Not only that but here's a little caveat to the "Greatest Generation". Only around 10% of veterans see 'actual' combat. Sorry, but that's significant. Not to disparage their contributions, but of the 16 million WW2 veterans, less than 2 million ever fired a weapon. Do with that statistic what you will. That's ditto for the Vietnam War and Korea. Most veterans fight boredom far more than they fight the enemy...
Where's the stat on WW2 vets coming from? The link you provided only talks about current wars and kinda misses part of the point.
My step brother, right now, is in Mali as a door gunner on a helicopter. I want to say he hasn't fired his gun yet (we're not really close), but the stress a person can get of just being on edge and not knowing if you are going to be attacked is a horrible experience that just gets compounded every time you leave a safe zone.
My step father was a sanitation engineer in the first Iraq war. He never left the base, nor did he ever fire his weapon but that didn't stop him from being gassed when the base he was working at was shelled.
My father, an airplane mechanic, never saw combat. He wanted too, he wanted to die a hero. But that didn't stop him from getting PTSD from picking up body parts after military plane crashes. Nor did it stop him from getting sick and dying young because he was told to recover the all jet fuel from a tank so he'd be in the confined area with no ventilation or protective equipment, sopping up the jet fuel with a bucket, a rag and his bare hands. Late 70s for you (I highly doubt they still do that). When he was in the hospital before he died, the doctors were shocked at the amount of chemicals in his body. He didn't die in combat, but the military still killed him and pretty much gave him a slow and painful death.
So ya, that 10% who fire at enemy combatants might be a realistic statistic now, but it shouldn't be the only statistic used to determine if they were actually doing something meaningful or that the other 90% just 'fight boredom.' There is a mental toll on almost every person who serves in the military, regardless of their role.
Here's one source. I thought I'd read 7% somewhere before, and if you do the math (1M/16M) that's close to correct. Not only that, but the same people fought on for years and years, battling the odds. The infantry, tankers and pilots were the unlucky ones taking the brunt.
Yeah. Perhaps the greatest injustice the Baby Boomers ever wrought was the idea that they created or earned their disproportionate position in society, and demand that all subsequent generations "earn" it like they did (whilst actively hindering them through competition).
They were the beneficiaries of a postwar economy they did not create, and subject to an ethos in government (and society, in some cases) that gave them the opportunity to benefit. Then entrenched themselves and havent left the same opportunities to those that came after.
Instead, we Millennials get derided as "do-nothing" and "entitled".
I agree that generational warfare is stupid, but I truly hope that once Millennials dont make the same mistakes of the Baby Boomers. I have hope that we wont.
Dave Grohl of Nirvana and Foo Fighters breaks it down for the masses so everyone can understand. Even IF you are totally in favor of reopening schools, our teachers deserve, at a bare minimum, a real plan:
Not only that but here's a little caveat to the "Greatest Generation". Only around 10% of veterans see 'actual' combat. Sorry, but that's significant. Not to disparage their contributions, but of the 16 million WW2 veterans, less than 2 million ever fired a weapon. Do with that statistic what you will. That's ditto for the Vietnam War and Korea. Most veterans fight boredom far more than they fight the enemy...
Where's the stat on WW2 vets coming from? The link you provided only talks about current wars and kinda misses part of the point.
My step brother, right now, is in Mali as a door gunner on a helicopter. I want to say he hasn't fired his gun yet (we're not really close), but the stress a person can get of just being on edge and not knowing if you are going to be attacked is a horrible experience that just gets compounded every time you leave a safe zone.
My step father was a sanitation engineer in the first Iraq war. He never left the base, nor did he ever fire his weapon but that didn't stop him from being gassed when the base he was working at was shelled.
My father, an airplane mechanic, never saw combat. He wanted too, he wanted to die a hero. But that didn't stop him from getting PTSD from picking up body parts after military plane crashes. Nor did it stop him from getting sick and dying young because he was told to recover the all jet fuel from a tank so he'd be in the confined area with no ventilation or protective equipment, sopping up the jet fuel with a bucket, a rag and his bare hands. Late 70s for you (I highly doubt they still do that). When he was in the hospital before he died, the doctors were shocked at the amount of chemicals in his body. He didn't die in combat, but the military still killed him and pretty much gave him a slow and painful death.
So ya, that 10% who fire at enemy combatants might be a realistic statistic now, but it shouldn't be the only statistic used to determine if they were actually doing something meaningful or that the other 90% just 'fight boredom.' There is a mental toll on almost every person who serves in the military, regardless of their role.
Okay, I don’t know about all of that, some things ring false. Yes this will come off as antagonistic, it is not meant to be so. I ask that you look at this as trying to expose the truth and not an attack.
