Author Topic: The first real crises of Trump’s presidency  (Read 5126 times)

Chan

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Re: The first real crises of Trump’s presidency
« Reply #15 on: February 29, 2020, 08:27:05 AM »
The lack of preparation for the arrival of a pandemic, further agitated by an administration that favors loyalists over qualified professionals, has left the US in a particularly vulnerable position.  The recent whistle blower account of the initial handling described a careless protocol that hastened the arrival of the virus.  The current testing standards allowed for a general population outbreak. 
Financial losses are being exacerbated by the lack of trust in the President.  Trump, a serial liar, can not assuage fears or inform the public at this critical time.  An anti-science, alternative facts administration has little ammunition to sooth markets or calm pandemic panic.  Even Trump supporters don’t trust the commander in chief to provide reliable emergency information.  This type of event was warned about by many an ex Trump staffer-and sadly, now it’s here.

I think you are being highly melodramatic.

I'm not.  Talking point noted.

How about some details on history for a starter?

It is true VP Pence was picked by Trump to lead the response to the Caronavirus. Does VP Pence have any medical knowledge? No, he doesn't.

But what is good for the goose is good for the gander which means:

Back in 2014, there was the Ebola outbreak scare in the US. At that time president Obama picked Ron Klain, a lawyer and political operative, to lead the Ebola response in 2014. Did Klain have any medical knowledge? No, he didn't.

So how is this any different than what Obama did?

I am less critical of Obama.  Partially because his political vision is similar to mine and partially because he was a great President who left little room for armchair political critics.  However, I don’t feel anything like blind loyalty.  His administration would never have considered cutting funding and weakening the CDC or hiring inept political allies to fill crucial government roles.  You can bet the left would have loudly criticized him if he had.  Say what you will about the left, but they are not so fragile that they are afraid to debate their candidate’s merits.   I did have a few criticisms of Obama, such as his turning to executive order in response to the gridlock in Congress, a move that opened the door for future abuses of the power of the office and subsequent whataboutisms.  Albeit excuses akin to:  My husband sent my kids to their rooms for squabbling with their siblings so its ok for me to beat them.   The whataboutisms have reached the level of absurdity.  They would be funny if it didn’t seem they have become an adequate substitute for accountability.

And the financial markets are not reacting to a lack of trust in Trump. They are reacting like they always do to "make a buck". China has more cases and more deaths caused by this virus than any other country on Earth. Investors are worried about the global economy since China is the second largest economy in the world and how it will affect trade on every country on Earth that does business with China. In other words, "their wallets".

Most investor profits are tied to market increases.  There is not enough profit incentive to create a crash.  If there were, they would occur more frequently

As for the virus. A virus isn't political. It is a virus and does what it wants to so the outcome is; it is going to infect people and can't be "cured by any political rhetoric" coming from either republicans or democrats. To put it in perspective, right now there is no vaccine that cures this virus. If an effective vaccine is not found, then the virus will "run it's course" just like the "Black Death" (bubonic plague) did in Europe in medieval times.

But, you don't think Trump is doing enough about this virus? Fair enough.
 Agreed

Now I'm going to assume you lean Democratic and favor lots of democratic policies like "open borders".

Hypothetically speaking, lets say a caravan of 4000 illegals travels to the US border from south and central america and 100 of them have this virus. Since California is a "sanctuary state", lets say California welcomes them with open arms. Then it a few weeks of time, thousands of people come down with virus in California and since viruses don't respect state lines, many people in the other lower 48 states get sick with this virus.

Would you blame Governor Newsome for his policy of making California a sanctuary state which allowed this virus to travel across the US from the west coast to the east coast, from the norther border with Canada to the southern border with Mexico infecting the entire US.............the same as you are blaming Trump right now?

Judging from your first post and your extreme hatred of Trump, I think you would "not" give Newsome any blame. And if this scenario did become Reality, I have a feeling, you'd blame Trump instead because you hate Trump.

The reality is it's a much more likely scenerio that US citizens snow-birding down to Mexico will take the coronavirus with them and infect Mexicans.

« Last Edit: February 29, 2020, 09:02:04 AM by Chan »

rbgar

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Re: The first real crises of Trump’s presidency
« Reply #16 on: February 29, 2020, 09:17:33 AM »
democrats suck at surfing, and most everything else  :D

Bean

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Re: The first real crises of Trump’s presidency
« Reply #17 on: February 29, 2020, 10:05:23 AM »
...At the same time we have the WHO raising the threat level to their highest level ...

"The World Health Organization declined to call the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic Friday, but raised the global risk level for the disease from ‘high’ to ‘very high,’ "

So no, not the highest level...

PonoBill

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Re: The first real crises of Trump’s presidency
« Reply #18 on: February 29, 2020, 10:11:37 AM »
...At the same time we have the WHO raising the threat level to their highest level ...

"The World Health Organization declined to call the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic Friday, but raised the global risk level for the disease from ‘high’ to ‘very high,’ "

So no, not the highest level...

Wow, very high. I wonder how much higher that is than high.

Whenever someone says "The WHO" I start hearing tunes in my head.

The only market bounce likely is of the dead cat variety. The underlying causes aren't simply panic, though of course, the market is good at that. Very good. Maybe even the goodest.

