Negatory

Yeah I guess if 72% of votes going to Hillary is the same as right of center, sure.

Hah, I guess then you guys are gonna support when Dems add 2 Supreme Court justices, approve stateship for DC and Puerto Rico, and end the 60 vote filibuster rule here in a year, as well, right? Because they’ll do it all under the legality of the US system and constitution. They’ll be playing “by the rules,” right? https://www.axios.com/democrats-supreme-court-ginsburg-options-871f3e66-e7a4-4f40-9691-d20de1f4be61.html Or are these not the rules that you want to play by? The truth is, a huge amount of US politics is contingent on good will and not doing shit like saying that Obama can’t have a judge within a year of election because of morality and then being a hypocrite less than 4 years later. This is the end of the republic. And it’s animosity on both sides, combined with a good amount of boot licking and pearl clutching, that’s gonna do it.

Of course it is, I even said it was true. There are no facts, there are opinions. Don’t twist the words. The point is that some people idolize the system because it’s always been the system. Not because they can point to a clear way in which having someone from Wisconsin count 3.6 times as much as the exact same occupation from California makes sense for the welfare of the people.

It’s not like this is a new thing. It’s happened before and it has had criticism since literally the founding of the country. It was almost amended in 1970 but was opposed overwhelmingly by segregationists in southern states. Go ahead, read about the electoral college abolition amendment.

You have no idea if that’s true. Judging by how many people still have “Hillary for Jail“ bumper stickers, I would even venture to say you’re wrong.

Yeah and an equal opposition argued against the electoral college in the anti-federalist papers. Just because they write “tyranny of the majority” doesn’t mean it turns out that way. In fact, the majority of civil rights scholars agree that the electoral college and its perpetuation is a large reason that slavery wasn’t abolished sooner and the civil war happened. What is that, tyranny of the minority?

There are no philosophical facts, that’s the point lol. No single idea, whether it came from a 21 year old founding father (like what you’re suggesting) or if it came from me should hold more inherent merit. Debate the ramifications - not the source.

The shortcomings of the current system of electing the President stem from “winner-take-all” laws that have been enacted by state legislatures in 48 states. These laws award all of a state’s electoral votes to the candidate receiving the most popular votes in each state. Because of these state winner-take-all statutes, presidential candidates have no reason to pay attention to the issues of concern to voters in states where the statewide outcome is a foregone conclusion. In 2012 all of the 253 general-election campaign events were in just 12 states, and two-thirds were in just 4 states (Ohio, Florida, Virginia, and Iowa). Thirty-eight states were completely ignored. States rights, huh? Bring back a system that actually makes everyone’s votes matter.

That’s not what it does, though. It just ensures that Wyoming farmers votes count 3.6 times more than California farmers. It ensures that Wyoming millionaire votes count 3.6 times more than California millionaires. Your vote should exactly equal every other Americans vote everywhere when it comes to electing the federal government. And good point that the founding fathers literally made this policy up based on how they felt, with no basis in fact. The federalist papers, by the way, were written primarily by two young people who were 21 and 25 at the time of revolution: Hamilton and Madison. They are not some form of higher truth - they are normal people subject to fallacies and the inability to predict future struggles. Idolizing them does nothing to help. The policy is an experiment that has no philosophical basis in truth, and, while it’s existed for hundreds of years, could still easily be flawed.

Actually pretty easy. 63M vs 66M, 63M wins. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election Also, non-voters are significantly less likely to have conservative viewpoints. https://www.pewresearch.org/2010/10/29/the-party-of-nonvoters/ Say what you want, but it's pretty obvious how the government could not be representative of the viewpoint of the average American. I'm not talking about the American voter, I'm talking about the American. And that's who actually matters.

Fair enough, I see your side of it. My question is how do we ever get back to more efficient, less partisan politics when both sides are such babies? In reality, some principles that espouse fairness, voter representation, or the spirit of the constitution (such as what McConnell hypocritically suggested in 2016) are exactly what would help unite the country. Are we past things like that? Is it so clearly one team versus the other? Are the gloves fully off? I agree that the dems were blatantly unfair during the Kavanaugh confirmation, and I understand the desire to “get back” at them. It just makes me sad for the future of the country and our ability to actually unite and make meaningful progress against external threats such as China, deficits, or Global Warming. Here’s to the 2020s being another lost decade of progress, just like the 2010s.

He’s just pointing out blatant hypocritical statements that didn’t need to be said in 2016. Nothing more, nothing less.

Whoa sparky, calm down. The linked story literally had nothing in it calling out a conspiracy, even going so far as to say it was due purely to “inattention.” I think the point of posting it was that even the commander in chief’s office made one of the same mistakes that pisses off a lot of Air Force pilots. How can we hold orgs like PA to a higher standard if the CiC’s office does the same thing? Also, I’m positive this would have been linked if Biden or Clinton had done it.