There were no troops in Desert Storm shelled by gas. None. I was there, long after most of the US military left. To be honest their Scud missiles had the worst aim in, gonna guess, the history of warfare. Look it up, how many landed among US troops. I counted one, but maybe the people here watching the news saw more, if I am not mistaken there were less than 50 troops killed by them in one strike, no gas.
Now with the plane fuel, this was the thing I was sure I couldn’t rebut because my uncle hasn’t spoken to me in years. I am not really what a good Christian family wants to admit came from them. He did answer me though, kinda shocked. He worked on the F-16s in the 70’s, always talked about a bad accident that he was one of the first people there. Okay, not death(I thought there had been), no one died but there was a ton of fuel on the ground. They used up the stuff they had and actually had to buy up all the kitty litter in three counties that they could find. No mops even, they squeegeed and used brooms to keep it contained. I am not saying that didn’t happen but cleaning fuel, of any kind, by hand is not in any modern military procedures.
I don’t know all of the facts, what I do know is that I was there. There were people in the thick of things, absolutely. I have only met a few in all the years that I was in the military. I actually saw more bodies and destruction than almost everyone I have ever talked to simply because my idiot lieutenant took us down the wrong road in Kuwait( film major, can’t expect much), and we drove the whole Highway of Death and we were in Safwan Iraq before he realized his mistake. Not pleasant. Worst was when we had to go slow around bomb craters in the road. You could smell it then, the burnt bodies. Smells like a backyard bar-b-que at first until you realize what it is. I will give you this, it is not possible to unsmell that, it never goes away. I was one of only 14 people in my company that experienced that though and I have never met anyone else who saw anything like that. It is a small percentage, everything else, trauma an what not, happens in the private sector every day. My family the men all drove truck while the women and children took care of their farms, seven families in all. My one uncle didn’t drive truck, he worked in a steel mill. I asked my grandma once why he didn’t drive truck like everyone else. She said that he did when he was young, one day a child ran out in front of his truck. Not his fault but he never got over it and could never drive truck again. What about all the things that first responders see every day? It is called life, we are surrounded by it every day. I couldn’t handle that, probably why I am not a first responder. PTSD is real and really, really bad, let’s not make it so everyone who has ever been in the military has dealt with that though, it is just not factual. To be honest, I feel it kinda of takes away from those suffering. I knew someone I had worked with was in Vietnam, I asked him about it after I had known him for years. He said,”Yeah, I was there and that is all we are ever going to talk about that.” That pain is real, please don’t make it less by claiming everyone who has ever served has felt that. I know for a fact they have not.
The thing about being 'in the military' is that the movies only show the soldiers that carry firearms and none of the soldiers required to enable them to do so. A firearm requires ammo - someone has to source the ammo from the manufacturer, someone else has to allocate it to the right theatre, division, regiment etc. Then someone else has to drive the trucks that deliver the ammo. Someone else has to make sure that the trucks are in the right place at the right time and have enough fuel to deliver the ammo to the right destinations. And we haven't even started to think about how this putative firearm-carrying soldier gets fed! Waging war is a Herculean task in logistics and it requires a whole bureaucracy of non-combatant soldiers to keep the front line supplied.
So both of my father's have died, so I personally can't ask them and don't have enough time to go into a lot of detail, but:
For my father, it wasn't cleaning up the spills after a plane crash (he was always mostly there for the mechanical side), it was maintenance after and prior to flights. And I get it, when most people think of a military plane, they think of fighter jets, but my father worked primarily on Hercules in his youth. IMO, his story of cleaning the fuel tanks made sense to me.
For my step father. Yes, I didn't want to get into the details, but Iraq missiles were a joke. That didn't mean that when the building they were bunkered in started filling with dense white smoke, you knew what that smoke was. I remember seeing pictures of it.
My point was just to reflect that one doesn't need to be in combat to have PTSD and not being in combat shouldn't take away things they had to sacrifice. (I didn't mean to imply that everyone in the military suffers from PTSD).
Mental Illness like PTSD needs to be talked about and needs to be addressed medically. The only way for that to happen is to step away from the 'tough guy' attitude of not talking about 'your feelings.'
Just wanted to post this infographic from the WSJ about the presidential polling. Easy to grasp context about the status of the race, in terms of polling history.
Just wanted to post this infographic from the WSJ about the presidential polling. Easy to grasp context about the status of the race, in terms of polling history.
I suspect everyone who thinks the polls were "way off" in 2016 have that period from 250 days to 150 days, when Clinton had a huge lead, stuck in their heads. IIRC - the GOP primary probably wasnt even over then (Technically neither was the Democrat one, I supposed).
