American Politics

[Tiny 12]

Did you guys notice when the lab leak theory came into being? It was just after Trump was out of office around April 2021. There were a slew of articles and people talking about where Covid originated from, and I remember hearing a guy named Josh Rogin of the Washington Post on the Joe Rogan show spewing out information about the Wuhan lab and Fauci I had not heard before. It was like some billionaire somewhere said, "Okay, we can trash the naturally occurring Covid theory and now tell people the truth. " And anyone who listened to this information was like Jon Stewart, ranting about how dumb anyone was to believe otherwise.

And now it looks like some billionaire has given the okay on talking crap about the Covid vaccine:

https://twitter.com/tomselliott/stat...73558155165697

Joe Scarborough was "knocked down" for months / weeks after getting the Covid booster, and his wife goes along with it.

Then you have Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, admitting he was wrong about the vaccine.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/...doesnt-get-why

It is not as if I did not anticipate this but I though it would happen in 2024 when the legal immunity drug makers have with the vaccine is over.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/16/covi...n-lawsuit.html

What happens next? Well, the vaccines are going to be withdrawn faster than any product in human history once that immunity expires. There might be some 200 page document that a person could sign if they wanted the vaccine going forward but given the drug companies have to be honest about the side effects of the vaccine in said document, I would bet it is more likely than not it will not be offered. The safer course is just to say the vaccines do not work against the newer variants and pull them.

The one thing I can say for certain is with these never mind Democrats it will not bother them in the least. They still believe Russiagate was real; they believe in the naturally occurring Covid theory and that if Hiliary would have been president versus Trump, we would have had no Covid deaths.

So the Covid vaccine may actually be a bigger health crisis than Covid itself but never mind.

I have to disagree with you on this one Elvis. Scarborough says he was knocked down for months or weeks with the COVID disease because he did NOT get the booster. Dilbert's creator isn't the first person I'd go to for COVID advice. Rather, I'd go to my general practitioner, an internal medicine specialist, who's a big believer in the COVID vaccine and boosters. And giving Moderna and Pfizer and other vaccine manufacturers immunity from lawsuits was a great idea. Otherwise the plaintiff's attorneys might be suing them into nonexistence, like they did for a while with manufacturers of silicone breast implants and private planes.

[Elvis 2008]

Stop hitting yourself.

Amen. The Dems were all griping that Trump do something and he did this not that it mattered, but we heard ad nauseam about how if Hiliary or any other Dem were president instead of Trump, there would be fewer deaths.

Well guess what? There are going to be fewer Covid deaths under Biden than Trump.

https://time.com/6249841/covid-19-no...lth-emergency/

For over a year, it has been apparent that many hospitalizations officially classified as being due to COVID-19 are instead of patients without COVID symptoms who are admitted for other reasons but also happen to test positive.

Misclassified hospitalizations obviously suggest there have also been miscategorized deaths, yet a parallel recognition that undoubtedly many official COVID-19 deaths are similarly due to persons dying with instead of from the coronavirus has only begun to emerge. CDC guidelines still stipulate that any death from (any) illness occurring within 30 days of a positive test result automatically be classified as due to COVID-19. Hence, if the current prevalence in the population is, say, 3% (towards the lower end of typical levels during major surges like the present one) then the background prevalence among persons admitted to hospitals for other reasonsand also among those who end up dying would similarly be around 3%. Considering about 9,200 total deaths occur daily in the USA, then in this hypothetical scenario some 275 deaths ascribed to COVID (or approximately two-thirds of the official daily count) would in fact have been due to other causes.

And bam just like that, the lame stream media has concluded that there were fewer Covid deaths under Biden than Trump.

Gosh, if only we had known what the CDC was doing when Trump was in office right? Oh wait, people like me WERE screaming about this. I STILL have not seen one person die due solely to Covid, and yet every day the lame stream media reported the thousands dying OF Covid and not WITH Covid.

And doesn't this put into question the phrama makers and their statements that the vaccine prevented deaths and hospitalizations?

And why is this shit coming out NOW?

[EihTooms]

All good points Elvis. I'm not at all an uncritical fan of Trump's handling of COVID. But he did some good things. I don't think Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden would have gotten the vaccine in peoples' arms as quickly.

There were Caribbean countries which shut down tourism because of COVID. They were really fucked, more than Colombia, because their economies were mostly dependent on the tourists.

