Climate change, WHO, EU, for example.Quote:
Originally Posted by Captain Trips
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Climate change, WHO, EU, for example.Quote:
Originally Posted by Captain Trips
Watching youtube videos isn’t research no matter what it is your looking into. What methods are you using to fact check? Or just putting ‘clinton human trafficker’ into google?Quote:
Originally Posted by spike220
That always makes me smile, just a wee bit mind. Trump is the epitome of the establishment. Multi Billionaire who looks after his friends and family in business and politics. Who was started in business with a loan if £1m from his dad. Not many people start if in life that way. Look at his friends list as well and you will see he is no better or worse than the Clintons. I am not trawling the internet for links or evidence of his wrong doings or thiers. Anti establishment my hoop!Quote:
Originally Posted by spike220
OkQuote:
Originally Posted by lapsedhibee
WHO undermined Trump when he wanted to close the boarders. They have blood on their hands. Trump wants only whats best for USA. NZ close the borders 2 days later and everyone celebrates the good leadership. Only because it suits their narrative. NB the NZ PM has strong communist ties and a poor human rights record.Quote:
Originally Posted by lapsedhibee
Quote:
Originally Posted by Captain Trips
on a personal level, at the moment, no my finances haven’t been affected. However when he is openly provoking other nations (north Korea for example), consistently and without facts blaming other nationalities for his country’s ills (Mexicans), regularly threatening to step out of or damage organisations like the UN and WHO, amongst other behaviours that impact on the world’s population, then yes I’d say it’s fair comment to describe him as a negative affect on all of us
provoking North Korea, had Clinton won it would have been war. He visted North Korea and has walked a tight line to manage them with a silk glive in ine hand and hammer in the other.Quote:
Originally Posted by McD
Totally agree that Ardern is a bit suspect. Her face is hardly orange at all. What's that all about? :dunno:Quote:
Originally Posted by spike220
I'm not really sure what "facts" you're referring to here? Or what point you're trying to make about a "silent majority"?Quote:
Originally Posted by spike220
Scary how The most ardent of Trump supporters wear their ignorance like a badge of honour.
What on earth are you talking about?Quote:
Originally Posted by spike220
Trump's core support is a large not so silent mixed bag of nuts, racists, religious zealots, misogynists, gun freaks, conspiracy theorists, homophobes, rednecks, corrupt businessmen, shysters, snakeoil salesmen, right wing bampots and a multitude of other freaks and egocentric misfits. When you gather all these nutters together then you guarantee a pretty solid base electorate. But just because the lunatics have taken over the asylum, doesn't mean they're right.Quote:
Originally Posted by spike220
Do you work for Fake Fox News?Quote:
Originally Posted by spike220
Trump wants America open for business so his false claims on his economic miracle can stand for the election campaigning. He does not want and has never wanted his own borders closed, it wouldn't show up well for his good bestest ever leadership.
Sorry but did you just accuse Jacinda Arden of being a communist!!Quote:
Originally Posted by spike220
Whatever you are taking I suggest you lay off it for a wee while...
I haven’t seen a single poll that suggests this?Quote:
Originally Posted by spike220
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https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12058818Quote:
Originally Posted by Iain G
It's not me suggesting it. I am just pointing out what others have said. I don't think it that simple. I happen to agree with several of these policy considerations of Arden. But certainly not all.
Seems like you have been manipulated into believing whatever the alt-media tells you. You have been brainwashed like all the other sheep, ever thought about thinking for yourself instead of just believing everything you are spoon-fed by the alt-media? Wake up! You are being lied to by these alt-media grifters on YouTube who earn money per view via advertising. Let me guess, these grifters ask you to “make a donation” to their “cause” at the end of the video? The oldest grift in the book, selling a lie and then taking the money of gullible people.Quote:
Originally Posted by spike220
I am not suggesting anyone should be believing anything. In fact that is the point I am trying to make. I don't believe any PM or president is all good or all bad. But when everyone is jumping on a bandwagon I like to to look at what others are saying.Quote:
Originally Posted by CapitalGreen
This sounds exactly like what someone who has been drinking the alt-media kool-aid would say.Quote:
Originally Posted by spike220
Also, I’m sorry to tell you this and it may be hard to hear but Donald Trump isn’t alternative or the “other” guy He is the president of the United States of America, that’s probably as mainstream as it gets buddy. He controls the world biggest military power. Christ, even before becoming president your guy was the star of the most mainstream reality tv show on mainstream US television.