Huh? Are you saying the CIA, FBI, DISA, etc are all wrong about Russian interference? Is this more disinformation? ”The Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee submitted the first in their five-volume 1,313-page report in July 2019 in which they concluded that the January 2017 intelligence community assessment alleging Russian interference was "coherent and well-constructed". ” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2016_United_States_elections

I’m not naive. There’s a difference between war and posturing, and to say we’re at war with Iran is laughable. I have had them tell me to leave their airspace before and intentionally ignored it, but that ain’t war. You probably also say we’re at war with Russia when it’s convenient to your argument but disregard the numerous pro Russia foreign policy moves that have been made by the administration. By your logic, you’d probably say we’re at war with China, Venezuela, Yemen, half of Africa, etc.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Qasem_Soleimani I guess this was just a continuation of our longstanding war with Iran. More blatant propaganda drivel.

You guys have any experience with this training? At my org (group level), we went around the room and, if you were white, you basically had to admit how you have been privileged and how you have internal biases. Super not awkward and fake, let me tell you. And this wasn’t optional. Literally every person had to talk. If you were black, you had to go around and tell the room about your experiences being oppressed based on your skin color. One of the TSgts didn’t know what to say and started rambling about how she’s never had a bad experience or felt scared until the last week when a rent a cop pulled her over on base for speeding. She went on to say that the cop was super nice and did nothing wrong, but that she felt like she should be scared so she was. We are creating victims and people with victim complexes. It also amplifies any sort of racial divide that existed before. The whole training takes away from the fact that there really are race bias problems out there, and that is what we should be focusing on.

https://federalnewsnetwork.com/pay/2020/09/military-is-subject-to-trumps-upcoming-payroll-tax-deferral-too/ Looks like some folks are getting short term loans for the next 4 months.

Also, I just looked into the actual comorbidities page on the CDC website, and some of the top conditions that were present when patients died of COVID that were counted as comorbidities were pneumonia, respiratory distress syndrome, respiratory arrest, and respiratory failure... Also, they listed cardiac arrest - something that happens when you die - as a comorbidity. If you don't see how the data is being skewed here, you're being intellectually dishonest. Seems fairly obvious that the overwhelming majority of people who died of COVID - a disease that is known to cause respiratory and heart issues - should have associated respiratory and heart issues when they die. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm?fbclid=IwAR3-wrg3tTKK5-9tOHPGAHWFVO3DfslkJ0KsDEPQpWmPbKtp6EsoVV2Qs1Q (Table 3) We've known all along that COVID causes people to have pneumonia, a cough, trouble breathing, and respiratory distress. Don't pretend like a report that says that those conditions happen in people with COVID is some sort of proof that COVID's actual death rate is vastly overstated.

The liberal media is getting this entirely wrong, as usual. The mayor of SF, when asked if Pelosi violated the city health order: "So look, Nancy Pelosi has done so much for this city and even this country and in the midst of this pandemic and all the stuff that’s happening amidst this election, she is in Washington D.C. fighting against a tyrant every single day," Breed said. "We need to be focused on the issues and the fact that over 180,000 people have died in this country and we have a president that continues to divide us." YGBSM. Can democrats just have some integrity and condemn that she did the exact opposite of what they've been saying? Why doesn't she just admit guilt and apologize? Why is the political system so broken in this country? What choice is there for a rational voter when it's just Republicans and Democrats? Every day further convinces me that constitutional amendments are in order: ranked choice voting and term limits for people in congress.

Sure, you’re right. The economic impact is real and must be considered versus health effects, and my argument oversimplified that very important fact.

You’re right. Absolutely f*&k MSM that says it’s okay for protestors to be outside but it’s not okay for churchs to congregate. Seriously. I 100% agree that CNN and MSNBC have contributed just as much as FOX as to why our nation can’t have a unified approach to this natural disaster. I am personally not for any news organization; I am equally against everyone that is anti-science. Turns out that’s the majority of the government press and mainstream media. I believe that Dr. Fauci and the CDC are some of the last bastions of integrity and rational thought when it comes to public health, and it pisses me off to no end when news organizations cherry pick/misrepresent data from their reports to support political positions.

I regret presenting it this way as I said at the premise, but after seeing the 6% COVID CDC statistics presented so many times incorrectly (across this forum and many different social media sites), I am frustrated. Mainly, I am frustrated that the smartest people I know seem to embrace points without doing much critical thinking because it aligns with them from an identity standpoint. And to your second point, whether you like it or not, your choices and beliefs absolutely will be assessed with 20/20 hindsight. There often IS a right side of history. You don’t see too many textbooks now spouting the merits of the San Francisco antimasker alliance that existed during the Spanish Flu.

