Playing Politics, The New GOP House

[Phil1111 910]

So instead of concentrating on the "peoples work". Republicans have gone the way everyone expected. Using the gavel and their majority to play political games and conducting theater.

1.Republicans pushed through a measure to create a powerful new committee to scrutinize what they have charged is an effort by the government to target and silence conservatives.

2. House Republicans Vote to Rescind I.R.S. Funding

3. Upcoming Biden's impeachment

4. Biden's laptop.

[kallend 1,623]

So tax cheats and evaders become the first constituency to receive a present from the GOP House.

Fortunately the measure won't go anywhere.

 

[Phil1111 910]

The counter to playing politics(propaganda) to mislead the ignorant base, is education. In Finland elementary schools teach children how to read news stories.

"A typical lesson that Saara Martikka, a teacher in Hameenlinna, Finland, gives her students goes like this: She presents her eighth graders with news articles. Together, they discuss: What’s the purpose of the article? How and when was it written? What are the author’s central claims?

“Just because it’s a good thing or it’s a nice thing doesn’t mean it’s true or it’s valid,” she said. In a class last month, she showed students three TikTok videos, and they discussed the creators’ motivations and the effect that the videos had on them.

Her goal, like that of teachers around Finland, is to help students learn to identify false information....Finland ranked No. 1 of 41 European countries on resilience against misinformation for the fifth time in a row in a survey

Finland’s success is not just the result of its strong education system, which is one of the best in the world, but also because of a concerted effort to teach students about fake news. Media literacy is part of the national core curriculum starting in preschool....

After Finland, the European countries that ranked highest for resilience to misinformation in the Open Society Institute survey were Norway, Denmark, Estonia, Ireland and Sweden....

The United States was not included in the survey, but other polls show that misinformation and disinformation have become more prevalent since 2016 and that Americans’ trust in the news media is near a record low. A survey by Gallup, published in October, found that just 34 percent of Americans trusted the mass media to report the news fully, accurately and fairly, slightly higher than the lowest number that the organization recorded, in 2016. In Finland, 76 percent of Finns consider print and digital newspapers to be reliable,"

So perhaps when you hear someone say they don't trust or read MSM. What you're really hearing is that they love to digest propaganda. i.e. FOX.

 

[wolfriverjoe 1,340]

A long time ago in a college level English Composition class, we had an exercise in this sort of critical thinking. This was just before the 'turn of the century' (98 or 99), so Google wasn't an option.

We were given an article from a tabloid (Weekly World News?) and asked to pick it apart.

It was full of glaring errors, and most of the class spotted most of them. I impressed the teacher somewhat when I pointed out that the article referenced Antarctica, and said something to the effect of 'the article says they have to leave in October, because of the coming winter. Southern hemisphere has spring in October.' Nobody else had noticed that one.

My parents taught me to analyze and critically examine stuff like that. It's a handy skill that is VERY lacking. 
The number of people that fell for Trump and all his bullshit is a clear example of that.

The number of people that fell for (and continue to believe) his "Fake News!!!!" garbage is both frightening and depressing.

[kallend 1,623]

 

Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), voted to raise the debt ceiling three times during Trump’s tenure without insisting on spending cuts in return. The GOP demand for cuts — and threats of a debt default — only occur when a Democrat is in the White House, such as Obama in 2011 and Biden now.

The national debt rose by nearly $7.8 trillion while Trump was in office.

Hypocrites!

[Phil1111 910]

2 minutes ago, kallend said:

Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), voted to raise the debt ceiling three times during Trump’s tenure without insisting on spending cuts in return. The GOP demand for cuts — and threats of a debt default — only occur when a Democrat is in the White House, such as Obama in 2011 and Biden now.

The national debt rose by nearly $7.8 trillion while Trump was in office.

Hypocrites!

Yes but now the trumpocrites have control authority over the speaker. So the overall function of the house is different. Wait till all the committees start their investigations. Wait till budget and debt ceiling kingmakers start their nonsense.

[wolfriverjoe 1,340]

4 hours ago, kallend said:

 

Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), voted to raise the debt ceiling three times during Trump’s tenure without insisting on spending cuts in return. The GOP demand for cuts — and threats of a debt default — only occur when a Democrat is in the White House, such as Obama in 2011 and Biden now.

The national debt rose by nearly $7.8 trillion while Trump was in office.

Hypocrites!

Heather Cox Richardson pointed out two very interesting things:

The thing that raised the debt the most in recent history was the "Trump Tax Cuts', that went mostly to the rich.