Your alt-media brainwashing has convinced you that one billionaire American business man is less mainstream than another billionaire American businessman.
Don't forgot the $320bn tax cuts for his corporate buddies. What an anti establishment hero!Quote:
Originally Posted by CapitalGreen
By that logic, does that mean Donald Trump is also a communist?Quote:
Originally Posted by spike220
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-c...-debt-to-china
So many bankruptcies with Trump as well, for a "successful" business man it's easy to believe hes a con man who plays the system and launders cash.Quote:
Originally Posted by CapitalGreen
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It seems Boris quite likes him as well.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hibrandenburg
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Now spitting the dummy because the media had the temerity to report his own words. Oh and because some people occasionally ask him awkward questions.
How anybody, no matter their politics, can remotely defend this guy I have no idea.
He makes Boris look competent by comparison. I can't decide whether it's better for Boris to have an imbecile in the White House or someone incredibly competent - someone with the ability to guide and help him but someone who has the potential to show him up.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bostonhibby
One thing is for sure - the UK, in it's post-Brexit self-harm era, we could do with a strong, competent, outward looking USA to call an ally. That is something we'll never have with Trump.
He's indefensible. You can still just about muster up respect for the office that he holds, see past the fact that he's an utter imbecile and just get on with it, but it is impossible to condone this guy, his behaviour, his actions or his words.Quote:
Originally Posted by RyeSloan
If some random doughnut appeared on TV advocating ingesting bleaches or putting yourself under an extremely strong UV light to kill this thing the reaction would rightly be one of horror. This donkey says it and his supporters twist all logic to condone him.
Dinny get it.
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With Trump its a character thing. We've all encountered people with a political compass totally opposite ends to our own, but you can respect those views if they are genuinely held and move past that to have friendships and enjoy their company anyway. But with Trump you just know he's actually of bad character. And like you, I cant believe how seemingly normal folk can defend him. Far less almost the entirety of the GOP, historically and supposedly the home of east coast yankee respectability. He's just downright bad.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kato
Quote:
Originally Posted by spike220
a few points to reply to:
- can you provide proof that Clinton would have forced a war?
- do you accept that by provoking North Korea then Trump was risking a war? A war he would have been responsible for starting
- you’ve ignored everything else in the post, so can we take it that you agree with the rest of it?
Good luck getting a reply, as usual when the alt-media narrative they have have been brainwashed into believing is challenged they disappear.Quote:
Originally Posted by McD
Bloody flat earthers 😊Quote:
Originally Posted by CapitalGreen
Quote:
Originally Posted by CapitalGreen
:aok: I know, but I always feel the need to reply and ask, because when you don’t they take that as you accepting their “facts” as the truth
Quote:
Originally Posted by -Jonesy-
100%. Trump and the pro-Trump “media” have emboldened morons who wear their ill-informed xenophobic ignorance with pride without any sense of irony.
Wow.Quote:
Originally Posted by spike220
:fishin::fishin::fishin::halowitch:Quote:
Originally Posted by JimBHibees
Why are you pretending you are fishing or stirring the pot now? Earlier you posted a link to a news article (from a mainstream media publication too) trying to back up your point about Ahern being a communist. Are you taking deflection techniques off billionaire businessman, commander in chief of the worlds most powerful military and “leader of the free world” Donald Trump? Humiliating yourself and then claiming it was just sarcasm all along?Quote:
Originally Posted by spike220
30 secs of research on Google my friend!Quote:
Originally Posted by CapitalGreen
Sorry you got sucked in! :)
You don’t even have the wearwithal or courage to back yourself or your opinions up. Spineless and pathetic.Quote:
Originally Posted by spike220
I could find out that the earth is flat in 30 seconds on Google, doesn't stop it being absolute drivel.Quote:
Originally Posted by spike220
Thanks for playing!Quote:
Originally Posted by CapitalGreen
“Thanks for playing!”Quote:
Originally Posted by spike220
https://i.imgur.com/dTcAHZc_d.jpg?ma...idelity=medium
The Flat Liners think social distancing could push some people over the Edge [emoji849]Quote:
Originally Posted by Hibrandenburg
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https://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...-a9484131.html
A couple of Republican groups turning their fire on Trump.
