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I agree, I am glad he is gone. Good on Marie Newman.Quote:
Originally Posted by Montmorency
Today, it seems as if Bernie has suspended his Facebook ads. Whether this means his campaign as a whole will follow, I do not know but I'm expecting a decision would be made soon. I think he is sadly going to go onto the NY primary which I think is a false hope, since he lost NY in 2016 and has only performed worse this time around.
By the way, the general election will almost certainly not be postponed this year.
https://twitter.com/imillhiser/statu...08944422506498
I mean we had an election during a civil war, so I doubt it will be moved. Fingers crossed that this crisis is solved by then anyways.
I think you may have been mistaking others succumbing to fatigue in the face of attrition as concessions, it's inflating your self confidence.Quote:
Originally Posted by Montmorency
Mhm.Quote:
Be wary of WW2 comparisons here, they may prove too much.
Americans ignoring British experience and walking into a massacre.Quote:
Originally Posted by Pannonian
The green america army's first encounter with ther germans had them smashed by Rommel and the american army found themselves having to reorganize. A reorg which they could have done before they charged into africa by copying reforms the British had done long before and would have not required taking about 10K casualties and losing 200 tanks (good number of those were lost at sidi bo zid, which kasserine was a continuation of, but kasserine is more well known).
Not as simple as that in reality but its the best example I could think of. Think there might be a few 1917 examples as well.
The disaster of Kasserine Pass happened because an over his head American commander (Fredendall) who'd impressed as a trainer disregarded military common sense in the field. Coupled with green troops, this left Rommel to make hay while the sun was shining out of Fredendall's arse and blinding Marshall with his buttly effulgence. Once this was clear Fredendall was fired and replaced with someone who had at least basic military common sense (Patton), and the counter attack showed the green American troops weren't so bad after all. What Kasserine Pass showed is that a leader who doesn't lead nor faces reality is worse than useless.Quote:
Originally Posted by Greyblades
A little thing (and I do literally mean little) showed up in the ointment that Trump supporters slather on their asses and each other---SARS-CoV-2. Don't think for a minute that the Dems won't keep harping on Donny Baby's abysmal response to a threat he couldn't bullshit his way through. And I would suspect that as the spring wears on into summer, voters (especially all of those millions who will then be on the unemployment line) will be spoon-fed all the articles written about how Donny Baby eliminated the NSC's Pandemic Response team in 2018, and followed that up by slashing the CDC's budget. Whether he was correct or not, the general public will buy in that it hurt our COVID-19 response, IMHO.Quote:
I dont understand how you could think this isnt setting up to be a slam dunk for trump.
Couple that with his erratic blustering that "one day it's like a miracle, it will disappear"; or "the current number of COVID-19 cases in the U.S. is going very substantially down, not up"; or his economic advisor Kudlow saying “We have contained this,” and “It’s pretty close to airtight"; or on 27 Feb when Trump claimed “the 15, within a couple of days, is going to be down to close to zero. That’s a pretty good job we’ve done"; or his response to Nancy Messonier's (director of the NCIRD) statement that it wasn't a matter of if, but when community spread of COVID-19 became prevalent in the US---“I don’t think it’s inevitable,” he said in response to a reporter’s question. “It probably will. It possibly will. It could be at a very small level or it could be at a larger level. Whatever happens, we’re totally prepared.”
We'll see how much American voters agree with his assessment that "we're totally prepared" come November.
Amen to that, except that as Monty put it, "you can't bullshit a virus." So the next best thing is to deflect peoples anger at our unpreparedness in the direction of China by calling this the "Chinese Virus." It may not be the wisest thing to do to poke a wounded dragon:shrug:Quote:
Trump goads opponents into the kind of mud-slinging fight he is comfortable with, and truly believes that an angry/upset opponent is the one he can best negotiate with/take advantage of. The Dems have been playing that game.
Nobody is ever totally prepared for a "black swan" event. That one will occur is predictable but the specific nature of it is not.
Inevitably, given the limitations of government, we are seldom if ever fully prepared to handle such a crisis. Leadership works to address and overcome obstacles to an effective response as quickly as possible, hopefully while showing a degree of calm concern that acknowledges the severity of the crisis without wallowing in fear or despair.
Of course, saying that effectively in public requires a sense of nuance and glibness -- not qualities for which the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania is known.
The phrase "given the unpredictable nature of the threat and the initial shortfalls we are experiencing in needed resources, we are rapidly improving our ability to combat this disease and to minimize the health risk to our citizens" is simply not in the man.
