Bear Pit: now the sole domicile of politics at LuLa

[Craig Lamson]

It's an admittedly wide brush, but let's be honest - can you imagine Donald Trump or Ted Cruz breaking out the phone and tweeting for dollars for AOC's district in NY?  I can go back to CA's wildfire devastation last year - I'll be shocked if Ted or Donald- or heck, any of the Trumps - were using their status/platforms to actually raise individual contributions for Californians.

Yes, let be honest.  Do you think AOC actually really cared about the Texans or was it a bit of care and chance to get some really great PR and continue to stoke her ongoing feud with Ted Cruz?  Was it political or human caring? As I said in another post, Cruz made his choice and he will have to suffer whatever comes with it.

Speaking of Presidents, how many days did it take Biden to get on the phone to Texas and act like the President of ALL Americans?  Did Biden or Harris reach out and ask individuals to send money to Texas?

The point is natural disasters happen all the time everywhere.  There were people without power and heat in Tenn. at the same time as there was in Texas, and I'm sure elsewhere.  Were those people less deserving of help? How much did AOC raise for them? 

There are good and bad people of all political stripes, and some somewhere in between.  Texans and Californians are both Republican and Democrat.  They are all people, and the good amoung us help when we can, and the bad, not so much...regardless of party.   The problems start when we try and make this stuff political because its not political.  It human.

[digitaldog]

Feb 18: Gov. Greg Abbott requests Major Disaster Declaration to provide individual, public assistance in wake of massive outages.
Feb 19: Biden To Authorize Broader Disaster Relief For Texas.
Next stupid question that is easily found using 'the Google Machine'.

EDIT: What took Greg Abbott so long to ask (that's how this works), while wasting time to speak rubbish about the state's energy grid and windmills:
https://www.fema.gov/pdf/rrr/dec_proc.pdf

The Stafford Act (§401) requires that: “All requests for a declaration by the President that a major disaster exists shall be made by the Governor of the affected State.” A State also includes the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. The Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia are also eligible to request a declaration and receive assistance.

Speaking of quick action (not):
September 10, 2020 WASHINGTON – FEMA announced that federal disaster assistance has been made available to the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico to supplement commonwealth and local recovery efforts in the areas affected by Tropical Storm Isaias from July 29-31, 2020.

[digitaldog]

Also of note:
Dr. Fauci: Trump Let ‘Terrible Things’ Happen After Our COVID-19 Disagreements

In a wide-ranging interview with The Telegraph, the infectious disease specialist recalled a marked shift in his professional relationship with Trump in April or May of last year, once the president began to publicly side with anti-lockdown protesters and back states’ efforts to lift stay-at-home orders.

“My influence with [Trump] diminished when he decided to essentially act like there was no outbreak and focus on re-election and opening the economy,” Fauci, who is now serving as chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden, recalled Friday. “That’s when he said, “It’s going to go away, it’s magical, don’t worry about it.”’

And with respect to Pence:

“When it became clear that in order to maintain my integrity and to get the right message [across] I had to publicly disagree with him, he did things — or allowed things to happen — that were terrible,” he said. On the flip side, he offered faint praise for former Vice President Mike Pence, who “really tried his very best to address the outbreak.”

[James Clark]

Yes, let be honest.  Do you think AOC actually really cared about the Texans or was it a bit of care and chance to get some really great PR and continue to stoke her ongoing feud with Ted Cruz?  Was it political or human caring?

Almost assuredly the former, maybe some of the latter.   But you know what? If the calculation is, "I'll show him - I'll do something NICE for his constituents" I'll take it. 

[Craig Lamson]

Almost assuredly the former, maybe some of the latter.   But you know what? If the calculation is, "I'll show him - I'll do something NICE for his constituents" I'll take it.

Sure, food banks always need money so it is nice and it will help. The bulk of the praise goes to those who actually put up the cash.

[faberryman]

Yes, let be honest.  Do you think AOC actually really cared about the Texans or was it a bit of care and chance to get some really great PR and continue to stoke her ongoing feud with Ted Cruz?  Was it political or human caring? As I said in another post, Cruz made his choice and he will have to suffer whatever comes with it.

Who cares? Certainly not the beneficiaries of the relief. Okay, maybe there were two highly principled Cruz supporters who gave back the aid when they found out that AOC raised the money just to tweak Ted Cruz's nose and go viral on Twitter. If AOC shows up at my door with a box of groceries and a $100, I'm not asking any questions, particularly if I am living in a dingy in what used to be my living room and freezing my ass off. But I guess reasonable minds could differ on the issue.

