US Politics: OBAMAGATE - An American Story

[Fragile Bird]

42 minutes ago, Ran said:

Cuba does billions of dollars of business with the rest of the world. How is this happening under the theory of US sanctions being such an issue? The EU, Mexico, and Canada passed acts or regulations that basically countered sanctions under Helms-Burton, for example, penalizing the US if tried to enforce it against their companies 

Yes, the US has caused trouble under Trump, threatening financial institutions moreso than industry. This doesn't change the fact that Cuba's economy was badly managed for much of its history following the Revolution. In particular, Castro's singular influence on agricultural policy was a fair disaster for Cuba.

 

Cuba only has an $11 B economy, it's not doing "billions" in trade which implies, to me anyway, 5 or 10 or more billions. It exports about $1.4 B and imports over $6 B, and doesn't sell anything that the US needs, like sugar, tobacco and nickel, and oil it refines for Venezuela, I think, which is why the US doesn't give a shit. If the US needed something Cuba had, they'd invade in a heartbeat. And there are only 6 or 7 major trading partners that Cuba has, not the whole world, but actually they are doing a helluva a lot better than Canada is doing, since 75% of our trade is with the US, something most of us wish we could change but it's pretty damn hard to do that when there's this elephant south of your border.

As for Castro's 'disastrous' agriculture policy, he sold sugar to the Russians in exchange for goods that the US embargoed. Like fertilizer. After the collapse of the Soviet Union he had to move Cuba off it's dependency on sugarcane. You may think that's disastrous, but I'm pretty sure agriculture specialists in the US think monoculture is a horrible idea and see millions of acres of corn or wheat or soybeans or whatever in the US as something that's going to destroy the land. In any event, because of the lack of fertilizer almost everything is organic and agriculture has become far more diverse. Not bad at all.

 

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Same here, and what's making it worse from what I can tell is that places are so thirsty for business, they're offering great deals, only magnifying the issue. 

Yep, plus a lot of small businesses are probably opening because of FOMO. Another shitty thing is that the employees, especially in restaurants, are being called back even though they're unlikely to make even close to what they were before, and good luck trying to navigate state unemployment systems to obtain partial benefits when the bulk of your income comes from tips.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

9 minutes ago, The Great Unwashed said:

Yep, plus a lot of small businesses are probably opening because of FOMO. Another shitty thing is that the employees, especially in restaurants, are being called back even though they're unlikely to make even close to what they were before, and good luck trying to navigate state unemployment systems to obtain partial benefits when the bulk of your income comes from tips.

Kind of highlights how tips are bs. 

[Zorral]

Ah -- still being outraged about Cuba's dreadful treatment of its people and terrorist activities against big rich nations, instead of convincing me that the Dems and Biden have an eff of an idea of how to convince anyone to risk his/her life to vote for him while the trumpanista deathcult makes it impossible to vote by absentee (not that the Dem party gives a damn about us voting here in NYC even next month because -- where in hell is my ballot?????) because destruction of the post office, while the deathcultists poll watch with their guns and no masks as we vote.

In a situation of 100 people in which 60 people want something and 40 of them don't, and the 40 who don't want it carry guns, who gets their way?

In the meantime, Cuba is totally crushing the virus, inside Cuba.  They know a healthy population makes a strong state.  Here in the US They want us sick.

 

[Fury Resurrected]

1 hour ago, Fragile Bird said:

Cuba only has an $11 B economy, it's not doing "billions" in trade which implies, to me anyway, 5 or 10 or more billions. It exports about $1.4 B and imports over $6 B, and doesn't sell anything that the US needs, like sugar, tobacco and nickel, and oil it refines for Venezuela, I think, which is why the US doesn't give a shit. If the US needed something Cuba had, they'd invade in a heartbeat. And there are only 6 or 7 major trading partners that Cuba has, not the whole world, but actually they are doing a helluva a lot better than Canada is doing, since 75% of our trade is with the US, something most of us wish we could change but it's pretty damn hard to do that when there's this elephant south of your border.

As for Castro's 'disastrous' agriculture policy, he sold sugar to the Russians in exchange for goods that the US embargoed. Like fertilizer. After the collapse of the Soviet Union he had to move Cuba off it's dependency on sugarcane. You may think that's disastrous, but I'm pretty sure agriculture specialists in the US think monoculture is a horrible idea and see millions of acres of corn or wheat or soybeans or whatever in the US as something that's going to destroy the land. In any event, because of the lack of fertilizer almost everything is organic and agriculture has become far more diverse. Not bad at all.

 

Cuba absolutely has things we need. They have life saving hepatitis drugs.

[Guest]

3 hours ago, Maithanet said:

Yeah, I'm reading a lot of articles to that effect.  Obviously not EVERYBODY is throwing caution to the wind, but enough people seem to be that it is hard to imagine that the virus isn't spreading rapidly.  Particularly in places where the govt is actively pushing people to go out like Georgia, Texas, etc.  It feels like another spike is just around the corner.   

And if in the next month some states do indeed see a huge jump in cases, I am kind of at a loss as to what they're going to do.  Like hypothetically, let's say it's June 10 and Georgia has increased from seeing ~40 COVID deaths a day (typical of the past month) to ~250.  Will Gov Kemp continue to value the economy over human lives?  If yes, what happens when it's June 20, and that number has increased to 400?  Or July 1 when it is 1,000?

If there is one thing we've seen pretty clearly thus far it's that ignoring the coronavirus does not make it go away, and right now many places seem to assume that the bare minimum of protections are surely good enough because...reasons. 