Add to that the false belief in the "blue firewall" in which people believed that Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Minnesota were bluer than the country as a whole, so if a Democrat was wining the popular vote, they'd win those states and cruise to 270+ EVs.
People should also be wary of the reversion to the mean that's evident in this graphic. The polling will change a lot in the next 30 days (When Biden picks his VP and both parties have their convention... whatever that looks like). After that, it looks like the race might change again about one more time. That seems about right, imo - two more changes in the nature of the race between now and election day (One in August, one in October).
October, maybe. But August is going to be nothing but more and more Coronavirus deaths averaging out to well over a thousand a day. Death is a very lagging indicator of cases, and we have had over 50,000 cases a day for at least 3 weeks. In regards to the election, you only really need to look at one state and how things are going, which is Florida. Trump has NO path without Florida. None. He cannot win an electoral college victory without it. Polls have Biden up by anywhere from 5 to 13 points. In a scenario where Trump wins, Biden should be down by 2 to 3 points, at a minimum.
Senior citizens (and others, but mostly seniors) are going to keep dying by the hundreds every single day for the immediate future in Florida. There is absolutely nothing that can stop that now. August is lost to Coronavirus as surely as April and May were now. The cause of his Florida numbers cratering is because of the senior voting block turning on him. If anything, the next 30 days (for sure, likely longer) are just going to be the same old song. More people they know dying every day, another month isolated in their homes. Unless a miracle akin to Christ rising from the grave after three days takes place in that state, there is no hope for his numbers to rebound. That leaves September and October.
Trump shouldn't be concerned about Florida this cycle anymore than he should be concerned about Oklahoma, to be perfectly honest. I had written off both Florida and Ohio LONG ago as viable pick-ups for Dems. I would have used certain parts of Florida as my #1 example of what "Trump Country" is. The fact that it isn't just competitive, but that Biden is CRUSHING him in every single poll (nothing within the margin of error) is incredibly ominous for him.
Even after the twin disasters of Iraq and Katrina, it took the financial crisis hitting the retirement of normally conservative voters for them to turn on Bush. In other words, they didn't give a shit until it happened to them and hit their pocket book. This time it isn't just their money, it's their ability to keep living.
Lie is ass off and have other people cover for him.
As far as I'm concerned the manipulation of this data is negligent homicide. It is meant to deceive the public about a contagious disease when the complacency they are hoping this instills in people furthers the spread. Since JANUARY, they have been pushing against accurate tests results. It is no accident or mystery why we're here, and whether it is by negligence or purposeful (a combination of both, actually) doesn't much matter. Only the federal government could have brought the power to bear to combat this how it needed to be done. Instead, they basically sided with the virus and went to work for it. 5 months, 150,000 (mostly) unnecessary fatalities. Which will be closer to a quarter million by election day. If a President can survive that colossal of a fuck-up, we're screwed regardless, because it means everything is fundamentally broken. Which, to be fair, it generally is.
A multi-billion dollar sports league made it through one weekend before an entire team (the Florida Marlins) has now tested positive (14 and counting). What do you imagine is going to happen in schools that don't have the nearly unlimited resources of MLB??:
As an aside, Trump doesn't have 100 days to turn this around, because the early voting in many states starts less than 2 months from now. Which means he only really has 45 days.
A multi-billion dollar sports league made it through one weekend before an entire team (the Florida Marlins) has now tested positive (14 and counting). What do you imagine is going to happen in schools that don't have the nearly unlimited resources of MLB??:
Kinda missed this but the NHL actually seems to be doing it right. They are now in Phase 4 and their COVID numbers was something like 9, 26, 42, 0 due to rampant testing and quarantining once any positive test was found. From July 18-25 the league did 4,256 tests to more than 800 players.
The 24 'playoff teams' are now in Toronto and Edmonton experiencing bubble life. Players were allowed to opt out with zero repercussions and a few made that difficult choice. Now we are 4 days away from hockey again albeit in empty stadiums but televised.
If that zero remains for through the play in round I expect the league to actually hand out the Stanley Cup late September.
A multi-billion dollar sports league made it through one weekend before an entire team (the Florida Marlins) has now tested positive (14 and counting). What do you imagine is going to happen in schools that don't have the nearly unlimited resources of MLB??:
Kinda missed this but the NHL actually seems to be doing it right. They are now in Phase 4 and their COVID numbers was something like 9, 26, 42, 0 due to rampant testing and quarantining once any positive test was found. From July 18-25 the league did 4,256 tests to more than 800 players.
The 24 'playoff teams' are now in Toronto and Edmonton experiencing bubble life. Players were allowed to opt out with zero repercussions and a few made that difficult choice. Now we are 4 days away from hockey again albeit in empty stadiums but televised.
