Bear Pit: now the sole domicile of politics at LuLa

[jeremyrh]

I'm sure we all have our favourites

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/16/politics/fact-check-dale-top-15-donald-trump-lies/index.html

[Alan Klein]

What about the truths he kept.  He didn't get us in any new wars.  He canceled the Iran deal.  He destroyed ISIS.  He got us a new tax bill.  He lowered the temperature with North Korea.  He redid NAFTA.  He got the Chinese on the run with trade, although Biden will have to complete that issue.  He started to rebuild our military?  He got NATO countries to chip in more.  He allowed drilling for oil.  He eliminated many regulations that were impeding business and our economy.  He moved our embassy to Jerusalem. He kept his word of these and many other real issues, not like most of the phony issues you listed. 

Meanwhile, Biden lied and he isn't even the president yet.  He told us he plans to unite our people.  So he starts out dividing up jobs he's giving out based on gender and race.  How does dividing us up into groups make us all treated as Americans first? 

[LesPalenik]

The reason America is ahead of Canada in distribution is because of Trump's Warp Speed program.  The reason you're reading negative news is because the anti-Trump press will try to make it seem like Biden is saving the day.

The only thing Trump did with Warp Speed was rushing to his golf courses. And even that was not under his own power.
If anything, Trump bungled up pretty much everything about Covid-19. As to the development of the vaccine, it would have happened with or without OWS. The vaccine is now supplied by several companies, which released the vaccines pretty much at the same time. Pfizer vaccine which was the first in the USA was entirely self-funded. although OWS funds were used later for the actual vaccine purchase. 
BioNTech, a medium-sized German pharma company in central Germany was actually the first authorized vaccine in the Western world.  And Moderna and AstroZeneca were not far behind. China, Russia and India have now also their own vaccines.

Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine development and manufacturing costs have been entirely funded by the company. However, it did strike a deal with Operation Warp Speed for the U.S. government to buy about $2 billion of its vaccine, or 100 million doses, once it gets approved. "Pfizer is a very large company with substantial cash reserves," Goodman said. "I'm sure that [OWS] was helpful. I'm not sure about [whether] it wouldn't have happened without it."

While Goodman said Operation Warp Speed is certainly a success, he criticized the Trump administration for being in denial about the pandemic and downplaying its seriousness. Indeed, getting OWS off the ground was done in anything but warp speed, he said. It took months, he said, before the U.S. government got investing in vaccines in earnest. "Can you imagine where we could have been had these billions of additional dollars and investment had started kicking in January?" he said.

The small German biotech firm BioNTech, started by a husband and wife team with Turkish roots, had never brought a vaccine to market before. But its experimental technology has now become the first authorized for use in the Western world to help end the coronavirus pandemic.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/operation-warp-speed-trump-pfizer-moderna-vaccine-1.5806820

https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/meet-the-husband-and-wife-team-behind-the-u-k-s-approved-covid-19-vaccine-1.5213397

[Chris Kern]

It was reported that the Trump administration inflated the size of the US vaccine stockpile and that many hospitals are experiencing vaccine shortage.

While some reports have characterized it in those terms, it appears this issue was more a matter of bungled messaging rather than any attempt to mislead the public.

Initially, the federal government held back "second doses" in its allocations to the states because officials at the Department of Health and Human Services were not certain about the rate of supply from the manufacturers.

Once the supply pipeline was reliably established, they followed the suggestion of President-Elect Biden and began releasing all the doses in the federal government's possession, confident that new doses would be manufactured in time for individuals who had received their first dose to be administered the second dose as scheduled.  (HHS officials said they always intended to do this, although I haven't been able to find any contemporaneously published evidence to that effect.)

Apparently, political appointees in the Trump Administration—most notably Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar—were either confused or badly briefed.  Azar announced that the federal government would begin releasing the held-back doses after they actually had been sent to the states.

The vaccine roll-out is a complex process in a country as large and diverse as this one.  The Trump Administration has certainly been guilty of incompetence in dealing with the pandemic, as in many of the other things it has attempted, and the messaging has been scrambled—and often much worse than that, especially from Trump, himself—from the start.

But it appears that this "disappearing doses" story is the product more of misunderstanding and confusion than any deliberate deception.

[Peter McLennan]

What about the truths he kept.  He didn't get us in any new wars.

We went through this list of points before, Alan. They're still nearly all bullshit, except for the "he didn't get us in any new wars" one.

