US Politics: Get Tested or Get Bested

[Maithanet]

I would definitely prefer Dan Snyder to Donald Trump as President.  The NFL is sufficiently competitive that everyday incompetence like Snyder's gets exposed over and over.  In contrast, the US is such a strong country and the President such a powerful position, it takes a truly overwhelming level of ignorance, incompetence and malice to fail as completely as Trump has these three years. 

[Freshwater Spartan]

1 hour ago, mcbigski said:

Is Trump dumber than W or Reagan?  The template my whole life has been that a Republican in the executive branch is either bumbling stupid (GWB, Reagan, Quale, Trump, Ford) or diabolically evil (Nixon, Pence, Cheney).  I guess there's also the out of touch elitist (Bush the Elder), but that's not actually the exception that proves the rule except perhaps in the Biden sense of 'literally'.

Not sure if you're a sports fan - would you rather have Trump own your favorite team or Daniel Snyder?  Donald Trump or the guy that used to own the LA Clippers?  Donald Trump or the Wilpons?  (Granted the USFL went under...)

There are plenty of much bigger morons in charge of things great and small.  Don't let your inclination to root for the Dems make you make silly statements.

 

Republicans do like their idiots...aka guys I would want to share a beer with.

Did you mean Donald sterling former Clippers owner or Dan Snyder Redskins owner? Clippers were god awful so kaybe Trump would have been an improvement. Redskins record is more mixed ...so maybe Sterling.

Would you like to have William Clay Ford as NFL owner or President. Imagine a world where Trump is your President and the Lions are your team.

[DireWolfSpirit]

16 hours ago, sologdin said:

classic rally around the flag

this is the best evidence for turning half the country into a re-education camp.  FFS. the irrationality of being persuaded by trauma to become more compliant with fiction not readily measurable.  

We must be like the ox and have no thoughts, unka say "it is known". 

 

[Paladin of Ice]

17 hours ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

I haven't studied his record, but he comes from a pretty awesome family, Mario was an outstanding Democrat.

Cuomo has a longstanding habit of criticizing Democrats from the right, (for example he wagged his finger at Democrats after the 2014 midterms basically saying "This is what happens when you move too far left") only to then try to make himself the face of Leftist causes. For example he long ridiculed the idea of raising the minimum wage in NYC, then became the champion of $15 an hour for fast food workers.

He also has a history of bullying and belittling other Democrats if they say something out of line with Cuomo's policies. Cuomo's first two terms were marked by an occasions where a local pol said something Cuomo was against in a local interview perhaps, only to find themselves being trashed the next day by Cuomo, either openly or through anonymous rumors and back door disses given to the press. NYC in particular has often taken collateral damage due to Cuomo's feuds with Mayor Bill de Blasio. And Go forbid you try to outshine him in any way. For example, Cuomo brought in Andy Byford, an expert in public transit systems, the rework the notoriously poorly run MTA. Cuomo quickly became irked at how popular Byford became, as Byford quickly won the hearts of MTA workers and became highly approved of by riders. So Cuomo made the job so difficult that Byford nearly quit the job, and then abruptly did quit in February.

Cuomo is an expert in New York's halls of power, having worked in state government for 30 years and having learned from his father. He's damn smart and competent. He's also an unbelievable prick, petty, and vindictive. I used to say he was a version of Chris Christie who had fewer chins and was smart enough not to get caught.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

4 minutes ago, Paladin of Ice said:

Cuomo is an expert in New York's halls of power, having worked in state government for 30 years and having learned from his father. He's damn smart and competent. He's also an unbelievable prick, petty, and vindictive. I used to say he was a version of Chris Christie who had fewer chins and was smart enough not to get caught.

So what you're saying here is he's a New Yorker?

Jokes aside, I can't recall what your position is, but you're a front line medical staffer in NY, right? How are things going? 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

10 hours ago, Freshwater Spartan said:

Republicans do like their idiots...aka guys I would want to share a beer with.

Did you mean Donald sterling former Clippers owner or Dan Snyder Redskins owner? Clippers were god awful so kaybe Trump would have been an improvement. Redskins record is more mixed ...so maybe Sterling.

Would you like to have William Clay Ford as NFL owner or President. Imagine a world where Trump is your President and the Lions are your team.

In disagreed with quite a few of the Obama Administration’s policies but to be honest I would much rather have a beer with him than George W. Bush.  I don’t have to, or want to, agree with someone to enjoy their company or their ideas.

A conversation with someone where we agree on everything sounds really dull.

[Larry of the Lawn]

36 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

In disagreed with quite a few of the Obama Administration’s policies but to be honest I would much rather have a beet with him than George W. Bush.  I don’t have to, or want to, agree with someone to enjoy their company or their ideas.

