Now a coin flip

[SocialCircle 570]

30 minutes ago, Brad_ATX said:

Your willful idiocy is on full display today

Do you know 6000 of our military have died with Covid-19? Opps. 

This whole deal is much ado about nothing and will be forgotten in a few days as other items come out. 
 

As it relates to FDR the one lasting thing from what he said is still and will always be the quoted I cited no matter how much you and others howl about it. 

[SocialCircle 570]

49 minutes ago, TitanTiger said:

Only if you ignore everything else said in the same speech.

FDR did not misrepresent the seriousness of the Great Depression.  Here's a link to the full speech.  I'll give some quotes to demonstrate how FDR specifically did not downplay the severity of the depression we were in.

https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/froos1.asp

In such a spirit on my part and on yours we face our common difficulties. They concern, thank God, only material things. Values have shrunken to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our ability to pay has fallen; government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income; the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade; the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no markets for their produce; the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone. 

More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.

....

Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the Government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our natural resources. 

Hand in hand with this we must frankly recognize the overbalance of population in our industrial centers and, by engaging on a national scale in a redistribution, endeavor to provide a better use of the land for those best fitted for the land. The task can be helped by definite efforts to raise the values of agricultural products and with this the power to purchase the output of our cities. It can be helped by preventing realistically the tragedy of the growing loss through foreclosure of our small homes and our farms. It can be helped by insistence that the Federal, State, and local governments act forthwith on the demand that their cost be drastically reduced. It can be helped by the unifying of relief activities which today are often scattered, uneconomical, and unequal. It can be helped by national planning for and supervision of all forms of transportation and of communications and other utilities which have a definitely public character. There are many ways in which it can be helped, but it can never be helped merely by talking about it. We must act and act quickly.

I mean, honestly the entire speech is a forthright acknowledgement of the dire situation we were in and an honest assessment that it's going to take some hard work on the part of the government and a great deal of sacrifice for each other from the American people to fix it.  He uses terms like "emergency" and "war."  Far from saying it's nothing to worry about, he communicates that it requires a sense of urgency and immediacy - that it will require courage and that we can't just talk about it but that "we must act and act quickly."

But he doesn't do so with doom and gloom and predictions of failure.  He believes we'll come out on the other side of this - that this is a problem that can be fixed.

Your simplistic comparison of FDR to Trump here reveals that you're confused about the difference in optimism and downplaying.  It's a lack of understanding between offering hope in the midst of an admitted hard road vs giving glib, Pollyanna-ish lies about the seriousness of the problem in the first place.

Grow the **** up.

The lunacy on display here is of those who believe this is some kind of revelation. Breaking news.....Trump is painting an optimistic view of the pandemic. Did anyone on earth not already know this? This is just another in a long line of nothing burgers. 

[Brad_ATX 13,654]

17 minutes ago, SocialCircle said:

Do you know 6000 of our military have died with Covid-19? Opps. 

This whole deal is much ado about nothing and will be forgotten in a few days as other items come out. 
 

As it relates to FDR the one lasting thing from what he said is still and will always be the quoted I cited no matter how much you and others howl about it. 

I hate that I ask this at least once a week, but......

HOW ARE YOU INVOLVED IN ANY WAY, SHAPE OR FORM IN OUR EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM?!

You don't even  understand the basics of FDR's speech despite being given it in it's entirity, yet have the audacity to say that we're out here howling.  Seriously, I love engaging with smart people who think differently from me.  I wish I had that opportunity with you, but you've outed yourself as an idiot too many times.

JFC man.  And we wonder why America lags behind the world in educational rankings.

[TitanTiger 20,510]

14 minutes ago, SocialCircle said:

The lunacy on display here is of those who believe this is some kind of revelation. Breaking news.....Trump is painting an optimistic view of the pandemic. Did anyone on earth not already know this? This is just another in a long line of nothing burgers. 

You're a liar.

