2024 ELECTION THREAD

Bold is absurd, an exceptional lie, something that has no logical legs at all, an utterly insane statement.

And you knopw that 100% well because you are intelligent and knowleadgeble.

Claiming the bold is declaring you are "post-truth" in a complete way.

POTUS HAS NO POWER TO LOCKDOWN or "manage a pandemic" inside the border. None except in federal buildings and the like. The totality of the choices are local. Democrat led states had far more deaths in april-june 2020.

Republican led states locked down a lot as well early on (less than democrat led states) and reopened earlier. Unemployment in democrat led states went down more and for longer. Objectively, uncontroversially, democrats damaged the economy more than republicans in the USA as a response to the pandemic. The fact that even while doing so they got the same or worse overall mortality pre-vaccine, is even more incredible. But even if they had managed to save lives (they didn't in 2020 at all), it would still be true that they had chosen to do so at the expense of the economy.

And anyway, it had nothing to do with the president, because it IS NOT IN POTUS POWERS TO DO ALMOST ANYTHING ON THE TOPIC.

At least rococo admitted this very clearly in the recent past. You keep lying obscenely about this, WHY?

by Luciom k

tariffs are bad but Biden used them more than Trump

https://taxfoundation.org/research/all/federal/trump-tariffs-biden-tariffs/

Tax Foundation

Tariff Tracker: Tracking the Economic Impact of Tariffs

As of March 2024, the trade war tariffs have generated more than $233 billion of higher taxes collected for the US government from US consumers. Of that total, $89 billion, or about 38 percent, was collected during the Trump administration, while the remaining $144 billion, or about 62 percent, has been collected during the Biden administration.

Why didn't Biden just remov

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Bro... 2 years of collection vs 4.

They did reduce the tariffs on certain goods, mainly steel and aluminum, by implementing a quota system, but primarily they kept most of them in place to use them as leverage in new deals w/ Japan and the UK.

This is just emotive nonsense. But in your defense it's the best you can do. I never said Trump or Kushner or Pence started lock downs. States were forced to lock down en masse partly because the federal response was incompetent to nonexistent. A competent federal response would have lead to shorter lockdowns, less death and more consumer confidence rather than what we got. That would have made a massive economic difference. Nobody knowledgeable in public health would ever use the federal response to Covid 19 as anything other than a lesson in what not to do.

I agree with ecriture d'adulte and I am not lying. I doubt he is lying as well. But I do think you should be banned from this site for repeatedly calling people liars.

If you look at how South Korea handled the pandemic on a national level you will see that there was a way to keep a nation's economy running smoothly. I had posted this in the Covid thread and my guess is you read what I said and still believe what you are saying for whatever your libertarian reasons.

The US failed to create a Covid test that worked early in 2020 and as a result we were completely unable to make sure that people coming from other countries did not have Covid. The CDC was responsible for creating the tests because the federal law did not allow private companies to do it. Trump ultimately responsible as President failed to make sure we had adequate testing as early as possible.

In South Korea because they could test everyone in a business or building on a moment's notice, could shut down specific businesses or buildings for a 2 week period of time if multiple people in those places had Covid. Because of the lack of tests in the US we were unable to do that and as a result had a huge spread of Covid basically everywhere. And remember that in March Trump overtly lied when he said that anyone could get a Covid test. I couldn't and I needed one because I was sick and was making soup for soup kitchens. I never found out if I had Covid or not.

In South Korea with a population of 50,000,000 there were < 2,000 deaths in 2020. In the US we had like 400,000 deaths in 2020 with a population of 330,000,000 instead of like 13,000 if we had been able to do what South Korea did.

The South Korean economy was less affected by covid than the US because they didn't have to shut down as much in part because everyone was wearing masks everywhere (which reduced the spread) and in part because everyone was isolating when they were sick with Covid. The reason that South Korea shut down so much less was a result of their ability to test everyone who had contact with people that tested positive for Covid. And again this was orchestrated at a national level. Unlike the US where nothing was orchestrated at a national level.

All Trump had to do was act like this was a national crisis and get congress to join in with set ups that would reduce the spread on a national level. Letting states dictate the way it would go down was catastrophic. In Florida for example during spring break in 2020 nothing was shut down so young people caught Covid at massive rates and then went back to school where it then spread. If I remember correctly, Trump in late March or early April was on national TV telling everyone that he thought Covid would go away. With the doctors behind him then saying that they thought it wouldn't.

There is nothing in the power of the federal government that could have been done to make California reopen sooner.

Florida reopened almost everything September 2020 which means all states could have reopened everything by then.

You said the federal response was responsible, it's false, completely false, it was all up to the states and everything could have been reopened far sooner as proven by republican led states, which evidently were facing the same identical federal response of democrat led states.

Btw most big countries did worse than republican led states lockdown wise.

In retrospect not doing absolutely anything at all at any point other than operation warp would have been optimal but it's tough to ask that from politicians in March 2020.

But in September when de Santis reopened there were no more excuses.

Everything south Korea did any single American state could have done, If you think that worked tell that to state governors and legislators.

POTUS absolutely doesn't have the power to test everyone (wtf????) nor can close down any non federal building or piece of land.

So what do you agree with ecriture about? That POTUS has those powers? He doesn't.

POTUS also can't change federal laws

The Colonel once again shows that he doesn't understand how USA#1 works. But I'll give him a hint - Leadership matters.

It took Biden many months to convince his own party governors to reopen.

Leadership matters in the sense that it was entirely newsom (and local Californian leaders) choice to keep things closed , and attributing that to Trump is bad faith out of proportion.