Yes, he did.  America is now at war with itself.

[JoeKitchen]

I think all you people just need to fly down to TX and have some BBQ. 

Not going to lie, it was worth it to risk it for the brisket.  Giordano's deep dish pizza, not so much; I'd advise a "stay at home order" on that one. 

But I could smell the barbeque in the plane after landing.  Seriously, I really could; I've never been in an airport that smelled that strong of anything before. 

In other news, I was able to photograph the Austin Federal Courthouse last night and today without any US Marshals running me down, like what usually happens when I've photographed other federal buildings.  With that said, there was an armed protest at the Capital building a mile away, so perhaps this was well timed. 

I am disappointed though that the Court House is the only successful modern architecture in Austin, which is why I am now in Dallas. 

[John Camp]

We went through this list of points before, Alan. They're still nearly all bullshit, except for the "he didn't get us in any new wars" one.

Yes, he did.  America is now at war with itself.

+1

[jeremyrh]

I think all you people just need to fly down to TX and have some BBQ. 

Not going to lie, it was worth it to risk it for the brisket. 

Just to put a face to the statistics - it was worth killing Alan so you could have a nice lunch?  It's true he writes a lot of nonsense but that does seem harsh!

[JoeKitchen]

We went through this list of points before, Alan. They're still nearly all bullshit, except for the "he didn't get us in any new wars" one.

Yes, he did.  America is now at war with itself.

No.  Obama is the one who broke us.  Trump did nothing to fix it, however he did not run on that, but it was Obama who started this. 

Obama is an incredibly arrogant man.  This has been commented on by people on both sides and he is writing a four part (750 page each) memoir on himself.  Nobody writes 3000 pages on himself without being arrogant.  So, when the country rejected Obama Care in 2010 and he lost the house, he could not understand why and blamed it on people being too stupid or racist. 

He stated this in part one of his memoir he just released, and until he released it I did not want to believe he was purposely divisive.  However the memoir makes it obvious he was. 

His solution to fix this faux problem was to only have Joe Biden deal with the republicans, because Biden is white and will be better received.  Once again, he admitted this thinking in his part one just released.  Of course this only made matters worse, which Obama blames, yet again, on an increase in racism against him.  However the real cause was just basic human nature. 

If you are to work with someone and that person only ever sends his lackey, and makes it a point for you to know you will only ever deal with his lackey, you will naturally loose respect for that person.  I can remember John Boehner complaining about this on the news once, that Obama would never meet with the republicans.  "Obama likes to play golf, I like to play golf, why doesn't Obama ever invite me to play with him?," or something like that. 

So, in 2012, Obama became a demagogue, he split the country into different racial groups and pitted them against each other.  If you don't believe me, just look at the race relation stats.   We were never more unified then in 2009, but in 2011 race relations started to decrease.  That was Obama's doing because he simply could not understand that he lost the house because Obama Care was a failure.  He went out of his way to divide and conquer. 

We have been dealing with this fallout ever since. 

Obama ran on unity and broke us.  Trump never made unity part of his platform, and did nothing to fix it.  And Biden, who also ran on unity, is now further dividing us. 

[Alan Klein]

The only thing Trump did with Warp Speed was rushing to his golf courses. And even that was not under his own power.
If anything, Trump bungled up pretty much everything about Covid-19. As to the development of the vaccine, it would have happened with or without OWS. The vaccine is now supplied by several companies, which released the vaccines pretty much at the same time. Pfizer vaccine which was the first in the USA was entirely self-funded. although OWS funds were used later for the actual vaccine purchase. 
BioNTech, a medium-sized German pharma company in central Germany was actually the first authorized vaccine in the Western world.  And Moderna and AstroZeneca were not far behind. China, Russia and India have now also their own vaccines.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/operation-warp-speed-trump-pfizer-moderna-vaccine-1.5806820

https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/meet-the-husband-and-wife-team-behind-the-u-k-s-approved-covid-19-vaccine-1.5213397

Warp speed included financing, distribution, and other measures the federal government took that helped speed the process.  The hangup now is the incompetence of the states who were not really prepared to carry the torch to the finish line.  They so convinced themselves that Trump wouldn't get the vaccine out, they sat on their butts for six months not preparing. 

[Alan Klein]

While some reports have characterized it in those terms, it appears this issue was more a matter of bungled messaging rather than any attempt to mislead the public.