No one needs optimism when the problem isn't that bad, when it's just a "little flu," when the real seriousness of the matter is that it's an overhyped Democrat hoax, when it's going to just magically disappear on its own.  

Optimism is only required when the problem is seen and communicated as serious and difficult.  FDR did that.  Trump has done the opposite.

If you're going to be this unserious and intellectually dishonest, this is not the forum for you.

[AUDynasty 585]

Reading these replies is so weird. It's chilling to say at least. If roles were reversed and a Democrat president was saying what Trump was saying--the reaction here from Trump supporters would be a polar opposite. You'd be SCREAMING for them to be hauled to the prison and throw away the key for the eternity.

[SocialCircle 570]

35 minutes ago, TitanTiger said:

You're a liar.

No one needs optimism when the problem isn't that bad, when it's just a "little flu," when the real seriousness of the matter is that it's an overhyped Democrat hoax, when it's going to just magically disappear on its own.  

Optimism is only required when the problem is seen and communicated as serious and difficult.  FDR did that.  Trump has done the opposite.

If you're going to be this unserious and intellectually dishonest, this is not the forum for you.

Shame on anyone who is surprised that Trump “downplayed” the virus. And I love lectures from someone who is confused about the origin of FDRs most famous quote. Next thing you will claim is Reagan was suggesting China tear down that wall. 

[McLoofus 35,182]

9 minutes ago, AUDynasty said:

Reading these replies is so weird. It's chilling to say at least. If roles were reversed and a Democrat president was saying what Trump was saying--the reaction here from Trump supporters would be a polar opposite. You'd be SCREAMING for them to be hauled to the prison and throw away the key for the eternity.

4 Americans died in Benghazi, and 10 investigations- including 6 by Republican-controlled committees- found no improper conduct on the part of any high-ranking officials in the Obama administration. Yet I feel like maybe that was a noisy affair. 4 dead.

Conservative estimates have us at over 50,000 preventable deaths had trump acted on the knowledge when he had it. 50,000 people. 50,000 human beings with names and families. Because Captain Suburban Hellscape didn't want to cause a panic. 

Some truly empty people walking among us. 

[SocialCircle 570]

17 minutes ago, AUDynasty said:

Reading these replies is so weird. It's chilling to say at least. If roles were reversed and a Democrat president was saying what Trump was saying--the reaction here from Trump supporters would be a polar opposite. You'd be SCREAMING for them to be hauled to the prison and throw away the key for the eternity.

Not true. I’m not screaming for DeBlasio or Pelosi to be hauled to prison even though they were telling people to come out in large numbers as the virus was hitting our shores. Now what Cuomo and other D governors did when they put elderly people who had the virus back in facilities with others who didn’t have this virus is something to really be concerned about. 

[SocialCircle 570]

3 minutes ago, McLoofus said:

4 Americans died in Benghazi, and 10 investigations- including 6 by Republican-controlled committees- found no improper conduct on the part of any high-ranking officials in the Obama administration. Yet I feel like maybe that was a noisy affair. 4 dead.

Conservative estimates have us at over 50,000 preventable deaths had trump acted on the knowledge when he had it. 50,000 people. 50,000 human beings with names and families. Because Captain Suburban Hellscape didn't want to cause a panic. 

Some truly empty people walking among us. 

Some experts say many more than this were saved by Trumps travel ban that Biden was against before he was for. 

[TitanTiger 20,510]

33 minutes ago, SocialCircle said:

Shame on anyone who is surprised that Trump “downplayed” the virus.

Your posts are a waste of keystrokes, electricity and server space.  Do better or leave.

 

Quote

And I love lectures from someone who is confused about the origin of FDRs most famous quote. Next thing you will claim is Reagan was suggesting China tear down that wall. 

I didn't read closely enough and ran with the comparison to the Churchill WWII reference.  Sue me.  The bottom line is, your FDR reference is full of s***.

[TitanTiger 20,510]

28 minutes ago, SocialCircle said:

Some experts say many more than this were saved by Trumps travel ban that Biden was against before he was for. 

