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Author | Topic: The Trump Presidency | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
PaulK Member Posts: 17815 Joined: Member Rating: 2.1 |
Ars Technica
The US was working with Chinese researchers - in China - to investigate coronaviruses. The title of the project: Understanding the risk of bat coronavirus emergence,. With the current epidemic still ongoing this research would seem to be of considerable value. Not to the Trump regime. The research funding was abruptly cancelled in April this year, on orders from the White House. No reason given. Peter Daszak, President of EcoHealth, the company organising the research commented:
Thanks to this China can now do the research, we can’t! Which is quite likely true. The Chinese government could pick up the tab for the Chinese researchers. And if they do, can the US count on seeing the results? Doubtless some would be published in the scientific literature but the Chinese government would have access that the US government would not.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17815 Joined: Member Rating: 2.1 |
What is wrong with opposing fascism?
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PaulK Member Posts: 17815 Joined: Member Rating: 2.1 |
When Hurricane Dorian neared the US Trump incorrectly claimed that Alabama was likely to be hit. Strangely an unsigned tweet from the Birmingham National Weather Service supported Trump.
It’s turned out that the tweet was ordered by the Commerce Department who decided that covering for Trump was more important than accurate weather warnings. And of course Trump later appeared with a map altered with a sharpie to agree with his mistake. The full report on what happened was due to be released on Monday, but the Commerce Department are demanding redactions and digging their heels in to delay the report as much as they can. See this on Ars Technica A summary that was released on Monday - with redactions. The conclusions - quoted by Ars Technica are:
I. The Department led a flawed process that discounted NOAA participation. II. The Department required NOAA to issue a Statement that did not further NOAA’s or the National Weather Service's interests. III. The Department failed to account for the public safety intent of the National Weather Service Birmingham tweet and the distinction between physical science and social science messaging. IV. One NOAA employee deleted relevant text messages, and the Department’s federal records guidance is outdated. So, under Trump, the President’s errors are a PR problem that must be handled by pretending that he’s right. At least where the Commerce Department is involved. I wonder how much of that applies to Government messaging regarding the coronavirus pandemic, and how many American lives it’s cost.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17815 Joined: Member Rating: 2.1 |
And despite the Department of Commerce refusing to cooperate, the report is out.
here (pdf) Reading between the lines it seems that Trump thought that the Birmingham office deliberately contradicted him instead of just doing their jobs. They had a lot of people phoning in fearing a hurricane, and it wasn’t coming. So they put it out in a tweet, not realising that Trump was the cause of the false concerns. It seems that Trump was really pissed off about it even though he was wrong - and even his recent briefings hadn’t mentioned any significant risk to Alabama. The criticism of them was justified by the fact that a small part of Alabama had a small chance of high winds - nothing really bad, just the edge of the high winds that accompany the storm. So they were technically wrong but not in a way that actually mattered. Alabama was not going to be hit, and even in the worst case a small part of Alabama would only have had a windy day. But that’s the message. Government employees are required to agree with Trump even when he is wrong. Even when it comes to warning people of disasters that aren’t coming. But that’s what you get when you put someone like Trump in the White House.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17815 Joined: Member Rating: 2.1 |
quote: So much for defending the Constitution.
quote: Don’t be silly. The justification for their presence is graffiti on Federal buildings - a little short of destruction, don’t you think? And they are snatching peaceful protestors off the streets. Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17815 Joined: Member Rating: 2.1 |
quote: At least you agree that the militia are lying hypocrites who actually want a tyranny. I don’t want them involved but if they lived up to their rhetoric they should certainly be objecting to the Federal government’s actions.
quote: Then why is the justification for the deployment a series of graffiti attacks? And the eye injuries I hear about are those inflicted on innocent people by police firing baton rounds at their heads.
quote: Even if that were true - and I very much doubt it, how is it an excuse for picking up innocent people off of the street? In violation of the Constitution?
quote: That is certainly untrue. Edited by AdminPhat, : fixed broken quote
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PaulK Member Posts: 17815 Joined: Member Rating: 2.1 |
quote: When did they change their minds and decide that the President’s character didn’t matter? Oh, right. That would be when they decided to support Trump.