This post is unfortunately more condescending than I like, but I guess it is what it is. Your analysis is, at best, fallacious and, at worst, intentionally misleading. I'll trust in Hanlon's razor and just assume incompetence over malice. Also, you'll note that these graphs have websites at the bottom. It's a thing called a "source." You still are ignoring excess mortality and arguing that COVID has had marginal total effects, all with no actual data to back it up. Your stats for Flu/Chronic Respiratory Disease/Diabetes show... nothing? They don't compare apples to apples. You would need to have TOTAL deaths for FLU/Chronic Lower Respiratory Disease/Diabetes in 2020, including both COVID and non-COVID - and it would need to be extrapolated to December - to compare the two datasets. Tons of people, literally the vast majority of them (>99%), live with and through those diseases every year. The fact that there are cases where they died with COVID only really proves that COVID does what has been said: causes death in the population. Literally nothing more. It just shows that deaths happen. Now if you could extrapolate the data from everyone that got COVID, then you could possibly compare the outcomes of the population without COVID that died from those diseases to the population with COVID that did, but that's not even close to what you did. Your argument that they had a pre-existing condition and would have died "regardless" is also absurd. Do you know how many people have pre-existing conditions in America? 40% of the country is obese for god's sake. The fact that a huge percentage of society has pre-existing conditions should be ASSUMED in discussions like these. The population of America is at risk health-wise, no duh, but that doesn't mean they are going to keel over and die year-to-year. 1) What do you think caused the 200k excess deaths up to this point this year? And how exactly does it matter what is a CF or a RC? When it comes down to death statistics, there is a reason why they don't put CF/RC on the death certificate: it usually doesn't matter because it's a combination of health effects that causes mortality. And before you go there, of course people with COVID that died in a car accident did NOT die of COVID, I'm not arguing that. But what's the difference from this year to the last decade? These people died because of something different. What could it be? Spoilers: It's the coronavirus combined with a naturally vulnerable population that ALWAYS EXISTS based on how humans age. 2) Here's the one other logical fallacy I'll dig into a little more (feel free to have me address more later). Your argument that folks with pre-existing conditions would have died "regardless" is horseshit. I bet even you or someone in your family has a pre-existing condition, based on the statistics. Or at least your VA claim will show it here in a few years. I'll put down money on that one. The number of Americans that have a pre-existing condition is up to 86% by insurer's definitions for people age 55-64. 48% of them have a no-shit health high risk pre-existing condition. They don't even report on those older than that, because it's basically assumed that the majority of the aged population has something significantly wrong with their health. "Sorry grandma, I know you have diabetes and high blood pressure, which you could probably live with for another 10-15 years with simple treatment, but the economy must open up. Although COVID disproportionately kills those over the age of 70 - and if you get it you have a high chance of hospitalization and a 5-10% chance of death - that is a sacrifice I am willing to make. Ignore the fact that we likely will have a working vaccine in the next year which would stop all of this, my mutual funds need to go up NOW. FAKE NEWS. DON'T TREAD ON ME." Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02483-2 It's not that hard. Wear your stupid mask, stop hanging out with all your friends, put your travel plans on a temporary hold, get over the fact that national sports and colleges aren't gonna be on TV, and understand that society isn't actually powerless when it comes to battling infectious disease. For all the shit conservatives give liberals over being babies, they have a real problem toughening up and adjusting their lifestyle temporarily for a global catastrophe. Literally FOX News hosts in the height of the deaths in April ran a segment about how hard it is to not be able to get your hair done, while, at the same time, medical teams across the world from Italy to Spain to the UK to the US were delivering bodies to morgues at a weekly rate 5-15 times higher than normal. Want to know something? Those countries don't have the magnitude of problem we have now. They learned and their societies adapted. Numerous other countries and societies haven't F'd this GLOBAL DISEASE away like we have. BLAB (BOTTOM LINE AT THE BOTTOM): Stop arguing about whether or not COVID causes deaths. It does. If you want to argue that 100's of thousands of deaths aren't that bad in the big scheme of the population and we can accept a few 100 thousand more, then that's your prerogative. I disagree, but at least now we are arguing about opinions. Out.

They get counted in excess deaths, which is why I think it’s probably a better metric when it comes to total impact. And if the disease still got to you with restrictions (probably via asymptomatic transmission), how can we reasonably ask for those at risk to avoid infection? They still have to get food, go to the doctor, fix their homes, interact with those that care for them. Unfortunately, there is no such thing anymore as a self-sufficient man; everyone is very interconnected.