CR: COVID-19 --Political Talk

[cactusflinthead 27,615]

1 minute ago, wildcat09 said:

It’s really insane that the Dems didn’t even push for this kind of approach. It would’ve been really hard for republicans to publicly oppose it and it sure as hell would’ve been better than giving Trump a fucking slush fund to give out to his friends.

Yesterday I saw a quote from AOC that they were pushing for it. Republicans absolutely refused. 

 

[cactusflinthead 27,615]

Crozier knew it was over as soon as he sent the letter. It didn't matter up the chain of command if it had been released. 

 

[Anastasis 23,498]

8 hours ago, JimmyJames said:

When we reach 30 percent unemployment, or perhaps higher. I think the one thing we should all think about, is was  Carter Page’s FISA warrant wrongfully procured. Because that’s what is important people.

[cactusflinthead 27,615]

 

[Anastasis 23,498]

I do miss the heydays of lunacy on this board though, laughing at server conspiracy theories and lawyers who don't understand basic legal concepts. I'd much rather go back to that time than follow this story line.  

Edited April 3, 2020 by Anastasis

[DixonHur 11,596]

4 hours ago, Mapache said:

 

Wish I had more rep to give...

[DixonHur 11,596]

39 minutes ago, cactusflinthead said:

 

This shit hits me hard as a Navy vet.  

When you're out at sea, all you have is each other and I would have loved to have this guy as my CO. 

But, in Trump's world, doing the right thing is a fire-able offense.  Pathetic.

[Message Board User 12,397]

 

[Captainant 27,970]

5 minutes ago, DixonHur said:

This shit hits me hard as a Navy vet.  

When you're out at sea, all you have is each other and I would have loved to have this guy as my CO. 

But, in Trump's world, doing the right thing is a fire-able offense.  Pathetic.

From what I've seen, I think this is more navy traditionalism than trumpism driving the CO's relief of duty. Dude broke chain of command while controlling a major strategic resource. They damn near dogmatically have to make a statement about that. 

Not saying it's right or just, but it adds up

[DixonHur 11,596]

6 minutes ago, Captainant said:

From what I've seen, I think this is more navy traditionalism than trumpism driving the CO's relief of duty. Dude broke chain of command while controlling a major strategic resource. They damn near dogmatically have to make a statement about that. 

Not saying it's right or just, but it adds up

Did they have proof he 'leaked' the memo?

My assumption was that the memo in question was too his superiors.

Either way, I like that he was looking after his sailors...and while I also had great CO's, I would have taking him in a heartbeat.

Edited April 3, 2020 by DixonHur

[Bullneck 19,315]

59 minutes ago, cactusflinthead said:

 

That must have been a lonely walk down.  He's seemed pretty over the protocol thing.  No. "ding, ding, captain, US Navy departing."

To go to the newspaper with a story like this is almost as big a sin as asking for a foreign government to find dirt on your political opponent.  He obviously decided it was better for the health of his sailors if he took the fall (or "went down with the ship") to save as many people as he could.  For me, he's up there with Vindman in terms of unimpeachable integrity.  And a sign of the times of how they were treated.

Edited April 3, 2020 by Bullneck

[Steamboat1874 4,152]

Zero percent chance Trump did not order this.

[kevwun 15,943]

15 minutes ago, Message Board User said:

 

This is why we are fucked.  There are too many exemptions.  We aren't gonna slow down shit this way.  Some of the rural counties are starting to have alarming jumps in case numbers.

Edited April 3, 2020 by kevwun

[Red Five 41,066]

Yes, by all means make an exception for millions of Texans all gathered close together singing into each others faces once a week. 

[kevwun 15,943]

It's not just that, it's the number of employees who have been declared exempt.  My wife got sent to the fucking panhandle this week to work on the survey for a transmission line that's not going to be built for a couple of years.  That's not exactly a high priority project in my mind.

[Jive Turkey 12,722]

6 minutes ago, Steamboat1874 said:

Zero percent chance Trump did not order this.

That’s what Rogue Melania said. 