quote: Whose charity? Maybe it’s time to point out that the Trump Foundation was poorly administered and the funds misused (for Trump’s convenience).
quote: Well great if you’re a single-issue voter who doesn’t care about anything else. But to be honest abortion is not a black-and-white issue. Hence the misleading pro-life label, rather than the accurate anti-abortion. Maybe if Ireland had been less strict Savita Halappanavar would still be alive.
quote: Trump will talk people up and tear them down depending on whatever is most useful to him. It’s not really meaningful.
quote: He’s a pretty terrible person.
quote: So it’s all about the unprincipled pursuit of political power. How Christian.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17815 Joined: Member Rating: 2.1 |
quote: It is? I thought Federal employers were meant to follow the Constitution.
quote: Graffiti is hardly a major offence that calls for a heavy deployment of additional men, let alone kidnapping people off the streets or tear-gassing peaceful protestors.
quote: Because that’s what they’re paid for?
quote: I don’t watch much TV. Besides it gets less coverage over here.
quote: And they’ve been breaking that by arresting people without any such grounds. Like Mark Pettibone
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PaulK Member Posts: 17815 Joined: Member Rating: 2.1 |
quote: Picking people off the streets without reason to think they’ve committed a crime is illegal under the Fourth Amendment.
quote: So, the law is ridiculously harsh which justifies going even further. That’s absurd.
quote: But the police would normally do that job, wouldn’t they?
quote: But not enough. Wanting to question somebody - who was not breaking the law - doesn’t justify bundling them into an unmarked van and taking them away without explanation. And that is exactly what happened to Mark Pettibone.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17815 Joined: Member Rating: 2.1 |
quote: Then perhaps you’d like to explain why the unprincipled pursuit of political power is Christian.
quote: I’d rather be a Christian than be you.
quote: You wish,
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PaulK Member Posts: 17815 Joined: Member Rating: 2.1 |
quote: Well, you seem determined to drag down the level of discourse here. But it’s hardly the first example of that.
quote: I guess that greed and egotism might come before power, but I don’t think either are good. Trump is also more power-hungry than most.
quote: Boasting about passing a cognitive test designed to detect dementia - and claiming that it was difficult suggests that there is something wrong with his brain. But all the lying he does is something else. Come on, do you worship Trump as the anti-Christ or do you just think he’s paving the way ?
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PaulK Member Posts: 17815 Joined: Member Rating: 2.1
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Why do you people think you can get away with pretending to be Christian?
Your sheer nastiness undermines the pretence every time.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17815 Joined: Member Rating: 2.1 |
quote: I think that’s just an excuse.
quote: Which means that the inhabitants should be denied their civil rights?
quote: And in every state you can’t arrest someone just because you think they might know something.
quote: If they are suspected of a crime. People who aren’t suspects can’t be held.
quote: Indeed, so you can contest illegal detention.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17815 Joined: Member Rating: 2.1 |
Oh, and look. Right-wing agitators are behind at least some of the violence
BBC On May 27, not long after the death of George Floyd:
Footage of the man wearing a mask and carrying an umbrella while smashing shop windows went viral online. And now:
According to the Star Tribune, the man was identified following an email tip-off. The email claimed the man was a member of the Hells Angels biker gang.
An investigation found that the man was also connected to the Aryan Cowboys, a prison biker / street gang. The Anti-Defamation League identifies them as a white supremacist group based primarily in Kentucky and Minnesota.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17815 Joined: Member Rating: 2.1 |
quote: I think you’ll find that it is the DHS that is sending agents in. But protecting federal assets does not extend to picking people - people who are not suspected of any crime - off the streets and bundling them into vans without telling them where they are going. But they did that to Mark Pettibone.
quote: I mean peaceful protestors of course.
quote: Seems that’s exactly what you are trying to do. There are rioters and there are peaceful protestors. And both sorts can get tear gassed, just like people standing peacefully, away from any violence can be intentionally shot with baton rounds. Really, I am reminded of the homeless man arrested for assaulting a cop’s fist with his face.
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