A conversation with someone where we agree on everything sounds really dull.

Is this some kind of USSR meets SC social ritual?

[sologdin]

be like the ox and have no thoughts,

DWS--

that's the risk--especially when leninist vanguardists take the decision.

but: the problem in late capitalism is not that the thoughts of the peasants and the doctrine of the vanguard party must coincide without remainder through so-called re-education, as in cambodia, but rather that precarious proletarians and know-nothing petit bourgeois always already have their minds filled with the ideas of the ruling class--this ideology is indoctrinated at all levels of civil society through institutions of family, church, media, and through the education apparatus.  what is needed therefore is less re-education than de-education.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

4 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

Is this some kind of USSR meets SC social ritual?

That would be more interesting, but it was a spelling error.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

wrong thread

[Paladin of Ice]

3 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

So what you're saying here is he's a New Yorker?

As a proud lifetime New Yorker born and bred in Brooklyn, .

In good fun.

Quote

Jokes aside, I can't recall what your position is, but you're a front line medical staffer in NY, right? How are things going? 

Hey, thanks for asking. I’m lucky in several different ways there: I’m in the lab, so I’m only interacting with patient specimens rather than directly with patients, (most of the time, anyway) which puts me in less danger, I work for a large private medical group rather than a hospital so we’ve actually been slow lately. We’re still taking extra precautions and such, but we’re probably doing less than 40% of our usual business. (We’re actually about to start furloughs as a result, with half the staff working one week, then off the next while the other half works.) Lastly, I’m in the suburbs rather than in NYC, so conditions aren’t quite as bad.

I’m planning on signing up for the NYS site where they’re recruiting medical personnel on an emergency basis. We’ll see if they even want me considering that I haven’t gotten my state certification for running lab tests yet. (Studying for that is something I’ve been doing a lot at work lately because we’re so slow.) They might be more relaxed about that in an emergency, or they might be willing to stick me a rung down the ladder in a position that doesn’t require a certification, like I’m doing now.

Regarding the state of the hospitals, I keep hearing disquieting things through the grapevine. What gets said officially and makes the news is bad enough, but there are rumors about people being told not to talk to the press about how low they really are on PPE and supplies, or how unprepared they are for things to get worse. A lot of hospitals and doctors offices (including my company) are sending Covid tests out to labs that are either hopelessly backlogged or under equipped, last Friday I had to try to help a nurse get an answer to why an elderly patient’s swab for Covid didn’t have a result from Quest Diagnostics 11 days after it was sent out, and that is by no means the only such example I’ve dealt with. We’ve practically given up on testing compared to the numbers we were doing two weeks ago because it takes too long to hear back and in all but the worst cases they’re going to be told the same thing about staying at home and what precautions to take. Only in cases where “it’ll make a difference in treatment” (read: where we expect the patient to need to go to the hospital and get special lung treatment to help with severe pneumonia like symptoms) do we really try to get a definite diagnosis. Well that, staff, and people who’ve had contact with someone who was confirmed to have it.

Stories in the news have talked a lot about hospitals having contracts with small labs that are out of all their supplies, they don’t even have test reagents to run tests or even, in extreme cases, to properly calibrate their machines.

In short I’m personally lucky so far, but shit is bad, and getting worse. I privately laugh and then cry when I see people not in the field talking about how testing is ramping up or we’re getting a handle on things. I’m just doing everything I can to make sure I don’t bring it home to my asthmatic wife, who’s already suffering from the early spring blooming.

As for those fuckheads who compare this to seasonal flu... I don’t even have the strength or mental resources to go into it.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

41 minutes ago, Paladin of Ice said:

As a proud lifetime New Yorker born and bred in Brooklyn, .

In good fun.

I quite enjoyed Williamsburg at the end of the summer. I’d move there in a heartbeat if I could, and stumbling on to NYU’s campus made me regret not trying to go there for undergrad.

Your city’s pizza isn’t anything special though. You can get the same stuff in the Midwest.

Quote

Hey, thanks for asking. I’m lucky in several different ways there: I’m in the lab, so I’m only interacting with patient specimens rather than directly with patients, (most of the time, anyway) which puts me in less danger, I work for a large private medical group rather than a hospital so we’ve actually been slow lately. We’re still taking extra precautions and such, but we’re probably doing less than 40% of our usual business. (We’re actually about to start furloughs as a result, with half the staff working one week, then off the next while the other half works.) Lastly, I’m in the suburbs rather than in NYC, so conditions aren’t quite as bad.