 

[Message Board User 12,397]

 

[SmokeyTheBear 5,569]

3 minutes ago, Red Five said:

Yes, by all means make an exception for millions of Texans all gathered close together singing into each others faces once a week. 

Might move Texas from a purple state to a blue? 

 

Trying to find the silver linings in things

[Mrs Whiggins 13,050]

I'll get smote for this blasphemy, but I'm noticing an interesting overlap between the Abbott church worshiper exceptions and the Q worshiper philosophy of WWG1WGA except the rest of us get swept up in their contagion.

[SuingToGetAMessageBoard? 3,861]

 

This rings true to me.  It seems like my right wing friends are taking this seriously, despite the popular portrayal of republicans intentionally flouting the rules.  The golfers making a show of shaking hands / squeezing in together stories, beachgoers, and UT spring breakers seem to be more the exceptions than the rule.

 

[Captainant 27,970]

2 minutes ago, SydneyCarton said:

Hey fuck off you piece of shit. My comment was in the context of if it has been stated by the president, you know it’s serious. But way to go cherry picking half a sentence from a very long and neutral post. You continue to be half a fucking retard in this thread, and trying to make something political when my post was anything but. So feel free to go get fucked by one of your cloakroom buddies, shitbag. 

Come and talk then, snowflake. Leave your hugbox and think critically. 

Weeks ago you and CTJ and the rest of the merry band were shifting all over me for pointing out what the president was saying was counter to the medical experts advice and consensus. Why is what the president saying now serious as opposed to then?

Fuck you, I'll continue to say you should cite medical experts as authoritative over the president. They haven't had to change their story yet, and actually give a shit about health outcomes as opposed to the economy over everything else. 

[Chad Fuck 17,839]

Quote

Jared Kushner Is Going to Get Us All Killed

Trump’s son-in-law has no business running the coronavirus response.

Quote

Kushner has succeeded at exactly three things in his life. He was born to the right parents, married well and learned how to influence his father-in-law. Most of his other endeavors — his biggest real estate deal, his foray into newspaper ownership, his attempt to broker a peace deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians — have been failures.

Undeterred, he has now arrogated to himself a major role in fighting the epochal health crisis that’s brought America to its knees. “Behind the scenes, Kushner takes charge of coronavirus response,” said a Politico headline on Wednesday. This is dilettantism raised to the level of sociopathy.

 

Spoiler

Reporting on the White House’s herky-jerky coronavirus response, Vanity Fair’s Gabriel Sherman has a quotation from Jared Kushner that should make all Americans, and particularly all New Yorkers, dizzy with terror.

According to Sherman, when New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, said that the state would need 30,000 ventilators at the apex of the coronavirus outbreak, Kushner decided that Cuomo was being alarmist. “I have all this data about I.C.U. capacity,” Kushner reportedly said. “I’m doing my own projections, and I’ve gotten a lot smarter about this. New York doesn’t need all the ventilators.” (Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top expert on infectious diseases, has said he trusts Cuomo’s estimate.)

Even now, it’s hard to believe that someone with as little expertise as Kushner could be so arrogant, but he said something similar on Thursday, when he made his debut at the White House’s daily coronavirus briefing: “People who have requests for different products and supplies, a lot of them are doing it based on projections which are not the realistic projections.”

Kushner has succeeded at exactly three things in his life. He was born to the right parents, married well and learned how to influence his father-in-law. Most of his other endeavors — his biggest real estate deal, his foray into newspaper ownership, his attempt to broker a peace deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians — have been failures.

Undeterred, he has now arrogated to himself a major role in fighting the epochal health crisis that’s brought America to its knees. “Behind the scenes, Kushner takes charge of coronavirus response,” said a Politico headline on Wednesday. This is dilettantism raised to the level of sociopathy.

The journalist Andrea Bernstein looked closely at Kushner’s business record for her recent book “American Oligarchs: The Kushners, the Trumps, and the Marriage of Money and Power,” speaking to people on all sides of his real estate deals as well as those who worked with him at The New York Observer, the weekly newspaper he bought in 2006.

