caulfield12

As long as nobody that gets sick blames their governor for opening up too quickly and providing them a false sense of security...as long as nobody who goes outside without a mask expects to get priority treatment in a hospital or have their medical expenses reimbursed when they are on a ventilator or have a lifelong debilitating lung condition as a result. It has been pointed out hundreds of times in this thread already...but why do we even need a president if he’s deferring to state governors on every single decision? Whatever accidentally goes well, he will attempt to take credit for (since he’s just going on gut instinct and the fact an uncle went to MIT) and whatever goes wrong, it gets blamed on the governors, right? If Trump didn’t care more about reelection (the definition of power hungry), he would have simply declared in February or March that the health of the American people will always be my priority, first and foremost. That this crisis is a health care crisis, and that only by addressing that first will the economy start to rebound for all Americans. We all know the answer. Regardless of the individual actions of politicians, you can’t force now people to spend when every bone in their body says they should save or conserve resources. It won’t make the majority of people feel safe to return to church, to sports events, to concerts, to fly, to stay in hotels, to malls, to go to a movie...to even go out to eat. As we have now learned, businesses run on just 15-25% margins. Many will not survive, no matter how many want to go out and enjoy the summer. You just can’t wish or hope or con or brand your way through a pandemic. Other than food prices, there’s a tremendous amount of deflationary pressure in the economy. Yet our president wants negative interest rates for the first time in American history. He’s just used to borrowing money and not paying it back. But Americans over 60 still value their lives, they care about the future cost of living, their drugs...and especially the world being left behind for their grandchildren. As it turns out, intentionally dividing the country has now made it virtually impossible to get everyone back on the same page...and that is ultimately a failure in leadership. It’s one thing to win an election, it’s quite another to successfully govern it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/27/nyregion/new-york-city-doctor-suicide-coronavirus.html But what about the top doctors in their fields who are overwhelmed when the virus runs out of control and only triage is possible...which is already the case in numerous rural community hospitals like Gallup, NM? Being in KS, one has to be aware of Native American populations getting sick, migrant farmworkers and meat processing workers getting sick, military bases (Ft. Riley), homeless veterans, etc. https://www.kcur.org/health/2020-04-06/leawood-kansas-group-seeks-emergency-support-for-struggling-rural-hospitals Rural hospitals face “catastrophic cash shortages” brought on by the COVID-19 crisis and need congressional action to save them, according to a Leawood, Kansas, advocacy group that represents hundreds of rural hospitals. In a letter Monday addressed to the leaders of the U.S. House and Senate, the National Rural Health Association asks that 20% of the $100 billion in funding for hospitals in the CARES Act, the $2 trillion coronavirus response bill passed by Congress last month, be set aside for rural providers. It also asks Congress to accelerate Medicare payments, ensure that rural hospitals can access the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and pass legislation to provide additional funding for rural health care providers. The PPP, also part of the CARES Act, is a $350 billion program aimed at enabling small businesses to keep current workers or rehire those who were laid off. “The loss of revenue over the last few weeks due to the inability to provide non-emergency care is destabilizing core health services in rural America,” the letter states. Rural hospitals were hurting before the pandemic, with about half of them posting financial losses. In the last 10 years, 128 rural hospitals have shuttered, including six in Kansas and seven in Missouri, according to the University of North Carolina’s Rural Health Research Program. Just last month, Sumner Community Hospital in Wellington, Kansas, abruptly closed. The owner of the hospital, Kansas City-based RHG Consolidated, blamed a revenue shortfall and lack of patient demand. The closest hospital is about 25 miles away, in Winfield, Kansas.

Because the mask and haircut storyline has dragged on for so many weeks, there has to be a catharsis/conclusion. Or for the same reason Jose Abreu debates never die, although they just might fade away.

https://www.ft.com/content/97dc7de6-940b-11ea-abcd-371e24b679ed This is one of the Top 5 articles that captures the the overall picture so well...definitely confirmed some apprehensive feelings about Dr. Redfield and Dr. Birx. It is as though we knew for a fact that 9/11 was going to happen for months, did nothing to prepare for it and then shrugged a few days later and said, ‘Oh well, there’s not much we can do about it,’” says Gregg Gonsalves, a public health scholar at Yale University. “Trump could have prevented mass deaths and he didn’t.”

