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Bat Guano

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Everything posted by Bat Guano

  1. In theory, we could knock this shit out in 2 weeks. Simple in theory, difficult in practice, but it isn't rocket science. Keep everybody home for 2 weeks. That means everybody, across the country, and of course that's the hard part. But after 2 weeks, any incubating cases will be resolved or identified, and they can be isolated; everyone else goes back to their lives. It's equivalent to universal testing and quarantining; the spread would be halted in its tracks. If there was the political will to do it (pretty big if). What am I missing?
  2. Time to revive this thread. There's a new option that hadn't occurred to me a month ago:
  3. In the moment, there's a great sense of relief, and that it will be nice to NOT have a leader that is a laughingstock around the world; not having to dread looking at the headlines every morning and wonder, what kind of crazy shit has that asshole done now? There will be a chance to undo some of the damage done in the last 4 years. Some. But it's going to be a hard road. When Trump made it clear in 16 that he was going to make it a white-male, base election, I thought, well, good luck with that; that demographic has been shrinking for years. And then he managed to just pull it out, and I blamed Hillary: you had one job, and you turned out to be the only person in the country who couldn't beat the orange piece of shit. I think I, and many other people, owe her an apology now. As shown by this election, there are a lot more racist, reactionary, backwards redneck assholes in the country than I thought, and they crawled out from under their rocks in even greater numbers this year than 4 years ago. Mitch McConnell is worse than Trump, because he's smarter and knows how to get things done, and he's got a all too good chance at holding power (if one of the GA seats flips, is it too much to hope for one R - I'm looking at you, Romney - to switch sides? Yeah, probably, but one can dream, no?). Maybe Biden can work some kind of compromise magic mojo and get some things done, but I'm not getting my hopes up. But the real problem is when someone smarter and more polished than Trump comes along and runs his campaign again; there will be trial balloons in '22 and a full-fledged authoritarian on offer in '24. Anyone who runs for president is by definition a power-hungry maybe-megalomaniac, and there's a fine line between someone who has the ambition to take on the most powerful job in the world and willingly give it up if he loses, and someone who won't, if he has the chance to hold on to it. Hawley seems to be the front runner so far, but who knows; I don't think he has all that much charisma, but I've been wrong before. The point is, we could be looking at a real fascist next time around, not an incompetent wannabe, and it's been shown all too well that our system is not as strong as lots of people thought or hoped, and may not hold up. And the next one will have the advantage of a pre-stacked federal court system, including the Supremes. Will anyone be able to rouse the racists like Trump did? We're going to find out. I'm not sure I want to know the answer. Sorry for being Debbie Downer, and this is a good and necessary step, but it's just the first one of a long march.
  4. This. Trump mostly just accelerated where the Republican party was going anyway, in part at least - the racism, xenophobia, authoritarianism - and said the quiet parts out loud. You can make the argument that he didn't represent the party on economic issues - fiscal conservatism, trade - but you can also make the argument that the party was never really serious about those issues anyway, judging by the record, i.e., what they actually did when they were in power with respect to fiscal management. They only care about the deficit when a D is in office; they're about to rediscover their misplaced fear of government debt, just watch. Lots of Rs went along with Trump because he represented the base - that is, the baser impulses of the so-called conservative movement, as well as in the political sense of 'base.'
  5. Trump needs to raise $400 million and change in the next few years to pay some debts that he REALLY needs to actually pay. I'd be willing to help him out; I'd give him $1000 for the chance to punch him in the face (with a legally binding agreement that he won't sue me later, of course). All he needs is 399,999 more people like me. Should be easy to find.
  6. Well this brings up a dilemma. I'm out of Highland Park. Still have some Ardbeg 17 and Macallan cask strength though; just wondering if that will get me through tonight (ah, who am I kidding, make that today and tonight) or do I need to make a run to Twins?
  7. I'm sure he's thinking, 'This is the greatest reality show in the history of TV. There's gotta be a way I can monetize it.'
