American Politics

[QUOTE=ChrisP;2785797]Another good post.

Everyone living in reality knows that violent crime is massively higher in black urban areas.

These dem douche leftists who attempt to deny it with idiotic twisted arguments are like the pro-tranny lobby who say "I know this woman who is 6 feet tall, or that woman who can bench 200 pounds, therefore there is no difference between men and women".

Or like cutting a highlight reel of every Tom Brady interception and sack, then showing it to people and trying to argue it proves he's a terrible quarterback.

BTW thanks for the memories Tom the GOAT. A shining example of old school American manhood for us all to look up to.[/QUOTE]Actually, all Dems know that there is a difference between men and women.

What we also know is that some males are born into female bodies and some females are born into male bodies. If they decide later in life that their gender is wrong, they may make the effort to remake themselves into the gender that suits them. These people also know that virtually everyone who identifies as a Repub will deny that gender mistakes happen. They will also deny that homosexuality (male and female) is victimless and that it doesn't harm anybody.

And everybody knows that Repubs have no clue how to prevent urban crime. Well, the only clue they have is to arm everybody and turn the streets of every large city into the wild west.

Now, I guess I'm just a dumb Dem voter but this just does not look like the devastating, horrible, no good, really bad Great Biden Economic Crash / Downturn that smart Repub voters assured us would start happening mere minutes or days after Biden won the election back in 2020. Or that it was already happening sometime in 2021. Or was it 2022. Well anyway it was almost certainly going to happen within a year or two of that yield curve thingy and so on.

[B]Jobs report shows increase of 517,000 in January, crushing estimates, as unemployment rate hit 53-year low[/B]

[URL]https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/03/jobs-report-january-2023-.html?__source=androidappshare[/URL]

[QUOTE]"Todays jobs report is almost too good to be true, wrote Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter. Like $20 bills on the sidewalk and free lunches, [b]falling inflation paired with falling unemployment is the stuff of economics fiction.[/b][/QUOTE]Well, not really "fiction. " After all, the historical data is quite clear that Dem POTUS Jimmy Carter shouldered all of the heavy lifting and assumed all of the political risk to set that exact same golden combination of results in motion almost a full year before Reagan became president.

And it continued until Reagan's idiotic Repub policies reversed the jobs creation trend Carter handed him and the unemployment rate began to skyrocket into double digits late in his second year in office and stretching well into his third. Oh well.

Of course, those same smart Repub voters would want us to understand that the only reason so many jobs are being created instead of millions upon millions of jobs being wiped out, as is always their preferred result, is because evil Dems sent $5. 1 Billion in stimulus money to one grade school to be spent teaching budding Drag Queens that white skin is bad and black skin is good. Or something like that.

As one of their smart top elected Repub Party Oversight and Accountability Committee Members told us:

[B]Marjorie Taylor Greene Mocked for Claim School Received $5.1B for CRT[/B]

[URL]https://www.newsweek.com/marjorie-taylor-greene-mocked-claim-school-received-5-1-billion-critical-race-theory-1778372[/URL]

[QUOTE=EihTooms;2785623]You mean "Keeps losing. On a regular basis"
I assume from your original whine that you were talking about Dems "losing" the actual support of Americans by their supposedly bad ideas and lack of connection with Americans and not just about "losing" due to an undemocratic Repub-advantaged rigged Electoral College system, right?
So please untwist my words and meaning and explain how Dems have "Kept losing" votes to Repubs "on a regular basis" since 1988. Or have you twisted the meaning of the words "losing" and "on a regular basis" to mean something more like "winning more than" and "way back before 1988"?[/QUOTE]"Keeps losing" - is blindingly obvious to anyone that doesn't feel butthurt bcos they got accused of twisting someone esle's words.

Keeps losing has a very different meaning to 'always loses', which is what you wanted it to mean.

"I am so fed up with my favourite team. They keep losing games that they should have won". This does not mean they have lost every game this season and are bottom of the log.

The dem party keeps losing elections. That is transparently clear by looking at how many Rep president there have been and always will be until the USA finds a party that represents the people.