If that zero remains for through the play in round I expect the league to actually hand out the Stanley Cup late September.
24 NHL teams made the playoffs and still no Detroit Redwings. Oh how the mighty have fallen... ?
A multi-billion dollar sports league made it through one weekend before an entire team (the Florida Marlins) has now tested positive (14 and counting). What do you imagine is going to happen in schools that don't have the nearly unlimited resources of MLB??:
Kinda missed this but the NHL actually seems to be doing it right. They are now in Phase 4 and their COVID numbers was something like 9, 26, 42, 0 due to rampant testing and quarantining once any positive test was found. From July 18-25 the league did 4,256 tests to more than 800 players.
The 24 'playoff teams' are now in Toronto and Edmonton experiencing bubble life. Players were allowed to opt out with zero repercussions and a few made that difficult choice. Now we are 4 days away from hockey again albeit in empty stadiums but televised.
If that zero remains for through the play in round I expect the league to actually hand out the Stanley Cup late September.
24 NHL teams made the playoffs and still no Detroit Redwings. Oh how the mighty have fallen... ?
Dude. They were in last place, before COVID shut everything down, they were the only team in the league who didn’t have a mathematical chance of making the playoffs. They have to run out the time on some crappy contracts before honestly starting a proper rebuild. Deadwing era 2.0, enjoy it.
So apparently the Senator from Georgia released an ad that featured a digital distortion of John Ossoff''s face. The distortion was to make his nose appear bigger, which in and of itself is comically weird - except for the fact that it reinforces a racial stereotype that Jews have big noses (Ossoff is Jewish).
Apparently, earlier - Lindsey Graham released an ad that artificially darkened the skin of his black opponent, Jamie Harrison.
The Southern Strategy is alive and well, evidently. Cant blame Trump for this - it's just the GOP weaponizing racism to try to win tight elections.
So apparently the Senator from Georgia released an ad that featured a digital distortion of John Ossoff''s face. The distortion was to make his nose appear bigger, which in and of itself is comically weird - except for the fact that it reinforces a racial stereotype that Jews have big noses (Ossoff is Jewish).
Apparently, earlier - Lindsey Graham released an ad that artificially darkened the skin of his black opponent, Jamie Harrison.
The Southern Strategy is alive and well, evidently. Cant blame Trump for this - it's just the GOP weaponizing racism to try to win tight elections.
Trump didn't invent any of this. He just started giving people pure heroin instead of methadone.
Serious question- is the lady who believes in demon sperm any less crazy and unfit to be a public health expert than the ones claiming that "white supremacy is the real virus"? White supremacists and demon sperm have about the same lethality rate in this country. Neither one of which has anything to do with infectious disease.
The idiocy and shameless propaganda that comes out of American institutions just kills me. None of them are worth a damn anymore, and you can tell by our sky high rates of covid.
Schools must open immediately, but the election must be delayed. Got it.
I now hear people saying "well, it has to be a landslide so he can't contest the results". First off, NO, that is not the case. Trump's opponent is not required to beat him by 15 points and 100 electoral votes, he's simply required to beat him. Setting up this absurd double standard is insane.
If the election is held, and Trump loses, he will declare it illegitimate and force someone to evict him from the office. I don't see how people can argue he won't at this point. But people really need to stop saying "he can't do that" as if it's some magic talisman that will save you. It won't, and it's never stopped him up to this point. Waving your rulebook in the air will not help.
Serious question- is the lady who believes in demon sperm any less crazy and unfit to be a public health expert than the ones claiming that "white supremacy is the real virus"? White supremacists and demon sperm have about the same lethality rate in this country. Neither one of which has anything to do with infectious disease.
The idiocy and shameless propaganda that comes out of American institutions just kills me. None of them are worth a damn anymore, and you can tell by our sky high rates of covid.
I get what you're saying here, and it's maybe fair to say some people are being overly promiscuous with the term "white supremacy", but it's a real thing--of this world. It's unarguably existed and still exists today even if we couldn't get everyone to agree on its magnitude.
Herman Cain, who had attended Trump's Tulsa rally without wearing a mask, died today at the age of 74 from Covid-19 weeks after being admitted to hospital after contracting the virus.
Sometimes, the news speaks for itself, and this seems to be one of those cases.
Serious question- is the lady who believes in demon sperm any less crazy and unfit to be a public health expert than the ones claiming that "white supremacy is the real virus"? White supremacists and demon sperm have about the same lethality rate in this country. Neither one of which has anything to do with infectious disease.
The idiocy and shameless propaganda that comes out of American institutions just kills me. None of them are worth a damn anymore, and you can tell by our sky high rates of covid.
I don’t know the context of the “white supremacy is the real virus” but my guess is that it was metaphor.