And the below is a bit out of date but it's a prominent Evangelical Christian publication condemning Trump. Some of the religious aspects may not be to everyone's tastes but the general tone is agreeable:
https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct...om-office.html
Confusing Pulitzer prizes with Nobel prizes and then misspelling Nobel as Noble, now claiming he didn't make any mistake at all and that he was really suggesting that critical award-winning journalists should return their Noble prizes. And again puzzled that no-one understands sarcasm.Quote:
Originally Posted by Pretty Boy
America, do what you're best at and somebody just take him out.
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂Quote:
Originally Posted by CapitalGreen
👍🏼👍🏼
What a fudQuote:
Originally Posted by spike220
At it again. Saying 'someone' could have stopped this but choose not to, eh?
Usual attack on China after he has been exposed. His disinfectant chat was sarcastic, like the whole world didn't see it, and he takes no responsibility for the people who have drank disinfectant 😂
Sent from my SM-A405FN using TapatalkQuote:
An essay by Fintan O’Toole of The Irish Times, April 25, 2020
Over more than two centuries, the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger. But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.
However bad things are for most other rich democracies, it is hard not to feel sorry for Americans. Most of them did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016. Yet they are locked down with a malignant narcissist who, instead of protecting his people from Covid-19, has amplified its lethality. The country Trump promised to make great again has never in its history seemed so pitiful.
Will American prestige ever recover from this shameful episode? The US went into the coronavirus crisis with immense advantages: precious weeks of warning about what was coming, the world’s best concentration of medical and scientific expertise, effectively limitless financial resources, a military complex with stunning logistical capacity and most of the world’s leading technology corporations. Yet it managed to make itself the global epicentre of the pandemic.
As the American writer George Packer puts it in the current edition of the Atlantic, “The United States reacted ... like Pakistan or Belarus – like a country with shoddy infrastructure and a dysfunctional government whose leaders were too corrupt or stupid to head off mass suffering.”
It is one thing to be powerless in the face of a natural disaster, quite another to watch vast power being squandered in real time – wilfully, malevolently, vindictively. It is one thing for governments to fail (as, in one degree or another, most governments did), quite another to watch a ruler and his supporters actively spread a deadly virus. Trump, his party and Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News became vectors of the pestilence.
The grotesque spectacle of the president openly inciting people (some of them armed) to take to the streets to oppose the restrictions that save lives is the manifestation of a political death wish. What are supposed to be daily briefings on the crisis, demonstrative of national unity in the face of a shared challenge, have been used by Trump merely to sow confusion and division. They provide a recurring horror show in which all the neuroses that haunt the American subconscious dance naked on live TV.
If the plague is a test, its ruling political nexus ensured that the US would fail it at a terrible cost in human lives. In the process, the idea of the US as the world’s leading nation – an idea that has shaped the past century – has all but evaporated.
Other than the Trump impersonator Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, who is now looking to the US as the exemplar of anything other than what not to do? How many people in Düsseldorf or Dublin are wishing they lived in Detroit or Dallas?
It is hard to remember now but, even in 2017, when Trump took office, the conventional wisdom in the US was that the Republican Party and the broader framework of US political institutions would prevent him from doing too much damage. This was always a delusion, but the pandemic has exposed it in the most savage ways.
Abject surrender
What used to be called mainstream conservatism has not absorbed Trump – he has absorbed it. Almost the entire right-wing half of American politics has surrendered abjectly to him. It has sacrificed on the altar of wanton stupidity the most basic ideas of responsibility, care and even safety.
Thus, even at the very end of March, 15 Republican governors had failed to order people to stay at home or to close non-essential businesses. In Alabama, for example, it was not until April 3rd that governor Kay Ivey finally issued a stay-at-home order.
In Florida, the state with the highest concentration of elderly people with underlying conditions, governor Ron DeSantis, a Trump mini-me, kept the beach resorts open to students travelling from all over the US for spring break parties. Even on April 1st, when he issued restrictions, DeSantis exempted religious services and “recreational activities”.
Georgia governor Brian Kemp, when he finally issued a stay-at-home order on April 1st, explained: “We didn’t know that [the virus can be spread by people without symptoms] until the last 24 hours.”
This is not mere ignorance – it is deliberate and homicidal stupidity. There is, as the demonstrations this week in US cities have shown, plenty of political mileage in denying the reality of the pandemic. It is fuelled by Fox News and far-right internet sites, and it reaps for these politicians millions of dollars in donations, mostly (in an ugly irony) from older people who are most vulnerable to the coronavirus.