The two ways to reduce the debt are to reduce spending or to increase income. Putting the tax rates back to where they were in 2016 would go a long way to reducing the debt.

What do you think the chances are of that happening? (we really need a 'sarcasm' font)

[kallend 1,623]

15 minutes ago, wolfriverjoe said:

Heather Cox Richardson pointed out two very interesting things:

The thing that raised the debt the most in recent history was the "Trump Tax Cuts', that went mostly to the rich.

The two ways to reduce the debt are to reduce spending or to increase income. Putting the tax rates back to where they were in 2016 would go a long way to reducing the debt.

What do you think the chances are of that happening? (we really need a 'sarcasm' font)

During the four years of the Trump administration, the national debt rose by  24.8%.

And we weren't even in a recession.

Yet the GOP clings to the myth that tax cuts pay for themselves, and morons believe them.

[JerryBaumchen 1,048]

46 minutes ago, kallend said:

During the four years of the Trump administration, the national debt rose by  24.8%.

And we weren't even in a recession.

Yet the GOP clings to the myth that tax cuts pay for themselves, and morons believe them.

Hi John,

David Stockman, Reagan's economic advisor, got sent to the outhouse for even suggesting that Reagan's Trickle Down Economy would not work.

Jerry Baumchen

PS)  I think it is moran.

 

Edited January 20, 2023 by JerryBaumchen

[kallend 1,623]

2 hours ago, JerryBaumchen said:

Hi John,

David Stockman, Reagan's economic advisor, got sent to the outhouse for even suggesting that Reagan's Trickle Down Economy would not work.

Jerry Baumchen

PS)  I think it is moran.

 

Sorry, yoor rite:
 

[Coreece 190]

20 hours ago, kallend said:

During the four years of the Trump administration, the national debt rose by  24.8%.

And we weren't even in a recession.

No, we were in a pandemic.  

Your thought process sounds similar to  conservatives I heard praising Trump the other day for getting gas prices under $2 dollars during his administration.

 

 

[piisfish 135]

38 minutes ago, Coreece said:

No, we were in a pandemic 

 

 

What pandemic? I thought it was a scam. 

[kallend 1,623]

37 minutes ago, Coreece said:

No, we were in a pandemic.  

 

 

 

You mean the one he was in denial about for months? The one that he grossly mismanaged resulting in hundreds of thousands of excess fatalities**?  The one about which he bragged "“You have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero."?   The one about which he said "It’s going to disappear. It is disappearing.”

That pandemic?

 

** The Trump Death Clock  as of January 5, 2021 stood at  350,664.  This is the estimate of excess deaths due to Trump's initial inaction.

[Coreece 190]

13 minutes ago, kallend said:

You mean the one he was in denial about for months?

The one he declared in March 2020 when the national debt suddenly spiked.

[kallend 1,623]

37 minutes ago, Coreece said:

The one he declared in March 2020 when the national debt suddenly spiked.

Must have been the cost of bleach and horse dewormer.

[kallend 1,623]

Coreece forgets where the buck stops.

• New York Times, 8/6/20: "one country stands alone, as the only affluent nation to have suffered a severe, sustained outbreak for more than four months: the United States."

• Washington Post, 3/20/20: "Trump's insistence on the contrary seemed to rest in his relationship with China's President Xi Jingping, whom Trump believed was providing him with reliable information about how the virus was spreading in China, despite reports from intelligence agencies that Chinese officials were not being candid about the true scale of the crisis."
• New York Times, 4/11/2020: "Throughout January, as Mr. Trump repeatedly played down the seriousness of the virus and focused on other issues, an array of figures inside his government — from top White House advisers to experts deep in the cabinet departments and intelligence agencies — identified the threat, sounded alarms and made clear the need for aggressive action."
• POLITICO, 4/15/20: "Trump, however, echoed many of those same assurances regarding China and its response to the virus throughout January and February, as the unique coronavirus began to infiltrate countries around the world. Just days before the U.S. recorded its first death from Covid-19, Trump touted China's government for its transparency and hard work to defeat the coronavirus that causes the illness."

As COVID-19 swept across the country, Trump dithered, delayed and denied, leading to persistent shortages and delays.  