 

Kushner, Bernstein told me, “really sees himself as a disrupter.” Again and again, she said, people who’d dealt with Kushner told her that whatever he did, he “believed he could do it better than anybody else, and he had supreme confidence in his own abilities and his own judgment even when he didn’t know what he was talking about.”

It’s hard to overstate the extent to which this confidence is unearned. Kushner was a reportedly mediocre student whose billionaire father appears to have bought him a place at Harvard. Taking over the family real estate company after his father was sent to prison, Kushner paid $1.8 billion — a record, at the time — for a Manhattan skyscraper at the very top of the real estate market in 2007. The debt from that project became a crushing burden for the family business. (Kushner was able to restructure the debt in 2011, and in 2018 the project was bailed out by a Canadian asset management company with links to the government of Qatar.) He gutted the once-great New York Observer, then made a failed attempt to create a national network of local politics websites.

His forays into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — for which he boasted of reading a whole 25 books — have left the dream of a two-state solution on life support. Michael Koplow of the centrist Israel Policy Forum described Kushner’s plan for the Palestinian economy as “the Monty Python version of Israeli-Palestinian peace.”

Now, in our hour of existential horror, Kushner is making life-or-death decisions for all Americans, showing all the wisdom we’ve come to expect from him.

“Mr. Kushner’s early involvement with dealing with the virus was in advising the president that the media’s coverage exaggerated the threat,” reported The Times. It was apparently at Kushner’s urging that Trump announced, falsely, that Google was about to launch a website that would link Americans with coronavirus testing. (As The Atlantic reported, a health insurance company co-founded by Kushner’s brother — which Kushner once owned a stake in — tried to build such a site, before the project was “suddenly and mysteriously scrapped.”)

The president was reportedly furious over the website debacle, but Kushner’s authority hasn’t been curbed. Politico reported that Kushner, “alongside a kitchen cabinet of outside experts including his former roommate and a suite of McKinsey consultants, has taken charge of the most important challenges facing the federal government,” including the production and distribution of medical supplies and the expansion of testing. Kushner has embedded his own people in the Federal Emergency Management Agency; a senior official described them to The Times as “a ‘frat party’ that descended from a U.F.O. and invaded the federal government.”

Disaster response requires discipline and adherence to a clear chain of command, not the move-fast-and-break-things approach of start-up culture. Even if Kushner “were the most competent person in the world, which he clearly isn’t, introducing these kind of competing power centers into a crisis response structure is a guaranteed problem,” Jeremy Konyndyk, a former U.S.A.I.D. official who helped manage the response to the Ebola crisis during Barack Obama’s administration, told me. “So you could have Trump and Kushner and Pence and the governors all be the smartest people in the room, but if there are multiple competing power centers trying to drive this response, it’s still going to be chaos.”

Competing power centers are a motif of this administration, and its approach to the pandemic is no exception. As The Washington Post reported, Kushner’s team added “another layer of confusion and conflicting signals within the White House’s disjointed response to the crisis.” Nor does his operation appear to be internally coherent. “Projects are so decentralized that one team often has little idea what others are doing — outside of that they all report up to Kushner,” reported Politico.

On Thursday, Governor Cuomo said that New York would run out of ventilators in six days. Perhaps Kushner’s projections were incorrect. “I don’t think the federal government is in a position to provide ventilators to the extent the nation may need them,” Cuomo said. “Assume you are on your own in life.” If not in life, certainly in this administration.

 

 

 

[Jive Turkey 12,722]

 

[SuingToGetAMessageBoard? 3,861]

1 minute ago, Jive Turkey said:

 

I have a feeling that approval number is headed to, oh, about 42%

[tx 3 putt 77,921]

1 minute ago, Jive Turkey said:

 

he's #1 on facebook though, just ask him 

[SydneyCarton 48,296]

2 minutes ago, Captainant said:

Come and talk then, snowflake. Leave your hugbox and think critically. 

Weeks ago you and CTJ and the rest of the merry band were shifting all over me for pointing out what the president was saying was counter to the medical experts advice and consensus. Why is what the president saying now serious as opposed to then?

Fuck you, I'll continue to say you should cite medical experts as authoritative over the president. They haven't had to change their story yet, and actually give a shit about health outcomes as opposed to the economy over everything else. 

