wxman91

Tracing from this is the problem with the interpretation of equal opportunity. There are people in this thread that think that because there are no longer laws on the books that stand in the way of equal opportunity everything is now on an even playing field. But that is a radical interpretation of the world in which we live with massive wealth disparities and social geography, and the problems caused by both. In other words, we can’t just wash our hands of history and say that everyone has the same chances.

@Hayduke - there isn’t a good reason to defend the Portland anarchists. The peaceful protestors outnumber them by a massive amount, but some assholes just want to watch the world burn. Yes, the feds ratcheted up the tension, but that is a separate problem. Destructive protests aren’t helping anything. Also, saying something absolute such as left-wing terrorists don’t kill people is just inviting a challenge that obfuscates the issue. Left wing terrorists in the US are more about property damage while right-wing terrorists are more likely to kill. Leave it at that and it is obvious which side is worse.

Here’s the problem - you think that a $300 bottle of wine impresses people. I’m assuming that you are a business owner, so here’s what would actually impress us. How well paid are your employees? How good are their benefits? How long do they stay with your company? Are any of your employees on government assistance? The world is always going to have business owners and employees. How the employees are treated is a better measure of the success of a society than the boss’s extraction of wealth.

That’s a lot of hand-wringing over 1% of the population who might identify as Antifa supporters. I’m personally more afraid of Evangelical Christians trying to remake the country in their theocratic image.

Um, yes? Things can be Constitutional and still be a bad idea. Burning bibles and Confederate statues as two examples.

Catching up a bit 1) Portland - I don''t think that this is all that complicated. Portland is an activist town, and it is no surprise that the protests have lasted longer there than other places. Also, Portland has a distinct anarchist-type community. I think what we are seeing at the federal courthouse is a blending of Antifa/anarchist protests (there certainly is crossover), and those are the ones that got more destructive/violent. It also is not shocking that the tensions abated with the withdrawal of federal forces. I should note here that anarchists are not Democrats in the least (radically different values regarding the role of government). They are their own breed of crazy. 2) Herman Cain - The guy survives Stage 4 cancer and refuses to protect himself. No sympathy. 3) COVID stats - All of those sarcastic "wait for it" posts about the deaths aged poorly. We are likely to have several more weeks with 1000+ deaths/day. The good news is that the new cases and hospitalizations data has seemed to have peaked. Hopefully we see a sharp decrease from here. By the way, here is a very good writeup about the dates of reporting about deaths vs the date of the actual death: https://covidtracking.com/blog/is-there-a-right-way-to-chart-covid-19-deaths-over-time.

Already cancelling MLB games. Edit - ok, this is funny https://twitter.com/Doug_Exeter/status/1287757879697526784?s=20

The 2nd link pretty much gives you the answer. Those who felt led astray by surveys conducted during the 2016 U.S. presidential election may be surprised to learn that national polling was generally quite accurate. National pre-election polls in 2016 indicated that Hillary Clinton would win the national popular vote by a 3-point margin, and in fact she won by 2 points. The major problem was with state-level polls, many of which missed a late swing to Trump among undecided voters and did not correct for the fact that their responding samples contained proportionally too many college-educated voters (who were more likely to favor Clinton). A silver lining is that both of these problems can be overcome, to some extent, by more rigorous survey weighting and heightened attention to the possibility of late shifts in voter preferences.

Not really. The idea today is that there is this "silent majority" out there that are Trump supporters but won't tell pollsters about it. That didn't happen in any relevant fashion in 2016. It was a very close election, the polls were pretty good, and the undecideds broke towards the challenger at the end. That's it. That's the full story. This year, the polls are not close and Trump's approval ratings are terrible across all sets of information that we have. However, I've said it here before and will say it again. Biden could very well lose. Trump has a consistent level of support and there is this weird uncertainty out there about COVID and Biden's mental acuity. What I don't think will tip the scales is the protesting/rioting. If it were Bernie, then yes, I could see the suburban support melt away. But Biden is more law & order than the leftist Dems. His two top VP candidates are a former prosecutor (who the left likes to call Cop-mala) and a National Security Advisor. Not exactly what "Antifa" would offer up.

No, I'll continue to think that I'm better than you. Thank you very much.