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/movie-theaters-opening-coronavirus-seating-concessions-safety-guidelines-210001492.html Here’s one for you, Greg. On one hand, you hate high concession prices, and probably thumb your nose at authority by sneaking candy and even drinks into the theatre. Will you allow the power-hungry governor and tyrannical Douglas (KS) Board of Commissioners deny you the opportunity (to support a local theatre or drive-in) to enjoy a summer movie in July, if all the proper precautions are in place? As a movie fan, I personally will never be satisfied watching every single release months later on a big screen t.v., or watching a lower quality version on an Ipad, tablet/laptop or even phone. The overall experience, the sound quality, it’s just not comparable. What say ye? Restaurant and bar owners worldwide say social distancing could wipe out their industry https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/17/business/restaurant-coronavirus-business-model/index.html

HEROES Act would cancel $10,000 in student debt for ‘economically distressed’ borrowers https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/3-trillion-heroes-act-cancels-student-debt-for-economically-distressed-borrowers-154237083.html And while other protections would extend to borrowers holding commercially-held FFEL-program student loans (as well as Perkins loans), a key provision would forgive up to $10,000 in debt for “economically distressed borrowers” who hold private or federal student loans. To be considered an economically distressed borrower, a borrower with student loans as of March 12, 2020, should meet the following criteria: Paying $0 a month on their federal student loans through an income-contingent repayment plan or an income-based repayment plan Or be in default on their private and/or federal student loans (270 days past due) Or if the private and/or federal student loan was in serious delinquency, or 90 days past due Or the student loans were in forbearance or deferment The bill also expands eligibility for Public Service Loan Forgiveness, and also forgives loans held by thousands of borrowers who attended the now-defunct, for-profit colleges Corinthian Colleges and ITT. This might be the most divisive political topic in recent years. Seems nearly everyone has an opinion. Rabbit is the one whose opinion stands out the most right now. (Why they selected two Asian/Chinese students at Columbia who probably never took out student loans for the accompanying picture is beyond me...since international students always pay the highest possible tuition, and 90-95% of the money comes from parents abroad.) I definitely see both sides of this. In the end, it doesn’t set a great example that the most responsible should essentially be held accountable for subsidizing those who weren’t as willing to work hard, forgo Spring Break trips/destination travel, give up endless partying, etc. Those are the stereotypes. Not everyone in financial trouble now chose a frivolous liberal arts degree lacking in an array of realistic career choices that would provide at least a decent standard of living. Lots of kids are born with obvious advantages in terms of parents paying for all or at least 1/2 of school. Definitely. There are tons of shady online programs and lenders that prey on minority students in particular. Yet Betsy DeVos, otoh, isn’t responsible for every individual choice in America made to, for example, bypass two years of community college at home for a more glamorous four year private liberal arts program out of state. I think those students who have struggled and sacrificed to pay for college on their own...who truly appreciated the totality of the struggle just to graduate in 6-8 years instead of 4-5, this would be a slap in the face to all of those who played by the rules and faced the consequences of taking out loan debt instead of pretending they didn’t know what they were signing up for. Collectively, everyone under 40...the sooner we are forced to face the reality of accepting responsibility for our actions, that the government won’t or can’t save us, the better off we will be as a society. Sorry for sounding like a moderate Republican on this, lol. "It's as though we're on a Zoom split screen. One side is deprivation and food lines. The other is a kind of postmodern Great Gatsby.”

Why aren’t you blaming the banks and the administration that created the two PPP rounds that largely failed to address the needs of the majority of small business owners? Do you really believe the WH has responded to anyone writing to them with anything but the same form letter generated largely to create a facsimile Trump signature for the masses/commoners? There are just three Douglas County commissioners. I would think you would largely agree with “Nancy Thellman, born and raised in Douglas County, represents the Second District as Douglas County Commissioner. She lives on a small farm north of Lawrence (Grant Township) with her husband, Scott, and their three children. Nancy was educated in Lawrence public schools, holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Nursing from Kansas University, and a Master of Divinity degree from Vanderbilt University. She is currently an ordained Presbyterian minister.” Which of the three are dictators? If they did anything but open up the county completely...what restrictions exactly would you agree with, if any? If Kansas and Lawrence is just way too extreme/liberal, why not move somewhere like Idaho, Montana, Wyoming or eastern Washington? Texas? Oklahoma? Missouri? Arkansas? Instead of taking the confrontational position of seeing them as comic book evil villains...ask yourself how these commissioners benefit exactly from trying to save more lives by being careful/conservative/cautious? They simply enjoy wielding power? Power has corrupted them? Is being a commissioner there even a half-time position? Why did the non-dictatorial candidates you seemingly prefer lose their positions to this current crop? Finally, 75-85% of America probably needs a haircut.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/almost-time-pandemic-apologies-110001172.html Writer asks for apologies to be made to Gov. Brian Kemp and from Dr. Fauci, fails to understand that the comparison being made in article is actually to the country Georgia (just a handful of deaths) and not the southeastern state in the US. That’s pretty pathetic for someone presumably being paid to write on this topic. And then holding him (Fauci) accountable for the accuracy of the death count when response has been all over the place and the CV Task Force has been forced to use the IHME data all along (147,000+) is pretty rich. What’s particularly pathetic is Dr. Birx going along with the administration and attempting to suppress the death count. Scientists should stick to the science, and there should be one agreed-upon measure for accounting for Covid deaths that every single state in the country has to abide by.