Georgia has already been caught manipulating its data at least 3 times, including backdating positive cases to when the patient first reported symptoms, rather than when the test came back positive, and by publishing misleading graphs where the x-axis was based on inverse numerical order (so that the greatest number of reported positive cases was clustered near the origin of the graph) instead of chronological order.

Florida has reported that as many as 25,000 tests either have an inconclusive result or a false negative.

Oklahoma is deliberately not testing its prison population, which is among the highest in the world, even though jails are rampant with COVID-19 here.

Things are definitely going to get worse. It's like none of these governors ever learned object permanence.

And I agree that the political will won't be there to close things back down in these states, at least not until things have gotten so bad that they wont have any other choice. 

[Fragile Bird]

6 minutes ago, Fury Resurrected said:

Cuba absolutely has things we need. They have life saving hepatitis drugs.

Like I said, nothing the US needs, eh?

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, Fragile Bird said:

Like I said, nothing the US needs, eh?

Maybe those giant cigars Jordan was smoking in The Last Dance?

[Centrist Simon Steele]

2 hours ago, Mexal said:

I guess we'll find out if he has a heart attack. Wouldn't surprise me if he was making it up though.

I agree--it seems like something he is saying so he can say, "see? I'm not sick, and I'm not dying." I know he reportedly has a "small" financial tie to the company, though I wouldn't be surprised to find out he was benefiting from this promotion of the drug in several ways.

[Paladin of Ice]

4 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Meanwhile, Trump says he's been taking Chloroquinine, and here's my response:

 

 

I also believe this is bullshit. It's funny if you know anything about the drug and the side effects, as it literally lowers your immune system response, (making you more at risk of contracting a disease) and has a long list of side effects that could make a COVID infection worse, most notably causing cardiac arrhythmia, (irregular heartbeat, can be either too slow, too fast, or just irregular and missing certain beats) which would mix just splendidly with serious COVID cases of myocarditis, racing heartbeat, and lowered oxygen levels. Not to mention both COVID and HCQ can do a real number on your GI system, HCQ can throw off the blood sugar levels, (people who are diabetic or pre-diabetic will have a lot of fun with that one) etc.

Using it as a preventative would literally be the worst, least medically sound/ethical treatment to give a person that I can think of offhand. (Granted, being a mere lab tech instead of a doctor or pharmacist, there is a lot I don't know about the subject.) There are definitely going to be people who Darwin themselves by listening to Cheeto's words, even though he almost certainly bullshitting. But hey, we're already on the rollercoaster, strapped in, and the ride has started moving. Nothing to do now but see where it takes us.

[Kalbear]

3 hours ago, Zorral said:

In the meantime, Cuba is totally crushing the virus, inside Cuba.  They know a healthy population makes a strong state.  Here in the US They want us sick.

Yes, because it is definitely the case that it is entirely due to their health policies and not remotely due to things like fewer people travelling plus already stringent requirements on entry plus being an island country. 

Also, good choice in believing authoritarian governments word, because they'd never lie, right?

[aceluby]

So... Pelosi called trump morbidly obese on air tonight and it was hilarious. Can’t wait for the 3am retort.

[GrimTuesday]

If Nancy Pelosi starts wearing a chainmail coif and gets absolutely jacked, I'd be all about that. Until then she just looks silly saying shit like that. Until then she's just cutting an inferior promo to Big Papa Pump

 

[Darth Richard II]

OK I have to post this its been running through my brain for a few days now.

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

36 minutes ago, aceluby said:

So... Pelosi called trump morbidly obese on air tonight and it was hilarious. Can’t wait for the 3am retort.

Well we're going full pro wrestling I guess. Not that it's necessarily a bad idea, but still.

He is probably the fattest president since Taft though. And rage tweeting is not cardio.
 

20 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

OK I have to post this its been running through my brain for a few days now.

 

The number of excellent jokes packed into such a short clip is amazing.

[Mexal]

Yup. Bullshit.

 

[Kalbear]

I choose to believe that the doctor is slowly poisoning Trump while telling him he's totally fine

[A True Kaniggit]

Maybe he suffers from "Three Stooges Syndrome" ?

(Since we're doing Simpson references)

 

[karaddin]

 

On 5/17/2020 at 12:03 AM, ants said:

You think banks use interviews to decide business loans?  WTF are you Americans doing?????  For small business loans it depends on things like business plans, collateral, and the type of business.  For large business loans, it gets a lot more complicated.  

How are you meant to determine if you can trust a man without looking deep into his eyes as you judge the firmness of his handshake grip? That's the true measure of if someone is trustworthy!

On the question of a ceiling and a floor on wealth, while I understand you don't see equality of outcome as desirable surely you agree that the below is closer to the right answer than the current scenario:

Proposed: ceiling = floor x 2

Current: ceiling(soft limit, currently being expanded) = average wealth x 210 000

Bearing in mind that the average wealth is already a lot higher than the floor.

On 5/17/2020 at 4:50 AM, Ran said:

So is Sanders and Warren and every damned person else you can think of, from the perspective of a lot of people, so who is the not-seriously-flawed candidate that you believe you would be the right choice? Ralph Nader?

I'd have taken almost literally any candidate that dropped out before the voting actually started I think. Who didn't get enough traction to even stay in so its not like that's a big endorsement of their chances, just bemoaning wtf is going on with the electorate

[polishgenius]

If Cuba is such a wonderful place and government, ruined only by the US's hatred of them, then why do, for example, their boxers defect? Why do they need to defect in order to have the freedom of choice of what to do with their career, and why is it so hard for them to do so and so devastating for them if they try and fail?

No-one here's denying that the US has fucked Cuba down the years, but Zorral your constant skating over the regime's repressive nature is fucking bullshit.