caulfield12

Even if he once again challenged the emoluments clause by hawking MAGA masks back in February/March to his own followers for $19.95 and they were made in China instead of 3M...AND the rest of the country was required to wear real masks of their choice from the beginning of the 1st shutdown through the first or second week of June upon entering any public facility, he would still be looking at better than 50/50 odds of being re-elected.

Everyone on the "hoax" side of this claimed hundreds of thousands were dying all over the streets and hospital waiting rooms of China. How can it suddenly NOT be real? What changed? How many of those same people are going without masks or social distancing? Yet still asking their kids to work and/or go to school without any PPE in order to earn money for the family? How many of the conspiracy crew are turning down the extra $600/week and volunteering themselves to basically take pretty much any essential services job that likely pays less than it would be to sit on the couch through the end of July and collect unemployment payments? How many are rejecting subsidized health care coverage from the government? How many will not receive a vaccine but want to send their kids to public schools? Will they pay restitution to their classmates and classmates' families if they get them sick? Why don't they all home school them, then? How many believe in FOX News, Breitbart, Alex Jones and OAN over real journalism? How many of these same anti-maskers were fighting to defend President Obama from 2009-2013 when he made every possible effort to reach out to the other side....when the GOP philosophy of Mitch McConnell was OPENLY ADMITTED TO BE for the Congress to make him a one term president and obstruct every single thing he wanted to accomplish no matter how center right it was (ObamaCare was more to the right than Romney's own Massachusetts health care plan)? That cheered on the blocking of Merrick Garland and are still cheering on the filling of hundreds of lifetime judicial appointments in an "election year" when those appointments should have been suspended beginning in January... If these same things were happening under Obama, he would have been impeached about 3 months ago, if not 4. Imagine ServerGate and Benghazi TIMES ten.

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/white-house-campaign-urges-jobless-040719927.html White House urges jobless to "find something new" Brilliant.

Which "soft" government leaders have been most effective during this crisis? One would argue that the female governors/mayors and 3 Republican governors (Inslee/Cuomo/Newsom have also done well)...have performed as well as anyone. Kansas is NOT an easy state to deal with, not unlike Iowa. Lots of religious communities that are conservative/traditional, and then rural folks and farmers that are usually anti-government in general. Otoh, you've had idiots like Kris Kobach "valiantly" attempting to investigate mail-in ballot scandals that have unearthed 22 individuals over the past couple of decades. Westboro Baptist Church. Endless arguments about teaching creationism vs. evolution/Darwin in the schools. It's almost inconceivable to imagine a "non-bullying" attitude getting anyone's attention....at least outside of Johnson County, where the bullying is more over your social circle and net worth/connections. I don't get you Greg, why you harbor mostly ill feelings towards women like Hillary Clinton, Gretchen Whitmer in MI, Chelsea Clinton scared you for five years, Stacey Abrams in Georgia, then the shockingly Democratic female governor of one of the more conservative overall states in the USA in KS....why do they scare you so much? I mean, we've had these arguments for decades about how female politicians exhibiting ambition/aggressiveness, traits valued in men, come across as unlikable in the world of business or Washington, D.C. Why don't Ivanka and Melania scare you even moreso? If someone is a model (the two Trumps) or more attractive (we could even extend this to Sarah Palin, Kristi Noem or Tulsi Gabbard) than average, they are rendered harmless? During a flurry of activity on his Twitter account, Trump retweeted a message from game show host Chuck Woolery that claimed “everyone is lying” about the coronavirus as part of a plot to sabotage the economy and hurt Trump’s reelection campaign. “The most outrageous lies are the ones about Covid 19,” wrote Woolery in the message promoted by Trump. “Everyone is lying. The CDC, Media, Democrats, our Doctors, not all but most ,that we are told to trust. I think it’s all about the election and keeping the economy from coming back, which is about the election. I’m sick of it.” Asked about the retweet at a briefing later Monday, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said that the “notion of the tweet was to point out the fact that when we use science, we have to use it in a way that is not political.” In an op-ed published on the CNBC website, Mulvaney wrote: “I know it isn’t popular to talk about in some Republican circles, but we still have a testing problem in this country. My son was tested recently; we had to wait 5 to 7 days for results. My daughter wanted to get tested before visiting her grandparents, but was told she didn’t qualify. That is simply inexcusable at this point in the pandemic.” https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-identifies-another-hoax-the-coronavirus-152649383.html

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/apr/04/the-two-meetings-that-changed-the-trajectory-of-australias-coronavirus-response It doesn't take watching HAMILTON to realize the conflict between the Federal government and individual states, as well as individual states between each other (see the Articles of Confederation), but in such a divisive political atmosphere, the MOST logical thing to do would have been to sit down with all the governors for as long as it took to hash out some shared/universal agreed-upon principles for the response that each state could agree with. Neither too flexible nor too prescriptive, but at least doing 50-65% of what needed to be done (as a whole) instead of 25% in some places, 0 in others, 75-100% in the Northeast/I-95 Corridor. Australia has a very TRUMP-like PM in Morrison, but even he was politically astute enough to realize that everyone had to come together and push forward with a set of shared, mutual values.

