The Coronavirus

[Eric the Green]

US states with most new cases August 9th:

California 6836
Florida 6229
Texas 5803
Georgia 3169
Louisiana 2653
Tennessee 2127
Illinois 1382
North Carolina 1166
Alabama 1161
Indiana 1041

[Bob Butler 54]

CNN has the US topping five million cases of COVID, and didn't think the fact was important enough to merit more than a link on their front page.

[David Horn]

(08-11-2020, 05:05 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: CNN has the US topping five million cases of COVID, and didn't think the fact was important enough to merit more than a link on their front page.

It's amazing that we can become inured to just about anything.  Ask yourself: how shocked should we be by nearly 4 years of Donald Trump?  If we were viewing it from the pre-Trump era, we would be either totally disbelieving or struck dumb.  Yet here we are.  

FWIW, some of the same things happened in 1919, when flu fatigue set in.

[Bob Butler 54]

The AP has Russia approving a COVID vaccine, and may be giving it to tens of thousands of volunteers soon.  On the other hand scientists are saying it is too soon for approval, that there is usually a test on tens of thousands of volunteers before you approve a vaccine.

Methinks there may be a bit of propaganda involved...

[David Horn]

(08-11-2020, 03:05 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: The AP has Russia approving a COVID vaccine, and may be giving it to tens of thousands of volunteers soon.  On the other hand scientists are saying it is too soon for approval, that there is usually a test on tens of thousands of volunteers before you approve a vaccine.

Methinks there may be a bit of propaganda involved...

If the Fake News can be believed, Putin's daughter will be among the first to get the vaccine.

[Eric the Green]

(08-11-2020, 03:16 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(08-11-2020, 03:05 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: The AP has Russia approving a COVID vaccine, and may be giving it to tens of thousands of volunteers soon.  On the other hand scientists are saying it is too soon for approval, that there is usually a test on tens of thousands of volunteers before you approve a vaccine.

Methinks there may be a bit of propaganda involved...

If the Fake News can be believed, Putin's daughter will be among the first to get the vaccine.

Russians can be guinea pigs, that's OK with me.

[Bob Butler 54]

The AP has another outbreak occurring in New Zealand, if you could call 30 cases a problem.  They are another island nation that has generally done pretty well defending the borders.  One current theory is that importing food infected dock workers.

[Eric the Green]

The US mail now appears to be non-functional for any purpose, thanks to Trump.

[David Horn]

(08-14-2020, 03:25 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: The US mail now appears to be non-functional for any purpose, thanks to Trump.

We all know that the Donald is unaffected by inflicted pain other than his own.  I don't see this, or any of his other madness, stopping without a few highly placed Trump suck-ups going to jail.  As to Trump himself: leave him on the streets, but take all his money -- every dime!

[Bob Butler 54]

(08-15-2020, 07:15 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(08-14-2020, 03:25 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: The US mail now appears to be non-functional for any purpose, thanks to Trump.

We all know that the Donald is unaffected by inflicted pain other than his own.  I don't see this, or any of his other madness, stopping without a few highly placed Trump suck-ups going to jail.  As to Trump himself: leave him on the streets, but take all his money -- every dime!

I don't know. Didn't he lead the 'Lock her up' chants? Hasn't he earned the chance to have that turned around?

[David Horn]

(08-15-2020, 08:06 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(08-15-2020, 07:15 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(08-14-2020, 03:25 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: The US mail now appears to be non-functional for any purpose, thanks to Trump.

We all know that the Donald is unaffected by inflicted pain other than his own.  I don't see this, or any of his other madness, stopping without a few highly placed Trump suck-ups going to jail.  As to Trump himself: leave him on the streets, but take all his money -- every dime!

I don't know.  Didn't he lead the 'Lock her up' chants?  Hasn't he earned the chance to have that turned around?

Being poor and unimportant will destroy his toxic self esteem, and be more punishment than he can tolerate -- without giving his perpetual whining any oxygen.  He won't do well as a prole. All the more reason to make him one.

Some of the other Trumps (e.g. Don Jr. and Ivanka) might be better prison bait.

[pbrower2a]

(08-15-2020, 08:06 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(08-15-2020, 07:15 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(08-14-2020, 03:25 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: The US mail now appears to be non-functional for any purpose, thanks to Trump.