I was just thinking that AOC really blew her chance at immortality by not giving Texans free flights to Cancun. Obviously she didn't consult me.

[Alan Klein]

I don't know what any of that has to do with my comment: Let's review:

I'll ask again for the forty-eleventh time. If you are not going to respond to my posts, don't quote them in your posts.

What does your earlier post have to do with spreading the virus and additional deaths? It's not like the people who were sick then went home to die there and that was it.  They spread it to other healthy people who got sick and died raising the number of dead.  Had the original sick patients stayed in the hospital instead of being forced home by Cuomo's directive, those additional people would not have gotten sick and died. 

[Alan Klein]

It's an admittedly wide brush, but let's be honest - can you imagine Donald Trump or Ted Cruz breaking out the phone and tweeting for dollars for AOC's district in NY?  I can go back to CA's wildfire devastation last year - I'll be shocked if Ted or Donald- or heck, any of the Trumps - were using their status/platforms to actually raise individual contributions for Californians. 

It's a smart gesture on AOC's part.  But she doesn't threaten Cruz.  She threatens Schumer, the NY Senator, and Senate leader, also from NY.  It's been rumored she wants to replace him as NY senator when he runs again.  So she's trying to establish her credentials to be a senator.  The Republican party could use someone like her.  It's too bad she's such a socialist.   

[faberryman]

What does your earlier post have to do with spreading the virus and additional deaths? It's not like the people who were sick then went home to die there and that was it.  They spread it to other healthy people who got sick and died raising the number of dead.  Had the original sick patients stayed in the hospital instead of being forced home by Cuomo's directive, those additional people would not have gotten sick and died.

I'll ask again, what does any of that have to do with what I said? Let's review:

As an aside, for every death you add to the nursing home column, you have to subtract a death from the hospital column. It's not like Cuomo has a warehouse full of dead bodies we are just finding out about.

[Alan Klein]

I'll ask again, what does any of that have to do with what I said? Let's review:

Quote from: faberryman on Today at 10:59:14 am
As an aside, for every death you add to the nursing home column, you have to subtract a death from the hospital column. It's not like Cuomo has a warehouse full of dead bodies we are just finding out about.

www.ambientlightcollection.com

Apparently, I don't understand your sentence.  What did you mean by it?

[Alan Klein]

NYC Mayor DiBlasio continues to make NYC worse.  Like Covid wasn't bad enough. What a vindictive dope.

NYC shutting Central Park ice rinks to kids to freeze out Trump Organization
https://nypost.com/2021/02/20/nyc-shutting-central-parks-wollman-and-lasker-rinks-to-ice-out-trump/

[faberryman]

Apparently, I don't understand your sentence.  What did you mean by it?

I can't explain it any more clearly.

[faberryman]

NYC Mayor DiBlasio continues to make NYC worse.  Like Covid wasn't bad enough. What a vindictive dope.

NYC shutting Central Park ice rinks to kids to freeze out Trump Organization
https://nypost.com/2021/02/20/nyc-shutting-central-parks-wollman-and-lasker-rinks-to-ice-out-trump/

DeBlasio doesn't want the city to be in a contractual relationship with the Trump Organization because he thinks Trump is a despicable human being and doesn't want any of the city's money lining his pocket, so he terminated the contracts. The Trump Organization is packing up its ice skates and going home. Sure some people are going to miss ice skating. Life is full of disappointments. Maybe the city will find someone else to operate the ice rinks later in the season or next year. Maybe this will be the straw that breaks the camel's back and voters will elect somebody else to be mayor at the next election because they are mad about the ice skating situation and think DeBlasio is a petty and vindictive so and so. The real question is how big a tax deduction the Trump Organization is going to take for donating all those ice skates to the Widows and Orphans Ice Skate Fund.

[TechTalk]

It's not like the people who were sick then went home to die there and that was it.  They spread it to other healthy people who got sick and died raising the number of dead.

Did they? Is that the only source of virus transmission to nursing home residents? How many patients discharged from the hospital were actually infectious at the time of discharge? If there were infectious patients discharged and returned to a nursing home, do they automatically become the only possible source of infection to other residents? Were returning patients isolated by the nursing homes with proper protocols? Haven't residents in nursing homes been infected where other patients were not retuning from hospitals? Haven't some nursing homes been inspected and investigated and found to be negligent, sometimes grossly negligent, in their protocols and practices causing virus transmission and deaths from staff or outside sources? How many nursing home residents were infected by returning hospital patients and not thru another source? How has that been determined?

