PLAYPEN: Covid-19 Everything Political

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

It's your total lack of any sensitivity with your remarks that is truly astonishing...

My sensitivity to people's plight is 13.5 times larger. You obsess over 2 million, I obsess over 27 million.

[LesPalenik]

What? 

Are you making this up as you go now? 

Tell me what private companies do this.

Just recently, Trump retweeted vengefully a call to fire Dr. Anthony Fauci after the nation’s top infectious disease expert said lives could have been saved if the country had shut down sooner. Not exactly professional or presidential.

I don't keep track of all the people Trump fired, starting with Rex Tillerson, and ending with Marie Yovanovitch who commented unfavourably on Trump, but there must be a long list of all his firings.

[Alan Klein]

There are too many restaurants out there. Unfortunately, even after relaxing the lockdowns, quite a few of their employers will be forced to permanently shut down the restaurants and bars.

I agree.  There's going to be a bloodbath.  We were going to get hit with a recession anyway.  The virus has accelerated that and will make it worse.  The problem is the government will print a lot of fake money and borrow a lot to try to prevent the recession.  It won't work. That's just going to add to future debt and devalue the currency through inflation. Although it will seem mean, we have to let the recession play out cleaning out all those restaurants and businesses that are operating marginally.  Their workers would move on to more productive jobs with better companies.  By trying to bail them out, government is playing winners and losers and not letting the free market work.  That's not capitalism.  It's socialism redistributing the wealth of the country in an inefficient and wasteful way. 

[Alan Klein]

Yes, that appears to be his plan. Avoid blame at all costs. And your grandchild will ask you one day "What did Donald Trump do during the great 2020 pandemic?" "You mean Cadet Bonespurs? Oh, he avoided any blame, Sally. It's what great leaders do. Keep that in mind. When the call comes, always take one step back."

Trump can't doing anything right.  First you castigated him for wanting to decide for the whole country when to reopen it calling him a dictator.  Then, when he backs off and gives it to the governors as you demanded, you complain he's a coward.  As usual with you guys, Trump is damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.  We get it.  You don't like him.

[Alan Klein]

The great American propoganda machine...Alan you should not get sucked in so much.

Why are you an apologist for that killer Castro?

[elliot_n]

Trump can't doing anything right.  First you castigated him for wanting to decide for the whole country when to reopen it calling him a dictator.  Then, when he backs off and gives it to the governors as you demanded, you complain he's a coward.  As usual with you guys, Trump is damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.  We get it.  You don't like him.

I applaud him for handing over the reins to Birx and Fauci. Hopefully he will now retire to his golf course.

[Alan Klein]

And why is the US broke?

Because we're becoming socialists. 

[Craig Lamson]

Just recently, Trump retweeted vengefully a call to fire Dr. Anthony Fauci after the nation’s top infectious disease expert said lives could have been saved if the country had shut down sooner. Not exactly professional or presidential.

I don't keep track of all the people Trump fired, starting with Rex Tillerson, and ending with Marie Yovanovitch who commented unfavourably on Trump, but there must be a long list of all his firings.

Gosh, imagine that, a leader who removes his subordinates who are insubordinate. I'm sure no other US President in history has every done that.  OMB virus infects another,

[LesPalenik]

Why are you an apologist for that killer Castro?

Actually, Che Guevara was worse than Fidel Castro.
 

In 1962, the official Cuban newspaper Revolución reported that Guevara said, “in times of excessive tension we cannot proceed weakly. At the Sierra Maestra, we executed many people by firing squad without knowing if they were fully guilty. At times, the Revolution cannot stop to conduct much investigation; it has the obligation to triumph.”

In his own diaries, Guevara waxed poetic: “I see it printed in the night sky that I ... howling like one possessed, will assault the barricades or the trenches, will take my bloodstained weapon and, consumed with fury, slaughter any enemy who falls into my hands.”

He later wrote in one of his diaries about how he shot a peasant who admitted leaking information to the enemy. “He gasped for a little while and was dead,” Guevara wrote. “To execute a human being is something ugly, but [also] exemplary.” Thousands were killed by the Cuban regime, with many killings linked to Guevara.

