Election results discussion thread (and sadly the inevitable aftermath)

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Agema

You have no authority here, Jackie Weaver
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In any case, Venezuela-- which is not really 'communist' either, in my opinion-- at present has had just under 1000 deaths from COVID according to the Google News Coronavirus tracker and a little under 111,000 cases. Texas, with around the same population, has had over 26,000 deaths from greater than 1.6 million total cases.

Vietnam, with a population three times either Texas or Venezuela (Vietnam's population is 95.54 million), has had a grand total of 1420 cases and 35 deaths. Now, there are some counties in the United States which have had less total cases and deaths than Vietnam. Tripp County in South Dakota is one of them, with 612 cases and 10 deaths. Impressively, those are under half of Vietnam's totals. Tripp County has a population of 5478 as of the year 2018.
I think we should try to avoid citing developing countries against developed for this sort of precision of comparison, because the likelihood is that they do not have systems adequate to report reliable estimates. Chances are many may be dying of covid mostly without meaningful documentation. On the other hand Vietnam clearly does seem to be handling covid-19 well compared to the USA in a general sense.
 

Seanchaidh

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I think we should try to avoid citing developing countries against developed for this sort of precision of comparison, because the likelihood is that they do not have systems adequate to report reliable estimates. Chances are many may be dying of covid mostly without meaningful documentation. On the other hand Vietnam clearly does seem to be handling covid-19 well compared to the USA in a general sense.
I mean, the comparison doesn't have to be precise when the numbers are so stark.
 

Silvanus

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You can filter by material, statistical, document, photo-audio-video, and more
This is a terrible resource. I checked through a few, and when you click "source", they just end up linking to YouTube videos like Matt Braynard or other unverified claims. Not actual material evidence. Yes, even the ones listed as "material".

Maybe some of them link to actual material evidence, but I'm not going to sift through dozens or hundreds of useless links to get to them. If you're aware of actual material evidence, please point me towards it. Even a way to whittle down the rubbish on that site would be helpful (because the site's own filters sure don't).
 

tstorm823

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I wouldn't call what is the current system of the United States to being "working out fine". Both parties are driving us off the "cliff", one of them is just going like 30mph and the other is going like 29mph. They both absolutely suck, I don't get why anyone defends either of them besides wanting to go off that cliff 1mph slower.
Or, hear me out, nature tries to push people off the cliff, and society tries in all different ways to avoid that, and some gratitude for people's efforts is justified, rather than everyone blaming the party they don't like for natural disasters.
Pretty sure tstorm823 would have just as much problem blaming the rest of the culprits-- fanatical devotion to capitalism and maintaining the class structure.
I mean I've literally seen him say that "communism" would not solve the pandemic response (even despite PRC and Vietnam and other socialist places having WAAAAAAAY better COVID stats), so
You're currently actively blaming capitalism for a pandemic, and then projecting your own fanaticism onto me.
Imagine you're part of a team.
Back at you: imagine you're part of a team, and for ease of analogy I'll make it a school project. Like a semester long senior project. And there's one part of your assigned group who really sucks. He just does nothing and is an anchor on the group. But in the end, the rest of you manage to put together a good project despite being effectively down a person. And then the professor doesn't even look at your work and fails you preemptively because he knows that one guy sucks and figures there's no way the final submission is worth reading.

That's what you're doing: your prejudging the entire government based on your opinion of Trump, and not even considering the actual results.
There are also estimates such as excess deaths: the CDC put this at 300k by early October. That being consistent, >320k seems a very reasonable estimate.
Ok, but subtract from that 300k the at least 100k additional deaths from solitude, overdoses, suicides, delayed healthcare... the secondary effects of the lockdowns have been as harsh as the pandemic itself. And most of those lockdown policies were done against federal guidance. Despite the ridiculous caricature people have made of it, the US in many places locked down harsher than the rest of the world, and in frankly stupid ways. Speaking of which:
We can perhaps be thankful that the federal system in the USA enabled many governors to take action independently of the federal government.
LOL, no. Those freaking governors killed thousands of people by ignoring the CDC, whose guidance was much closer to what other countries have done, and was ignored because harsher restrictions were good optics apparently.
I think we should try to avoid citing developing countries against developed for this sort of precision of comparison, because the likelihood is that they do not have systems adequate to report reliable estimates. Chances are many may be dying of covid mostly without meaningful documentation. On the other hand Vietnam clearly does seem to be handling covid-19 well compared to the USA in a general sense.
Lack of meaningful documentation is huge, but so is circumstance. Obesity, heart disease, diabetes are all contributing factors that the US has problems with. Vitamin D deficiency is a problem in the US moreso than Vietnam. Vietnam has a dramatically younger population than the US. Like, I could plan a country to have perfect covid response by slaughtering everyone over 65 before the pandemic begins and we wouldn't exactly count that as a win.

It takes a really, really obsessed mind to suggest capitalism is the meaningful difference here.
 