I think one part of it was also that he was conflicted about making Xi Jinping look bad at the time, and trying to protect his personal relationship with him as well as preserve the trade deal...and then you have this whole "anti-science/anti-vaccine/climate change" is a hoax or conspiracy concocted by the Left, that doing anything to so much as acknowledge it made him look weak. Not to mention the whole "hiding in his basement with a huge mask" argument against Biden. From everything we know about Trump, he's absolutely obsessed with germs, having tables/eating utensils wiped clean....having EVERYONE around him tested. The personal valet coming down with COVID-19 really shook him up, that it could get that close to him. There was even that week when he claimed to be taking HYDROXY to "prevent" getting sick, and speculation that his doctors were covering up something. In the end, all they had to do was study SARs and MERs to realize that the WORST thing that could happen with masks would be that they weren't as effective as previously thought. If you bring an umbrella and it doesn't rain, you're slightly inconvenienced. But if you're stuck in a downpour without one? Surely, they cause skin irritation ("maskne") with some due to the cloth, they're uncomfortable when speaking or exercising or in extremely hot/humid weather, but it's simply a matter of being polite and courteous and respectful to OTHER people, not possibly spreading your own germs. I don't remember people intentionally coughing or sneezing on others before, at least in public....why the mask has become such a symbol is just idiotic/inane.

Cost required to safely reopen schools in August/Sept., roughly another $150-200 billion. Odds of that happening despite seven months to prepare....approximately 1%.

That Atlantic reporter has been Top Three on this all along...Amanpour always has the best sources of info. As for those school districts not requiring masks and distancing, good luck with all the lawsuits from teachers’ unions and parents...if daycares are also shut down, we’re back to almost nobody will be working except essential workers and daycare.

Singapore. Taiwan. Australia, or even better, New Zealand. Germany. Certain areas of Canada.

Nobody has quite explained where we will get the personnel or continuous funding for massive contract tracing... or pool testing, for that matter. https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/13/politics/donald-trump-florida-coronavirus-reopening/index.html

Anyone think they can find a single DeVos grandchild or even just a family member attending a school in-person, or even a school with a class size of more than 12-18?

Why are you typing in kYLe font? Victoria’s Secret Angel married to Jared Kushner’s brother gets it at least

A potential housing crisis is on the way for millions of Americans whose mortgage and rent deferrals are about to sunset. Evictions loom as the end of state and local moratoriums will no longer protect homeowners and tenants unable to make payments because of COVID-19 lockdowns. A minority of U.S. states have already expired orders against evictions, and a host of others across the country are set to expire over the next two months. Once they do, residents are facing a possible flood of non-payment legal actions. The COVID-19 Eviction Defense Project (CEDP) predicted recently that by the end of September, more than 20 million U.S. renters —many of them Black and Latino located in big cities — will be at risk for eviction. According to data released on Friday by mortgage tracking firm ATTOM Data Solutions, homeowners most at risk for foreclosures during the second quarter were those in metropolitan markets along the East Coast and in Northern Illinois, with clusters of troubled borrowers in New York City, Chicago, Baltimore and Washington, D.C. “There are millions of Americans now unemployed due to the pandemic with greatly reduced means to keep up on their mortgages,” Todd Teta, ATTOM’s chief product officer, told Yahoo Finance in an email. “At some point, banks are going to need mortgage holders to pay what they owe and go after those who don't,” he added. https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/renters-homeowners-face-new-phase-of-coronavirus-crisis-evictions-172940378.html

The Covid lunacy has doomed Paul to nothing more than a niche candidacy like his father, along with his unruly mop of hair and getting tackled by a neighbor. Teacher says school reopenings would be 'epidemiological nightmare' as thousands sign remote learning petition More than 25,000 teachers, students and parents want to continue distance learning this fall until U.S. coronavirus cases — 3 million and counting — subside for 14 days in their respective counties, according to a new petition that claims in-person school would lead to a health care disaster. The Change.org proposal was written by Harley Litzelman, a history and economics teacher at Skyline High School in Oakland. Alameda County, where Oakland is located, has more than 7,000 confirmed coronavirus cases, according to Friday data. According to Litzelman, resuming in-person classes would “glorify the endless sacrifice of American teaching,” as he explained in a June 30 article on the website Medium calling for support of the petition, which uses the hashtag #14daysnonewcases. “We refuse to return to campus this fall until our counties report no new cases of COVID-19 for at least 14 consecutive days,” reads the petition. “Let it be known that this is not simply a petition, but a statement of intent, a pledge not to return until it is safe.” https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/teacher-school-reopenings-epidemiological-nightmare-thousands-sign-remote-learning-petition-215709113.html

Yet another example where minority kids in inner city districts are disproportionately affected. Access to healthy meals cut off if they don’t go, internet/online education limited if they stay home...when I worked in Kansas City, students were being paid $50-75 or so just for showing up to school, because the subsidies were so massive that it made economic sense to incentivize schools to operate in such a fashion. And this was more or less 15-20 years ago. I’m sure a limited number of teachers are providing “live/interactive” lessons with PPT’s. The numbers are even smaller for teachers over 50ish. Every lesson we did here in China was either 90 (ten minute break in middle) or 45 minutes long, and we were teaching something new everyday or having kids present through cam/mike to each other. In addition, tons of graded supplemental homework. We even taught an additional month into the summer (finished Friday) previewing senior year topics for the matriculating juniors. Many students are also doing Pioneer Project research papers with American university professors, writing EE’s for IB or studying SAT/IELTS/TOEFL pretty much the entire summer, either online or offline. After news about teachers getting sick or dying from professional development/school improvement meetings or required one or two week summer training classes in July or August, those are likely to be cut out as well. PS: Every Grade 6 and up (with creative editing) or at least high school student in the US should be required to watch Hamilton and write about what it means to them over this summer. Of course, 1/4th to 1/3rd of US parents would threaten to sue schools claiming it was BLM propaganda without bothering to first watch it themselves and do some meaningful self-reflection. (It does seem Chief Justice John Roberts is taking those lessons to heart, at least.) https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/04/21/how-some-school-funding-formulas-hurt-learning-and-make-schools-more-dangerous/