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FWD

Burnt Ends
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Posts posted by FWD

  1. They seem to be going back and forth between thinking the virus is when Trump strikes and brings the whole Q operation into action, and thinking the virus is a conspiracy to stop Trump by Bill Gates and his minions in the public health world. It's fascinating.

    There is some next level shit too, theories that the vampire blood drank by celebrity pedophile rings comes from Wuhan and the virus is related to an attempt to poison it.

    In other words, Q folks having a normal one.

  2. 2 minutes ago, Enchubben said:

    A risk of derailing the current thread, can you please stop trying to make this about politics please?

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/03/16/no-white-house-didnt-dissolve-its-pandemic-response-office/

      Reveal hidden contents

    It has been alleged by multiple officials of the Obama administration, including in The Post, that the president and his then-national security adviser, John Bolton, “dissolved the office” at the White House in charge of pandemic preparedness. Because I led the very directorate assigned that mission, the counterproliferation and biodefense office, for a year and then handed it off to another official who still holds the post, I know the charge is specious.

    Now, I’m not naive. This is Washington. It’s an election year. Officials out of power want back into power after November. But the middle of a worldwide health emergency is not the time to be making tendentious accusations.

    When I joined the National Security Council staff in 2018, I inherited a strong and skilled staff in the counterproliferation and biodefense directorate. This team of national experts together drafted the National Biodefense Strategy of 2018 and an accompanying national security presidential memorandum to implement it; an executive order to modernize influenza vaccines; and coordinated the United States’ response to the Ebola epidemic in Congo, which was ultimately defeated in 2020.

    It is true that the Trump administration has seen fit to shrink the NSC staff. But the bloat that occurred under the previous administration clearly needed a correction. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, congressional oversight committees and members of the Obama administration itself all agreed the NSC was too large and too operationally focused (a departure from its traditional role coordinating executive branch activity). As The Post reported in 2015, from the Clinton administration to the Obama administration’s second term, the NSC’s staff “had quadrupled in size, to nearly 400 people.” That is why Trump began streamlining the NSC staff in 2017.

    One such move at the NSC was to create the counterproliferation and biodefense directorate, which was the result of consolidating three directorates into one, given the obvious overlap between arms control and nonproliferation, weapons of mass destruction terrorism, and global health and biodefense. It is this reorganization that critics have misconstrued or intentionally misrepresented. If anything, the combined directorate was stronger because related expertise could be commingled.

    The reduction of force in the NSC has continued since I departed the White House. But it has left the biodefense staff unaffected — perhaps a recognition of the importance of that mission to the president, who, after all, in 2018 issued a presidential memorandum to finally create real accountability in the federal government’s expansive biodefense system.

    The NSC is really the only place in government where there is a staff that ensures the commander in chief gets all the options he needs to make a decision, and then makes sure that decision is actually implemented. I worry that further reductions at the NSC could impair its capabilities, but the current staffing level is fully up to the job.

     

     

    Sorry but public health experts at the time cried out that disbanding the pandemic response team made us less prepared. There were reports from health groups and lawmakers asking that the team be reinstated. Current top public health officials have said that the initial and ongoing response to COVID19 would be better coordinated if that team was still in place.

    • Like 3
  3. The primaries also provide a clean test of Bernie's general election argument that he would make up for losses among moderates by generating a surge in turnout by young voters and new voters. If he couldn't do it in a primary against Biden there is no way it was happening in the general.

    • Like 1
  4. 1 minute ago, Message Board User said:

    Beto fell victim to this overestimation, IMO, last summer.

    So did Harris, Castro, Booker...

    Do you think Harris would still be in this if she hadn't misread the room and jumped on board the "ban private health insurance" train?

  5. If botching the response to COVID-19 becomes the Trump presidency's final act, there is no way it will not get more absurd before it all ends. Meaning Trump himself contracting the virus (and lying about it), Biden contracting it, or RBG dying from it a month before the election. Probably all three will happen. 

  6. 1 minute ago, Hank Kingsley said:

    After Nevada, Bernie world was doing victory laps and confidently sensed a primary victory. We're all playing with our own narratives as a way to predict who wins the nomination. 

     

    I'll never understand why the instinct after Nevada wasn't to project unity and try to bring broader groups of Dems on board. Instead, Bernie railed against the Democratic establishment and defended Fidel Castro. 

  7. 4 minutes ago, ChiTownDoc said:

    You act like people like Bernie's policies but hate Bernie.  To me Bernie is easiest the most likable candidate but, for the most part, I don't like his policies.  No need to take it personally, bros. 

    My view as well. If you took Bernie's personality and history but dropped the extremely unpopular positions he has that poison him in the general, I would be a huge fan.

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