Had the original sick patients stayed in the hospital instead of being forced home by Cuomo's directive, those additional people would not have gotten sick and died.

Fortunately none of us here had to make decisions in the middle of a pandemic unprecedented in modern times. None of us had to weigh the possibilities of deaths increasing due to the risk of hospital capacities being overwhelmed versus the risk of sending patients no longer requiring hospitalization back to the nursing homes from which they came. I'm not judging those decisions because I don't have enough clear information to do so. I'm not sure that anyone does or will until the crisis is over and a look back at lots of data is possible. Perhaps it will be difficult or impossible even then.

[Robert Roaldi]

Yes, let be honest.  Do you think AOC actually really cared about the Texans or was it a bit of care and chance to get some really great PR and continue to stoke her ongoing feud with Ted Cruz?  Was it political or human caring? As I said in another post, Cruz made his choice and he will have to suffer whatever comes with it.

Speaking of Presidents, how many days did it take Biden to get on the phone to Texas and act like the President of ALL Americans?  Did Biden or Harris reach out and ask individuals to send money to Texas?

The point is natural disasters happen all the time everywhere.  There were people without power and heat in Tenn. at the same time as there was in Texas, and I'm sure elsewhere.  Were those people less deserving of help? How much did AOC raise for them? 

There are good and bad people of all political stripes, and some somewhere in between.  Texans and Californians are both Republican and Democrat.  They are all people, and the good amoung us help when we can, and the bad, not so much...regardless of party.   The problems start when we try and make this stuff political because its not political.  It human.

Well that was a predictable response. You can pile on all the cynicism you want, the only thing that matters is who delivers and who flies to Cancun.

You know, what aboutism is bad enough, but when you use "what about" about someone who actually does it better, it beggars belief. But I'm not going to argue with you. Of course politicians only do things that are visible. Do you think this is a revelation?

[TechTalk]

It's a smart gesture on AOC's part. The Republican party could use someone like her.  It's too bad she's such a socialist.   

As a favor, just because you find her "kinda cute", I'm linking a video of her dancing in college which went viral in conservative circles.

https://www.youtube.com/Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Dancing In College Video

Your comment about her being cute reminded me of that video, because it went viral on conservative social media with nasty comments attached. The comments and circulation of the video backfired as quite a lot of people actually found her to be kind of charming and adorable in it.

Watch the YouTube video above rather than the one in USA Today story. The YouTube version has the original music and is full-length.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/01/03/viral-video-shows-college-era-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-dancing

[Alan Klein]

...

Fortunately none of us here had to make decisions in the middle of a pandemic unprecedented in modern times. None of us had to weigh the possibilities of deaths increasing due to the risk of hospital capacities being overwhelmed versus the risk of sending patients no longer requiring hospitalization back to the nursing homes from which they came. I'm not judging those decisions because I don't have enough clear information to do so. I'm not sure that anyone does or will until the crisis is over and a look back at lots of data is possible. Perhaps it will be difficult or impossible even then.

I coun't have described a better defence of what Trump did than that.

[Alan Klein]

As a favor, just because you find her "kinda cute", I'm linking a video of her dancing in college which went viral in conservative circles.

https://www.youtube.com/Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Dancing In College Video

Your comment about her being cute reminded me of that video, because it went viral on conservative social media with nasty comments attached. The comments and circulation of the video backfired as quite a lot of people actually found her to be kind of charming and adorable in it.

Watch the YouTube video above rather than the one in USA Today story. The YouTube version has the original music and is full-length.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/01/03/viral-video-shows-college-era-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-dancing

Mata Hari was cute too.

[TechTalk]

I coun't have described a better defence of what Trump did than that.

My comments were in the context of the decision made by Cuomo and the choices which he had to weigh regarding nursing homes. Depending on the decision and situation under discussion, those comments might be applicable to other circumstances and decisions—or they might not.

What decisions by Trump are you referring to defending? Is it the same defense that you will apply to decisions that Biden makes—or Cuomo?

[TechTalk]

Mata Hari was cute too.

And, apparently she could dance as well. Some contemporaries and historians believe she was a scapegoat and there are a variety of other opinions about her case.

In any event, she was executed.