Initially, the federal government held back "second doses" in its allocations to the states because officials at the Department of Health and Human Services were not certain about the rate of supply from the manufacturers.

Once the supply pipeline was reliably established, they followed the suggestion of President-Elect Biden and began releasing all the doses in the federal government's possession, confident that new doses would be manufactured in time for individuals who had received their first dose to be administered the second dose as scheduled.  (HHS officials said they always intended to do this, although I haven't been able to find any contemporaneously published evidence to that effect.)

Apparently, political appointees in the Trump Administration—most notably Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar—were either confused or badly briefed.  Azar announced that the federal government would begin releasing the held-back doses after they actually had been sent to the states.

The vaccine roll-out is a complex process in a country as large and diverse as this one.  The Trump Administration has certainly been guilty of incompetence in dealing with the pandemic, as in many of the other things it has attempted, and the messaging has been scrambled—and often much worse than that, especially from Trump, himself—from the start.

But it appears that this "disappearing doses" story is the product more of misunderstanding and confusion than any deliberate deception.

I'm worried that I'll never get my second dose, possibly not even my first shot, at 75,  because Biden released the first dose to practically everyone.,  By him opening it up, 16 year-olds who smoke could wind up getting the vaccine before 80 year-olds.  If Trump did this, you'd be calling that incompetence, that he's killing people.  But because Biden is doing it, it's being applauded. 

[Alan Klein]

No.  Obama is the one who broke us.  Trump did nothing to fix it, however he did not run on that, but it was Obama who started this. 

Obama is an incredibly arrogant man.  This has been commented on by people on both sides and he is writing a four part (750 page each) memoir on himself.  Nobody writes 3000 pages on himself without being arrogant.  So, when the country rejected Obama Care in 2010 and he lost the house, he could not understand why and blamed it on people being too stupid or racist. 

He stated this in part one of his memoir he just released, and until he released it I did not want to believe he was purposely divisive.  However the memoir makes it obvious he was. 

His solution to fix this faux problem was to only have Joe Biden deal with the republicans, because Biden is white and will be better received.  Once again, he admitted this thinking in his part one just released.  Of course this only made matters worse, which Obama blames, yet again, on an increase in racism against him.  However the real cause was just basic human nature. 

If you are to work with someone and that person only ever sends his lackey, and makes it a point for you to know you will only ever deal with his lackey, you will naturally loose respect for that person.  I can remember John Boehner complaining about this on the news once, that Obama would never meet with the republicans.  "Obama likes to play golf, I like to play golf, why doesn't Obama ever invite me to play with him?," or something like that. 

So, in 2012, Obama became a demagogue, he split the country into different racial groups and pitted them against each other.  If you don't believe me, just look at the race relation stats.   We were never more unified then in 2009, but in 2011 race relations started to decrease.  That was Obama's doing because he simply could not understand that he lost the house because Obama Care was a failure.  He went out of his way to divide and conquer. 

We have been dealing with this fallout ever since. 

Obama ran on unity and broke us.  Trump never made unity part of his platform, and did nothing to fix it.  And Biden, who also ran on unity, is now further dividing us. 

While Obama made it worse, playing the race card and identity politics has been a Democratic practice for decades.  It divides people up into groups causing the very hostility among those groups that Democrats claim they're against. Biden's continuing the practice by selecting people for his administration based on gender and race.  He brags about it.  How does that unite Americans? He should be hiring people based on who could do best for the country. 

[jeremyrh]

While Obama made it worse, playing the race card and identity politics has been a Democratic practice for decades.  It divides people up into groups causing the very hostility among those groups that Democrats claim they're against. Biden's continuing the practice by selecting people for his administration based on gender and race.  He brags about it.  How does that unite Americans? He should be hiring people based on who could do best for the country.

You're right, Alan, coloured folk should know their place, right?

[Alan Klein]

You're right, Alan, coloured folk should know their place, right?

That's a racist comment you made totally at odds with my point and beliefs.  Even though I voted for McCain, I was proud when Obama became president, that America voted in our first black president.  But I was totally disappointed that he continued playing the Democrat Party's way of racial and identity politics to get votes and continuing it after his election.  After all, he promised to unite us as a people and put race behind us.  He lied about that and his continuing racial policies helped divide the country.  Biden is continuing the practice.  You really need to stick with British politics because you don't really understand what goes on here. 