Seanchaidh

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You're currently actively blaming capitalism for a pandemic, and then projecting your own fanaticism onto me.
Not sure why you think it is 'fanaticism' to note that an organization of society that requires most people to move around and interact with people every day or else lose their livelihood would facilitate the spread of a virus.

Lack of meaningful documentation is huge, but so is circumstance. Obesity, heart disease, diabetes are all contributing factors that the US has problems with. Vitamin D deficiency is a problem in the US moreso than Vietnam. Vietnam has a dramatically younger population than the US. Like, I could plan a country to have perfect covid response by slaughtering everyone over 65 before the pandemic begins and we wouldn't exactly count that as a win.

It takes a really, really obsessed mind to suggest capitalism is the meaningful difference here.
this analysis wow

If you did exactly your proposal in the United States COVID infections and deaths would still be way worse in the United States than they are in Vietnam. Still by several orders of magnitude.

edit:

suicides, delayed healthcare
oh, look, it's capitalism.
 
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tstorm823

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oh, look, it's capitalism.
A pandemic happens and people end up secluded in their homes and get depressed and you think that's because of capitalism? And you think I'm the one with blind devotion to a certain economic system?
 

Phoenixmgs

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Or, hear me out, nature tries to push people off the cliff, and society tries in all different ways to avoid that, and some gratitude for people's efforts is justified, rather than everyone blaming the party they don't like for natural disasters.
The pandemic was an avoidable natural disaster. Everyone who had the power to make decisions and influence said decisions did a horrible job, I don't care about parties. I fucking knew the virus was here in February and I barely did much research into it at the time. I'm sure with the reach, intelligence, and power of the US government at your disposal, you'd be able to know far more than I did at the time. Our reaction in mid-March was at least a month too late. Fauci did a horrible job and he doesn't have any party affiliation. Has Fauci ever said "vitamin d" in his hours and hours of TV during the pandemic (yet he takes 6,000 IUs of it a day)? The media has also done a horrible job on both sides with completely inept journalism. Those daily press conferences were a joke and just the media trying to ask Trump "gotcha" questions the whole time instead of actually doing their job, which is journalism. Remember when the media blew up over Trump telling that Asian reporter to "ask China" and claimed racism when you should damn well know what he meant by that unless you're just that stupid, either way you shouldn't be a journalist.
 

Houseman

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This is a terrible resource. I checked through a few, and when you click "source", they just end up linking to YouTube videos like Matt Braynard or other unverified claims. Not actual material evidence. Yes, even the ones listed as "material".

Maybe some of them link to actual material evidence, but I'm not going to sift through dozens or hundreds of useless links to get to them. If you're aware of actual material evidence, please point me towards it. Even a way to whittle down the rubbish on that site would be helpful (because the site's own filters sure don't).
Did you see? Braynard publicized a portion of his data, the "invalid addresses" stuff. I'd say that's solid material evidence, when you can look up the address and see that it's a kroger or whatever.

The argument the defense gave against his data in court was "he wasn't educated at a top-tier university, your honor"
 

Silvanus

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A pandemic happens and people end up secluded in their homes and get depressed and you think that's because of capitalism? And you think I'm the one with blind devotion to a certain economic system?
A friend of mine worked as an editor until earlier this month. His work didn't require use of specialist software or sensitive information-- which is to say, it could be done from home quite easily.

When the first lockdown began in the UK, and the government advised-- but did not order-- people to work from home if possible, his boss simply ignored it. The entire staff was expected to travel into work in Central London as usual, 5 days a week, to do in an office what could be done from home. The boss justified this on the basis that the workplace was "covid secure", which involved a bottle of anti-bac at the door and nothing else. And if someone had to isolate...? It would count as a sick day. And at this company, sick days come out of an employee's holiday allowance.

The boss in question, by the way, allowed herself to work from home from the start.

The boss did eventually (after many weeks of employees complaining) acquiesce to letting people work from home. Then lockdown ended.... then lockdown began again. And again, there's no provision for working from home, no provision for isolating oneself unless you spend your holiday days to do it.

This is a direct result of an unregulated company being allowed to do whatever the fuck it wants. No centrally-planned response to the pandemic, no coherence or consistency in how companies respond. And the management, of course, are purely motivated by money, and will sacrifice employee wellbeing and safety for it.
 

Silvanus

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Did you see? Braynard publicized a portion of his data, the "invalid addresses" stuff. I'd say that's solid material evidence, when you can look up the address and see that it's a kroger or whatever.
I've seen a small curated list of addresses he published from a wider dataset we haven't seen. Which really tells us quite little.

The argument the defense gave against his data in court was "he wasn't educated at a top-tier university, your honor"
If you're referring to this, thats not the defence at all. The defence is that he's not qualified in any relevant field to interpret the results, and hasn't utilised any accepted methodology.
 

Houseman

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Georgia House Hearing on Election Fraud, Brad Raffensperger to Participate 12/23/20
 

Houseman

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I've seen a small curated list of addresses he published from a wider dataset we haven't seen. Which really tells us quite little.
This spreadsheet has 1142 cells. Is that what you're referring to?
 