It draws on a concoction of conspiracy theories, hatred of science, paranoia about the “deep state” and religious providentialism (God will protect the good folks) that is now very deeply infused in the mindset of the American right.
Trump embodies and enacts this mindset, but he did not invent it. The US response to the coronavirus crisis has been paralysed by a contradiction that the Republicans have inserted into the heart of US democracy. On the one hand, they want to control all the levers of governmental power. On the other they have created a popular base by playing on the notion that government is innately evil and must not be trusted.
The contradiction was made manifest in two of Trump’s statements on the pandemic: on the one hand that he has “total authority”, and on the other that “I don’t take responsibility at all”. Caught between authoritarian and anarchic impulses, he is incapable of coherence.
Fertile ground
But this is not just Donald Trump. The crisis has shown definitively that Trump’s presidency is not an aberration. It has grown on soil long prepared to receive it. The monstrous blossoming of misrule has structure and purpose and strategy behind it.
There are very powerful interests who demand “freedom” in order to do as they like with the environment, society and the economy. They have infused a very large part of American culture with the belief that “freedom” is literally more important than life. My freedom to own assault weapons trumps your right not to get shot at school. Now, my freedom to go to the barber (“I Need a Haircut” read one banner this week in St Paul, Minnesota) trumps your need to avoid infection.
Usually when this kind of outlandish idiocy is displaying itself, there is the comforting thought that, if things were really serious, it would all stop. People would sober up. Instead, a large part of the US has hit the bottle even harder.
And the president, his party and their media allies keep supplying the drinks. There has been no moment of truth, no shock of realisation that the antics have to end. No one of any substance on the US right has stepped in to say: get a grip, people are dying here.
That is the mark of how deep the trouble is for the US – it is not just that Trump has treated the crisis merely as a way to feed tribal hatreds but that this behaviour has become normalised. When the freak show is live on TV every evening, and the star is boasting about his ratings, it is not really a freak show any more. For a very large and solid bloc of Americans, it is reality.
And this will get worse before it gets better. Trump has at least eight more months in power. In his inaugural address in 2017, he evoked “American carnage” and promised to make it stop. But now that the real carnage has arrived, he is revelling in it. He is in his element.
As things get worse, he will pump more hatred and falsehood, more death-wish defiance of reason and decency, into the groundwater. If a new administration succeeds him in 2021, it will have to clean up the toxic dump he leaves behind. If he is re-elected, toxicity will have become the lifeblood of American politics.
Either way, it will be a long time before the rest of the world can imagine America being great again.
Excellent from O'Toole, as usual.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kato
Is Trumps behaviour a political death wish though? He’s proved time and time again that anything that shocks most level headed moderate people simply emboldens and even validates his right wing base who seem devoid of critical thought.Quote:
Originally Posted by lapsedhibee
Quote:
Originally Posted by -Jonesy-
I didnt read it as a death wish for Trump, more as a death wish for America's place as 'worlds leading nation'. The article is very good. Whether he can use his combination of superior analytics and superior wealth to beat the Worst Democratic Party Candidate In Living Memory is one political event I just cant get excited about this time round. Im sure whatever happens it wont be a dignified exit.
My knowledge and understanding of American politics is sub par, but it seems unforgivable, to me, that the Democrats have not managed to get their act together by nurturing an opposition of young, bright, strong and competitive candidates who could challenge Trump and his browbeaten eunuchs at the next election.
Tbf unless you have lived in the USA for a decent period, and in more than one state, it's difficult to comprehend how people actually are politically. The notion of freedom among a huge number of Americans revolves around guns. Yes it does. There are pockets of sanity on both the east and west coast metropolitan areas. So called liberals, what we in Europe regard as the norm. Personally I love the USA and spend lots of time there with my family. It is a very different place from what you see in movies and from visiting as a holidaymaker. Oh that we could right now!!Quote:
Originally Posted by Jim44
It’s mostly money. To run a campaign costs and exorbitant amount of money which requires funding. Candidates usually obtain funding through contacts/companies/lobbies they have had relationships with for 25/30 years. For a younger person to run a campaign would be difficult with funding far inferior to his or hers opponents even if they are the better candidate.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jim44
There were some good younger candidates on the Democrats ballot this time around which probably lacked exposure. Again this is done through funding and advertising. As someone already mentioned. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez could be the next young hope already with a huge fan base and social media presence. In another 8 years when she’s eligible to run, she could be the one.