  8. Precisely this. Seltzer called it Trump by 7 in Iowa a day or two before the election; Iowa turned out to be Trump by 8. Which brings it back around to Nate Silver; discussing the Seltzer poll he said it was an outlier, acknowledged that Seltzer is considered the gold standard of IA polling, then said that even very good pollsters can be wrong sometimes. Good call, Nate. He's a bit too much in love with his own model, and doesn't exhibit enough garbage in/garbage out skepticism. The bigger issue is something I've seen from my dips into the right-wing internet mediasphere. It's not prevalent, and I've never seen it talked about in the mainstream media, but every once in a while you'll see a reference to Trump supporters lying to pollsters. Of course this is said approvingly, but it's also infrequent, in passing, and very much on the down-low; they don't want everyone to catch on to it. I imagine if you go into the comment threads on some of these sites, you'd find more of it, but I certainly don't have the stomach or the time for that nonsense. I think it's a real thing, though; this is the second time in a row the pollsters - most of them, anyway, one exception noted above - missed, and this miss was even bigger than the first one. Coincidence? Random chance/noise? Possibly. But it seems unlikely.
  9. I could really see him sneaking away to Mar a Lago sometime mid-December and setting up some kind of media outlet - TV network devoted to all-Trump all the time, combined with a boiler room of twitter trolls - and just never even returning to the White House. Keep messaging that the election was stolen, and blow off any actual presidential duties or responsibilities. Not even kidding.
  10. What makes you think he's going to concede? He won't. Ever. No matter what happens.
  11. Another problem is that the WH staff was relying on Abbot Labs instant test, which is not approved for use on asymptomatic people, and has a lot of false positives and false negatives. And this was the only thing they were relying on; if someone tested negative, they were good to go, no masks or social distancing required. Just a shitshow all around. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/06/health/covid-white-house-testing.html?searchResultPosition=3
  12. Too easy. "I don't know the details of the President's medical testing regimen. I'm sure he behaved responsibly and appropriately. blah blah blah" These people lie as easily as ... something really easy.
  13. Well, of course every accusation is a confession, and the idea that those evil Dems infected Donald is pretty prevalent in certain right-wing online neighborhoods. So yeah, Trump was trying to kill Biden. I mean, nobody who's seen been paying attention would even think twice about it; of course he'd do it, if he could.
  14. I was talking about the rate. High rate = sign of severe stupidity.
  15. Still trying to wrap my head around the fact that the White House has a higher infection rate than a South Dakota meatpacking plant.
  16. I just heard somewhere it was a high dose. No specifics, and could have been pure speculation. Never mind.
  17. Yeah, prednisone is nasty shit; had a course of it for Meniere's disease. Broke a lot of stuff over that two weeks; not proud of it. The shit Dotard is taking is reportedly much stronger, and he's taking high doses. He's a rage-filled maniac under the best of circumstances; gotta be totally out of control now.
  18. You're right, of course. I don't want him to die before he loses the election though; we don't need no stinkin' martyrs up in this bitch.
  19. I try to live by the Golden Rule, y'know, do unto others and all that. I certainly wouldn't want to catch the virus, so I shouldn't wish it on others. It's just wrong. And of course if nothing else it's in bad taste. And it's too easy - an uncontested layup - to pick on such an obvious target. Like wrestling a quadriplegic. All that being said, it's really, really hard to resist saying that if anybody deserved to get the virus and suffer horribly, it's the Dotard. See you in hell....
  20. Thanks. Yeah, maybe there was a judgement and they couldn't dun me for the fine because of the extradition thing. I got something in the mail; like i said, it was many years ago and all I remember is the conclusion that I didn't have to pay. Statute of limitations is probably up by now. Shit, now I feel like I pulled a Trump.
  21. Is extradition universal these days? A number of years ago I got out of a traffic ticket in NY because Texas didn't have an extradition agreement with NY; don't know if that's still the case. So might there be states where he'd be immune from NY state prosecution?
  22. It's certainly legit to prosecute for actual crimes unrelated to any political actions. It may be a bit of a slippery slope to prosecute for actions taken in office, which may be characterized as politically motivated, but most slippery slope arguments are stupid; I think it's possible to distinguish actual malfeasance from accusations ginned up by political adversaries.
  23. I suspect it's mostly Putin's money, and he got a ROI far beyond his wildest expectations, even if he never gets the money back. Definitely hit the El Gordo jackpot.
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