Any effort in the right direction, no matter how feeble, likely saved "some" lives.  But given the porous nature of the travel ban due to numerous exceptions and workarounds, it's highly doubtful it saved thousands or tens of thousands of lives.

https://apnews.com/d227b34b168e576bf5068b92a03c003d

The point is, there were other actions that should have been taken or should have been taken much earlier that would have saved more.

[AUDynasty 585]

40 minutes ago, SocialCircle said:

Not true. I’m not screaming for DeBlasio or Pelosi to be hauled to prison even though they were telling people to come out in large numbers as the virus was hitting our shores. Now what Cuomo and other D governors did when they put elderly people who had the virus back in facilities with others who didn’t have this virus is something to really be concerned about. 

Okay I'll bite. If Trump could have pushed for a mask mandate due to safety and protection at the beginning when this pandemic hit--this incident could have been politically advantageous for Trump to say something like "See, I care about your safety and protection. Too bad Democrats can't say the same." Once Trump made not wearing a mask a political statement, that's where the messaging got lost. 

And to redirect your focus back to my original question: if Barack Obama or Bill Clinton had said the exact SAME quote as Trump said... would you still defend Obama/Clinton? A genuine question. 

[AUDynasty 585]

48 minutes ago, McLoofus said:

4 Americans died in Benghazi, and 10 investigations- including 6 by Republican-controlled committees- found no improper conduct on the part of any high-ranking officials in the Obama administration. Yet I feel like maybe that was a noisy affair. 4 dead.

Conservative estimates have us at over 50,000 preventable deaths had trump acted on the knowledge when he had it. 50,000 people. 50,000 human beings with names and families. Because Captain Suburban Hellscape didn't want to cause a panic. 

Some truly empty people walking among us. 

I truly do not understand it. Propaganda really works.

[TitanTiger 20,510]

Stolen from Twitter:

“I don’t want to cause panic” says the guy who tells the country every day that Joe Biden and his Antifa army are coming to destroy your suburb.

[SocialCircle 570]

19 minutes ago, TitanTiger said:

Any effort in the right direction, no matter how feeble, likely saved "some" lives.  But given the porous nature of the travel ban due to numerous exceptions and workarounds, it's highly doubtful it saved thousands or tens of thousands of lives.

https://apnews.com/d227b34b168e576bf5068b92a03c003d

The point is, there were other actions that should have been taken or should have been taken much earlier that would have saved more.

I agree this pandemic could have been handled better by Trump and by several governors and mayors and congressional leaders too. 

[TitanTiger 20,510]

Just now, SocialCircle said:

I agree this pandemic could have been handled better by Trump and by several governors and mayors and congressional leaders too. 

Well, we aren't having a national election for several governors, mayors and congressional leaders in a couple of months.  None of them by themselves can affect things - for good or ill - that the President can.  So let's try to stay on topic and deal with what the most powerful leader in the world did or failed to do or lied about.

[SocialCircle 570]

10 minutes ago, AUDynasty said:

Okay I'll bite. If Trump could have pushed for a mask mandate due to safety and protection at the beginning when this pandemic hit--this incident could have been politically advantageous for Trump to say something like "See, I care about your safety and protection. Too bad Democrats can't say the same." Once Trump made not wearing a mask a political statement, that's where the messaging got lost. 

And to redirect your focus back to my original question: if Barack Obama or Bill Clinton had said the exact SAME quote as Trump said... would you still defend Obama/Clinton? A genuine question. 

I don't think what Trump said is a big deal and it doesn't surprise me in the least as it has been clear from the outset this was/is his strategy as it relates to this pandemic.  I don't blame those seeking to defeat him for trying to make a big deal out of it.  I'm not defending Trump as he said what he said.  I just don't think it is a big deal. Let's be real....I'd probably mention it if Obama had said it or if Biden had said it and you'd probably say it wasn't that big of a deal.  

