The Right Side of the News

Forcing a company like GM to produce ventilators is over the top. They volunteered to do it and then it seems had to pull back from their initial promise, and it's not clear why. Instead of the original 24,000 they offiered they pulled back to only 6,000 and said it was going to cost more too. We haven't heard their explanation as far as I know, all we've heard is that Trump is now going to use government power to require of them what they seem to be saying is beyond their ability. he called them unpatriotic although they had volunteered to help. Apparently turned out to be more than they could pull off but now they are being forced, Communist style, to do it anyway. There's something wrong with this picture.Then there was the big complaint about a Congressman named Massey who was objecting to the House's voting with mere yeas and nays on such an enormous bill as this $2.2 Trillion relief bill. Massey wanted the normal constitutionally required roll call vote so that it would be clear to constituents who voted for and who against this enormous outlay of money. And Trump joined in the denouncing of this man who was asking for normal accountability in the House, also caling him unpatriotic. There is something wrong with this picture.Trump's signing the bill at all is hard to defend. It's depressing to hear the rationalizations for accepting the adding on of purely partisan projects, such as Planned Parenthood, NPR, Kennedy Center, things that should be separately voted on at a different time. It's depressing to think they can cram stuff like that down our throats so easily, and depressing to think Trump felt he had to accept whatever was left of it after they got rid of some of it. Depressing that Republican senators accepted it, depressing that at least one of them added his own pork to it. Although they managed to pare down some of it, the final result still has money it for causes dear to the Left that have nothing whatever to do with economic loss due to the virus. The point is supposed to be aiding people who have lost their income due to the quarantining. Such pork should not be allowed in the first place and one caller into one of the conservative talk shows said he's working on a bill to prevent it, making all spending bills clearly defined for particular purposes. This should have been done decades ago, I wonder what its chances are now.Is Trump giving in to the wrong advisers or what?Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

No, Trump is actively interfering with solving our pro problems. He listens only to the voices in his head. Edited by JonF, : No reason given.

No, the Dumb Sonofabitch in the White House is simply trying to Channel Canute. Edited by jar, : il Percy does not like the word fool

A sane and accurate statement? Who are you?I don't know where the 24,000 figure came from, but GM never volunteered to manufacture ventilators, see https://www.nasdaq.com/...tors-to-battle-covid-19-2020-03-21 from a week ago:

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The company said Friday evening that it was leveraging its logistics, purchasing, and manufacturing expertise to assist health-care equipment maker Ventec to increase output.

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Somehow the fact that GM was only volunteering to help a ventilator manufacturer to increase production has gotten lost. More sanity? What have you done with Faith?Now that you've finally become aware of the Trump blame, censure and accuse machine in the case of a Republican congressman, is it possible it will become more evident to you in the future? I had a feeling it wouldn't last. The bill is anti-Planned Parenthood, see Coronavirus aid bill passes Senate, blocks loans to Planned Parenthood - CatholicCitizens.org. NPR isn't mentioned in the bill, see Coronavirus Bill: Read The Full Text : NPR, there's a search capability so you don't have to actually read the whole thing. The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is a public/private partnership, and the bill spells out policy for the government portion of its maintenance and its employees during the crisis. Hey, cheer up, at least they won't be lending Planned Parenthood any money. Trump almost always follows his own counsel. The only exceptions seem to be that he's especially vulnerable to misinformation and bad advice from Kushner and Giuliani. There does seem to be a general rule that he ignores good advice and information and accepts bad.--Percy

Gosh, Planned Parenthood isn't killing babies during the pandemic so we have to make sure they get paid anyway? So many Leftist projects positively turn my stomach.

No the Republicans insisted on no money for STD tests or contraception or other related services.I.e. the opposite of what you wrote.. You didn't even try to read Percy's message..

I read his post but not the links. And what do "STDs and contraceptives and other related services" have to do with helping out businesses that have lost their income due to the virus? Nothing. That sort of thing does not belong in this sort of bill.

