patrick.net

I have not followed much about E. European crime syndicates since 2005 or so. After that (+/- some years), most large organized crime fell under Russian State. But there exist just as bad or even probably worse syndicates from -stans, which are even more ruthless than Russian ones. See Nazarbayev, Karimov, etc.

Patrick says

Trump can't be all that dumb. He got himself elected president with the entire establishment determined to stop him.

That speaks more about lack of intelligence of establishment, I think.

Trump needs to tell the establishment to quit squirming and stand still.
Slippery slimy swamp bastards!

#TDS

The Tea Party wasn't astroturf.

Here's the proof: The House Majority Leader Eric Cantor lost his seat in a Republican Primary powered by the Tea Party by 10 pts to Dave Brat in 2014.
He won the 2012 Primary by almost 80% of the vote. A majority leader of the House being unseated in a primary is a once-a-century event.

Eric Cantor was you archetypical Big Business Republican: He was for total one sided Free Trade, supported every "Free Trade" Agreement, supported TARP, fought the minimum wage, loved every capital gains tax cut he ever saw, and was solidly anti-Union. He was also weak on immigration. While strong on Gun Rights and Anti-Abortion, he supported a version of the DREAM Act to give big business lots of cheap labor and crush wages of US Citizens. That was his undoing.

If the Tea Party was Astroturf, they would have instructed Virginia Leaders not to endorse Brat or work against Cantor.

jazz_music says

CBOEtrader says

Does Clinton also deserve your critique?

Maybe, I don't know.

But you know Trump is bad? You understand the flaw in your logic? Thinking one is better than the other.

jazz_music says

WookieMan says

the flaw in your logic

The flaw?

Yes. Trump is bad, but you don't know about Clinton though. You're admitting that you may actually not know that Trump is bad by default saying you don't know that Clinton was bad.

Clinton got a BJ on public property. Then lied about it. Not a big deal in my world, but if you don't know Clinton is bad, then maybe you don't know much about Trump? Flying to a pedophile's island multiple times is also pretty bad optics. But hey Trump golfs and talks about grabbing women by the pussy, which he likely never did. You don't know what you don't know.

Yep, and the Tea Party wasn't one, since it took out the House Majority Leader, beloved of Donahue and the COCsuckers in a primary.

Obama did not replace the inventory of masks & equipment.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/obama-administration-sought-to-cut-ppe-stockpile-biden-gop

Nor did Trump "eliminate pandemic response staff"
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-trump-fired-pandemic-team/partly-false-claim-trump-fired-pandemic-response-team-in-2018-idUSKBN21C32M

Just realize that the federal government is bloated, incompetent, and corrupt. That's why "limited government powers" is such an important concept — downsize the government so that it downsizes the bloat, incompetence, and corruption.

When the anti-Trump news tries to lay blame at Trump's feet, it's a fairly reasonable reaction to point out that it was already broken well before Trump got there. We can't exactly expect Trump to fight a coup against him, drain the swamp, fix the economy, secure the borders, drive out the illegal aliens, AND also fix the broken pandemic response system, can we?

jazz_music says

So what?

That was then, this is now.

We are merely applying the same rules and standards you give Democrats to Republicans.

jazz_music says

Onvacation says

Where's the hockey stick?

IDK

Nobody does.

Most people quietly stop talking about it.

jazz_music says

socal2 says

We are merely applying

Too many of you claim to be speaking for a whole group of people.

This shows self knowledge of your weak position.

There is definitely a plurality of like thinking people who can see how wrong you are.

I drove out of state to get a haircut and now all the grandmas in my state are going to DIE.

Math just is and blacks kill each other and whites disproportionately. Don't argue with math, makes one look dumb. You can try and mitigate factors after the first step which is admitting there is a problem. If one keeps deluding themselves with TDS then this bad and sad fact will never change.

personal

Even 200,000 out of at least 330,000,000 isn't much. Not even enough to put a dent in traffic.

Obviously these people are all like butchers with blinders and their fingers on the scale. The bigger the numbers, the greater their power and potential remunerations, while ignoring the collateral damage of extreme policies. They aren't much better than soothsayers casting and reading chicken bones.