[SocialCircle 570]

6 minutes ago, TitanTiger said:

Well, we aren't having a national election for several governors, mayors and congressional leaders in a couple of months.  None of them by themselves can affect things - for good or ill - that the President can.  So let's try to stay on topic and deal with what the most powerful leader in the world did or failed to do or lied about.

I disagree with you somewhat here.  I think governors can impact their respective states as it relates to what is or isn't done relative to this pandemic in many instances more than the president. 

[SocialCircle 570]

1 hour ago, McLoofus said:

4 Americans died in Benghazi, and 10 investigations- including 6 by Republican-controlled committees- found no improper conduct on the part of any high-ranking officials in the Obama administration. Yet I feel like maybe that was a noisy affair. 4 dead.

Conservative estimates have us at over 50,000 preventable deaths had trump acted on the knowledge when he had it. 50,000 people. 50,000 human beings with names and families. Because Captain Suburban Hellscape didn't want to cause a panic. 

Some truly empty people walking among us. 

What world leader stopped the virus from occurring?  Could another administration have stopped Benghazi from occurring? 

[Leftfield 2,652]

5 minutes ago, SocialCircle said:

 Let's be real....I'd probably mention it if Obama had said it or if Biden had said it and you'd probably say it wasn't that big of a deal.  

It's good that you're admitting to being intellectually dishonest. However, please don't project your failures onto others.

[TitanTiger 20,510]

Just now, SocialCircle said:

I disagree with you somewhat here.  I think governors can impact their respective states as it relates to what is or isn't done relative to this pandemic in many instances more than the president. 

Granted.  But again, I live in Alabama and you live wherever you live and neither of us are voting in the gubernatorial or mayoral races of these other places.  If Trump had been on top of this and doing all he could reasonably do given what he knew about the severity of this problem, and there were still issues with the spread, then talking about those other leaders makes sense.  But when he's secretly admitting that he knows and believes it is a more serious and deadly virus than anything we've faced while telling bald-faced lies publicly about it, failing to implement anything more than the most basic of measures, and pushing states and school systems to open up regardless, then it's HIS actions that are on trial here, not theirs.  The people of NY can deal with Cuomo and the people of NYC can deal with DeBlasio.  We have to deal with Trump.

[johnnyAU 3,645]

3 minutes ago, SocialCircle said:

I don't blame those seeking to defeat him for trying to make a big deal out of it

This is just the beginning. Both sides engage in this ferociously as it gets closer and closer to election day.  It will never change.

[McLoofus 35,182]

By all means, provide a single expert opinion suggesting that trump's "ban" (wasn't a ban) on China travel saved more lives than the rest of his incompetency cost. No, a Breitbart link to Dr. Demon Semen won't suffice.

Also, this constant refrain of "trump might have gotten that one thing right" as though it absolves him of subsequent months of murderous incompetence is just more mindless ranting of lunatics. Truly vapid lunatics.

 

[homersapien 11,440]

4 hours ago, SocialCircle said:

Fauci is on record saying Trump has done a good job as it relates to this virus.  I agree he downplayed it as did DeBlasio, Pelosi, etc... And Biden disagreed with the China travel ban before he agreed with it....kind of like his mask mandate.   I also think Trump will make sure we get a vaccine out as fast or faster than anyone else. If the vaccine comes out before the election and it works, then pretty much everything that happened on both sides will largely be forgotten. This administration has already done a great job of putting things in place to get the vaccine to the public as quickly as humanly possible once it is released.  I suspect Trump will take the vaccine live on TV as well to lead by example.    

"It was a life-or-death decision, and President Trump chose . . . himself.

To end the pandemic, there must be widespread vaccination among a public already skeptical about inoculations. If Americans think the covid-19 vaccine has been rushed for political reasons, tens of millions won’t take it — and herd immunity won’t kick in.

But Trump just couldn’t help himself. “So we’re going to have a vaccine very soon, maybe even before a very special date,” he teased at a news conference Monday, suggesting vaccination could begin in October. “You know what date I’m talking about.”