Agema

You have no authority here, Jackie Weaver
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That's what you're doing: your prejudging the entire government based on your opinion of Trump, and not even considering the actual results.
Trump affects the government. The government would be a lot better off without him - not only because of the guy at the top, but the agenda he can set (or lack of it), and that he then hires the B-team (or even C-team) as well. Why do people like Javanka or Peter Navarro have White House advisor positions to pull levers and make things happen, except sheer nepotism and ability to flatter Trump? It's the facilitation of corruption: overruling security concerns for his favoured friends and family, replacing inspectors of the executive function with yes-men. Why did Rudy Giuliani have a hotline to Trump ahead of the State Dept. on Ukraine? This is also what I mean by the ever-changing cabinet: appointing either the wrong people, or the right people he then doesn't want or trust. It goes beyond that - and harder to see - with the exodus of experienced civil servants vacating the shitshow, and the loss of their institutional knowledge and expertise. Loads of senior State Dept. posts went unfilled throughout the four years. Maybe they were useless and inefficient bureacracy so good riddance - but maybe what's happened is there's a load of foreign affairs not being processed which means the State Dept. is increasingly ineffectual.

Ok, but subtract from that 300k the at least 100k additional deaths from solitude, overdoses, suicides, delayed healthcare... the secondary effects of the lockdowns have been as harsh as the pandemic itself. And most of those lockdown policies were done against federal guidance. Despite the ridiculous caricature people have made of it, the US in many places locked down harsher than the rest of the world, and in frankly stupid ways. Speaking of which:
No, you don't just get to arbitrarily delete any number you feel like from official estimates and have it hold credibility.

LOL, no. Those freaking governors killed thousands of people by ignoring the CDC, whose guidance was much closer to what other countries have done, and was ignored because harsher restrictions were good optics apparently.
You're forgetting that the baseline is that the White House has been a clusterfuck on covid-19. Some governors have done much better, others have not. And where they have not, in some part that rests on the failure of the WH. Part of the problem here is that Trump has influence, often over voters. The president played for cheap popularity with his base, indulged bullshit, poor practice and conspiracy theories, and swayed a lot of individuals. At that point many governors potentially followed his line simply because they didn't want to annoy their voters. For instance, it's only been the last month or two with covid running rampant that some Republican governors have suddenly performed a volte-face and begged their people to mask up: but that's hard to get much traction on having spent months deriding it. People dead for posturing and stupidity, with the nation's leading example set by the president himself.

For instance, Mike DeWine, last I read a few months back, seemed to be regarded as on the ball with his covid-19 response right from the early days. I can't help but notice Ohio is 36th in terms of covid-19 deaths per head population, about a half to two-thirds that of most neighbouring states. Perhaps that sort of thing tells us something. If Mike DeWine had been in charge of the whole USA's covid-19 response, maybe an extra 100,000 or more Americans would still be alive.
 

Gergar12

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Either he is trying to torpedo the bill, or he's been listening to Saagar Enjeti, and Tucker Carlson too much, and now is an actual right-wing populist.

Oh, and Pelosi in a somewhat decent political move is trying to agree to this to avoid flak from people, and to put McConnell in the spotlight. McConnell and the deficit hawks are so mad right now.

Either way, I am now scared for the 2024 elections given how close it was, and if he goes to Georgia it's all over for the democrats, IDK maybe Warnock will pull something off.

Edit: Oh, and Trump may want to veto section 230 possibly ending the internet as well knew it.
 

Agema

You have no authority here, Jackie Weaver
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Oh, and Pelosi in a somewhat decent political move is trying to agree to this to avoid flak from people, and to put McConnell in the spotlight. McConnell and the deficit hawks are so mad right now.
If they were really deficit hawks, they wouldn't have gleefully passed those large tax cuts a few years back.

The Republicans haven't been deficit hawks for decades: it's just a bullshit line they roll out when they don't want to have to pay for something. The minute it gets put in terms they like the look of - say, an extra $50 billion for the DoD - turns out there's always some spare cash down the back of the sofa.
 

Houseman

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Edit: Oh, and Trump may want to veto section 230 possibly ending the internet as well knew it.
The internet as we know it is a propaganda machine where tech giants manipulate what views are seen and what views aren't, so... good.
 

Seanchaidh

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A pandemic happens and people end up secluded in their homes and get depressed and you think that's because of capitalism? And you think I'm the one with blind devotion to a certain economic system?
Oh yeah, the rise in suicide isn't because people are laid off and getting evicted or such things that are often associated with suicide; they're just lonely.

Get real.

edit:

Also, regarding the efforts of governors doing more draconian measures than necessary supposedly causing more deaths:


Here is a governor doing the exact opposite of that and it going very, very poorly.
 
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Hades

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I don't get it


I think its funny. When Trump thinks his enemies are undermining investigations they simply must be hiding something. But Trump doing every single thing in his power to obstruct investigations against him somehow wasn't a sign he had a ton to hide?
 
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