We all know that the Donald is unaffected by inflicted pain other than his own.  I don't see this, or any of his other madness, stopping without a few highly placed Trump suck-ups going to jail.  As to Trump himself: leave him on the streets, but take all his money -- every dime!

I don't know.  Didn't he lead the 'Lock her up' chants?  Hasn't he earned the chance to have that turned around?

Trump is as intellectually-destitute as his core supporters. His vulgarity is his supposed common touch, but vulgarity does not create or imply empathy. I prefer people who understand the complexity of human nature to the best as is possible, which comes from formal learning in the liberal arts. 

As for "lock her up"... Kamala Harris is the sort of person who made a career out of locking people up, especially for violent crimes.  She broke the "gay panic" defense that used to get gay-bashers off the legal hook. Drug offenses? Tough luck! Family violence? Tough luck!

[Bob Butler 54]

CNN has the CDC blindsided by Trump's statement it could deploy teams to schools this fall.  It is apparently common practice at the CDC to learn of what they are going to have to do by listening in on a press conference.

It doesn’t seam reasonable for CDC to send a team to every school district and college.  I expect they will review their advice to schools again, and this will likely be good enough.

[Classic-Xer]

(08-15-2020, 08:06 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(08-15-2020, 07:15 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(08-14-2020, 03:25 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: The US mail now appears to be non-functional for any purpose, thanks to Trump.

We all know that the Donald is unaffected by inflicted pain other than his own.  I don't see this, or any of his other madness, stopping without a few highly placed Trump suck-ups going to jail.  As to Trump himself: leave him on the streets, but take all his money -- every dime!

I don't know.  Didn't he lead the 'Lock her up' chants?  Hasn't he earned the chance to have that turned around?

You already had your chance turn it around twice.

[Classic-Xer]

(08-15-2020, 12:20 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(08-15-2020, 08:06 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(08-15-2020, 07:15 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(08-14-2020, 03:25 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: The US mail now appears to be non-functional for any purpose, thanks to Trump.

We all know that the Donald is unaffected by inflicted pain other than his own.  I don't see this, or any of his other madness, stopping without a few highly placed Trump suck-ups going to jail.  As to Trump himself: leave him on the streets, but take all his money -- every dime!

I don't know.  Didn't he lead the 'Lock her up' chants?  Hasn't he earned the chance to have that turned around?

Trump is as intellectually-destitute as his core supporters. His vulgarity is his supposed common touch, but vulgarity does not create or imply empathy. I prefer people who understand the complexity of human nature to the best as is possible, which comes from formal learning in the liberal arts. 

As for "lock her up"... Kamala Harris is the sort of person who made a career out of locking people up, especially for violent crimes.  She broke the "gay panic" defense that used to get gay-bashers off the legal hook. Drug offenses? Tough luck! Family violence? Tough luck!

Dude, you're an imbecile who has no right to accuse me of being intellectually-destitute or stupid.

[Classic-Xer]

(08-10-2020, 02:52 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: 2020 college football? Not happening.

Obviously, a sixth of a million deaths from the Trump Plague is infinitely worse.

Saturday afternoons will be great for getting out the vote this year, won't they now that NCAA football isn't a distraction.

You might get shot and get you're ass kicked because everyone knows that colleges are run by Liberals and everyone knows that Liberals hate Trump and know the loss of college football was politically motivated and know they hate Americans too. Have fun dude and pray you don't knock on the door of a person who wants to beat the shit out of some Liberal. BTW, your post is proof that we are right about you. So, you shouldn't mind when we start taking away for you and everyone else associated with the Democrats these days. Personally, I'm not much of a college football fan but I do sympathize with those who are avid college football fans.

[pbrower2a]

(08-16-2020, 05:59 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(08-10-2020, 02:52 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: 2020 college football? Not happening.

Obviously, a sixth of a million deaths from the Trump Plague is infinitely worse.

Saturday afternoons will be great for getting out the vote this year, won't they now that NCAA football isn't a distraction.

You might get shot and get you're ass kicked because everyone knows that colleges are run by Liberals and everyone knows that Liberals hate Trump and know the loss of college football was politically motivated and know they hate Americans too. Have fun dude and pray you don't knock on the door of a person who wants to beat the shit out of some Liberal. BTW, your post is proof that we are right about you. So, you shouldn't mind when we start taking away for you and everyone else associated with the Democrats these days. Personally, I'm not much of a college football fan but I do sympathize with those who are avid college football fans.