Quote:
Originally Posted by HibernianJK
What eligibility is needed to run? Not being wide, I'm genuienly curious as I didn't realise there was eligibility to meet
You have to be at least 35. She's only 30 so won't be eligible until the 2028 election.Quote:
Originally Posted by McD
You also have to be a natural born US citizen and have been resident in the US for at least 14 years.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pretty Boy
Thanks :aok:
I knew you had to be a natural born US citizen, didn't know about the other points though, cheers
You need to be 35.Quote:
Originally Posted by McD
AOC would be an amazing candidate but is too far left to win. If she can tack towards the centre she is a very impressive politician.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
This.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jim44
My politics are marginally right of centre - but the US doesn't need a Republican President.
They need a calm, measured, intelligent Democrat more than ever IMHO.
Their society is broken and that utter d**khead Trump is a huge part of the problem and no part of the solution whatsoever.
There’s a fair few Americans I know (through forums) that think by the time she is eligible to run she might be very electable candidate. The next wave of eligible voters are exactly the sort of people she is attracting.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ozyhibby
Trump looks like being dragged away by men in white coats soon.
Men in white coats applying the best possible science.Quote:
Originally Posted by heretoday
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New York cops had to break up a mass gathering at a funeral .. for a rabbi that had died from Coronavirus!!
Only in America
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/28/n...de-blasio.html
https://twitter.com/danielnewman/sta...814215170?s=21
States start to fall apart when the lose the monopoly on the use of force. America heading in a dangerous direction.
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Oh dear, maybe some of those gunmen will catch it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ozyhibby
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If they were black they’d have been shot by police before they got to the front door!Quote:
Originally Posted by Kato
He’s fuelled the story about the virus starting from a Wuhan lab overnight by saying he’s seen evidence suggesting that’s the case - in direct contradiction to what his own security organisations have said.
Who to believe. :hmmm:
I posted a link to a poll a week or so ago reporting 29% of Americans believe the lab conspiracy theory. Deflect,blame, repeat.Quote:
Originally Posted by Barney McGrew
This is part of the problem now He is so consummate now at lying and using the term Fake News ,thst when he may be correct you tend to dismiss himQuote:
Originally Posted by Barney McGrew
They two posts from the Japanese Professor is a good example
One saying here is the evidence to say it’s a Man Made Virus
The other refuting he was responsible for that post
Our Goverment says we are sticking just now to Lockdown But new Flights are today leaving from Luton Airport on top of the thousands that have continued unabated since lockdown started
Wetherspoons tweet we will be open in June etc etc
Don’t wear Masks , Wear Masks
The level of Speeding Traffic on the roads in paisley yesterday after Nicola reinforced it was growing too fast and wasn’t all essential ,confirms more people are taking risks and perhaps putting others at risk
I haven’t seen much Police presence at all during Lockdown so it gives the impression that we aren’t really serious about enforcing lockdown
If the R rate starts creeping up we will find ourselves back in a more severe lockdown
If people would only stick to what’s being asked we could of got F rate in Scotland down to 0 .25 and then been in a great position to plan for and relax lockdown properly
I do hope people start pulling back and listen and act
It’s people being Selfish that will possibly undermine all the good work we have done
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38% of Americans would not drink Corona beer for fear of infection. A further 16% were confused as to whether it would lead to infection.Quote:
Originally Posted by hibsbollah
😳
Pretty worrying stuff in the state's just now with armed "militia" (terrorists if they had been any other colour) in the Michigan state building. Sadly they seem to have the support of the president.
Trump's a loose cannon, but I don't think National Intelligence have ruled out the outbreak being due to an accident in a Wuhan lab? What they have ruled out is it being man-made or genetically modified.Quote:
Originally Posted by Barney McGrew
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence said: “The intelligence community will continue to rigorously examine emerging information and intelligence to determine whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan.”