Boy, you must be high.You didn't need to read the links, Percy made it explicitly clear that Planned Parenthood wasn't getting anything. Twice. So your "Planned Parenthood isn't killing babies during the pandemic so we have to make sure they get paid anyway?" reveals you didn't even attempt to read what Percy wrote.I threw in STDs and contraception to remind you that most of PP's services are essential medicine for the poor. Abortion (legal) is a small portion of their services. We discussed exactly that earlier but you've forgotten.Hell, they're POORS. They don't count, amirite?

Oh good grief, I knew some of the pork got thrown out so why mention PP at all if it was thrown out? It didn't belog there, it's out, great.

yeah who cares about health service during a pandemic

You posted two very similar messages. Responding first to Message 5579: Looking this up (something you should try now and then, see 2009 swine flu pandemic in the United States - Wikipedia). Obama declared a health emergency in April of 2009 and a national emergency six months later in October. Because the world was aware of the swine flu virus early in the year a vaccine became available before the end of the year, though supplies were short in the US and decisions about who to administer it to were carefully managed. The number of deaths due to swine flu were as high as they were because of the large number of people infected, not because it was particularly deadly. In fact, in the end it turned out to be far less deadly than the standard flu, around .02%. The mortality rate for the flu is around .1%.Coronavirus is far more contagious, virulent and deadly than the swine flu. That's why during the swine flu there were no school or business closings, no advisories not to congregate in groups larger than 10, no mask, glove, scrubs and ventilator shortage.Under pressure from states and from advisers, Trump declared a health emergency at the end of January and a national emergency on March 13. That's a much shorter time between the two events than for the swine flu, but the speed and virulence forced Trump to quickly take such actions. He definitely was not in front of events, what little time he did have was squandered in denying the dangers.Now responding to Message 5586: But because of your choice of sources what you usually hear is wrong. That is very unlikely as the swine flu was only then taking off and it lasted six more months. Wikipedia contradicts you:

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These deaths totaled at 4,000 as of November 15, 2009. (Later reaching 12,469 American deaths, as of 03/2020 according to the WHO).

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Trump reacted quickly because circumstances forced him to act quickly. He delayed as long as he could with false assurances, assurances that his advisers told him were false, such as that it was fully contained, that the US was safe, that it would just move through and we'd barely notice it, that the few cases we had would soon become zero, and so forth. You can't deny he said these things because they're all on YouTube. A number of these videos have already been posted here or to the Coronavirus and Pandemics thread, and of course they were all reported in the news at the time he said them.Trump is repeating the same error now with Pollyanna-ish declarations of hope that the country will reopen around Easter. He's sniping with governors. He's maligning congressmen. He's changing his mind constantly from one day to the next. He's getting distracted by Venezuela. He should instead be focused on preparing and mobilizing the country for the reality of what is to come.Frako was pretty sure you don't understand exponentials, and I think he's right, but here's the most recent graph of US infections again: As that line climbs upward and toward the right you can see that as you trace the line upward that the distance between points grows ever larger. A slowing will be indicated by the distance becoming less, and that's exactly what you see with that last point in the upper right corner. Is that just the kind of variation normally seen in real world data, perhaps an artifact of data gathering as we move into the weekend, or is it real and has the infection rate begun to slow? No way to know yet, tune in tomorrow.By the way, when you said in another post that there's no way to know the progression of the disease, that's dead wrong. There's a whole science of how diseases progress through populations called epidemiology that is extremely data driven. It's how we knew that without a vaccine that the disease would spread throughout the world and that serious mitigation like social distancing and so forth would be necessary. We knew and know plenty, and denying it is just ignorance.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Punctuation.Edited by Percy, : Grammar, typo.

Don't ask us, ask the Republicans. The only reason we're talking about this is because you erroneously claimed that the coronavirus bill added Planned Parenthood as a "purely partisan project" when it actually further penalized them. Just concede the error and move on.It's a wonder you never tire of always getting things wrong. You spend half your time making erroneous statements and the other half defending the indefensible. There's a whole reality out there, you should try it some time.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Punctuation.

It was one of the long "wish list" Pelosi wanted added to the bill. It was on her original list. I didn't know what got taken off and what left. So apparently it got left off. How could it be "penalized?" It could be included or left off. It was left off. Rightly. Some others were kept. Wrongly.

Surely that graph merely represents the increase in testing.

The increase in testing has a significant effect.So does the increase in the number of cases.We can't separate the two.