I’m planning on signing up for the NYS site where they’re recruiting medical personnel on an emergency basis. We’ll see if they even want me considering that I haven’t gotten my state certification for running lab tests yet. (Studying for that is something I’ve been doing a lot at work lately because we’re so slow.) They might be more relaxed about that in an emergency, or they might be willing to stick me a rung down the ladder in a position that doesn’t require a certification, like I’m doing now.

Regarding the state of the hospitals, I keep hearing disquieting things through the grapevine. What gets said officially and makes the news is bad enough, but there are rumors about people being told not to talk to the press about how low they really are on PPE and supplies, or how unprepared they are for things to get worse. A lot of hospitals and doctors offices (including my company) are sending Covid tests out to labs that are either hopelessly backlogged or under equipped, last Friday I had to try to help a nurse get an answer to why an elderly patient’s swab for Covid didn’t have a result from Quest Diagnostics 11 days after it was sent out, and that is by no means the only such example I’ve dealt with. We’ve practically given up on testing compared to the numbers we were doing two weeks ago because it takes too long to hear back and in all but the worst cases they’re going to be told the same thing about staying at home and what precautions to take. Only in cases where “it’ll make a difference in treatment” (read: where we expect the patient to need to go to the hospital and get special lung treatment to help with severe pneumonia like symptoms) do we really try to get a definite diagnosis. Well that, staff, and people who’ve had contact with someone who was confirmed to have it.

Stories in the news have talked a lot about hospitals having contracts with small labs that are out of all their supplies, they don’t even have test reagents to run tests or even, in extreme cases, to properly calibrate their machines.

In short I’m personally lucky so far, but shit is bad, and getting worse. I privately laugh and then cry when I see people not in the field talking about how testing is ramping up or we’re getting a handle on things. I’m just doing everything I can to make sure I don’t bring it home to my asthmatic wife, who’s already suffering from the early spring blooming.

As for those fuckheads who compare this to seasonal flu... I don’t even have the strength or mental resources to go into it.

Interesting. It’s good to hear you’re safer than others, but yes, the horror stories are here too and we’re not going through anything like you guys. Yet.

And I believe we’re getting furloughed too. They’re prepping us to work from home, which is frankly next to impossible, and now they collected all our emergency info. Pretty sure we’ve seen a >95% decline in our workload since we can’t have patients for everyday issues. The hospital is effectively closed until the end of April unless you have COVID signs and are at risk or you suffer some major event like a heart attack. So I’m just cleaning up other departments’ many, many mistakes from the last six months. Rather annoying that it only took me 12 hours to fix one thing that wound care had been sitting on FOR MONTHS, and we have to write most of it off.

Working here has taught me a lot, and while I tend to think the whole fixing waste, fraud and abuse line is over exaggerated, I can say with 100% confidence that it’s real in the medical industry.

[Varysblackfyre321]

13 hours ago, Week said:

Not what was said or is the case, but ok. You do you bro. 

PS - Bernie lost his ass to the "broke" presumptive nominee. I agree with you that I would support Bernie long before Biden...doesn't it make you think though? It's like losing a fight to a toddler and then pretending that you're tough.

I find this level of confidence to be unearned. Biden winning the nomination does not mean he must be the strongest candidate one could run in the general election. 

16 hours ago, Simon Steele said:

The Democrats know exactly how to lose--they seem more than happy with it. The Atlantic (limited clicks) released this article suggesting he just needs to show up in "corporeal form" to the Presidential race. Which, I guess, means he could be wheeled out dead, so long as he's there physically. These guys put all their effort into shutting down the progressive movement, and they did it, now they're about to walk into another Presidential loss against one of the biggest morons to ever be charge of anything. 

Where is Joe Biden? He's just staying alive until November, I guess. Great plan, dems.

It does reek of a weird sense of entitlement, and arrogance that they think could just rely on hatred/dislike of Trump to propel him to victory-in terms any problems he has as a candidate-from messaging, to organization, to outreach, to exciting people to vote for him yeah lets just ignore all of that.

 

[Zorral]

4 hours ago, Paladin of Ice said:

Cuomo has a longstanding habit of criticizing Democrats from the right, (for example he wagged his finger at Democrats after the 2014 midterms basically saying "This is what happens when you move too far left") only to then try to make himself the face of Leftist causes. For example he long ridiculed the idea of raising the minimum wage in NYC, then became the champion of $15 an hour for fast food workers.

However, I for one NYer am profoundly grateful that in this time he's governor and Cynthia Nixon is not. (I voted for her in the primary -- I think.  I know I didn't vote for C.  That was ... eons ago, in a galaxy far far far away.)

[Week]

14 minutes ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

I find this level of confidence to be unearned. Biden winning the nomination does not mean he must be the strongest candidate one could run in the general election. 