“The regime that Che Guevara co-founded is the only one in modern history in the Western Hemisphere to have herded gays into forced labor camps.”

In 1959, leftist journalist José Pardo Llada reported that Guevara told him: “We must eliminate all newspapers; we cannot make a revolution with free press. Newspapers are instruments of the oligarchy.” Fontova says that was in line with Che’s actions. “When Che Guevara first arrived in Havana, he moved into the biggest, most luxurious mansion in the city. A Cuban journalist, Antonio Llano Montes, wrote about it in 1959. Naturally, Che Guevara's goons paid him a little visit,” Fontova noted.

[Peter McLennan]

Because we're becoming socialists.

And there you have it, boys. Absolute proof of the stupidity of attempting reasonable discussion here.

It is, however, mildly entertaining, if frequently infuriating.

[Alan Klein]

Alan, you have a private pension scheme most likely. I was talking about Social Security.

No, my pension is government from NYC/NYS. My last job was 14 years with the NYC School Construction Authority.  My wife worked over twenty years as a NYC public school teacher.  So her pension is government too. We both get SS which is separate.  We're very fortunate but we sacrificed higher paying jobs at the time with no or little pensions.  Of course, if the state goes broke, and there's not enough cheese to go around, just how protected are we?  After all, who would have figured we were getting hit with a virus?  We plan, God laughs.

[LesPalenik]

Because we're becoming socialists.

What you need, is more guns and lawyers.

[Alan Klein]

where do you see a connection between cancer research and loss of liberties?

If anything, the current US president is interfering with the work of medical experts and researchers.

Well, you made a connection between good government and a government that has good cancer care?  Where's the connection there?  To me a good government is one that gives you your political and economic freedoms so you can develop the best medical care privately.  Then you have the best of both worlds.  Isn't that a better way? 

[Alan Klein]

Similar to USA where you can get fired for saying bad things about the Trump family.

Oh please, Les.  How can you compare a dictatorial regime that kills political enemies to Trump firing employees? 

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

No, my pension is government from NYC/NYS...

Well, pardon the semantics, but I consider that still private, as opposed to Social Security. Private in the sense that Democrats were buying votes by showering teacher unions, etc. with lavish pension promises. As opposed to the federal Social Security which is totally ignorant to your political affiliation or anything else but your earnings record.

So, if you insist on technicality, you are right, it is a government pension. Buth chances that a city like NY or Chicago could go bankrupt are indeed much higher than of the federal government.

[Alan Klein]

In 2019, the USA had 2.3 million inmates.

They're not political prisoners.  They commited crimes, like lying to the FBI. 

[faberryman]

How does Mr. Pillow make them in Minnesota with American labor?  Ok, they're pillows, not T shirts.  But pillows?  I think T shirts are more difficult to make.

He charges a lot and sells exclusively to the idiots who spend their whole day watching The Shopping Channel on cable TV.

[Alan Klein]

If you start making t-shirts and pillows in the USA...you'll see your average wage drop to compete with "3rd world" countries. Is that the direction the USA wants to take? Do they really want to compete with China and Vietnam?

You have it backwards.  What happens is as wages drop, then business will see the profitability to bring manufacturing home.  Of course, I don't want to see wages drop.  That means America is becoming less productive.  The level of wages is based on productivity.  But what happens is the more dollars the government prints, the less it's value to purchase things from others overseas.  So it starts to become advantageous to manufacture at home.  Of course other countries are printing too.  So it might equal out. 

[faberryman]

Trump can't doing anything right.  First you castigated him for wanting to decide for the whole country when to reopen it calling him a dictator.  Then, when he backs off and gives it to the governors as you demanded, you complain he's a coward.  As usual with you guys, Trump is damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.  We get it.  You don't like him.

You keep confusing me with someone else.

[Alan Klein]

Actually, Che Guevara was worse than Fidel Castro.
 

Castro used Che for his killing. He didn't want to dirty his own hands.