We already have confirmation of the COVID impact and the likely undercount from the excess deaths metric. And LOL @ RedState.

Oh, they are probably perfectly happy to see the US standing in the world plummet under Trump. The trade war is just collateral damage.

Except when it is complete folly (like NK). Foreign policy successes: ISIS - he gets credit for following through (and perhaps accelerating) what the Pentagon had started under Obama Foreign policy failures: Embarrassing attempts to cozy up to NK - no progress at all on containment/disarmament Withdrawal from the Iran pact - even though it wasn't a perfect agreement, it was something. No progress on preventing a nuclear state. Advocating on behalf of Putin for Russia to re-enter the G-7 (G-8) despite the Crimea fiasco. Letting Saudi Arabia off the hook for state-sanctioned murder. Deterioration of relationship with China. Rolling back advancements made with Cuba.

Putting the US first by attempting to cozy up to dictators and make our allies mistrust us?

Not even sure whether it is worth diving back into this thread, but I came across some interesting points from a local (Virginia) school board meeting that shows the difficulty in the opening decision. 25% of custodial staff either tested positive or had to quarantine this summer Extended Day summer camp - 5 out of 50 kids had to be sent home with fevers. Also a family lied on the daily health questions. Family members were at home waiting for covid test results but they sent their kids in. A whole lot of teachers put in for retirement or a year leave of absence

There is a direct quote in the second link about only finding COVID. It does make intuitive sense that if you are trying to reduce the pathways for COVID that a side benefit would be the reduction of pathways for the seasonal influenza, which is less transmissible. One of my concerns about schools is how they would deal with a presumed COVID case prior to testing, and how complicated it would be with the other seasonal bugs going around. If the flu is dramatically reduced, that would be a giant help.

Maybe some good news? https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19-measures-have-all-but-wiped-out-the-flu-in-the-southern-hemisphere-11595440682 https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/infection-control/flu-cases-significantly-down-in-southern-hemisphere.html

You are for the rule of law but you don't want to read the legislation that makes the rules? I posted the HR1 link. Oh, no. The feelings of the poor Border Control were hurt during Obama's presidency I'm sure you have the same concerns for the scientists that have been sidelined by the current administration. If we want to keep from falling too far behind China and eventually India, we need to dramatically increase legal immigration. At least 1% of the total population per year, which is about triple of the rates now.

I think this is pretty well-known. That's why the hospitalization numbers are the only good real-time measure, IMO. But I'm not sure why this is being portrayed by some as a "gotcha".

I was at a big (and still popular) mall last weekend. While it was less crowded, everything was open. The big difference was that the kiosks in the aisles that depend on foot traffic were mostly closed. The only ones that were staffed were the couple that were selling masks. Capitalism!

I'm trying to wrap my head around the rate of encounter metric. Would the final definition then be the chance that you'd get COVID per encounter? You do recognize that mask wearing is much more about transmitting than receiving the virus, right?

Yup, bad business to be in during COVID. As I mentioned earlier, I think there is a good case for a targeted rescue (bailout) of particularly hard hit small-business industries (bars, theaters, gyms). Effectively, pay them to stay closed.

And I don't understand it, as I stated above, because a mask mandate is a very reasonable response to a pandemic and not an infringement on personal liberty. You keep talking about businesses being closed. Can you give further examples? And how do you separate the impact of the government-mandated closures, which were limited in time and the broader issue of people not wanting to go out and do things? Here's an interesting example. Restaurants in the states that opened early. This isn't government mandates beyond May, this is the public choosing to stay home.

It would be great if we could get to a point where contract tracing was able to nail down most of the cases. Just the fact that cases were low and steady was clearly not enough for AZ, FL, TX, et al. I don’t know how far away ND is from that. Clearly a very low population density has been a great help.

There is no good way to define a “line” as far as individual freedom vs common good. However, thought exercise. A year ago someone informs you that there would be a global pandemic and the government has declared that everyone should wear a mask in indoor public locations. Would that have seemed all that strange? No, you’d probably be concerned about how bad the pandemic is. If the same person said that the government would be branding you with a bar code so that they could track immigration, you’d likely freak out. There are clearly lines that can be crossed in terms of personal freedom. But masks during a pandemic are so far on the “reasonable” side of the line it boggles my mind that we are even having this conversation.