Re-title: over-estimated.

jazz_music says

continues to spread the divisive mentality of us-vs.-them

jazz_music says

His need to squash alternate information and his insistence of constant ego stroking are all characteristics of other famous leaders—cult leaders.

Those that are drinking the kool-aid can't begin to fathom how it all appears to those not in the cult. That is those outside the cult looking at the whole thing objectively. Including even many well known conservatives.

The cultists say, "oh that's my favorite part - the way it triggers the libs - the liberal tears," etc.

CLEARLY! the only space space is GUAM!

It sounds like a lot when pumped and porned in the lamestream news media but compared to how many old people die of something each year it's not even a blip on the radar. And the kicker is that usually nobody gives a shit when somebody they didn't know dies of something. But when it's Covid-19 virtue signaling goes through the roof and it's suddenly somehow orange! Man! Bad! 's fault. Everybody and their mother incl. Fauxci and the who got it wrong (or covered for the ccp) alright. Let's move on, do a good deed today for someone who matters to you and switch off the fear porn.

100,000 90,000 they can't even keep their inflated numbers right.

The Virus didn't kill many people.People that died that had it, which it turns out many of us had it, or have it, and never knew.
They get counted as a Covid death regardless how they died.

FACT CHECK: FALSE

When medical agencies are getting paid $30000 for classifying a death as COVID-19 caused, do you think there might be just a bit of over-reporting to get extra money?

I'm sure the biggest hospitals have administrators working extra hard to "reclassify" EVERY SINGLE DEATH as COVID-19 related. How could they justify not taking free money? Our shareholders DEMAND IT!

This is known as a "perverse incentive." A similar case occurred when the government began rating every airline for "on-time performance." The metric was based on "pushback" from the gate - not actual wheels-up time. To avoid bad numbers, what did every airline do? Padded all takeoffs by 30 minutes. Now, the airplane pushes back on time, every time. So EVERY consumer who flies has to waste their time (that was about 2 million people per day before COVID-19) for a perverse government metric.

Large number sound scary without proper context.

From CDC: Death rate is less than half of a percent, so more than 200 people have to be infected before one dies.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scenarios.html

Deaths from flu in 2017 - 80,000
https://www.statnews.com/2018/09/26/cdc-us-flu-deaths-winter/

Deaths from Spanish Flu(last real pandemic) - 500,000
(same link ^^)

Deaths from Covid this year(not anything else, just covid), 76,000
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm

NuttBoxer says

From CDC: Death rate is less than half of a percent, so more than 200 people have to be infected before one dies.

This is good to point out. It needs another layer though. The demographics all point to people that have lived a full life. I've said it before, I don't want anyone to die, but we have to look at the data and what's happening. This number is closer to 1 in 2,000 for people under the age of 60 (I'm making this up, but I'm probably being conservative). There's a way to protect these people. Not complicated.

We're shutting down people that are productive to save some old people that likely lived poorly and would have survived this if it wasn't for their own shit decisions. Or they're just fucking old. It makes no sense.

Face it. This won't end, much less make sense, until the election is over, and the Dems have stuffed the ballot boxes with mail in ballots.

You two are free to have your own threads. I won’t interfere.

"Time tells truths, that now will never know."
Windsurferman

jazz_music says

“Socialism needs to pull down wealth; liberalism seeks to raise up poverty. Socialism would destroy private interests, Liberalism would preserve [them] ... by reconciling them with public right. Socialism would kill enterprise; Liberalism would rescue enterprise from the trammels of privilege and preference. Socialism assails the preeminence of the individual; Liberalism seeks ... to build up a minimum standard for the mass. Socialism exalts the rule; Liberalism exalts the man. Socialism attacks capitalism; Liberalism attacks monopoly.” —Winston S. Churchill

"Liberalism" in Great Britten in the 1950s meant promoting "liberty" — pretty much what the Bill of Rights attempts to do. That is very far removed from what "liberalism" means in the USA today.

OccasionalCortex says

SunnyvaleCA says

"Liberalism" in Great Britten in the 1950s meant promoting "liberty" — pretty much what the Bill of Rights attempts to do. That is very far removed from what "liberalism" means in the USA today.

Can't expect Jazz to actually know about such facts, can we?

Or know the difference between "your" and "you're."