“Demon sperm” and some of her other claims were not made metaphorically.
So yes, she is a bit more crazy.
~
So that’s the first step, ask for a delay. Once it doesn’t get delayed he is going to sign an executive order to cancel it till further notice. Red governor states will follow suit and America is in another dragged out legal clown circus till 2021.
Serious question- is the lady who believes in demon sperm any less crazy and unfit to be a public health expert than the ones claiming that "white supremacy is the real virus"? White supremacists and demon sperm have about the same lethality rate in this country. Neither one of which has anything to do with infectious disease.
The idiocy and shameless propaganda that comes out of American institutions just kills me. None of them are worth a damn anymore, and you can tell by our sky high rates of covid.
This looks like a false equivalency to me. You can debate the magnitude of white supremacy in the USA, and you can debate its effects and what it has wrought, but it is a very real concept and does exist. Demon sperm is pure fantasy.
I also agree with @deltago that one is metaphorical and the other is not.
So that’s the first step, ask for a delay. Once it doesn’t get delayed he is going to sign an executive order to cancel it till further notice. Red governor states will follow suit and America is in another dragged out legal clown circus till 2021.
He can try. He lacks any authority to do so, and would be challenged by the SCOTUS, which would take the case and accelerate a decision to ensure the outcome occurs before the election is held.
There's no real reason to worry about him actually delaying the election at all. Instead, the concern should be that he wont concede after he loses.
Also, unremarked upon so far: Just your casual 32% drop in GDP over the last quarter. Worst ever drop.
It's only gonna get worse from here. Death rates are now catching up to the cases from the last month (1200 a day and rising). The unemployment stipends and eviction moratoriums end in 24 hours. The main purpose of these brigades of federal troops in cities is not to protect anything, but to escalate confrontations. It's hard not to come to the conclusion that the total breakdown of society is the GOAL at this point.
As for Herman Cain......how should I put this. Trump's Tulsa rally should be looked at as his Jonestown. Herman Cain is most certainly not the only person who contracted COVID-19 at that event who has died or will now have life-long health problems if they survive (the later being something we don't talk about nearly enough, or at all). It's symbolic of his entire approach to the virus. He hasn't just asked those 6000 to possibly sacrifice themselves for his glory and power, it's all 300+ million of us.
We're awash in medical quackery, entrenched tribalism, and an absentee government. There are food lines, an impending threat of mass homelessness, and cold storage of bodies in trailers outside of overflowing funeral homes. And at the top of the pyramid is a malignant narcissist who cares not an ounce for a single other living being in this country other than himself. Something tells me this does not end well.
Serious question- is the lady who believes in demon sperm any less crazy and unfit to be a public health expert than the ones claiming that "white supremacy is the real virus"? White supremacists and demon sperm have about the same lethality rate in this country. Neither one of which has anything to do with infectious disease.
The idiocy and shameless propaganda that comes out of American institutions just kills me. None of them are worth a damn anymore, and you can tell by our sky high rates of covid.
I don't believe white supremacists do have the same lethality rate as "demon sperm." The latter has a death count of zero. The former does not:
In analyzing fatalities from terrorist attacks, religious terrorism has killed the largest number of individuals—3,086 people—primarily due to the attacks on September 11, 2001, which caused 2,977 deaths. The magnitude of this death toll fundamentally shaped U.S. counterterrorism policy over the past two decades. In comparison, right-wing terrorist attacks caused 335 deaths, left-wing attacks caused 22 deaths, and ethnonationalist terrorists caused 5 deaths.
Perhaps more importantly, the rate of these attacks is increasing:
First, far-right terrorism has significantly outpaced terrorism from other types of perpetrators, including from far-left networks and individuals inspired by the Islamic State and al-Qaeda. Right-wing attacks and plots account for the majority of all terrorist incidents in the United States since 1994, and the total number of right-wing attacks and plots has grown significantly during the past six years. Right-wing extremists perpetrated two thirds of the attacks and plots in the United States in 2019 and over 90 percent between January 1 and May 8, 2020. [italics mine]
One might draw a distinction between far-right terrorism and white supremacist terrorism and suggest that far-right groups that aren't white supremacists are responsible for the rise in far-right terrorism, but I think the death count and the number of failed attacks indicate that white supremacy is still a real threat in this country.
How large it is compared to other threats is another question, but it has a death count and white supremacist violence is on the rise.
It's possible the COVID death rates will trend downwards (relatively, anyway) in a couple weeks, since the number of new cases has fallen as the death rates have skyrocketed this month. There's a roughly two-week delay between a surge in infections and a surge in deaths, so things might go down in mid-August, provided that new cases right now don't rise again.