I have news for you. We liberals have as much love America as a fascist like you does. At least our love for America is in no way abusive.

Here is a college that is not run by liberals; it has plenty of conservatives on the faculty. The late Paul Harvey actually pushed it:

https://www.hillsdale.edu/

OK, it does not have renowned sports teams as does the University of Michigan, but small colleges imply some compromises. 

If most colleges and universities are liberal havens, then maybe such reflects that the "profit over all else" ethos of for-profit business has little room for people not ruthless and reactionary enough. A liberal starting work in the for-profit private sector must often bite his mouth when he hears such things as "greed is good", "he who has the gold makes the rules", or even "no human suffering can ever be in excess in the name of profit". Almighty Mammon reigneth in Corporate America, as if you did not know. 

You might want to beat some liberal to a bloody pulp... but somehow it is illegal to beat someone to a bloody pulp. That goes beyond an excuse as self-defense, and a challenge to your core beliefs does not constitute an excuse for a violent act of self-defense. Shooting a mugger and causing his death might be self-defense, and having a dog that does his tiger act upon a burglar is... well, what one expects from a dog. Making a tiger out of a normally-placid dog is a catastrophic mistake... and easy to avoid doing. Just don't break into any house with an animal that differs from a bear or Big Cat only because of (usually predictable) good behavior. 
   
In view of the mass death resulting from COVID-19, Donald Trump looks culpable of negligent homicide, at the least, on a gigantic scale.

[Bob Butler 54]

(08-16-2020, 05:50 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Dude, you're an imbecile who has no right to accuse me of being intellectually-destitute or stupid.

I generally think having a strong ideological world view or values does not depend a lot on intelligence. One gets sucked into an ideology in one’s youth and just does not change. It is just a shortcut. Humans react to how a problem fits into their perspective rather than think though each problem afresh. Overall, this has been OK though history, but during the transition between ages it leaves a lot of people running on obsolete perspectives. We have just changed a lot. We are not designed to change a lot. If people live in an environment which does not change, it is hardly a surprise that they do not change.

4Ts have evolved as a way to force people to change their perspective. If you have an obsolete perspective, eventually a 4T will illustrate the mess resulting from a dated perspective and that perspective gets abandoned.

In the Civil War, the old rural bigoted slaveholding faction got creamed, and was forced to take a large step back. I anticipate it will happen again this crisis. That the parties have reversed their progressive vs conservative ideals does not matter. The arrow of progress points towards democracy, equality and human rights. If you are against these things, and a 4T comes along and you lose. Sorry, but you lose.

But somebody’s intelligence has little to do with it. If you look at the strong ideologues of both sides, you see intelligent and less intelligent folks on both sides. Still, there is an unwillingness to check against reality and switch perspectives when there is no match. That is the big difference between an ideological political perspective and a scientific one. Idologues get more attached to their perspective than to reality.

Not sure what to do about that. I guess reality will eventually hit people who try to ignore it hard enough. Harder than I can, anyway.

[pbrower2a]

(08-16-2020, 09:53 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(08-16-2020, 05:50 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Dude, you're an imbecile who has no right to accuse me of being intellectually-destitute or stupid.

I generally think having a strong ideological world view or values does not depend a lot on intelligence.  One gets sucked into an ideology in one’s youth and just does not change.  It is just a shortcut.  Humans react to how a problem fits into their perspective rather than think though each problem afresh.  Overall, this has been OK though history, but during the transition between ages it leaves a lot of people running on obsolete perspectives.  We have just changed a lot.  We are not designed to change a lot.  If people live in an environment which does not change, it is hardly a surprise that they do not change.

Extremist beliefs are likely to reflect the culture of one's parents (as in one comes from a Commie-infested or Klan-infested family), a rejection of those that leads to the supposed opposite, or perhaps some personal trauma. Those rarely have anything to do with intelligence. Joseph Goebbels and Ted Kaczynski left no question that they were geniuses. David DuKKe has a very high IQ, and one of the key inventors of the transistor (William Shockley) got entangled one the vile side of the debate on 'race'. Supposedly Stalin was a really-good linguist... 

Sometimes one finds that what one's family says on one topic or another (mine is deep into antisemitism, and I got to find out that Jews are mostly moral, decent, honest people who have an enviable culture. People often attribute to other groups what they dread in themselves... I have much to dislike about myself, but it is my character, some of it indelible, and nothing to hang on others.  
 