[QUOTE=ChrisP;2785799]
It is coming out now how utterly destructive and wrongheaded the covid scamdemic was on so many levels.
The masks didn't work, the vaccines didn't work, the lockdowns didn't work.
Or rather, they didn't work in their stated aims. What they did do was destroy centuries-old liberties, cripple businesses and the middle class, add trillions to the debt, retard kids' development, and lead to an awful lot of #DiedSuddenly. .[/QUOTE]One good thing that may well come from all this is. It has really shone a bright light on some huge failures of modern society:

- how corrupt the government is. In this case, in league w Big Pharma (but usually its defence / banks / finance etc).

- how the government should never be allowed to censor free speech, nor use big tech to influence / censor people that think differently to them.

- how the majority of normal people can be lead off the cliff edge (once again) by psychological manipulation for the cause of a Big Lie.

[QUOTE=Tiny12;2785839]Yeah, I do. I read the first link, and it wasn't convincing. They only have low to moderate confidence in their conclusions, and their data is mostly drawn from influenza studies. You may recall that the CDC's and Fauci's reason for telling us masks weren't useful initially was because that's what the influenza studies indicated. OK, yes the reason probably really was they didn't want the public using masks while there was a shortage among health care workers. And they figured the public could just stay home and not work or go to school anyway, haha. Anyway, the reading I did a couple of years ago indicated good quality masks worn correctly did help prevent COVID 19 and SARS transmission.

I will continue to wear KN95 masks when in crowded settings where nobody knows me. (I don't like being a laughingstock.) And I'll continue to get boosters until such time as there's evidence sufficient to convince me they're a bad idea. I don't see the downside in either, and I see a lot of upside. I've only gotten a cold once since COVID kicked off. I used to get about 3 a year. Part of that is probably from wearing KN95 and N95 masks correctly (with a good seal) when appropriate.[/QUOTE]You are welcome to believe your own anecdotes as evidence Tiny. I have noted that a few times now. :) The issue is that, even if we agree that these research studies are not conclusive in favour of 'masks don't work' - you have zero evdience to support your case that masks DO work! You sound like a religious believer that, when asked why they beleive in god, says, 'bcos it makes me feel better'.

Anyway, if you ever visit Colombia, I would love to meet you. I will recognise you as the Darth Vader lookalike walking down the street.

[QUOTE=JustTK;2786075]"Keeps losing" - is blindingly obvious to anyone that doesn't feel butthurt bcos they got accused of twisting someone esle's words.

Keeps losing has a very different meaning to 'always loses', which is what you wanted it to mean.

"I am so fed up with my favourite team. They keep losing games that they should have won". This does not mean they have lost every game this season and are bottom of the log.

The dem party keeps losing elections. That is transparently clear by looking at how many Rep president there have been and always will be until the USA finds a party that represents the people.[/QUOTE]Oh maybe you mean Dems haven't dominated both houses of Congress like they did prior to their passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Yeah, LBJ predicted such an outcome at the time.

It was still the right thing for them to do.

If that isn't what you meant then I don't see how the oldest POTUS candidate ousting an incumbent, a black Dem winning a critical Southern state Senate seat, twice, Dems sweeping in Michigan for the first time in decades, Dems presiding over one of the best first midterm results for an In The White House party of all time, not to mention the first black POTUS winning the vote and the EC, twice, as well as the first POTUS ticket with female, a black female at that, winning by 7+ Million votes qualifies as "Keeps losing" elections they should have won.

But you go ahead and define "Keeps losing" any way that feels comfy to ya'.

[QUOTE=ChrisP;2785980]Aaand {...drivel, drivel, drivel...} [/QUOTE]But really, what are the Repubs doing to for better gun control laws?

[B]Why Republicans arent likely to budge on gun control [/B]
[URL]https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/28/politics/republicans-gun-control-analysis/index.html[/URL]

Also still waiting on the homicide study / chart committed by a Dem vs. Repub by weapons of choice?

[QUOTE=Chris P;2785981] {...drivel, drivel, drivel...} [/QUOTE]Your delusions are indeed very comical, to the point where is just one big blurring rant. And where you are now self congratulating yourself...kkkk!