• New York Times, 3/28/20: "As the deadly virus spread from China with ferocity across the United States between late January and early March, large-scale testing of people who might have been infected did not happen — because of technical flaws, regulatory hurdles, business-as-usual bureaucracies and lack of leadership."
• New York Times, 7/6/20: "In recent weeks, as cases have surged in many states, the demand for testing has soared, surpassing capacity and creating a new testing crisis."
• Washington Post, 7/8/20: "Health-care workers on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic are encountering shortages of masks, gowns, face shields and gloves — a frustrating recurrence of a struggle that haunted the first months of the crisis."
• CNN, 7/14/20: "Trump administration's delayed use of 1950s law leads to critical supplies shortages"

• POLITICO, 3/7/20: "For six weeks behind the scenes, and now increasingly in public, Trump has undermined his administration's own efforts to fight the coronavirus outbreak — resisting attempts to plan for worst-case scenarios, overturning a public-health plan upon request from political allies and repeating only the warnings that he chose to hear.
• Washington Post, 4/4/20: "It may never be known how many thousands of deaths, or millions of infections, might have been prevented with a response that was more coherent, urgent and effective. But even now, there are many indications that the administration's handling of the crisis had potentially devastating consequences."
• NBC News, 3/14/20: "An examination of how the Trump administration responded to the coronavirus outbreak that was first documented in December reveals a story of missed opportunities, mismanagement and a president who resisted the advice of experts urging a more aggressive response."

Even after months of abject failure on COVID-19, Trump still refused to take the threat seriously, repeatedly claiming that it will simply "disappear" even as he and his allies attack public health officials and undermine the basic measures we need to control the virus.

• POLITICO, 8/1/2020: "President Donald Trump publicly rebuked Dr. Anthony Fauci on Saturday, forcefully rejecting the nation's top infectious disease expert's testimony on why the U.S. has experienced a renewed surge in coronavirus cases."

[wolfriverjoe 1,340]

Funny how Covid gets blamed for the deficits and debts.

Despite not existing for the FIRST THREE YEARS of the Trump idiocracy.

[kallend 1,623]

Timeline of Trump's ineptitude through March 20, 2020:

May 2018	The Trump Administration disbands the White House pandemic response team.
July 2019	The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) epidemiologist embedded in China’s disease control agency left the post, and the Trump Administration eliminated the role.
Jan. 22, 2020	“We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. It’s going to be just fine.”
Feb. 2, 2020	“We pretty much shut it down coming in from China.”
Feb. 10, 2020	“I think the virus is going to be—it’s going to be fine.”
Feb. 10, 2020	“Looks like by April, you know in theory when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.”
Feb. 24, 2020	“The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA… the Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”
Feb. 25, 2020	“CDC and my Administration are doing a GREAT job of handling Coronavirus.”
Feb. 26, 2020	“The 15 (cases in the US) within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.”
Feb. 26, 2020	“We're going very substantially down, not up.”
Feb. 26, 2020	“Well, we're testing everybody that we need to test. And we're finding very little problem. Very little problem.”
Feb. 27, 2020	“It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”
March 4, 2020	“Now, and this is just my hunch, and — but based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people that do this. Because a lot people will have this and it's very mild.”
March 4, 2020	“If we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work — some of them go to work, but they get better.”
March 5, 2020	“I NEVER said people that are feeling sick should go to work.”
March 5, 2020	“The United States… has, as of now, only 129 cases… and 11 deaths. We are working very hard to keep these numbers as low as possible!”
March 6, 2020	“I think we’re doing a really good job in this country at keeping it down… a tremendous job at keeping it down.”
March 6, 2020	“You have to be calm. It’ll go away.”
March 6, 2020	“Anybody right now, and yesterday, anybody that needs a test gets a test. They’re there. And the tests are beautiful…. the tests are all perfect like the letter was perfect. The transcription was perfect. Right? This was not as perfect as that but pretty good.”
March 6, 2020	“I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it… Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president.”
March 6, 2020	“I don't need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn't our fault.”
March 7, 2020	“No, I’m not concerned at all.
March 8, 2020	“We have a perfectly coordinated and fine-tuned plan at the White House for our attack on CoronaVirus.”
March 9, 2020	During a news conference, White House officials said the U.S. will have tested one million people that week and thereafter would complete 4 million tests per week. By the end of the week, the CDC had only completed a paltry 4,000 tests.
March 10, 2020	“Just stay calm. It will go away.”
March 11, 2020	The World Health Organization categorizes the coronavirus as a pandemic due to its alarming spread and severity.
March 11, 2020	“It goes away….It’s going away. We want it to go away with very, very few deaths.”
March 11, 2020	"the vast majority of Americans, the risk is very, very low"
March 12, 2020	“The system is not really geared to what we need right now...That is a failing. Let’s admit it.” [Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to Congress]
March 12, 2020	"You know, you see what's going on. And so I just wanted that to stop as it pertains to the United States. And that's what we've done. We've stopped it."
March 13, 2020	“I don’t take responsibility at all.”
March 13, 2020	The Atlantic reports that less than 14,000 tests have been done in the ten weeks since the Administration had first been notified of the virus, though Mike Pence had promised the week prior that 1.5 million tests would be available by this time.
March 14, 2020	“I’d rate it a ten,” [Trump’s rating of his coronavirus response]
March 15, 2020	“Relax”
March 15, 2020	“This is a very contagious virus. It’s incredible. But it’s something that we have tremendous control over.”
March 16, 2020	“Respirators, ventilators, all of the equipment-try getting it yourselves,”
March 17, 2020	“The only thing we haven’t done well is get good press.”
March 17, 2020	“I felt like it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.”
March 19, 2020	I intended "to always play it down.”  [Trump in a private taped interview with Bob Woodward, made public on September 9]