Well I am drinking it by the case loads d never felt betterQuote:
Originally Posted by Hibby Bairn
It’s completely irrational
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So the virus just happened to naturally evolve in a test tube in a Wuhan lab? I'm too thick to understand what you're getting at.Quote:
Originally Posted by G B Young
It means the Chinese may have been studying the virus in the lab and safety protocols weren't followed which allowed the virus to escape.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hibrandenburg
There is a precedent for it happening.Quote:
Originally Posted by HFC_NYC
There was a death from Smallpox in 1978 in Birmingham, the lady involved worked in a building which had a lab studying the disease and it was traced to there. 300 people were quarantined and that saved us from a wider outbreak.
In 2014 the FDA quite literally found a box of vials containing live smallpox virus that was unaccounted for. They were transported in an unapproved way and one was broken. Thankfully it was a control specimen.
The CDC inadvertently sent H5N1 samples to a lab and that was only discovered when the lab in question got unexpected results from an experiment. Add to that 75 employees from the same organisation were suspected of being exposed to anthrax the same year.
In recent years in China there has been scandals involving both contaminated baby milk and faulty vaccines. Both were the subject of attempted cover ups.
I don't believe it's what has happened here but it's undoubtedly something that can and does happen.
Extract from Guardian. WHO reports numerous scientists assured virus is natural. Think I know who I believe.
The executive director of the World Health Organization reiterated that the group believes coronavirus came about naturally, despite Trump’s dubious claims that he has seen evidence it was created in a Chinese government lab.
“We have listened again and again to numerous scientists who looked at the sequences and looked at this virus and we are assured that this virus is natural in origin,” WHO executive director Michael J. Ryan said Friday.
Just yesterday, Trump claimed he had seen evidence that coronavirus was made in a lab in China’s Wuhan region, which saw the first outbreak of the virus. Asked what evidence he had seen, Trump said, “I can’t tell you that. I’m not allowed to tell you that.”
The president’s comments came hours after the office of the director of national intelligence said in a statement that the intelligence community “concurs with the wide scientific consensus that the Covid-19 virus was not manmade or genetically modified”.
That is completely untrue. He said he believed it originated from the lab, meaning the point I raised a few posts up comes into play.Quote:
Originally Posted by JimBHibees
Smallpox has been with us for at least 4000 years and has been cultivated, cured and used as a biological weapon, there will be strains of it kept in laboratories around the world and is estimated to have killed over 300 million people in the 20th century alone. Covid19 is a new virus that mutated in a way that makes humans sick, those are scientific facts widely agreed upon by the scientific community. The chances that Wuhan Covid19 mutated, transferred to humans, was recognized, then contained and eradicated but somehow kept in a test tube in China without the world knowing and then spread from a laboratory accidentally is not just far fetched, it's mental and the chances that Donald Trump meant exactly that in his utterances are next to zero. If this virus mutated from animals and wasn't produced in a lab then it has spread from patient zero and not from a lab.Quote:
Originally Posted by Pretty Boy
I'm not disagreeing with you. I did try to make it clear in my last sentence I thought it was very unlikely that it was the case.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hibrandenburg
As I said earlier in the thread part of Trumps problem (I was going to say biggest problem but that would be bollocks) is that he just goes off on a tangent when he gets an idea in his head, the idea being totally ridiculous doesn't matter.
Much like with the disinfectant stuff (I've read analysis he may have been referring to ozone therapy, a controversial topic) I think this is something that has been put in his head and it's easier to run with that for him than to try and get his tiny brain around the actual scale and process of what has happened.
I'll clarify that shouldn't be read as any kind of defence of Trump, I assumed it was clear enough last time I said similar but it seems painting someone as a total idiot can be defined as a defence.
I certainly never thought you were in anyway defending him, apologies if I've somehow given you that impression. However those who are are comically pitiful. Trump says something outlandish and then there's a whole army of apologists chewing over the semantics of what he spews out looking for a hidden sensible meaning in the words spoken by the messiah. The same phenomena is now happening with Boris Johnson and this Tory government, their utterly farcical management of the Covid19 crisis is inexcusable, yet there are people queueing up to do so in the most ridiculous manner.Quote:
Originally Posted by Pretty Boy
100% agree. It's a really worrying trend, and the manipulation of a willing media is really, really dangerous and depressing.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hibrandenburg
We are at a stage where people who openly act in a way that, in days gone by, would have destroyed careers or put them in jail, and instead of that their acts and words are swept under the carpet.