What level of confidence? Where do I say that Biden winning the nomination means that he must be the strongest candidate one could run in a general election? I specifically said that I would prefer Bernie, so this line of argument is quite a head-scratcher.

How does Bernie losing the nomination to a weaker candidate make him a stronger candidate? Even in his wins he only broke 40% in North Dakota and Vermont (also >40% delegates in Nevada's (undemocratic) caucus.

14 minutes ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

It does reek of a weird sense of entitlement, and arrogance that they think could just rely on hatred/dislike of Trump to propel him to victory-in terms any problems he has as a candidate-from messaging, to organization, to outreach, to exciting people to vote for him yeah lets just ignore all of that.

Once again, Biden is out there. What specifically would you like him to be doing? Run ADDITIONAL counter-programming the the Trump news conferences? This is a time where accurate, timely information is critical -- Trump hammering nails into his own coffin in front of the nation. Cuomo and other governors are providing that accurate, timely information because they are on the ground engaging with these issues.

Priorities USA (largest Dem PAC) is running anti-Trump commercials -- https://priorities.org/ (including the ad the Trump campaign has tried to block leading to it getting shared everywhere https://priorities.org/press/one-week-later-priorities-usa-action-releases-updated-version-of-ad-trump-tried-to-block/). 

I'm pretty excited to vote for any Democrat and will be even moreso after Trump's America lost 100-200k lives due to their incompetence and dishonesty. All pro-democrat (of any candidate) and anti-Trump messaging should be geared toward ANY democrat running in November. Continued anti-Biden messaging does jack shit for Bernie and only serves to support Trump. Great, continue to support your candidate -- I hope it leads to greater control over the party's platform -- enough with anti-Biden sentiments.

[Zorral]

If Biden's out there ... Imma not seein' him or hearin' him anywhere I go.  He's not even on the radio, which he can do safely in isolation.

~~~~~~~~~~~

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/04/inside-trumps-decision-to-back-off-of-his-easter-coronavirus-miracle

Quote

 But he ultimately realized that as bad as the stock market was, getting coronavirus wrong would end his presidency. “The campaign doesn’t matter anymore,” he recently told a friend, “what I do now will determine if I get reelected.”

 

[Week]

2 minutes ago, Zorral said:

If Biden's out there ... Imma not seein' him or hearin' him anywhere I go.

Maybe you aren't in an area getting his commercials? He is not completely absent as those with their head in Bernie-land may suggest: https://joebiden.com/Heres-The-Deal/ https://twitter.com/joebiden 

The fact of the matter is that a portion of the (very online) left does not like Joe Biden and is using this time to push a narrative that is productive to no one. The only way for him to avoid criticism here would be to drop out of the race.

I hate that I feel like a Biden-stan. Among legitimate candidates (i.e. not Tulsi, Bloomy, etc.), he has been my least favorite from the jump. This criticism seems extremely short-sighted and is disheartening for democrats in a pretty especially shitty time (Corona virus anyone?).

Some interesting commentary from 538 - https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/so-about-that-supposed-lack-of-enthusiasm-for-biden/?ex_cid=2020-tracker 

[Week]

Sorry for the double-post ...

Bernie has been doing a good job of making lemonade with lemons in his day job as a senator. Arguably, he could do more for his movement by pushing the Dem platform left and continuing to advocate for it in the Senate (where he could actually introduce THE DAMN BILL HE WROTE). Any EO that he would make could be undone on Day 1 of a republican successor in 2024 (I can't imagine Bernie or Biden running again/for a second term in 2024). Biden has already said he does not intend to run in 2024.

[Kalbear]

21 minutes ago, Zorral said:

If Biden's out there ... Imma not seein' him or hearin' him anywhere I go.  He's not even on the radio, which he can do safely in isolation.

~~~~~~~~~~~

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/04/inside-trumps-decision-to-back-off-of-his-easter-coronavirus-miracle

 

So about that - a lot of that is because the media isn't airing it, because they're kinda involved in this whole coronavirus thingy. From the previous 538 article:

Quote

 

Yeah, Sarah, Biden hasn’t been as much of a presence on our TV sets, but I don’t think that’s his fault, as Nate pointed out. I think cable news just hasn’t been giving him a lot of airtime. The other day, major networks decided to air Cuomo’s briefing on the coronavirus instead of Biden’s speech.

But what Biden has to say on the coronavirus is more relevant to a majority of the country.

 

 

[Week]

12 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

So about that - a lot of that is because the media isn't airing it, because they're kinda involved in this whole coronavirus thingy. From the previous 538 article:

Media bias ignoring Biden. Rigged!