Hey cuntbag, don’t lump me in with any other poster. For starters my views on this are nothing like CTJ. People love to proclaim we’re the same person but we aren’t. I’ve said nothing of the sort in defense of trump. Look at my posting history, I’ve been present on THIS thread, and every post is a link that Trump is a stupid fucking piece of shit. He’s a monster and if there’s a hell im looking forward to him rotting in it. Which is why you taking a neutral post in the no politics thread and making it political is fucking stupid. I cited the quickest thing that came to mind in regards to someone’s question, and you ignored the tenor of the post and fixated on whatever you could to make it political. So fuck right off, cocksucker. Trump is a colossal piece of shit but you fixating people who aren’t inclined to support trump in any way and lumping them in with right wing cunts also isn’t helping the divide in this country. So once again, get fucked. 

[SuingToGetAMessageBoard? 3,861]

get a room, you two.

 

 

but also stay six feet apart in there.

[FondrenRoad 4,378]

39 minutes ago, DixonHur said:

Did they have proof he 'leaked' the memo?

My assumption was that the memo in question was too his superiors.

Either way, I like that he was looking after his sailors...and while I also had great CO's, I would have taking him in a heartbeat.

No they had no proof, and the article I read said they didn't even think he did leak the memo to the press. He sent it to ~30 people in the armed forces though, most of them outside of his chain of command.  And he did that through insecure means. The leaker is likely one of the ~30. 

I agree with his sentiment and his firing. There are better ways he could have notified his superiors while also letting the public know shit was getting bad. 

[Gengs1 2,583]

26 minutes ago, Message Board User said:

 

This is good news, the faster those retards die out the faster we can fix the country 

[Captainant 27,970]

2 minutes ago, SydneyCarton said:

Hey cuntbag, don’t lump me in with any other poster. For starters my views on this are nothing like CTJ. People love to proclaim we’re the same person but we aren’t. I’ve said nothing of the sort in defense of trump. Look at my posting history, I’ve been present on THIS thread, and every post is a link that Trump is a stupid fucking piece of shit. He’s a monster and if there’s a hell im looking forward to him rotting in it. Which is why you taking a neutral post in the no politics thread and making it political is fucking stupid. I cited the quickest thing that came to mind in regards to someone’s question, and you ignored the tenor of the post and fixated on whatever you could to make it political. So fuck right off, cocksucker. Trump is a colossal piece of shit but you fixating people who aren’t inclined to support trump in any way and lumping them in with right wing cunts also isn’t helping the divide in this country. So once again, get fucked. 

Sorry, it's so easy to lose track of who's who when there's so many admirers. I didn't mean my post to be an attack on you or making things political, just stating where you should go for factual information in a thread that's meant to be for facts (and thread cops, apparently). It is factual and self-evident that the president is not a good source of information - especially with regard to COVID-19. My apologies for pointing that out and upsetting you so much.

Thoughts and prayers.

[GhostOfTomJoad 9,435]

Never forget, Abbott sent the Texas Sate Guard to monitor Jade Helm. THAT'S the level of idiocy we're dealing with.

[Gengs1 2,583]

Just now, GhostOfTomJoad said:

Never forget, Abbott sent the Texas Sate Guard to monitor Jade Helm. THAT'S the level of idiocy we're dealing with.

This is amazing, just amazing, the republicans would vote for a retard or demon as long as it had an R next to the name

[TXSG8R 3,362]

8 hours ago, UDontKnow said:

People with military background, please feel free to chime in and comment. You guys obviously understand the situation better.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52145230

 

If the story is correct as written, he knew writing the letter was going to cost him his command.  Your only avenue around the chain of command is the Inspector General (IG) or someone from Congress, and even those arent wide open (IANAL, just remembering UCMJ stuff).  Breaking chain of command will get you smoked, even if you're right.  

[Biff Tannen 45,763]

4 minutes ago, Gengs1 said:

This is amazing, just amazing, the republicans would vote for a retard or demon as long as it had an R next to the name

And in the dotard's case, he may be both.