Could be considered very narcissistic indeed? Take care now!

Typical lazy, cowardly and spineless Repubs, who secretly want to oust Trump, but don't want to do it for themselves.

Author, McKay Coppins, says he's interviewed several Repubs and GOP consultants, and it appears to be, [i][b]"There's a desire for deux ex machina"[/b][/i], said one GOP consultant, [i]"...It's like 2016 all over again, only [b]more fatalistic[/b]".[/i]

And that, [i]"The least disruptive path to getting rid to Trump, grim as it sounds, might be to wait for [u]his expiration.[/u] "[/i]

So once again, the QAnon/Repubs, parade down that "Trump Rabbit Hole", again of their own making. Is wishing thinking going to stop the Repubs fall, down the rabbit hole?

Here is the article in the Atlantic:
[QUOTE] [b]Republicans 2024 Magical Thinking[/b]

"Faced with the prospect of another election cycle dominated by Trump and uncertain that he can actually be beaten in the primaries, [b]many Republicans are quietly rooting for something to happen[/b] that will make him go away. And they would [u]strongly prefer not to make it happen themselves.[/u]"

[URL] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2023/01/2024-republican-primary-donald-trump-deus-ex-machina/672888/[/URL] [/QUOTE]

Personally I'm looking forward to heavyweight bout between "Trump vs. DeSantis".

[QUOTE=EihTooms;2786096]
If that isn't what you meant then I don't see how ...'.[/QUOTE]No of course you can't. I no longer expect anything else from you. I guess you reached that age where you cannot entertain evidence that contradicts what you believe. Fllat Earther Dem.

[QUOTE=Elvis2008;2786002]The NFL kept track of people really well, and they had some intriguing data. If a Covid + person talked to someone without Covid, the masks helped to prevent getting the disease, but this was before omicron. Still, people did transmit Covid if they were wearing masks, but this was pre-omicron. After omicron hits and it is so contagious, the NFL stops most if not all preventative measures with Covid because they know those measures do not work. The studies you looked at were not when omicron was around.[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=JustTK;2786084]You are welcome to believe your own anecdotes as evidence Tiny. I have noted that a few times now. :) The issue is that, even if we agree that these research studies are not conclusive in favour of 'masks don't work' - you have zero evdience to support your case that masks DO work![/QUOTE]Gentlemen, Since it's been a year or two since I last looked at research on the effectiveness of masks in preventing COVID, and given Elvis' comments above, I decided to do a quick Google scholar search. I only came up with five more-or-less noteworthy papers published in 2022, and they all appeared in the first half of the year. This is perhaps the best, as it provides summaries of relevant studies.

[URL]https://www.futuremedicine.com/doi/full/10.2217/fvl-2021-0032[/URL]

Like Elvis' link, it kind of leaves you hanging, with no clear cut call one way or the other. Reading the summaries, the pro-mask case is more convincing to me.

This paper also is of particular interest as it's the only one I found that extended through Omicron. Prior to July, 2021, participants who didn't wear masks every day were 66% more likely to report a COVID infection than those who wore masks daily. During the Delta period, the percentage dropped to 53%, and during Omicron to 16%, which agrees more or less with Elvis' comment above.

[url]https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0196655322007271[/url]

The other three papers aren't as noteworthy, but I'll include them below anyway. They support wearing masks.

[URL]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8830622/[/URL]

[URL]https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10.1377/hlthaff.2021.01072[/URL]

[url]https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/28/1/21-1591_article[/url]

This won't affect my mask wearing. I'll probably continue to wear a mask several times a week, when I'm in a crowded indoor area besides a restaurant. But yeah, as a result of this exercise, I do see your points. Still, I don't see any downside.

[QUOTE=JustTK;2786084] You sound like a religious believer that, when asked why they beleive in god, says, 'bcos it makes me feel better'.[/QUOTE]Don't discount the placebo effect JustTK. Also, unfortunately for you and me, people who are deeply religious live longer than agnostics and atheists.