Trump's approach, if there was ever one, to National Security with regard to health concerns was a clusterfuck from beginning to end. The dude started creating a Pandemic, any Pandemic just make sure it's a really HUGE and DAMAGING one, as far back as 2018 and right up until he was still asserting it was "disappearing" and "will go away without a vaccine" just days before the November 2020 election. Later was so ashamed of his near zero contribution to getting those vaccines into Americans' arms that he and Melania got the shots in their arms in near total secrecy.

I have provided numerous links citing the when and the how for the above many times here. No one has produced so much as a single report link supporting a contradiction of my report links. No one.

Trump handed over no coherent and viable national response plan for vaccine distribution. At best he was going to shuffle off the responsibility for that to each state, a "plan" almost certain to create his much preferred in-fighting and chaos leading to crap results that he applied to everything else he had no clue how to handle. So 50 states would have found themselves climbing all over each other, competing and bidding into the stratosphere for the first wave of vaccines that Trump fought for a year to convince no one should bother inventing. Reminiscent of The Great Ventilator Wars.

And that is the rosiest view of what Trump's idiotic state-centered non federal rollout plan would have wrought. There would have been entire Red State holdouts for ANY response to Trump's Pandemic, including the vaccines Trump spent critical year 2020 dismissing as unnecessary and just part of a "Democrat Hoax"! That would have only created festering state-wide laboratories for new variants and mutations to thwart the effectiveness of those first vaccines that did manage to get past Trump's "populist" campaign against them.

Besides that, as near as anyone could tell from November 2020 until this very day Trump's only "handover" plan was to dig his heels in, screetch his Big Lie about the election being stolen from him, gather, incite and lead a violent mob of cop-killing, America-hating Insurrectionists to overturn a free and fair election, overthrow American democracy and try to convince any loon who will listen that Biden isn't even the legitimate POTUS.

So it strains all credibility and defies all available evidence to suggest that in this one wild and crazy exception Trump handed over a coherent, viable vaccine distribution plan to the incoming Biden Administration. Ever.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-h...-idUSKBN29T0FY

Biden plans to partner with state and local governments to establish vaccination spots in conference centers, stadiums and gymnasiums. The new administration will also deploy thousands of clinical staff from federal agencies, military medical personnel and pharmacy chains to increase vaccinations, and make teachers and grocery clerks eligible.

Vaccination programs lagged far behind the Trump administrations target of 20 million Americans inoculated by the end of 2020.

[Tiny 12]

Handguns are 6000, rifles are 477. About 13 to 1. It stands to reason that "firearms, type not stated" (probably mostly the huge number of gang-related urban ghetto shootings whether neither the perp nor the weapon is ever found) would follow approximately the same ratio.

So about 4400 to 400, to err in your favor. For a total of over 10,000 handgun deaths and fewer than 1000 rifles.

Spidy's theory makes a lot more sense Chris. Those 4740 deaths from "firearms, not stated" must be from bazookas, grenade launchers, shoulder fired missiles, howitzers and similar firearms owned by right wing militia members and hard core Trump supporters. Oh yeah, and Carrie Fisher.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xggMwkGnbhw

[EihTooms]

A ban, by definition, presumes "all". For instance, if a city bans smoking in public places, that means "all public places", not "some public places but not others". If a school district bans a book in schools, if means "all schools", not "some schools but not others". If a state bans abortion without any exceptions, it means "all abortions", not "some abortions".

So while Chrissie didn't specifically say all, he didn't have to. A "ban" means "all". Period.

And Hong Kong and Macau are part of China, are they not?

Chris even changed his tune mid-song when he replaced the word "ban" with "restrictions" before the end of that original post. So even he knew it wasn't really a "ban" from the get-go. Yet that is what he hung into like a rat on a rafter ever since.

Which begs the question, what exactly were the "good point" support Trumpsters supporting; his assertion that it was a "ban" or his assertion that there were only "restrictions"? Bothsides? Neitherside? Anarchy? Nothing? Everything?

Slippery as greased eels they are. Very Trumpian, of course.

[Chris P]

That was very educational for me. After seeing that I don't know why anyone would criticize McCarthy for removing Swalwell and Schiff from the intelligence committee. And yes, if Trump's views about Russia predominated in the Washington establishment instead of the neocon's, I don't think there would be a war in Ukraine right now.

I'm not a fan of Dore though. His favored economic policies, which for some strange reason he feels compelled to relate to Russiagate at the end of the video, would make for a much less prosperous and weaker America.