Um, Halloween?

If timing a vaccine to Election Day weren’t political enough, Trump also claimed that the Obama administration wouldn’t have had a vaccine for three years, if at all, and that political benefit could “inure” to him.

Such careless, selfish talk confirms Americans’ worst fears about a vaccine. According to a new CBS News poll, just 21 percent of voters said they would get a vaccine as soon as possible, even if it were free, down from 32 percent in July. Two-thirds said they would suspect that a vaccine rolled out this year had been rushed through without sufficient testing, and only 34 percent said they trusted Trump to make sure a safe vaccine is available.

Administration scientists fought mightily Wednesday at a Senate hearing on the vaccine rollout to undo this damaging perception, caused largely by months of Trump’s public pressure on scientists.

“Please hear me now: The rigor of the scientific evaluation on safety and efficacy will not be compromised,” said Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health. He urged Americans to “take the information they need from scientists and physicians, and not from politicians.”

Surgeon General Jerome Adams echoed the plea: “There will be no shortcuts. This vaccine will be safe … or it won’t get moved along.”

But senators on both sides were wary. “The president has accused FDA officials of being ‘deep state’ operatives, he’s tweeted conspiracy theories about covid-19 deaths, and he has implicitly tied vaccine development to his reelection campaign,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) observed.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said her state needs “assurance that, yes, this vaccine is going to be safe, that this vaccine has not been subject to political initiatives that would speed it up in any such way that would cause it to be less effective.”

It’s all essentially a rerun of what happened at the beginning of the outbreak. Thanks to audio recordings of Trump released by Bob Woodward along with his new book, we know that Trump on Feb. 7 privately confided that the new virus was “deadly stuff.” But instead of preparing the country for such, he publicly claimed it would “disappear” and was no worse than the flu. “I wanted to always play it down,” Trump told Woodward.

That, too, was a life-or-death decision, and Trump chose political expediency.

Now, weeks before the election, this administration has become a government of the Donald, by the Donald and for the Donald. The Justice Department Tuesday intervened in a defamation lawsuit against Trump brought by E. Jean Carroll, who says Trump raped her years ago. Trump’s DOJ wants the United States to be the defendant in the case instead of Trump because, it claims, he was “acting within the scope of his office as President” when he denied the assault.

Attorney General William Barr claimed Wednesday that DOJ’s action was “routine” and is “done frequently.”

Uh-huh.

Also routine: trashing the South Lawn of the White House and the Rose Garden with a political convention, appointing a big-time political donor to disrupt service at the U.S. Postal Service on the eve of an election that will rely on mail-in voting, canceling intelligence briefings for lawmakers about foreign attempts to interfere in the election, having the Justice Department back Trump’s unsubstantiated claims about antifa and election fraud, making federal law-enforcement officers serve as Trump’s political paramilitary and using the federal government to damage Trump’s political opponents and boost his business properties.

Now, Trump is trying to use a vaccine rollout to revive his political fortunes. The result is lost faith in the vaccine — which inevitably will mean more suffering and death.

“What a heartbreak that would be,” Collins told senators Wednesday at a hearing of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, “if we go through all of this, we come up with a vaccine that is safe and effective, we have already lost 190,000 people, and we can prevent many more deaths, and yet people are afraid to use it. We can’t let that happen.”

But it’s already happening, because the head of government has spent four years demonstrating that he cares only about his own interests."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/09/09/this-is-government-donald-by-donald-donald/

 

[homersapien 11,440]

4 hours ago, SocialCircle said:

This is impossible for you to know.  Sounding alarm bells could have caused food shortages and other things to happen.  We will never know, because he elected not to do so.  

And not sounding the appropriate alarm bells - plus his lack of a coordinated Federal response in follow-up - resulted in the additional deaths of tens of thousands Americans, perhaps a 100,000.

A "food shortage" was not a rationale trade-off in comparison.  You're grasping at straws in your effort to make excuses for a criminal lack of leadership.