[jeremyrh]

That's a racist comment you made totally at odds with my point and beliefs.  Even though I voted for McCain, I was proud when Obama became president, that America voted in our first black president.  But I was totally disappointed that he continued playing the Democrat Party's way of racial and identity politics to get votes and continuing it after his election.  After all, he promised to unite us as a people and put race behind us.  He lied about that and his continuing racial policies helped divide the country.  Biden is continuing the practice.  You really need to stick with British politics because you don't really understand what goes on here.

Exactly my point - you were happy that Obama was elected as long as he continued to work for white men, and now you're upset that people get into power who have a different idea of "good for America" from you.

[Alan Klein]

Exactly my point - you were happy that Obama was elected as long as he continued to work for white men, and now you're upset that people get into power who have a different idea of "good for America" from you.

"Work for white men"?  What are you talking about?  He was president.  People worked for him.  He was in charge.  Today he;s worth over $100 million dollars. 

Biden was the one as Obama was who claimed what was good for America.  That was that we're neither black nor white, gay or straight, male or female, but rather all red in blood.  That's what they said.  That we would be color-blind.  I'm for that.  Everyone treated equally, that race, gender, and personal factors would have no bearing.  I'm all for that.  But they practice the opposite.  Jobs are assigned by race and gender.  That's racial and identity politics to get the vote.  If that's "good for America" I don't want any part of it, nor would any fair-minded person.

[Robert Roaldi]

A forgotten incident from the past when white supremacists almost toppled a government, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55648011.

[Peter McLennan]

No.  Obama is the one who broke us.  Trump did nothing to fix it, however he did not run on that, but it was Obama who started this. 

Obama is an incredibly arrogant man.  This has been commented on by people on both sides and he is writing a four part (750 page each) memoir on himself.  Nobody writes 3000 pages on himself without being arrogant.  So, when the country rejected Obama Care in 2010 and he lost the house, he could not understand why and blamed it on people being too stupid or racist. 

He stated this in part one of his memoir he just released, and until he released it I did not want to believe he was purposely divisive.  However the memoir makes it obvious he was. 

His solution to fix this faux problem was to only have Joe Biden deal with the republicans, because Biden is white and will be better received.  Once again, he admitted this thinking in his part one just released.  Of course this only made matters worse, which Obama blames, yet again, on an increase in racism against him.  However the real cause was just basic human nature. 

If you are to work with someone and that person only ever sends his lackey, and makes it a point for you to know you will only ever deal with his lackey, you will naturally loose respect for that person.  I can remember John Boehner complaining about this on the news once, that Obama would never meet with the republicans.  "Obama likes to play golf, I like to play golf, why doesn't Obama ever invite me to play with him?," or something like that. 

So, in 2012, Obama became a demagogue, he split the country into different racial groups and pitted them against each other.  If you don't believe me, just look at the race relation stats.   We were never more unified then in 2009, but in 2011 race relations started to decrease.  That was Obama's doing because he simply could not understand that he lost the house because Obama Care was a failure.  He went out of his way to divide and conquer. 

We have been dealing with this fallout ever since. 

Obama ran on unity and broke us.  Trump never made unity part of his platform, and did nothing to fix it.  And Biden, who also ran on unity, is now further dividing us.

A meritless defence.  Equating Obama’s book with Trump’s consistent on-camera incitement to violence is a desperate false equivalent.

[jeremyrh]

Jobs are assigned by race and gender.  That's racial and identity politics to get the vote.  If that's "good for America" I don't want any part of it, nor would any fair-minded person.

Maybe a woman knows what's best for women, and a black person knows what's best for black people, or can bring their perspectives into policy making.  And maybe carryoing on with in-built bias from decades of injustice isn't a feasible way forward for a country.

[Alan Klein]

Maybe a woman knows what's best for women, and a black person knows what's best for black people, or can bring their perspectives into policy making.  And maybe carrying on with in-built bias from decades of injustice isn't a feasible way forward for a country.

We've been doing that for decades favoring minorities and women.   All it's done is perpetuate inequality causing people who are not minorities or women to be discriminated against.  That's set up bitterness, pitting one group against the other.  This is identity politics. It creates tribal conflict which is being played out on the streets now.  People should be judged by their ability and hard work, not on the color of their skin or gender.

Should we judge photos by checking on the color or sex of the photographer?