AUSTIN — The Texas Supreme Court late Friday overruled an appeals court’s order that had allowed election officials across the state to temporarily give mail ballots to people who are afraid of being infected with the coronavirus. Attorney General Ken Paxton said the court accepted his argument that mail ballots should not be granted to voters who fear catching COVID-19, If we can avoid the subject of how to possibly discuss “fair and equitable” elections on November 3rd when we’re likely to be in the midst of our “darkest winter”....essentially when you have the combination of winter flu season and Covid Wave V. 3/4 hitting simultaneously, not to mention the 36 people who got sick in Wisconsin because they were forced to stand in lines together voting in a WI SC justice race, which is a fraction of the numbers for a presidential cycle. We can pretend all the protests or anti-media marches are completely divorced from a political prism, but there’s just no evidence that bears that out. I’m not even sure what the middle ground is right now. Probably Ptac and Texsox...and if Dr. Fauci is now a “partisan,” the US is in bigger trouble than I imagined.

AUSTIN — The Texas Supreme Court late Friday overruled an appeals court’s order that had allowed election officials across the state to temporarily give mail ballots to people who are afraid of being infected with the coronavirus. Attorney General Ken Paxton said the court accepted his argument that mail ballots should not be granted to voters who fear catching COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus. He said the Supreme Court’s order stops the distribution of mail ballots under those conditions until his appeal is heard. “I am pleased that today the Texas Supreme Court confirmed that my office may continue to prosecute voter fraud and issue guidance on mail-in ballots" while an appeal plays out, Paxton said in a statement. https://www.dallasnews.com/news/public-health/2020/05/15/texas-supreme-court-puts-mail-ballots-for-those-who-fear-covid-19-on-hold/ Kobach said there have been more than 1,000 convictions for voter fraud since 2000, and that the commission presented 8,400 instances of double voting in the 2016 election in 20 states. “Had the commission done the same analysis of all 50 states, the number would have been exponentially higher,” Kobach said. In response, Dunlap said those figures were never brought before the commission, and that Kobach hasn’t presented any evidence for his claims of double voting. He said the commission was presented with a report claiming over 1,000 convictions for various forms of voter misconduct since 1948. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/report-trump-commission-did-not-find-widespread-voter-fraud So pretty much 29 cases on average nationally (0.58 per state) during the course of 35 national elections over the last 68 years.

I just can’t imagine parents teaching their kids to treat news reporters like this...it’s one thing to watch Fox News or now OAN and for kids to develop subconscious biases from their parents. But, for example, all of these media assaults on Dr. Fauci for trying to protect and save as many American lives as possible? Siding against science on a consistent basis? The guy has served under three Republican presidents and two Democrats before Trump. And the only ones to speak out on his behalf are Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney? https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/remdesivir-gilead-conspiracy/

Another Al Gore documentary is already in the pipeline...

Fake News is not Essential!!! Well, one thing’s for sure, the US is giving the Chinese state-sponsored media another weekend’s worth of propaganda...taking the focus off all the problems within China. The protests with assault weapons out in public are particularly jaw-dropping, since only the police and military can legally have a gun here.

Recently, when one such woman had a change of heart about the charges she was paid to fabricate — this time against Dr. Anthony Fauci — she recorded (Jack) Burkman detailing the importance of the scam they were pulling. When pushed by the young woman (a former friend of Wohl’s) about the health risks of the virus — risks she felt Wohl and Burkman were downplaying — the latter articulated the desiccated heart of conservative thinking. To wit, Burkman: “Mother Nature has to clean the barn every so often…So what if 1 percent of the population goes? So what if you lose 400,000 people? Two hundred thousand were elderly; the other 200,000 are the bottom of society. You got to clean out the barn. If it’s real, it’s a positive thing, for God’s sake.” Tim Wise/Medium.com This is the beating heart of every Covid argument on this board. The 47% who aren’t generating revenues/taxes for the government or profits for corporations, to Mitt Romney. The Deplorables, to the Clinton campaign. To Obama, the ones “clinging to guns and religion” in PA. While it sounds exactly like something from a Hitlerian era treatise on eugenics...if you strip away rights/freedoms/we the people/don’t tread on me, it comes down to this simple conclusion. Older people die, so less government resources are allocated for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. The bottom of society (well, we have to somehow keep Trump voters alive at least until November 3rd in order to vote in person) needs to be “cleansed” as well, the wheat needs to be separated from the chaff. This is actually a positive thing for society, not something to be feared or prevented.