[Gengs1 2,583]

Just now, Biff Tannen said:

And in the dotard's case, he may be both.

Donald is an useful idiot to our adversaries and the 1%s

[Dnaguy 12,328]

36 minutes ago, Message Board User said:

 

Calling my shot.

When the movie gets made about the epic fuckup that this is, Florida man is going to be played by Bradley Cooper after he fattens up for the role.

[Gengs1 2,583]

3 minutes ago, TXSG8R said:

If the story is correct as written, he knew writing the letter was going to cost him his command.  Your only avenue around the chain of command is the Inspector General (IG) or someone from Congress, and even those arent wide open (IANAL, just remembering UCMJ stuff).  Breaking chain of command will get you smoked, even if you're right.  

He will retire as a captain, get his pension and write a book.

sucks for him for caring about his sailors, sad times 

[FondrenRoad 4,378]

1 minute ago, Dnaguy said:

Calling my shot.

When the movie gets made about the epic fuckup that this is, Florida man is going to be played by Bradley Cooper after he fattens up for the role.

John Krasinski. Christian Bale and Joaquin Phoenix will play all other characters. 

[Guest Lobo]

I think the movie will be done ensemble cast style and be shot sorta psuedo-documentary style instead of straight narrative live-action.  Gary Coleman could host!  

[Jive Turkey 12,722]

1 minute ago, FondrenRoad said:

John Krasinski. Christian Bale and Joaquin Phoenix will play all other characters. 

yeah, i immediately thought of fat Jim from the Office.

[Dnaguy 12,328]

1 minute ago, FondrenRoad said:

John Krasinski. Christian Bale and Joaquin Phoenix will play all other characters. 

Who plays Fauci? I can’t see it right now....

[Red Five 41,066]

Sean Penn as Gavin Newsom.

Bill Hader as Al Pacino as Andrew Cuomo.

[Guest Lobo]

Dustin Hoffman as Fauci, Duh! 

 

Actually, Ian Holm would be great in all seriousness.  But I think he's a little too old.  Even with lighting and makeup (and he'd be a dead ringer in both appearance and persona), he's just too old to move around a movie set nowadays.  Then again, all he really has to do in the film is stand at a podium.  This could work, let me make some calls.  

Edited April 3, 2020 by Lobo

[FondrenRoad 4,378]

Just now, Dnaguy said:

Who plays Fauci? I can’t see it right now....

Bale will spend a year living the role. He will be indistinguishable from the real Fauci once the cameras are rolling. 

[SuingToGetAMessageBoard? 3,861]

Just now, FondrenRoad said:

Bale will spend a year living the role. He will be indistinguishable from the real Fauci once the cameras are rolling. 

DDL has been spending his days solving 4 minor pandemics in preparation for the role.  He spends evenings staring for three hours in an unflinching trance at a medical diploma with his name on it.

[Jiggy-Z 3,467]

2 hours ago, DigglerontheHoof said:

Yeah, that was pretty fucking stupid.  It makes me wonder how this has spread throughout all the armed forces.  

Looks like a chink in the armor ......literally.  I'll see myself out.

[mdmost 43,295]

Sorry, on the last page. 

Edited April 3, 2020 by mdmost

[Ted Lange 16,153]

 

[Mrs Whiggins 13,050]

16 minutes ago, FondrenRoad said:

Bale will spend a year living the role. He will be indistinguishable from the real Fauci once the cameras are rolling. 

I like Bale, but if you're going to go with a Brit, then Jude Law could do it. Young, but age him up and he would be stellar. Edit to add--Edward Norton for Newsom.

 

I am searching for GOP defense of Jared talking points but there seems to be a glitch in the machine. May have to wait until their Sunday rounds of Fox et al.

Edited April 3, 2020 by Mrs Whiggins
Addition

[FondrenRoad 4,378]

1 minute ago, Ted Lange said:

 

Wrong. The ventilators belong to Trump because the federal government is Trump.  We aren't supposed to receive anything back from the federal government.  We pay feudal taxes so the king can make his palaces more lavish, and so he can plunder foreign lands and build palaces there as well.