[Coreece 190]

48 minutes ago, kallend said:

Coreece forgets where the buck stops.

Nonsense, you forget that this was about the cognitive parallels between you and a special subset of conservatives with their hasty generalizations based on a variety of outliers.

[Coreece 190]

29 minutes ago, wolfriverjoe said:

Funny how Covid gets blamed for the deficits and debts.

Despite not existing for the FIRST THREE YEARS of the Trump idiocracy.

It's getting blamed because that's what it was.  The increase of debt for those first three years maintained the same rate since it got jacked back in 2008-2009.

[billvon 2,400]

38 minutes ago, Coreece said:

It's getting blamed because that's what it was.  The increase of debt for those first three years maintained the same rate since it got jacked back in 2008-2009.

Let's look at the facts!

Debt to GDP ratio, last five years of Obama:

2012 6.6%
2013 4.0%
2014 2.8%
2015 2.4%
2016 3.1%

Cool!  Obama had our debt ratio going down.  Let's see how Trump did before the pandemic:

2017 3.4%
2018 3.8%
2019 4.6%

Rising fast!  Understandable, since he increased spending and cut taxes, which is the formula for huge deficits.

[JoeWeber 2,299]

11 minutes ago, billvon said:

Let's look at the facts!

Debt to GDP ratio, last four year of Obama:

2012 6.6%
2013 4.0%
2014 2.8%
2015 2.4%
2016 3.1%

Cool!  Obama had our debt ratio going down.  Let's see how Trump did before the pandemic:

2017 3.4%
2018 3.8%
2019 4.6%

Rising fast!  Understandable, since he increased spending and cut taxes, which is the formula for huge deficits.

This is the problem in a nutshell: conservative apologists live in a nutshell. 

This message brought to you from the Peoples Republic of Joe

[Coreece 190]

54 minutes ago, billvon said:

1 hour ago, Coreece said:

It's getting blamed because that's what it was.  The increase of debt for those first three years maintained the same rate since it got jacked back in 2008-2009.

Let's look at the facts!

Debt to GDP ratio, last four year of Obama:

2012 6.6%
2013 4.0%
2014 2.8%
2015 2.4%
2016 3.1%

Cool!  Obama had our debt ratio going down.  Let's see how Trump did before the pandemic:

2017 3.4%
2018 3.8%
2019 4.6%

Rising fast!  Understandable, since he increased spending and cut taxes, which is the formula for huge deficits.

Ok, so on average 3.78% for Obama and 3.93% for Trump.

I'm basically going by the graph below.  The rate from 1990 was relatively steady until 2001-02 after 9/11, then it maintains that rate until the recession in 2008-09, and then that rate maintains relatively steady until the pandemic.  Not sure where Joe's taking us, but we're running out of room.

So to sum it up, it looks like about every 10 years we get screwed by something. . .

 

[Coreece 190]

48 minutes ago, JoeWeber said:

the Peoples Republic of Joe

They're next!

[kallend 1,623]

1 hour ago, Coreece said:

Ok, so on average 3.78% for Obama and 3.93% for Trump.

I'm basically going by the graph below.  The rate from 1990 was relatively steady until 2001-02 after 9/11, then it maintains that rate until the recession in 2008-09, and then that rate maintains relatively steady until the pandemic.  Not sure where Joe's taking us, but we're running out of room.

So to sum it up, it looks like about every 10 years we get screwed by something. . .

 

 

You simply can't bring yourself to admit that Trump's gross incompetence is responsible for tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths, in addition to the largest 4 year increase in the debt in history.

 

Pathetic!  Just plain pathetic.

Edited January 22, 2023 by kallend