[QUOTE=JustTK;2786084] Anyway, if you ever visit Colombia, I would love to meet you. I will recognise you as the Darth Vader lookalike walking down the street.[/QUOTE]What, are you crazy? That's not the way I roll. What woman is going to want to bang Darth Vader? I'll be the guy with the surgical grade N95 mask, the aviator goggles, Bermuda shorts, and wife beater (sleeveless) T-shirt. Here in God's country, Texas, I'd typically have a semiautomatic weapon slung over my shoulder too. This is called peacocking -- appealing to the opposite sex. Women can't resist a man with aviator goggles and an AR-15. And the aviator goggles, like the N95 mask help prevent transmission of COVID!

[QUOTE=Elvis2008;2786002]A lot of doctors are not getting the boosters.

[URL]https://www.zerohedge.com/political/growing-number-doctors-say-they-wont-get-covid-19-booster-shots[/URL]

"I have taken my last COVID vaccine without RCT (randomized control evidence) level evidence it will reduce my risk of severe disease," Dr. Todd Lee, an infectious disease expert at McGill University, wrote on Twitter.

Moderna presented efficacy estimates for a different bivalent, which has never been used in the United States, during a recent meeting. The company estimated the booster increased protection against infection by just 10 percent.

Lee was pointing to the lack of randomized clinical trial (RCT) results for the updated boosters, which were cleared in the United States and Canada in the fall of 2022 primarily based on data from experiments with mice.

The USA Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted emergency use authorization to updated boosters, or bivalent shots, from Pfizer and Moderna in August 2022 despite there being no human data.

So the current boosters have not been proven to work, and they have no safety profile.

As for harm, that comes from immune imprinting. [URL]https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/what-immune-imprinting-means-for-the-future-of-covid-19-vaccines[/URL]#Immune-imprinting.

This article is very pro-vaccine but it is honest about immune imprinting.

While many of us will be able to stage an immune response to SARS-CoV-2 that we would not have been able to 2 years or even 1 year ago, the individual response may vary considerably between people, depending on the nature of previous exposure.

"Some people want to be very exotic and sort of biblical about it, call it 'original antigenic sin,' you know, the idea that your immune system is born with some sin on board already, and you can't go change it back to a blank sheet. So that's not the kind of academic nuance, that's a real thing and a big thing," Prof. Altmann said.

And there was this shocking statement: This was because attempts to develop variant-specific vaccines showed that it was not possible to develop them quickly enough to be of use in each wave.

So we are Omicron like version 7 now, but let us say you had alpha Covid and then the vaccine. You have primed your body to fight Alpha. So when omicron Covid hits your body and your body is used to making antibodies against Alpha, that is what it is going to do, and studies showed that those previously vaccinated or infected with one variant of Covid do worse than people who have not had any vaccine or exposure.

And the one certainty about the virus is that it will keep mutating.[/QUOTE]Hi Elvis, The data I've seen indicates boosters do provide significant protection from hospitalization and death from Omicron, although, granted, the protection from infection lacks a lot to be desired.

I read somewhere that the overall infection fatality ratio (IFR) from COVID today is around 0.1%. That's down from the 0.5% to 1.2% estimates earlier in the pandemic. It has dropped largely because of partial immunity provided by vaccines, boosters and infection, and probably because the current variants are less virulent.

The IFR ratio is much higher for older people though.

Anyway, the probability of me dying from a case of COVID now, which was low to begin with, is now maybe around the probability of dying from a case of the flu. However, COVID is much more infectious than the flu. I get the flu vaccine every year, and I never get the flu. I've got no problem getting a COVID vaccine every year or every 6 months. I don't like getting laid up sick in bed.

As to physicians, around 95% or 96% of American physicians have gotten the vaccine. Based on a couple of surveys I found on Google, about 70% to 75% of physicians at this point in time strongly support the vaccine and boosters. About 10 to 12% believe the vaccines are dangerous. And the other 15% to 20% fall in between -- maybe believing the boosters are a good idea for the elderly or people over 50 but not for young people. Note the discrepancy -- all but 4% or 5% of the physicians are vaccinated, but 10% or 12% disapprove of the vaccine. I guess that leaves about 7% who have modified their view about the risk / reward profile of the vaccine.