How it all came apart for Bernie Sanders
Quote:
In the view of some Sanders advisers, the candidate’s abrupt decline was a result of unforeseeable and highly unlikely events — most of all, the sudden withdrawal of two major candidates, Senator Amy Klobuchar and former Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who instantly threw their support to Mr. Biden and helped spur a rapid coalescing of moderate support behind his campaign.
Mr. Sanders had been “on the brink of winning,” Mr. Tulchin argued, “until the most unprecedented event in the history of presidential primaries occurred.”
But interviews with more than three dozen Sanders aides, elected officials, activists and other people who worked with his campaign revealed a more extensive picture of his reversal of political fortune. Though Mr. Sanders climbed to a position of seeming dominance by mid-February, he and his inner circle also made a series of fateful decisions that left him ill positioned to win over skeptical Democrats — and sorely vulnerable to an opponent with Mr. Biden’s strengths.
Mr. Sanders proved unable to expand his base well beyond the left or to win over African-Americans in meaningful numbers. He failed to heed warnings from traditional party leaders, and even from within his campaign, about the need to modulate his message and unify Democrats. He allowed internal arguments to fester within his campaign, an ungainly operation that fragmented into factions beneath the only two real decision makers — Mr. Sanders and his wife, Jane.
Though outwardly amiable, Mr. Sanders’s inner circle fractured between some long-serving counselors and relative newcomers, like Faiz Shakir, his campaign manager. Mr. Shakir and others regarded pleas from Mr. Tulchin and another pugilistic aide, David Sirota, to go on the attack against Mr. Biden as both futile and annoyingly predictable, while Mr. Shakir’s internal critics saw him as exceedingly territorial.
Bernie is planning on staying in through the NY primary.
Unbelievably selfish and stupid, especially since NY is now the epicenter of the pandemic in the country. I anticipate a large vote by mail system to be in place (if its not already), but I see any path forward for him to be very unlikely. Right now Biden could lose every remaining contest but as long as he got 47% of the vote in each he would still get to 1991 delegates. There is no excuse for Bernie to continue except to stroke his own ego. Just unbelievable.
Sanders will continue so long as it is theoretically possible for him to win. He can't tear down and remake the Democratic Party into the Democratic Socialist Party if he's not the nominee. Even though, at a moment of national crisis, Biden is much more electable Sanders will do everything he can to un-seat him.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hooahguy
Sidebare - this is the moment for Americans to push for universal, single-payer healthcare.
It's a bit confusing as why the whole thing goes on - there's no more realistic chance of him winning, so why continue?
And yeah, America really, desperately needs a universal change in the healthcare system. Single-payer, Medicare for All, I don't know, just change the existing one.
This is more of a conversation for the Coronavirus thread, but I dont think single-payer would have helped the US so its a moot point for those really paying attention. I mean look at Spain and Italy. Both have a system of universal healthcare (to my knowledge) and things are going disastrously. We could have the best healthcare system in the world, but it means nothing if it gets overwhelmed as we are seeing now.
We've been stumbling towards universal healthcare under one label or another for over half a century. I am guessing we will get there about the time I check out of this mortal coil, though perhaps a bit sooner.
As I said, he needs to win the nomination or it's pointless - so he has to keep going. Bernie's not for compromise.Quote:
Originally Posted by edyzmedieval
Spain and Italy have a massive number of cases, take a look at the other European countries that initiated lockdowns earlier in the curve.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hooahguy
In the US people have to pay for tests and people will avoid hospital when sick because they're afraid of paying for three weeks in the ICU.
More significantly, a global epidemic finally reveals the lie that poor people only suffer because they're poor and lazy - which is the cruz of the American argument against healthcare.
This current issue is very different, it's an outlier of how the medical system works. No system is prepare for such a thing.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hooahguy
The prerequisite for universal healthcare in much of the rest of the world was the suffering of World Wa II. The US had little to no suffering at home, only of its returning wounded. So you get the VA, not Universal Healthcare.Quote:
Originally Posted by edyzmedieval
It could be justifiable to formally remain in contention while suspending actual operations, but it sounds like Sanders wants to do this the hard way. :/Quote:
Originally Posted by Hooahguy
Taken narrowly on the subject of universal coverage in a overload scenario, there are arguably some advantages. You have a population trained to expect and seek care - it's the opposite here - and a consolidated record-keeping and communication regime (ours is fragmented). Those are differences that matter in the early stages and toward mitigating the worst effects.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hooahguy
Just off the top of my head. Going further, to a national health service, may offer more theoretical benefits toward pandemic preparedness, as the state may direct resource and personnel allocations years before the fact, from training and infrastructure planning on up.