One sure result of a significant crisis is the light it sheds on leadership and institutions. China's leadership flaws have been exposed. Without extremely harsh crackdowns on dissent I expect there will be some kind of reckoning. That said, if I were in Xi Jinping's shoes I'd be lying like mad while I did what I could to contain the epidemic--there's no big upside to panicking 1.4 billion people. I think he did that. The negative light is not that the information was suppressed but that there was so little in the way of preparedness to deal with a crisis of this kind.

Trump lies by reflex. You'd have to be completely oblivious to not understand that. To hear him issue conflicting statements stacked on top of each other is simply meaningless. What the crisis illuminates is that Trump gutted the CDC, as he did the EPA, and now we are not ready for a medical shitstorm--Coronavirus or whatever comes next.

I didn't realize he'd done that though I'm not surprised. Now the entire country knows.

Putting Pence in charge is simply funny. I can't think of any politician or bureaucrat that is less likely to be effective. Maybe Bernie. And using the "Obama did the same thing" argument is self-defeating, or it should be. It never worked with my Mom, and in fact was simply tantamount to a confession that indeed, not only had I done something despicable, but I knew it was wrong when I did it.

Wasn't Trump supposed to do better than Obama? Personally I think Obama did a shitty job as president, damaging his ability to govern with his arrogance, and marginalizing the checks and balances our government requires with procedural tricks and executive orders. I only see this stuff from ten thousand feet--I have no great insight into politics and governance, but the end result sucked. Excusing Trump's dipshit decisions by pointing to Obama seems absurd.
« Last Edit: February 29, 2020, 10:46:31 AM by PonoBill »
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Quickbeam

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Re: The first real crises of Trump’s presidency
« Reply #19 on: February 29, 2020, 10:24:26 AM »
Whenever someone says "The WHO" I start hearing tunes in my head.

Very good   ;D
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Quickbeam

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Re: The first real crises of Trump’s presidency
« Reply #20 on: February 29, 2020, 10:28:23 AM »
I live in British Columbia, Canada. Our province has a population of just over 5 million people. I googled the population of the United States, and it showed the U.S. has a population of just under 330 million.

I mention this because this morning I caught just the tail end of a news conference involving the Premier of British Columbia. In answer to a question, he mentioned that British Columbia has done more tests for the coronavirus than have been conducted in all of the United States.

So if true, and I have no reason to believe it isn’t true, then our small little province of approx. 5 million people has done more testing than the entire country of the U.S., with approx. 330 million people. This might give you an indication of how the U.S. government is handling this threat.
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Re: The first real crises of Trump’s presidency
« Reply #21 on: February 29, 2020, 10:32:00 AM »
...At the same time we have the WHO raising the threat level to their highest level ...

"The World Health Organization declined to call the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic Friday, but raised the global risk level for the disease from ‘high’ to ‘very high,’ "

So no, not the highest level...

The World Health Oragnization disagrees.

“We are on the highest level of alert or highest level of risk assessment in terms of spread and in terms of impact,” said Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO’s health emergencies program. “This is a reality check for every government on the planet: Wake up. Get ready. This virus may be on its way and you need to be ready. You have a duty to your citizens, you have a duty to the world to be ready.”


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Re: The first real crises of Trump’s presidency
« Reply #22 on: February 29, 2020, 10:51:58 AM »
I live in British Columbia, Canada. Our province has a population of just over 5 million people. I googled the population of the United States, and it showed the U.S. has a population of just under 330 million.

I mention this because this morning I caught just the tail end of a news conference involving the Premier of British Columbia. In answer to a question, he mentioned that British Columbia has done more tests for the coronavirus than have been conducted in all of the United States.

So if true, and I have no reason to believe it isn’t true, then our small little province of approx. 5 million people has done more testing than the entire country of the U.S., with approx. 330 million people. This might give you an indication of how the U.S. government is handling this threat.

The testing has been a problem of its own.

As the highly infectious coronavirus jumped from China to country after country in January and February, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lost valuable weeks that could have been used to track its possible spread in the United States because it insisted upon devising its own test.

The federal agency shunned the World Health Organization test guidelines used by other countries and set out to create a more complicated test of its own that could identify a range of similar viruses. But when it was sent to labs across the country in the first week of February, it didn’t work as expected. The CDC test correctly identified COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus. But in all but a handful of state labs, it falsely flagged the presence of the other viruses in harmless samples.


For that reason very few tests have been done.  The lack of testing is one reason why we do not have an accurate read on the issue.
« Last Edit: February 29, 2020, 10:54:22 AM by Admin »

Bean

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Re: The first real crises of Trump’s presidency
« Reply #23 on: February 29, 2020, 11:09:25 AM »
That's pretty scary stuff for sure.

Just today - the FDA will allow some laboratories in the US to immediately use tests they have developed and validated to achieve more rapid testing.  State public health labs can immediately begin local testing and possibly get results within hours.

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Re: The first real crises of Trump’s presidency
« Reply #24 on: February 29, 2020, 12:15:10 PM »
Kinda reminds me of NASA.   17,000 employees whose principal mission seems to be: orbiting the Washington Beltway.  Here's a story of initiative that used to be common here. Instead, like GE, GM, etc. we are winding down, cashing out and letting Private Equity suck marrow from the bones. 

https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2020-astra-rocket/


Jim


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PonoBill

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Re: The first real crises of Trump’s presidency
« Reply #25 on: February 29, 2020, 02:23:53 PM »
Cool article.
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