That’s fine, as long as his wife/family are still supportive when he hits FA at 32 rather than 31...and ends up earning $30+ million less for his career. Not to mention lost future endorsement opportunities if he’s one of the few holding out at home. That kind of move doesn’t play well no matter how you spin it to the average American sports fan or consumer.

Great, except someone who’s not even a doctor (nor has she been confirmed even) blocked them, largely because Trump doesn’t like or trust Dr. Redfield (yet can’t fire him or Azar because it would make him look weak, apparently.) https://time.com/5836540/nancy-beck-trump-coronavirus-cdc-guidelines-reopening/ Let’s not forget that Jared Kushner inhabits a universe where he thinks his powers might be so expansive that an election can even be delayed, which, of course, hasn’t happened EVER...and where the DJIA is infinitely more important than 150,000 lives lost. Well, will you commit that the elections will happen on November 3?" he was asked. "It's not my decision to make, so I'm not sure I can commit one way or the other. But right now, that's the plan and again, hopefully, by the time we get to September, October, November, we've done enough work with testing and with all the different things we're trying to do to prevent a future outbreak of the magnitude that would make us shut down again,” he said. cnn.com

https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/14/opinions/restaurants-will-need-a-miracle-to-survive-the-pandemic-dey/index.html Let’s say you do get your way, we just collectively say screw it...about 50% of the population or so is confident to go out eating, shopping, traveling, etc. How many of these independent restaurants that make up the backbone of cities across the country are going to survive in such an environment, where profit margins are already stretched so thin? Won’t we just end up more America, Inc., with only fast food franchises and a few mid or upscale places like a Ruth’s Chris, Tony Roma’s or Cheesecake Factory (struggling to pay rents) thrown into the mix? Are we now doomed to a world where Red Lobster, Olive Garden, Applebee’s, TGI Friday’s and Chili’s comprise the apex of fine dining? Restaurants run at terribly low margins with astonishingly high failure rates and often exploitative terms for our employees. Much of this is for sheer survival and not because of rapacious owners rolling in money. On the contrary, we restaurateurs fuel employment against all odds, and we're stuck in this vicious loop. But maybe there will be innovation in the aftermath of the destruction. Maybe not all our businesses are meant to survive this storm, to surface with stronger economics and with less excess capacity in the industry as a whole. Maybe it's time to reevaluate minimum wages, redraw tip credits and rethink the lack of parental and sick leave and social safety nets. Maybe this is true of all small business and even big business today. These are issues we have to confront as a society with our government. Now could be the perfect time to break with the past. ..... Our industry is irate that the precipice we've been driven to stems from mandated months of closure and that we face an incredibly uphill journey, with none of the assistance that big business receives. It is categorically not an intrinsic, reckless failure of our own making. After the trillions expended on buoying the stock market and on unlimited quantitative easing and corporate bond financing, shouldn't our government deliver for an industry that employs some 15 million and is #TooSmallToFail?

Speaking of masks... (Dr. Rick) Bright (of BARTA) said that he would "never forget" an email from Mike Bowen, the hearing's other witness and the vice president of the medical supply company Prestige Ameritech, indicating that the US supply of the N95, the respirator masks used by health care professionals, was at a perilous level. "He said, 'We're in deep shit,'" testified Bright. "'The world is.'" Bright said he "pushed" that warning "to the highest levels" he could at Health and Human Services but received "no response." "I was met with indifference, saying they were either too busy, they didn't have a plan, they didn't know who was responsible for procuring those," he said in his testimony, adding 'A number of excuses, but never any action." Bright said that in a meeting on February 7, Health and Human Services leadership said they did not believe there would be a shortage of N95 masks. "My response was, 'I cannot believe you can sit and say that with a straight face.' It was absurd," he said. https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/14/politics/key-moments-bright-hearing/index.html

https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2020/05/13/frozen-years-potential-sars-vaccine-tested-coronavirus-cryogene-houston-baylor-college-medicine/3110750001/ Speaking of an imminently logical one (compared to hydroxychloroquine) that was right in your backyard, just waiting to be refunded after interest in SARs abated. Bill Gates and his foundation has also been all over this. The problem is the anti-vaxxers will take any breakthrough as a Gates/Soros-led attempt at world domination, somehow...well, just because he’s now the bogeyman behind everything. If it’s a Chinese company, 50% of Americans will think it’s a Trojan Horse trick to poison us and take over as top dog, replacing the US dollar with the RMB as the global reserve currency after staging a predawn paratrooper invasion of Lawrence with our defenses weakened, etc.