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The prerequisite for universal healthcare in much of the rest of the world was the suffering of World Wa II. The US had little to no suffering at home, only of its returning wounded. So you get the VA, not Universal Healthcare.
There's more to the world than Europe. Taiwan, for example, has National Health Insurance based on the original American Medicare model.
From Wiki:
It should not escape notice that the "American model" always ends in ruin abroad unless it is completely revamped and iterated upon, and where we have had direct opportunity to impose political or other systems elsewhere we have generally deprecated our own model in favor of the cutting-edge of the day in philosophy.Quote:
On 1 March 1995, Taiwan formed the National Health Insurance (NHI) model, following the passage of the National Health Insurance Act on 19 July 1994.[10] In a 2009 interview, Michael Chen, vice president and CFO of Taiwan's National Health Insurance Bureau explained that one of the models investigated was the United States and that fundamentally, NHI "is modeled after Medicare [in the USA]. And there are so many similarities — other than that our program covers all of the population, and Medicare covers only the elderly. It seems the way to go to have social insurance."[11][12]
Considering that the very department designed to give advanced warnings of possible pandemics was disbanded in 2018, and the CDC itself was defunded by many millions of dollars the same year, and the the US liaison to China's equivalent of the CDC was also fired, I'd say that had as much to do with the current fiasco here as the healthcare structure. And there's no excuse for wasting six weeks or more, once it became apparent that this was a possible pandemic situation from an emerging pathogen.Quote:
No system is prepare for such a thing.
The next president (hopefully), must do a better job of preparing and responding.
I suggest you write to Joe Biden and tell him that.
To the extent that the funding and organizational decisions of this administration are testament to its deeper rot, maybe having preserved such offices and funding wouldn't help where the leadership would disregard or suppress their fruits - just as they have in fact done with the attenuated equivalents.Quote:
Originally Posted by ReluctantSamurai
I guess what I'm saying is we should blame the Trump admin for being the kind of people to disregard expertise (viz. destruction of the US diplomatic corps and purges of scientists and more scientists) toward running the government like afailed businesscriminal enterprise.
He recently expanded his field offices in Pennsylvania. My prediction is that if/when he gets beaten in NY, he is going to move the goalposts to Pennsylvania, who is having their primary in early June. There is no reason for this, especially not now with the pandemic. Bernie also stated that he wants to debate Biden again, but honestly I do not think he should do it. They have had eleven debates, does Bernie really think that one more would do the trick? The last debate failed to produce the result he wanted and its irresponsible to force staffers to potentially expose themselves to the virus more. Biden currently has a 20 point average polling lead on Bernie. I cant imagine that a debate is going to change that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Montmorency
I don't disagree with you, but in the case of the US I dont think universal coverage would have mattered if people couldnt get tested in the first place, which is what happened and is still happening.Quote:
Taken narrowly on the subject of universal coverage in a overload scenario, there are arguably some advantages. You have a population trained to expect and seek care - it's the opposite here - and a consolidated record-keeping and communication regime (ours is fragmented). Those are differences that matter in the early stages and toward mitigating the worst effects.
I won't have to. The many thousands of dead will do the talking.....Quote:
I suggest you write to Joe Biden and tell him that.
Hindsight is always 20/20, so it is said.Quote:
Originally Posted by ReluctantSamurai
Please tell me, now, how we should prepare to handle the next disaster/crisis/health threat. Then tell me how we can fully fund that preparation. Then tell me how we can fully fund ALL of the potential threat mitigations that will probably needed at some point in the future but at a point in the future of which we cannot be certain.
Of course you cannot, and nobody could. That is my point.
There are not, never have been, and likely never could be enough resources to be prepared constantly for all things that might turn 'bad.' So our governments make choices and yes, they sometimes malf it up. That's the nature of things with decision making and resources.
So, if you would like to bitch about poor choices, responses, and decisions FOLLOWING the advent of this health crisis -- say long about January 2020 -- you have a legitimate grievance to voice (and I would agree with you that waiting until Northern Italy imploded was NOT effective leadership).
Predicting potential disasters is the job of specialized agencies.Quote:
Please tell me, now, how we should prepare to handle the next disaster/crisis/health threat. Then tell me how we can fully fund that preparation. Then tell me how we can fully fund ALL of the potential threat mitigations that will probably needed at some point in the future but at a point in the future of which we cannot be certain.
