozier and now Modly, exited the scene at a time when their service was needed. We’ve said it many times, but, yes, leadership matters, especially in times of crisis. Sadly, what we’re seeing is that under this commander in chief’s leadership, critical components of our system are cracking apart. That’s dangerous even in the best of times.

  • Like 5
Link to comment
Share on other sites

As horrible as Trump and the federal govt has been, it seems like all governments have strong dis-incentives to testing:

- Testing costs money and is logistically challenging

- High positive numbers are bad PR (people freak out and think they're not being protected)

- The vast majority of positives don't need to go to the hospital before they recover

- Many positives don't even know they have it before it's gone

- Serious cases end up in hospital anyway, so testing seems redundant

Obviously, from a medical and societal standpoint, widespread testing should be a tremendous priority because we can't "re-open" without it. But I can see why even local governments would slow-walk it. Hope I'm wrong

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

It’s ok. Anastasis thinks that the states will take care of it.

Wait, what’s that? Virus testing isn’t in the Bible, so 20 states aren’t going to make any effort to continue it? Ok then.

He’s going to get thousands of people killed. He is. His decisions. Utter fuckery.

Because of his narcissism, he thinks he can say, or less likely do,  something to turn around the economy, or, failing that, blame someone effectively.  As he has made blindingly obvious, he doesn't give a rat's ass about anything other than winning the election.  RATINGS!

This is what evil looks like. It’s not twirling a mustache with a cartoon laugh. It’s just this: a man who would gladly sacrifice YOUR life for HIS personal gain. He’s not a mere narcissist. He’s not just an uneducated idiot. He’s evil. He’s exactly what evil is.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Fed on reopening (via Powell) - 

"While we all want it to happen as quickly as possible, we all want to avoid a false start, where we partially reopen and that results in a spike in coronavirus cases and then we have to go back again to square one."

Wise words. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, jimmyjazz said:

My daughter is a senior.  She is a fiercely independent smart kid who will kick ass in life, and she definitely marches to the beat of her own drum (on which she is massively proficient, as in "had offers to study percussion at UNT among other schools").

 

Fuck yeah get drunk on Fry St then head home to your dorm. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

That has literally been your position. It’s all over the posts above.

Once again, you act like my argument is that all the states act independently without coordination at federal level.  

7 hours ago, Anastasis said:

The states need to be empowered with the appropriate and necessary resources to drive regional response and decision making within a coordinated federal framework. 

It's fine I guess if you prefer our current system and the regulatory framework that amplifies a single failure point at an Atlanta lab. I would prefer a system with some redundancies that allows us to leverage diverse technical capabilities across the country.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

Yet their entire political approach before this was that every resource we had, at a cost of billions, had to be directed to stop......illegal aliens from crossing the Rio Grande.  Illegal aliens....who kill other people at a lower rate than natural-born citizens do.  We're talking triple digits each year, that's it.

So, yeah...DEFINITELY run all of these numbers, Tucker.  If we make our decisions based on "relative deadliness," we'll never have to waste time talking about little brown people hanging sheetrock ever again.  You dumbfuck.

They want to use those numbers now?   That leaves his flank open for healthcare broadsides.

a)  A better healthcare system would have been more prepared,

b) A lot of those numbers would be smaller with better  affordable healthcare for all,

c) Many less deaths to CV-19 because of a) and b).

 

4 hours ago, Tuco said:

I can't tell if you are just trying to become the parody of bothersidery, but the current administration took a plane full of people who had been exposed to the virus on a cruise, and just dropped them off in the Atlanta airport to catch domestic flights throughout the country.  The last administration had an extra nurse on a plane.  When someone says "even a moderately competent..." they are talking about someone who might have an extra nurse on a flight.  We would be much better with that level of incompetence.  That's the point. 

Yeah, on that bothsidery...I'm not going to argue that large government programs are super efficient.   What I will argue is this administration is simply doing what the republicans have been doing for years.  Don't increase taxes, decrease services.   Cut staff and funding and you end up with facades of programs. 