I read the immune imprinting article. Yes the virus is evolving. But they appear to be saying regardless the vaccine and boosters still offer good protection from severe disease.

[QUOTE=JustTK;2786173]No of course you can't. I no longer expect anything else from you. I guess you reached that age where you cannot entertain evidence that contradicts what you believe. Fllat Earther Dem.[/QUOTE]Well, the evidence I provided strongly supports the conclusion that Dems "Keep winning" the votes and support of the American people despite their having met for decades the politically risky challenges of the day and, unlike Repubs, don't merely take the easiest route just to ensure an election win.

Then I was anxious to be entertained by whatever evidence you have that the Dems "should have" won more elections if they had only ignored the realities of a changing world, not passed complicated, politically risky but necessary and right legislation and taken the easy route by only nominating the usual middle aged or older white guys on the top and bottom of the POTUS ticket. But I didn't see it.

Oh, on that topic, in my last list of Dem vote and support wins I forgot to include their first ever female POTUS nominee for a major party winning almost 3 million more votes than the Repubs' tried and true old white man celebrity nominee. Hers was also one of those 7 out of 8 recent POTUS elections where the Dem won more votes than anyone else in the race.

[QUOTE=EihTooms;2786213]Well, the evidence I provided strongly supports the conclusion that Dems "Keep winning" the votes and support of the American people despite their having met for decades the politically risky challenges of the day and, unlike Repubs, don't merely take the easiest route just to ensure an election win.

Then I was anxious to be entertained by whatever evidence you have that the Dems "should have" won more elections if they had only ignored the realities of a changing world, not passed complicated, politically risky but necessary and right legislation and taken the easy route by only nominating the usual middle aged or older white guys on the top and bottom of the POTUS ticket. But I didn't see it.

Oh, on that topic, in my last list of Dem vote and support wins I forgot to include their first ever female POTUS nominee for a major party winning almost 3 million more votes than the Repubs' tried and true old white man celebrity nominee. Hers was also one of those 7 out of 8 recent POTUS elections where the Dem won more votes than anyone else in the race.[/QUOTE]Yes, Democrats are much more likely to appoint people based on their sex, race or sexual preferences, instead of their abilities. That's not to say I wouldn't love to see a Nikki Haley / Tim Scott presidential ticket in 2024. Not only are they much more competent than Biden and Harris, they'd win. Nikki's a bit of a neocon, but it would still be worth it to see them wipe the floor with the tears of Democrats.

[QUOTE=PVMonger;2786033]So you agree that Repub governors are absolutely useless in getting the murder rates in their "urban ghettos" (a favorite Chrissie term) under control. They are very good, however, in trying to pass legislation dictating what women can do with their bodies, but seem curiously obtuse when confronted with urban gun violence. Maybe the are simply hopeful that all of those responsible for all that violence will simply kill themselves off.

Of course, people of a Repub bent will call the above analysis bogus but how else can one explain it? The simple facts are that the availability of firearms is the culprit. Where do the firearms come from? They come from straw buyers, from gun shows, from being stolen and they come from outside the state where gun laws are more lax (assuming the state in question has tougher gun laws that neighboring states). Evidently Repub governors, who have the power to convince their Repub-controlled legislatures to enact tougher legislation re: the issues raised above, think the situation in their states is just fine. But if a "Saturday night special" that costs $50 on the street of any large city anywhere now starts costing $1000 because they have become impossible to get, it becomes a loosing proposition to buy a $1000 handgun to stick up a bodega to get $100.[/QUOTE]Like I said, policing is done at the local level. All the state police do in my state is hand out parking tickets.

Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire are all gun friendly states that have low firearm homicide rates.

As to places like Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana, I attribute the problem to over 100 years of Democratic Party misrule prior to 1965. I'm not going to get into that though as the last time you and I did, our posts were deleted, with good reason. In any event, the blue counties in those states, like the USA in general, have the highest homicide rates.

As Chris and I have pointed out to you and Spidy repeatedly, the problem is the handguns. Chris would probably disagree, but in my view, if the powers that be want to ban handguns, they can have at it. Just don't take my long guns.