The US has agencies for predicting military threats (NSA, CIA, DIA, DTRA, etc.), and they are well funded and staffed. While I don't have numbers at my finger-tips, I would guess budgets for those agencies have only gone up since 9/11.
Agencies for predicting natural disasters (NOAA, USGS, OST, and various specific agencies for fire, earthquake, drought, floods, etc).
The Trump Administration has proposed cuts for nearly every one of those agencies (though how those cuts make their way through Congress is a matter of which states are impacted): NOAA (proposed 2020 budget cut of 18%); other cuts to science and research agencies---
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020...ience-programs
There are a litany of agencies related to health in the US: HHS, CDC, AHRQ, NIH, HRSA, to name a few of the largest. Persistent cuts to these agencies by the Trump Administration, while not directly tied to any specific reason for our current abysmal response, nonetheless undermined the entire process of predicting and responding to a biological disaster.
Shutting down the entire global-health-security unit of the National Security Council; eliminating the US government's $30 million Complex Crises Fund; reducing national health spending by $15 billion; and the list goes on and on. Is it any wonder we're now in the middle of this giant cluster-f@#$??
Of course noone has a magical crystal ball that predicts the future, but outside of a cataclysmic celestial event, or nuclear winter, the single disaster event that has shown the capability time and time again in human history to wreak havoc on our world is the pandemic. Defunding the ability to predict and respond to such health threats is not something I would have EVER allowed to happen if I was in the position of the President of the United States.Quote:
There are not, never have been, and likely never could be enough resources to be prepared constantly for all things that might turn 'bad.' So our governments make choices and yes, they sometimes malf it up. That's the nature of things with decision making and resources.
So, I stand by my earlier statement---now the dead will have their say:inquisitive:
I find this post bizarre. Why is it bizarre? Because we know in some detail at this point what the Trump administration has done and has failed to do, prior to the crisis and in reacting to the crisis.Quote:
Originally Posted by Seamus Fermanagh
There was infrastructure established under the prior administration to monitor and advise on events exactly like the COVID-19 pandemic. Trump dismantled this infrastructure.
There were protocols independent of infrastructure that had been prepared from long experience of past administrations, pursuant to events exactly like the COVID-19 pandemic. Trump actively disregarded these protocols.
He continues to undermine his government's response to this day, leaving the individual states almost to fend for themselves in a carnival mirror type of federalism.
There's no mystery here.
When I was 7 years old I asked my mom if the stove was hot. She said it was. I touched the stove to check. I burned my finger.
In that instance it would have been more credible for 7-year-old me to exclaim that no one could have foreseen this and that hindsight is 20/20, than for someone to do so on Trump's behalf.
So your assertion is that this class of potential threat is greater than the other potential threats and that it should therefore have been placed first in line for the available funding. Fair enough. The current administration certainly did the opposite, de-funding what infrastructure had been put in place by the Obama administration connected with this class of threat. In light of events, it is hard to assert that they did not blow the call on this one. The Trump crew seems to make more than its share of misjudgments.Quote:
Originally Posted by ReluctantSamurai
But the basic point I make is still a question of resources and threats. Every possible threat cannot be prepared for in advance given available resources.
"Bizarre?"Quote:
Originally Posted by Montmorency
Do you enjoy goading people or like to use rude epithets for self-entertainment?
You are making an ex-post-facto judgement. Trump's admin made a mistake in judgment, probably in part to their tendency to dismantle any Obama effort regardless of its quality because of the authorship. Dumb call. But it doesn't invalidate my point as to resources and threat potentials. A call must be made in advance.
They will be judged for their choice. Enough said.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Seamus Fermanagh
I do not understand you. We allocate resources to preparedness for any type of natural disaster, from pandemics to wildfires. What useful point is there in noting that there are not unlimited resources? There is no way to predict the precise "right" distribution, but we can let the professionals determine what is reasonable and fund them generously. There are always unexpected developments, but there is no dilemma between forms of preparedness for those who do not subscribe to strict austerity philosophy. We don't actually spend much in the first place, so restoring a few public health offices would be less than 0.01% of the federal budget.Quote:
Originally Posted by Seamus Fermanagh
Alright fellas, lets keep it civil and on topic, as we are drifting into COVID-19 territory.
It seems that local authorities should make some arrangements for dealing with a zombie apocalypse when all this is over. As the reasoning for that goes, if you are prepared for something so completely OTT and unrealistic, then you should go some way towards being better prepared for more realistic scenarios.Quote:
Originally Posted by Seamus Fermanagh