Which is exactly what’s happening in Dallas, San Antonio and Austin right now...until Gov. Abbott figures out some way to override their orders. Hasn’t exactly worked out well for Gov. Kemp in the showdown with the Atlanta mayor.

If they tried to put GPS trackers on Red Staters, they’d inevitably hack limbs off James Franco “127 Hours” style... ”Many years from now, would you be willin' to trade ALL the days, from this day to that, for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they'll never take... OUR FREEDOM!!”

Greg, you can get a haircut, Starbucks coffee, non-LGBTQ Subway sandwich and a reserved church pew if you simply hire these dudes! SHEPHERD, Texas — When Jamie Williams decided to reopen her East Texas tattoo studio last week in defiance of the state’s coronavirus restrictions, she asked Philip Archibald for help. He showed up with his dog Zeus, his friends and his AR-15 semi-automatic rifle. Archibald established an armed perimeter in the parking lot outside Crash-N-Burn Tattoo, secured by five men with military-style rifles, tactical shotguns, camouflage vests and walkie-talkies. One of them already had a large tattoo of his own. “We the People,” it said. “I think it should be a business’s right if they want to close or open,” said Archibald, a 29-year-old online fitness trainer from the Dallas area who lately has made it his personal mission to help Texas business owners challenge government orders to keep their doors shut during the coronavirus pandemic. “What is coming to arrest a person who is opening their business according to their constitutional rights? That’s confrontation.” https://www.yahoo.com/news/businesses-chafing-under-covid-19-121824076.html

“The chips are starting to crumble.” Eric Trump

Battlegrounds Biden Trump Spread Wisconsin 46.0 43.3 Biden +2.7 Pennsylvania 48.3 41.8 Biden +6.5 North Carolina 46.7 47.0 Trump +0.3 Florida 46.5 43.3 Biden +3.2 Georgia 47-46 Biden +1 Texas 43-43 https://www.yahoo.com/news/cnn-buries-own-poll-results-011348264.html Only after all of this stuff did we learn that CNN has a new poll out, under the headline, “CNN Poll: Biden tops Trump nationwide, but battlegrounds tilt Trump.” Polls are expensive, news organizations tend to hype them breathlessly to generate headlines in rival media outlets, Wednesday was (obviously) a slow news day, and politics is one of CNN’s core topics. Yet CNN seemed oddly unenthused about its own poll. And the story to which the homepage linked doesn’t mention that Trump had never scored higher in a CNN poll. True, there are lots of noisy data in the piece, most of which cut against Trump. But on the other hand the single most surprising and hence most newsworthy detail of the poll was that Trump holds a seven-point lead over Biden in the battleground states. The CNN story doesn’t even tell us what that figure is — seven points seems like a pretty big number — and downplays its own finding by noting, “Given the small sample size in that subset of voters, it is difficult to determine with certainty whether the movement is significant or a fluke of random sampling.” The headline of a different CNN news story about the same poll carries the headline, “CNN Poll: Negative ratings for government handling of coronavirus persist” over a picture of Trump looking downcast. This story, unlike the other one, mentions (but not till the fourth paragraph) that Trump’s approval rating of 45 percent “now matches his high point in CNN polling dating back to the start of his term.” Btw, Realclearpolitics.com average/aggregate numbers on a rolling basis, they had Michigan in the Biden column and actually added NC. An uphill battle if Trump’s fighting for his political survival in FL, NC and even GA, but still 5 1/2 months left to go. At the rate things are going, Biden can coast while sheltering at home up until September, and will have an appreciable bounce from his VP pick as well in August. But Trump will use that financial advantage to hammer him the next 3 1/2 months unless Bloomberg fulfills his promise. See below... https://theintercept.com/2020/04/10/bloomberg-hawkfish-biden-campaign/

No foreigners have been allowed into the country since the end of March. Chinese coming back from abroad, students, tourists...mandatory two week quarantines. Have been told this ban might last until October, or even January of 2021. So I essentially can’t leave to go home to the US for summer vacation and return to my family and job, at least as things stand now. First test will be renormalizing flights with South Korea, Thailand, Japan and Bali in all likelihood. Americans might be the last group cleared, along with the UK.