But school will be starting up soon, and if government relief peters out, more people will have to brave the virus to make ends meet, both of which could get thousands more killed in the coming months.
It's possible the COVID death rates will trend downwards (relatively, anyway) in a couple weeks, since the number of new cases has fallen as the death rates have skyrocketed this month. There's a roughly two-week delay between a surge in infections and a surge in deaths, so things might go down in mid-August, provided that new cases right now don't rise again.
But school will be starting up soon, and if government relief peters out, more people will have to brave the virus to make ends meet, both of which could get thousands more killed in the coming months.
I've lost all capacity for optimism in regards to our response to the virus. I never really had any to begin with, but retaining any now as we enter August in this situation strikes me as crazy as letting a person who has tried to pass 5 bad checks at your store in the last 4 months continue to write them for purchases, and then being surprised when they bounce. There is no money in his account. And there is no capability in America as it currently stands to deal with this. We're a failed state.
Serious question- is the lady who believes in demon sperm any less crazy and unfit to be a public health expert than the ones claiming that "white supremacy is the real virus"? White supremacists and demon sperm have about the same lethality rate in this country. Neither one of which has anything to do with infectious disease.
The idiocy and shameless propaganda that comes out of American institutions just kills me. None of them are worth a damn anymore, and you can tell by our sky high rates of covid.
If you ignore all documented death, pain and suffering caused by white supremacy over the years, sure. Totally the same...
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https://www.pbs.org/thewar/at_war_infantry.htm#:~:text=More than 16 million Americans,percent of the troops overseas.
Yeah. Perhaps the greatest injustice the Baby Boomers ever wrought was the idea that they created or earned their disproportionate position in society, and demand that all subsequent generations "earn" it like they did (whilst actively hindering them through competition).
They were the beneficiaries of a postwar economy they did not create, and subject to an ethos in government (and society, in some cases) that gave them the opportunity to benefit. Then entrenched themselves and havent left the same opportunities to those that came after.
Instead, we Millennials get derided as "do-nothing" and "entitled".
I agree that generational warfare is stupid, but I truly hope that once Millennials dont make the same mistakes of the Baby Boomers. I have hope that we wont.
https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/07/dave-grohl-pandemic-reopening-schools-health-teachers/614422/
Okay, I don’t know about all of that, some things ring false. Yes this will come off as antagonistic, it is not meant to be so. I ask that you look at this as trying to expose the truth and not an attack.
There were no troops in Desert Storm shelled by gas. None. I was there, long after most of the US military left. To be honest their Scud missiles had the worst aim in, gonna guess, the history of warfare. Look it up, how many landed among US troops. I counted one, but maybe the people here watching the news saw more, if I am not mistaken there were less than 50 troops killed by them in one strike, no gas.
Now with the plane fuel, this was the thing I was sure I couldn’t rebut because my uncle hasn’t spoken to me in years. I am not really what a good Christian family wants to admit came from them. He did answer me though, kinda shocked. He worked on the F-16s in the 70’s, always talked about a bad accident that he was one of the first people there. Okay, not death(I thought there had been), no one died but there was a ton of fuel on the ground. They used up the stuff they had and actually had to buy up all the kitty litter in three counties that they could find. No mops even, they squeegeed and used brooms to keep it contained. I am not saying that didn’t happen but cleaning fuel, of any kind, by hand is not in any modern military procedures.
I don’t know all of the facts, what I do know is that I was there. There were people in the thick of things, absolutely. I have only met a few in all the years that I was in the military. I actually saw more bodies and destruction than almost everyone I have ever talked to simply because my idiot lieutenant took us down the wrong road in Kuwait( film major, can’t expect much), and we drove the whole Highway of Death and we were in Safwan Iraq before he realized his mistake. Not pleasant. Worst was when we had to go slow around bomb craters in the road. You could smell it then, the burnt bodies. Smells like a backyard bar-b-que at first until you realize what it is. I will give you this, it is not possible to unsmell that, it never goes away. I was one of only 14 people in my company that experienced that though and I have never met anyone else who saw anything like that. It is a small percentage, everything else, trauma an what not, happens in the private sector every day. My family the men all drove truck while the women and children took care of their farms, seven families in all. My one uncle didn’t drive truck, he worked in a steel mill. I asked my grandma once why he didn’t drive truck like everyone else. She said that he did when he was young, one day a child ran out in front of his truck. Not his fault but he never got over it and could never drive truck again. What about all the things that first responders see every day? It is called life, we are surrounded by it every day. I couldn’t handle that, probably why I am not a first responder. PTSD is real and really, really bad, let’s not make it so everyone who has ever been in the military has dealt with that though, it is just not factual. To be honest, I feel it kinda of takes away from those suffering. I knew someone I had worked with was in Vietnam, I asked him about it after I had known him for years. He said,”Yeah, I was there and that is all we are ever going to talk about that.” That pain is real, please don’t make it less by claiming everyone who has ever served has felt that. I know for a fact they have not.