Swalwell was literally banging a Chinese spy, and Schiff lied openly about the Russia hoax. They should be facing charges, never mind expulsion from the intel committee.

Dore reminds me a little of the British leftist George Galloway. His economic policies are indeed disastrous. But he is at least honest and principled, from the old school left, with ideas based in reality.

Unfortunately, modern leftists are utterly unhinged fantasists, believing that men are women, fiery riots are peaceful but white silence is violence, the First and Second Amendments should be repealed, nobody should have a car or eat meat to apparently change the weather in the 22nd Century, etc. And they are perfectly happy to lie through their teeth in an attempt to reach this hellish "utopia".

[Chris P]

No not really! Not at all given the "very flawed" data collection of the chart itself and the source from which it hails.

The known firearm data shows handgun deaths outnumbering rifles at a rate of 13 to 1. Yet you somehow attempt to extrapolate that 100% of the unknown firearm data is rifles, and 0% handguns.

Anyone who would do that is either an idiot or a leftist political hack. If there is a difference.

[Chris P]

Did you guys notice when the lab leak theory came into being? It was just after Trump was out of office around April 2021. There were a slew of articles and people talking about where Covid originated from, and I remember hearing a guy named Josh Rogin of the Washington Post on the Joe Rogan show spewing out information about the Wuhan lab and Fauci I had not heard before. It was like some billionaire somewhere said, "Okay, we can trash the naturally occurring Covid theory and now tell people the truth. " And anyone who listened to this information was like Jon Stewart, ranting about how dumb anyone was to believe otherwise.

And now it looks like some billionaire has given the okay on talking crap about the Covid vaccine:

https://twitter.com/tomselliott/stat...73558155165697

Joe Scarborough was "knocked down" for months / weeks after getting the Covid booster, and his wife goes along with it.

Then you have Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, admitting he was wrong about the vaccine.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/...doesnt-get-why

It is not as if I did not anticipate this but I though it would happen in 2024 when the legal immunity drug makers have with the vaccine is over.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/16/covi...n-lawsuit.html

What happens next? Well, the vaccines are going to be withdrawn faster than any product in human history once that immunity expires. There might be some 200 page document that a person could sign if they wanted the vaccine going forward but given the drug companies have to be honest about the side effects of the vaccine in said document, I would bet it is more likely than not it will not be offered. The safer course is just to say the vaccines do not work against the newer variants and pull them.

The one thing I can say for certain is with these never mind Democrats it will not bother them in the least. They still believe Russiagate was real; they believe in the naturally occurring Covid theory and that if Hiliary would have been president versus Trump, we would have had no Covid deaths.

So the Covid vaccine may actually be a bigger health crisis than Covid itself but never mind.

Excellent post. The vax will indeed prove to be a bigger health crisis than covid (which was little worse than a bad flu season).

The twisting and spinning of the fake news and big tech on this issue has completely undermined what little credibility they had left (admittedly very little). The only people who believe them now are the likes of PVMonger. LOL.

[Spidy]

The problem is that "your own data" is a bunch of leftist horseshit...

No not really! Not at all given the "very flawed" data collection of the chart itself and the source from which it hails.

According to your logic, urban people ONLY use "handguns", therefore that leaves "Firearms, type not stated" and most of the other categories, to people in the burbs/rural US.

Right! Because of course, no self-respecting QAnon/Repub/MAGA/Trumpster insurrectionist would be seen (less caught dead) with a "handgun", the choice of Urban City Slickers.

[Chris P]

Yeah, Peter Zeihan has done much on this, and for all Saddam Hussein's hatred of America, he kept his cash in American $100 bills. The USA will be a reserve currency for all of our lifetimes. There really is no replacement for it.

Until recently I'd have agreed with you. But there has been vast damage wreaked upon America of late.

The demographic destruction and third worldization of the country.

Biden's humiliating military defeat by the Taliban.

Hundreds of trillions of debts and unfunded liabilities of various kinds.

The politicization and weaponization of the previously steadfastly neutral financial system by the theft of Russian dollar reserves, which have signalled to everyone that the US system can no longer be trusted.

The failure of the attempt to destroy Russia's economy by the theft of its dollar reserves plus sanctions, which has exposed America's economic weakness and impotence and emboldened others to create systems to challenge it (see the China-Saudi oil deal).

The theft of the 2020 election and the demonization and weaponization of federal law enforcement alphabet agencies and leftist judiciary against half the country.