Yes that was my reading of it. The lab in question was, IIRC, focused on research into bat coronaviruses and as you say, the NI statement suggests they want to eliminate the possiblity of accidental transmission.Quote:
Originally Posted by HFC_NYC
Personally I find it hard to imagine we'll ever have a definitive answer on where or, perhaps more importantly, when the virus orginated bearing in mind how long Beiging appears to have delayed announcing its emergence. If it really did start its spread as early as last September, the world was pretty much screwed long before anyone was able to try to prevent global infection.
As an aside, I hadn't realised human coronaviruses have been around since the 1960s:
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/types.html
I believe the South Koreans were so well prepared this time round due to an outbreak there in 2015 when one returning businessman infected 600 people of whom around 35 died. They initially thought it was MERS but after studying it identified it as Mers-covid. From their study they worked out that you needed massive stocks of PPE and tests. This they set about to achieve and is why they never went into lockdown and have had few deaths compared to other countries. This would seem to say to me that this virus has been mutating for years and it was only a matter of time till this happened. It also points out how utterly incompetent some governments are at prioritising things.
Meanwhile, as the South Koreans were looking after their citizens, Boris was giving a speech about a superman style of government who could make a profit during all this.
FT’s take on the governments handling of PPE today is interesting. They suggest the advise on PPE wasn’t based on science but on what they actually had access to. To be blunt they were lying about what was safe for PR reasons.Quote:
Originally Posted by HappyAsHellas
He's losing it day by day, just watched his latest broadcast or outburst. He seems to be more tanned and more bleached hair and talking more crap than ever. Can he get even more crazy before being removed?
With US deaths are nearing 80,000 and the country’s unemployment rate has risen to 14.7%, President Trump has tweeted nearly 40 times this morning, giving his administration “great marks” for his handling of the pandemic.
The man is an idiot. It's all about him!!
I try and avoid listening to him, reading his tweets, watching interviews or anything that gives him a platform. He just makes me so angry every time he opens his mouth.
I have been talking to an American friend who is living in Trumpland in Missouri, He's an absolute Democrat and a Bernie Sanders campaigner. He reckons Trump will be massively reelected. How depressing is thatQuote:
Originally Posted by HibernianJK
Way over 40 by the end of the day including yet more outlandish theories and promoting the reopening of his golf course in LA.Quote:
Originally Posted by theonlywayisup
Sanders fans are reluctant to say anything positive about Biden and even more recently with the rumours spreading. I don’t think there’s anyway it’s a convincing victory. It’s going to be close.Quote:
Originally Posted by wpj
FWIW, I was a Bernie fan, but since he’s out the running I would be backing Biden without a moments hesitation. The need the Democratic Party to unite behind Biden.
Makes another racist comment towards an Asian American journalist then storms off when she pushes him over the outburst at the latest press conference.
He's unhinged yet his supporters will love him for it.
I watched that, what an absolute bully, he just doesn't have a decent bone in his bodyQuote:
Originally Posted by BroxburnHibee
That is embarrassing behaviour. I wouldn't expect that from a surly teenager. I said yesterday that I had never seen anyone less suited to high office than Johnson but that's not true. Trump is better than him at being terrible.
What Trump and Johnson and their cult like followers need to understand is that the media is allowed to ask tough questions and in the position they are in they are expected to answer them.
They are obnoxious people PB, how did we end up with such people in charge? Chuck Putin in the mix we have a "perfect storm"Quote:
Originally Posted by Pretty Boy
The problem has been that all the way through their campaigns for office the media was not asking tough questions. Both got a very easy ride from the mostly right wing MSM. They are both woefully out if their depths when it comes to leading and especially at this moment when strong leadership is needed.Quote:
Originally Posted by Pretty Boy
Absolutely tragic that the three most important entities in the English-speaking world (UK and HMFC being the other two) are simultaneously under their worst-ever leadership. Dullards all.Quote:
Originally Posted by wpj
I've just seen that interview, what an embarrassment.
Really sad that he has made it to the most powerful position in the world.
I think this is a really tough question, going to the heart of what has happened in the UK and the US in recent years. But one key factor which I'd suggest in the UK was the lack of an effective opposition. But you'd have to add lots of other things too.Quote:
Originally Posted by wpj
GOP is split who to listen to.
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https://twitter.com/CNN/status/1260335570628366337?s=19
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Hmmm an immunologist with several published peer reviewed papers who has worked under several Presidents. Or Donald ****ing Trump. Tough choice.Quote:
Originally Posted by Callum_62