For my father, it wasn't cleaning up the spills after a plane crash (he was always mostly there for the mechanical side), it was maintenance after and prior to flights. And I get it, when most people think of a military plane, they think of fighter jets, but my father worked primarily on Hercules in his youth. IMO, his story of cleaning the fuel tanks made sense to me.
For my step father. Yes, I didn't want to get into the details, but Iraq missiles were a joke. That didn't mean that when the building they were bunkered in started filling with dense white smoke, you knew what that smoke was. I remember seeing pictures of it.
My point was just to reflect that one doesn't need to be in combat to have PTSD and not being in combat shouldn't take away things they had to sacrifice. (I didn't mean to imply that everyone in the military suffers from PTSD).
Mental Illness like PTSD needs to be talked about and needs to be addressed medically. The only way for that to happen is to step away from the 'tough guy' attitude of not talking about 'your feelings.'
That's super interesting. Thanks for posting it.
I suspect everyone who thinks the polls were "way off" in 2016 have that period from 250 days to 150 days, when Clinton had a huge lead, stuck in their heads. IIRC - the GOP primary probably wasnt even over then (Technically neither was the Democrat one, I supposed).
Add to that the false belief in the "blue firewall" in which people believed that Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Minnesota were bluer than the country as a whole, so if a Democrat was wining the popular vote, they'd win those states and cruise to 270+ EVs.
People should also be wary of the reversion to the mean that's evident in this graphic. The polling will change a lot in the next 30 days (When Biden picks his VP and both parties have their convention... whatever that looks like). After that, it looks like the race might change again about one more time. That seems about right, imo - two more changes in the nature of the race between now and election day (One in August, one in October).
Senior citizens (and others, but mostly seniors) are going to keep dying by the hundreds every single day for the immediate future in Florida. There is absolutely nothing that can stop that now. August is lost to Coronavirus as surely as April and May were now. The cause of his Florida numbers cratering is because of the senior voting block turning on him. If anything, the next 30 days (for sure, likely longer) are just going to be the same old song. More people they know dying every day, another month isolated in their homes. Unless a miracle akin to Christ rising from the grave after three days takes place in that state, there is no hope for his numbers to rebound. That leaves September and October.
Trump shouldn't be concerned about Florida this cycle anymore than he should be concerned about Oklahoma, to be perfectly honest. I had written off both Florida and Ohio LONG ago as viable pick-ups for Dems. I would have used certain parts of Florida as my #1 example of what "Trump Country" is. The fact that it isn't just competitive, but that Biden is CRUSHING him in every single poll (nothing within the margin of error) is incredibly ominous for him.
Even after the twin disasters of Iraq and Katrina, it took the financial crisis hitting the retirement of normally conservative voters for them to turn on Bush. In other words, they didn't give a shit until it happened to them and hit their pocket book. This time it isn't just their money, it's their ability to keep living.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ed8dA23UEAU8FHo?format=jpg&name=large
Lie is ass off and have other people cover for him.
As far as I'm concerned the manipulation of this data is negligent homicide. It is meant to deceive the public about a contagious disease when the complacency they are hoping this instills in people furthers the spread. Since JANUARY, they have been pushing against accurate tests results. It is no accident or mystery why we're here, and whether it is by negligence or purposeful (a combination of both, actually) doesn't much matter. Only the federal government could have brought the power to bear to combat this how it needed to be done. Instead, they basically sided with the virus and went to work for it. 5 months, 150,000 (mostly) unnecessary fatalities. Which will be closer to a quarter million by election day. If a President can survive that colossal of a fuck-up, we're screwed regardless, because it means everything is fundamentally broken. Which, to be fair, it generally is.
A multi-billion dollar sports league made it through one weekend before an entire team (the Florida Marlins) has now tested positive (14 and counting). What do you imagine is going to happen in schools that don't have the nearly unlimited resources of MLB??:
As an aside, Trump doesn't have 100 days to turn this around, because the early voting in many states starts less than 2 months from now. Which means he only really has 45 days.
Wow, the virus is just going away. It's a miracle!
"Whatabout the people dying?"
"They're going away too!"
My statement was supposed to be satire. Guess I shoulda put a winky there... ?
Kinda missed this but the NHL actually seems to be doing it right. They are now in Phase 4 and their COVID numbers was something like 9, 26, 42, 0 due to rampant testing and quarantining once any positive test was found. From July 18-25 the league did 4,256 tests to more than 800 players.