All the above and more have shown that America is no longer the solid and reliable bet it once was.

[Spidy]

The part about Democratic presidents sending right wing young men to die in foreign wars, while depriving them of miniature AR's during childhood so theyd be less likely to survive combat. That was semi satirical.

Yeah, Okay! And yet I felt, you said it with such conviction!

Although I can make a case that there would have been no American involvement in World War I, and no WW II, Korean or Vietnam wars if Democratic administrations had made different decisions. It's a weak case, but still much, much stronger than Tooms' argument that Republican presidents are responsible for most recessions.

I've notice how you love to dabble in revisionist history. If that's your thing then by all means, knock yourself out, playing "what-if's". To some it my prove interesting, if not entertaining to read, at the very least.

If you get bored with us "pee-ONS" here at ISG, you could always compare your "what-if's" with what ChatGPT might write.

Just a thought!

[Chris P]

the chart on the link has "Firearms, type not stated" as the 2nd most causes of death at 4,740, behind "Handguns" at 6,012. Wonder what that could be, such a big omission? Perhaps, I'll just fill the void with my own data and assume it's from all those "kiddy friendly" AR-15's assault rifles, sniper-rifles, high-powered rifles, bazookas and grenade launchers, in the burbs?

The problem is that "your own data" is a bunch of leftist horseshit.

Handguns are 6000, rifles are 477. About 13 to 1. It stands to reason that "firearms, type not stated" (probably mostly the huge number of gang-related urban ghetto shootings whether neither the perp nor the weapon is ever found) would follow approximately the same ratio.

So about 4400 to 400, to err in your favor. For a total of over 10,000 handgun deaths and fewer than 1000 rifles.

[Chris P]

A ban, by definition, presumes....

Stop hitting yourself.

[Spidy]

I refer you to Elvis's excellent recent post on the matter, detailing how few rifles are used in violent crime by comparison with handguns and knives.

I'll also refer you back to that chart, and the one (1) big gaping hole in that chart and the fact "statista.com" is not even a US based or US gov't organization for Pete's sake and are located in Germany, using 3rd party data from non-US governmental sources.

Its no accident and oddly enough, the chart on the link has "Firearms, type not stated" as the 2nd most causes of death at 4,740, behind "Handguns" at 6,012. Wonder what that could be, such a big omission? Perhaps, I'll just fill the void with my own data and assume it's from all those "kiddy friendly" AR-15's assault rifles, sniper-rifles, high-powered rifles, bazookas and grenade launchers, in the burbs? So by my account (if I am even to believe said chart) AR-15's in the burbs are not that far behind, the handguns.

Of course, the democrat voter base are the ones using those handguns and knives, which is why they and their allied fake news and corrupt alphabet agencies only attack rural and suburban AR-15 owners.

Right! Because of course, no self-respecting QAnon/Repub/MAGA/Trumpster insurrectionist would be seen with a "handgun".

Oh no, when we Repubs "kill it", we use our feet, hands, blunt objects, flagpoles, fire extinguishers, mental railing pipes, pipe-bombs and a cache of military grade assault-rifles nearby.

And when all else fails we use the "Amber Herd gambit". Lots of fecal matter and urine on wall and desks. Yeah, the ugly pride of the Repub/MAGA voting base! But I digress!

So if I now use the chart again and include the other weapons (more like used by people in the burbs/rural US and judging by our MAGA insurrectionists, ie. feet, hands, blunt objects, flagpoles ...etc), I will refer you back to using the chart to add the following:

- "Personal Weapons" at 461, plus "Rifles" at 477, "Blunt Objects" at 243, "Firearms, type not stated" at 4,740, bring the grand total to 5,921 homicides in the burbs/rural US.

By all accounts I'd say it's pretty even. City Slickers 6,012 vs. The Burbs/Country Folk at 5,921!

[Tiny 12]

Hmmm...does that make your last statement quarter-satirical?

And which half/part of your last post to me, was it, that was satirical, exactly?

The part about Democratic presidents sending right wing young men to die in foreign wars, while depriving them of miniature AR's during childhood so they’d be less likely to survive combat. That was semi satirical. Although I can make a case that there would have been no American involvement in World War I, and no WW II, Korean or Vietnam wars if Democratic administrations had made different decisions. It's a weak case, but still much, much stronger than Tooms' argument that Republican presidents are responsible for most recessions.