Democrats made the most insane policies mistakes in peacetime assassinating the economy and you guys blame trump for that. It's incredible

All the US needed was for Trump to step up in January to deal with the potential pandemic. And he didn't

In mid-January (or mid-February I don't remember which) a business associate/friend of Trump's who owned a surgical supply business went to the administration to discuss increasing his mask and surgical gown production to 24 hours per day to help the US with the current shortage. Trump declined that and instead sent like 2 million masks (or 20 million I don't remember which) to China. And we had a massive hospital shortage of masks and gowns in the US. We also had a massive shortage of masks for the population in the US.

Had Trump in mid January decided to produce masks and then give them away once Covid started spreading, the concept of the hatred of masks might have been avoided. Especially if they had said Trump on them (like a small signature). Part of the hatred of masks in the US was that they weren't particularly cheap. Now I know that the CDC had gotten it wrong about the masks early on, but it isn't clear why that happened. There was a lot of disputes between the doctors and the administration that were private and didn't come out until years later.

As President, Trump would have been able to set national policy on Covid if he had wanted to. It would have been easy because the Democrats in congress would have gone along with any national measures. But understand that Trump had dismissed the Pandemic team that Obama had put in place probably because Obama had put them in place. In early 2019 they did a pandemic scenario test and came to Trump with the results that there were shortages of masks and surgical equipment as well as a myriad of other things. And Trump fired them all. So that in part was why he was so clueless about what to do on the national level.

So you're arguing w/ Americans who actually lived through these experiences, claiming you know more about it?

As far as the bold... did better how? If you meant killing more people, but making more money, then I'd agree.

Also, I think we all have to acknowledge that it's REALLY easy to Monday morning QB this. When you're operating w/ limited information, that potentially could kill millions of your citizens, most decent politicians are going to function conservatively if they care about their constituents, more than they care about revenue.

as someone who lived in asia which went through strict lockdowns and then resumed normal life with the aid of contact tracing (you physically check in to shopping malls, stadiums, restaurants etc so you then later get sick you hit a button and it'll ping all the people who checked in at same time as you did to alert them to stay home and take a test)

it was incredibly heartbreaking watching the extreme stupidity of my home country where everyone was like "how do we solve this? if only there was a proven method?" when all they had to do was look to what all the asian countries did

Americans are deathly afraid of databases

There is nothing California can do to force people to spend money and pretend like there is not a pandemic going on. That's why the economy crashed in every state. A lack of competent federal response, Kushner saying things like we'd be rocking by Easter, when everybody knew that was ludicrous, caused people to become incredibly risk adverse, hoard money and crash GDP.

As someone who lives in CA, minus a couple of weeks toward the beginning of the pandemic, everyone was still doing their thing. People just had to wear masks. Restaurants moved outside. Hotels had tighter restrictions. Grocery stores were open. Most gyms were. I think only theaters were closed for awhile.

Covid was just a barometer of selfishness. The friends I had on the left and the right of the political spectrum, that were predominately self-centered, were anti-covid restrictions of just about any kind.

I was sitting next to my mothers' deathbed slightly after the peak of the pandemic, in ICU, while my uncle was complaining about the covid restrictions. My mother was one of those secondary death stats of covid because she had a genetic disorder w/ her lungs, and she was deathly afraid to go outside. Because of this, she ended up getting an undetected cancer in her throat, and instead of treating it, for fear of leaving her home, she tried to manage it herself until it was too late.

We were in a Nevada ICU. I remember turning to my uncle and asking him, "what exactly can't you do that you could before?" And his response was, "well, I have to wear this stupid mask." Right next time him his sister was dying because she was afraid of exposure from people not doing to responsible thing and wearing masks in public. His sister and my mom died 3 days later.

So, ya...

I also got a chance to speak to A LOT of ICU nurses during that time, as I was in the hospital 24/7. I was told story after story by nurses, of covid patients that were Trump supporters that literally in their last breaths were saying that covid was a hoax. Some of the stories I was told, you'd think these can't be real. But no... I had several tell me so many similar ones it would make your head spin.

Looks like trump won't debate again. Can't imagine why.

Can someone work up one of those funny hiding under the desk memes?

All this is true, except for the fact that things weren't closed, and everyone was still doing their thing like I said.

I know this because I stepped outside my home and saw it... with my own eyes.

I went to a few BLM protests during the pandemic. On one side you had Trump supporters, with no masks, waving flags and being obnoxious. On the other side you had people wearing masks, talking respectfully to people on both sides. It was something out of a comic book really.

My friend got punched by a Trump supporter, walking through the cross-walk which divided both sides of the rally, because he had the audacity of being black. No reason, just a random sucker punch thrown to his face while we were walking, with all the predictable N words to follow.

Got shot w/ tear gas that day. Good times.

Almost certainly his lackeys are telling him that he won and has nothing to gain by debating again. They undoubtedly know that is the only sure way to keep him from imploding on that platform again.

grunching ftl

There are 53 days until the election.

I think Kamala Harris should lightly troll that Donald Trump won't debate her again after she beat him in their only debate. But she should not go so far as to truly push for another debate. Going 1-0 is better than going 1-1 or 1-0-1 this close to the election and having won their only debate so handily.

this

most interesting part of those books was learning about how his people had to shape things in order to get his attention and agreement

I'm a fan of introspection and skepticism (at least on paper), but when people are literally dying from drowning in their own pus with hours to live, whatever lies they want to hold on to is fine by me.