The 24 'playoff teams' are now in Toronto and Edmonton experiencing bubble life. Players were allowed to opt out with zero repercussions and a few made that difficult choice. Now we are 4 days away from hockey again albeit in empty stadiums but televised.
If that zero remains for through the play in round I expect the league to actually hand out the Stanley Cup late September.
24 NHL teams made the playoffs and still no Detroit Redwings. Oh how the mighty have fallen... ?
Dude. They were in last place, before COVID shut everything down, they were the only team in the league who didn’t have a mathematical chance of making the playoffs. They have to run out the time on some crappy contracts before honestly starting a proper rebuild. Deadwing era 2.0, enjoy it.
Apparently, earlier - Lindsey Graham released an ad that artificially darkened the skin of his black opponent, Jamie Harrison.
The Southern Strategy is alive and well, evidently. Cant blame Trump for this - it's just the GOP weaponizing racism to try to win tight elections.
Trump didn't invent any of this. He just started giving people pure heroin instead of methadone.
The idiocy and shameless propaganda that comes out of American institutions just kills me. None of them are worth a damn anymore, and you can tell by our sky high rates of covid.
Schools must open immediately, but the election must be delayed. Got it.
I now hear people saying "well, it has to be a landslide so he can't contest the results". First off, NO, that is not the case. Trump's opponent is not required to beat him by 15 points and 100 electoral votes, he's simply required to beat him. Setting up this absurd double standard is insane.
If the election is held, and Trump loses, he will declare it illegitimate and force someone to evict him from the office. I don't see how people can argue he won't at this point. But people really need to stop saying "he can't do that" as if it's some magic talisman that will save you. It won't, and it's never stopped him up to this point. Waving your rulebook in the air will not help.
I get what you're saying here, and it's maybe fair to say some people are being overly promiscuous with the term "white supremacy", but it's a real thing--of this world. It's unarguably existed and still exists today even if we couldn't get everyone to agree on its magnitude.
On the other hand, demon sperm is fantasy.
Herman Cain, who had attended Trump's Tulsa rally without wearing a mask, died today at the age of 74 from Covid-19 weeks after being admitted to hospital after contracting the virus.
Sometimes, the news speaks for itself, and this seems to be one of those cases.
I don’t know the context of the “white supremacy is the real virus” but my guess is that it was metaphor.
“Demon sperm” and some of her other claims were not made metaphorically.
So yes, she is a bit more crazy.
~
So that’s the first step, ask for a delay. Once it doesn’t get delayed he is going to sign an executive order to cancel it till further notice. Red governor states will follow suit and America is in another dragged out legal clown circus till 2021.
This looks like a false equivalency to me. You can debate the magnitude of white supremacy in the USA, and you can debate its effects and what it has wrought, but it is a very real concept and does exist. Demon sperm is pure fantasy.
I also agree with @deltago that one is metaphorical and the other is not.
He can try. He lacks any authority to do so, and would be challenged by the SCOTUS, which would take the case and accelerate a decision to ensure the outcome occurs before the election is held.
There's no real reason to worry about him actually delaying the election at all. Instead, the concern should be that he wont concede after he loses.
Also, unremarked upon so far: Just your casual 32% drop in GDP over the last quarter. Worst ever drop.
As for Herman Cain......how should I put this. Trump's Tulsa rally should be looked at as his Jonestown. Herman Cain is most certainly not the only person who contracted COVID-19 at that event who has died or will now have life-long health problems if they survive (the later being something we don't talk about nearly enough, or at all). It's symbolic of his entire approach to the virus. He hasn't just asked those 6000 to possibly sacrifice themselves for his glory and power, it's all 300+ million of us.
We're awash in medical quackery, entrenched tribalism, and an absentee government. There are food lines, an impending threat of mass homelessness, and cold storage of bodies in trailers outside of overflowing funeral homes. And at the top of the pyramid is a malignant narcissist who cares not an ounce for a single other living being in this country other than himself. Something tells me this does not end well.
How large it is compared to other threats is another question, but it has a death count and white supremacist violence is on the rise.
But school will be starting up soon, and if government relief peters out, more people will have to brave the virus to make ends meet, both of which could get thousands more killed in the coming months.
I've lost all capacity for optimism in regards to our response to the virus. I never really had any to begin with, but retaining any now as we enter August in this situation strikes me as crazy as letting a person who has tried to pass 5 bad checks at your store in the last 4 months continue to write them for purchases, and then being surprised when they bounce. There is no money in his account. And there is no capability in America as it currently stands to deal with this. We're a failed state.
If you ignore all documented death, pain and suffering caused by white supremacy over the years, sure. Totally the same...