Kermit's Luck

Have you been sounding the alarm that our elections aren't run properly prior to 2020? Or did this go from zero to national crisis in one election cycle? I'll assume the latter. Do you think your attitude towards our elections has been influenced by the Trump campaign? Their only path to remain in power is to remove public faith in the election process, disenfranchise the votes of every American (especially the ones that voted against them), and throw a Hail Mary trying to get in front of a Supreme Court that they think they've stacked. It won't work, and they know it - but they'll do it anyways. Horrifyingly un-American, and a sadly tragic and predictable end to what I hope is the most far-right President this country ever elects. Our election process is fine - it's only now that Trump lost that we're talking about it. On another note, Canada does a ton of things well that we could learn from. Health care, cannabis, all-dressed chips, and they've got the hockey thing down. I'll always owe them for the road trips out of Walsh Hall to the peeler bars.

My source was from mlive.com, posted the link a few pages back when this BS all started. The two votes not to certify (assume you’re talking about Wayne County last week; it was 3-0 today in favor of certifying with one abstaining) were from two minor county election officials that drink the Trump Kool Aid. There hasn’t been any evidence presented of voter fraud in Michigan (or anywhere else).

Dude they were like 5-25 votes out of balance max in each precinct. Your hypothetical is absurd. As said above, it wouldn't have been certified by the county.

Im definitely not saying tax shelters are partisan. Rich people both blue and red have tools at their disposal to avoid paying taxes that normal folk simply don’t have. When you see some of the effective tax rates paid by the wealthy, it’s pretty crazy and counterintuitive to how things should work in a healthy society. In my opinion at least, obviously.

I think Trump’s refusal to take any questions at his other non-press conference appearances. He’s obviously not shy about sharing his opinion, but do we really want the lead statesman of this country primarily communicating via Twitter?

I don't disagree with any of that.

Get ready for some gasket work I think. I live somewhere with a crazy high cost of living, and that's my choice. I'm sure your location helps you pull down the decent coin you reference, and it's your choice to make that balance work for you or not. Additionally, I wouldn't expect that income to be in the 1%, not nationally and certainly not in those areas. If they raised the federal tax 3% in your bracket (wild a$$ guess on that increment, I'm no tax code scholar and am not going to pretend to be in a six minute internet effort), you'd be looking at an extra $12k at $400 annual. $1k a month at that monthly income level isn't a deal breaker. If it is, you're not doing it right. Will it somewhat impact some financial goals or some additional discretionary spending? Sure. The bigger problem is obviously the uber wealthy that have tax shelter upon tax shelter and hardly pay a nickel in taxes to this great country we're all haggling about.

Yeah man, I’ve been taking 2000 units or whatever the heck they’re called for years. I think that stuff works for sure and it’s good for plenty of other stuff besides immune support.

Well, if sunlight creates natural vitamin D production (directly correlated), then those are essentially the same variable. Wait - do you have a way to get sunlight directly into our bodies? Under our skin? That would be awesome. I know a guy that’s going to be out of a job in a couple months that might help you get that up and running. Don’t front the cash though, he’s a little sketchy.

You drew a direct conclusion based on the length of day/amount of sunlight. Oh, wait - you were talking about a new administration actually taking steps to control the virus! I got it now. Glad you’re looking forward to January as much as I am!

Yeah, we've needed to do that for awhile. I can't believe the people running our government (red or blue) think running a huge deficit for nearly twenty years is a good idea.

Impressive how you went all in on Vitamin D from sunlight being the prime variable in COVID transmission data, and then eight minutes later called me out for single variate thinking in a multivariate world.

I would expect the tax increases to be tiered based on the amount of profit reported. Would surprise me to see them going after incremental gains in tax revenue on middle class businesses. Shouldn't the high earners pay their share? Not even going into the whole "redistribution of wealth" argument (which has its own merits), but the top 1% has been gaming the system and not paying their share of taxes for decades. Needs to change, and quickly. Taxes will need to go up under some administration in our lifetimes - our deficit spending increased under Trump to nearly a trillion dollars in 2019, and that's no way to run a country. The bill for all of the COVID stimulus is going to come due at some point as well.

I'm pretty sure they'll raise taxes on people making more than $400,000, maybe institute a minimum tax for corporations, those kinds of things. Why make a statement like that after an election if it's going to end up being false and get posted all over the internet?

Well done. Expect silence and another link to right wing garbage in a couple hours. Driving up traffic to fringe websites willing to lie to increase division...which will drive up traffic to their fringe websites.

Read whatever you want Goon. All I said to Sicatoka about the sites he's citing is that they are very right wing with a history of fake news. Not exactly the kind of thing that it makes sense to discuss on a discussion board, unless you want an echo chamber - which this board obviously does. Gotta love the fact that Fox News is now taking heat over being "left" - an objective analysis of that would tell you all you needed to know about the state of the far right in 2020, but objectivity is about as well-regarded in here as reading comprehension.

That isn’t what I took from that article. And I don’t think comparing newspaper coverage in the 40s to discrediting links to an extreme right-wing BLOG in 2020 makes any sense. You guys should just hang out in MeinSpace or Parler or whatever it’s called. Not that this place is too far off...

Overall, we rate The Gateway Pundit Questionable based on extreme right-wing bias, promotion of conspiracies, and numerous instances of publishing false (fake) news

You’re like one of those triangles that has one angle that’s waaaay more than ninety degrees.

I’m not going to click on a link and be able to discuss it when it comes from a website with this description at mediabiasfactcheck or whatever the heck it is: The Geller Report (GR) is a right-wing source, run by Pamela Geller . GR is more of a personal blog than an actual news source, parroting the most extreme rhetoric of the right in general, and anti-Muslim sentiment in particular.

Dude, you really gotta stop posting super right wing info on here. You seem like a reasonably smart guy that can engage in a conversation, but what’s the point of discussing something that is so biased right out of the gate? Not a credible source, not even close. Talk about the deep state smh

I speculated that it’d be great to get data from a large sample of people that took basic mitigation measures seriously and didn’t interact with anyone else. It’s a theoretical trial that would be extremely difficult to actually perform. Then we could see how well the mitigation measures worked - we don’t know anything about how well they work in a mixed population of virus deniers alongside people trying to follow scientific guidance. are you a climate change denier also?

I’d prefer to use the scientific method and control more variables than that, but if you say so I guess I’ll go hustle something else. Whatever that means.

It’s obviously not possible in the US. People treat wearing a mask as an oppressive infringement on their freedoms for some unknown reason. As I stated, it’s be great to run a study to determine the actual efficacy of these basic mitigation measures. Maybe they don’t work that great? But maybe they would and that’s be great to know. We’re running an experiment with way too many uncontrolled variables, and no one has a clue what works or what doesn’t. Personally, I’ll give the recommendations from medical experts in their field of specialty a try. Science is real!

I’m not in the mood to hustle stats, but I will say this: it’d be great to be able to study transmission in a large enough sample of people that took basic mitigation measures (mask wearing, hand washing, social distancing. Maybe add in no bars/indoor dining/gyms/etc) with 100% buy-in and utilization. Kinda hard to determine what may or may not be effective when such a large percentage of the population isn’t taking things seriously and/or following guidelines.