Quote:4Ts have evolved as a way to force people to change their perspective.  If you have an obsolete perspective, eventually a 4T will illustrate the mess resulting from a dated perspective and that perspective gets abandoned.

Nothing so powerfully repudiates bad habits, personal or collective, like a 4T. In the end a 1T shows what the world is like without those habits. We get thrift instead of speculation, we get reason instead of cranky conspiracy theories, the celebrity circuses get shown for their emptiness, and character begins to matter across all classes. Bad business practices lead to shame instead of quick profits. People start seeing the legitimacy of the low-yield, long-term investment (such as setting up a small business) during a 4T that starts to pay off.  

Quote:In the Civil War, the old rural bigoted slaveholding faction got creamed, and was forced to take a large step back.  I anticipate it will happen again this crisis.  That the parties have reversed their progressive vs conservative ideals does not matter.  The arrow of progress points towards democracy, equality and human rights.  If you are against these things, and a 4T comes along and you lose.  Sorry, but you lose.

Just recall my overlays of Eisenhower and Obama elections. All that kept Obama from being a shining example of a conservative President was that he was not a conservative. Otherwise the style and substance is conservative.

Quote:But somebody’s intelligence has little to do with it.  If you look at the strong ideologues of both sides, you see intelligent and less intelligent folks on both sides.  Still, there is an unwillingness to check against reality and switch perspectives when there is no match.  That is the big difference between an ideological political perspective and a scientific one.  Ideologues get more attached to their perspective than to reality.

Not sure what to do about that.  I guess reality will eventually hit people who try to ignore it hard enough.  Harder than I can, anyway.

OK. I am a conservative on some things. Law and order (which does not mean brutal law enforcement) is the first civil right, without which all enumerated rights are cant. I took the LGBT side once I came to realize that I had no defense against misdirected homophobia, and that gay-bashing violence is dangerous lawlessness. I am about as anti-drug as one can be without supporting brutal and pointless enforcement of drug laws. I am an arch-conservative on educational content; yes, character (or virtue) matters greatly, and if we don't promote it we get a merciless jungle. We have a great trove of culture and learning that we ignore at great cost to the quality of our lives. Above all, don't mess with children.

[TnT]

One model: There is "DE-scription, there is PRE-scription and there is PRO-scription. I think folks generate their own personal belief system with various mixtures of the three.

Description shows how good we are as individuals at perceiving, interpreting and defining objective reality. Of course, that's the primary problem in the branch of philosophy called epistemology. The study of this is not trivial. However, often we can gather a group of people of good faith and come up with a decent picture of "reality." A shared set of facts, figures and interpretations that can roughly describe some piece of reality of interest.

PREscription is more abstract. This is the part of our belief system where we decide how things SHOULD be. Sometimes, pieces of our reality are as they SHOULD in our opinion. Sometimes little or nothing is. Then, of course, we go around ranting about how things need to change to be as they SHOULD be. So ... there SHOULD be peace. There SHOULD be kindness and generosity. There SHOULD be safety, jobs, food, shelter, healthcare, etc.

PROscription is also abstract, but perhaps resides more in the present reality. These are our beliefs of how things should NOT be. Thus, there should NOT be war, violence, injustice, racism, etc.

Some folks I know tend to be mostly Proscriptionists. Others, mostly Prescriptionists. What makes politics difficult is that some PROscriptionists think there should NOT be government, or regulations, etc. Runs headlong into the PREscriptionists on the other side who might want a benevolent regulated socialism.

What I find mostly missing is an adequate DEscription of our civilization/society, AND an articulate PRE and PRO scription of the desired outcome, AND a change management plan to get from point A to point B.

Take the issue of racism. One side PROscribes its existence, while DEscribing its existence with much evidence. The other side covertly PREscribes its existence, while denying that it even exists, thereby dodging the DEscription part.

So we can't even come up with a shared picture of the description of the issue. How in the world, then, can the issue be negotiated and a change management plan designed and executed.

Back to a point made in a previous post, intelligence only deals with how much facility we have at sorting and rearranging our information, interpreting it and deciding whether we like or don't like our reality, then running it through our belief system, which has little to do with our intelligence, and coming up with our own desired outcome.