So they have taken something that might not have been working to full efficiency, but gutted things, left positions of leadership vacant, or filled those positions with grifters. 

While these programs under other admins ran, but guzzled gas, Trump has taken spark plugs out.  They run barely, but won't get you anywhere.  All show, no go.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

52 minutes ago, Message Board User said:

NSIAP.

 

That article is devastating, true, and is why this problem will not end until Trump is no longer the president. 

We are all suffering because of the mental illness of one man. One man.

Is he worth it America? 

  • Like 5
Link to comment
Share on other sites

32 minutes ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

Gee whiz; no one would have seen this coming:

 

 

 

I think you might have fallen victim to an internet hoax.  Surely there isn't a man named "Pizza."

Quote

But here’s another possibility: Trump may have been influenced by a Palm Beach donor named Joseph Pizza. 

Pizza, formerly of the band Muffin, is a big donor to the pro-Trump super PAC America First Action, giving the group $125,000 in 2019. Mr. Pizza has also made large donations to other organizations that back the president: since 2016, he has given $62,500 to Trump Make America Great Committee, $61,400 to the Republican National Committee, and $4,000 to Donald J. Trump for President. 

In making his political contributions, Pizza has listed several pharmaceutical companies as his employer, including Pharmasphere, InterChem, and Pharma C. 

Here they are, Mr. & Mrs. Joe Pizza:

 

thepizzas.jpg?w=1400&ssl=1

Edited by Bullneck
Link to comment
Share on other sites

“Throughout the crisis, the top priority of the president, and of everyone who works for the president, has been the protection of his ego.”

A quote from the Atlantic article posted above and 100 percent the truth. It’s why the problem will not end until trump is gone. His number 1 priority and the priority of his administration is protecting his ego, not Americans and their lives and financial condition. His mental disorder will not allow anything else. And therefore America will not fix the problem, until he is gone. 

Edited by JimmyJames
  • Like 5
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I know most of you guys don't care, but I was hungry for some MMA. ESPN's parent company ABC tells UFC's Dana White to stand down on UFC 249 on April, 18th that was to be held on a Native American reservation in California due to COVID-19 concerns.

ABC caving to social justice warriors to mitigate backlash to their image and stock price. MMA is one of the few sports where a limited and manageable number of people need to be tested and isolated that could then give a much greater benefit to the social good.

I don't twitter, so no fancy link.

Dana has a direct line to the White House, I'm surprised he didn't use it.

Edited by JohnnyRage
Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 minutes ago, JohnnyRage said:

I know most of you guys don't care, but I was hungry for some MMA. ESPN's parent company ABC tells UFC's Dana White to stand down on UFC 249 on April, 18th that was to be held on a Native American reservation in California due to COVID-19 concerns.

ABC caving to social justice warriors to mitigate backlash to their image and stock price. MMA is one of the few sports where a limited and manageable number of people need to be tested and isolated that could then give a much greater benefit to the social good.

I don't twitter, so no fancy link.

Dana has a direct line to the White House, I'm surprised he didn't use it.

I'm down and was so much looking forward to some more. Gaethje Tony xsetera.  But let's slow down on pointing fingers.  The planets figuring shit out not just the whatevers.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

If UFC is a benefit to the social good, that says everything about this country and where we are right now. JFC. 

Liquor stores are now on the list essential.   I'm down with drinking whiskey and watching fighting.   

Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 minutes ago, JohnnyRage said:

 MMA is one of the few sports where a limited and manageable number of people need to be tested and isolated that could then give a much greater benefit to the social good.

Given the current scenario, I think that saying that this is a stretch would be a bit of a understatement....

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, hayden_horn said:

by the way, i'm not sure if anyone posted the tiger king exchange from yesterday's rally. here it is for those interested in the small details of the fall of our republic:

 

"I'll take a look"

If it's not a Federal charge it doesn't concern you.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites



×
×
  • Create New...