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Open thread Dec. 4, 2020

Dan Crawford | December 4, 2020 8:28 am

Tags: open thread Comments (13) | Digg Facebook Twitter |
13 Comments
  • anne says:
    December 4, 2020 at 3:24 pm

    What was done then, was taking an honored soldier, a veteran of Iraq, an enlisted soldier who worked to become a major, a Democratic member of Congress last elected with a 77.4% majority, an turning away as the soldier-member of Congress was repeatedly demeaned and attacked for working for peace.

     

    Thankfully, I am just brave enough to turn in support toward the soldier-member of Congress.

  • Fred C. Dobbs says:
    December 4, 2020 at 3:27 pm

    <a html=”https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/03/opinion/biden-republicans-debt.html?smid=tw-share”>Learn to Stop Worrying and Love Debt>/a>

    NY Times – Paul Krugman – December 3

    Why you should ignore the coming Republican deficit rants. …

  • coberly says:
    December 4, 2020 at 3:38 pm

    anne

     

    i have no idea what you are talking about.

     

    Dobbs

     

    unfortunately can’t ignore them.  they shape policy whether sensible or not,

     

    especially when they include Social Security as a driver of the deficit, which it is not.

  • Fred C. Dobbs says:
    December 4, 2020 at 3:42 pm

    Learn to Stop Worrying and Love Debt Learn to Stop Worrying and Love Debt>/a>

    NY Times – Paul Krugman – December 3

    Why you should ignore the coming Republican deficit rants. …

    (Just trying out the new technology.)

    Just input the link (only) in the first line and the title only in the second line.

  • ken melvin says:
    December 4, 2020 at 4:43 pm

    Tasting

  • anne says:
    December 4, 2020 at 10:40 pm

    Neera Tanden was nominated for director of OMB. I think Tanden and intolerable choice for having repeatedly demeaned and vilified a Democratic member of Congress who also is an honored soldier and veteran of Iraq.

    For defending this soldier-member of Congress, I in turn was attacked. Fortunately I find there are many, many people who agree with me about the unfortunate character of Tanden.

  • coberly says:
    December 5, 2020 at 1:06 am

    anne

    thanks for clearing that up. uness the problem the whole time was the pop-up ads obscuring your text and refusing to leave.

    just like right now the tropicana ad keeping me from checking the please notify me box which i know is there only because i saw it on another thread.

  • EMichael says:
    December 5, 2020 at 9:36 am

    Elizabeth Warren
    @SenWarren
    ·
    Nov 30
    I agree.
    Quote Tweet
    Sherrod Brown
    @SenSherrodBrown
    · Nov 30
    Neera Tanden is smart, experienced, and qualified for the position of OMB Director.

    The American people decisively voted for change – Mitch McConnell shouldn’t block us from having a functioning government that gets to work for the people we serve.

  • Fred C. Dobbs says:
    December 5, 2020 at 10:36 am

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/04/upshot/epidemiologists-virus-survey-.html?

    How 700 Epidemiologists Are Living Now, and What They Think Is Next

    They are going to the grocery store again, but don’t see vaccines making life normal right away….

  • Fred C. Dobbs says:
    December 5, 2020 at 12:34 pm

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/05/us/politics/trump-presidency-election-loss.html

    Trump’s Final Days of Rage and Denial

    NY Times – Peter Baker – December 5

    WASHINGTON — Over the past week, President Trump posted or reposted more than 130 messages on Twitter lashing out at the results of an election he lost. He mentioned the coronavirus pandemic now reaching its darkest hours four times — and even then just to assert that he was right about the outbreak and the experts were wrong.

    Moody and by accounts of his advisers sometimes depressed, the president barely shows up to work, ignoring the health and economic crises afflicting the nation and largely clearing his public schedule of meetings unrelated to his desperate bid to rewrite the election results. He has fixated on rewarding friends, purging the disloyal and punishing a growing list of perceived enemies that now includes Republican governors, his own attorney general and even Fox News.

    The final days of the Trump presidency have taken on the stormy elements of a drama more common to history or literature than a modern White House. His rage and detached-from-reality refusal to concede defeat evoke images of a besieged overlord in some distant dictatorship defiantly clinging to power rather than going into exile or an erratic English monarch imposing his version of reality on his cowed court. …

    The last act of the Trump presidency has taken on the stormy elements of a drama more common to history or literature than a modern White House.

  • Fred C. Dobbs says:
    December 6, 2020 at 9:22 am

     

    China Peddles Falsehoods to Obscure Origin of Covid Pandemic – The New York Times (nytimes.com)

     

    To push the idea that the virus didn’t come from China, the government has misrepresented experts’ remarks and given dubious theories the veneer of science.

     

     

     

     

    NY Times – Javier C. Hernández

    Dec. 6, 2020,

    The mild-mannered German scientist never anticipated becoming a Chinese propaganda star.
    But Alexander Kekulé, the director of the Institute for Biosecurity Research in Halle, Germany, has been all over the state-run media in China in recent days. News outlets have taken Dr. Kekulé’s research out of context to suggest that Italy, not China, is where the coronavirus pandemic began. Photos of him have appeared on Chinese news sites under headlines reading, “China is innocent!”
    Dr. Kekulé, who has repeatedly said that he believes the virus first emerged in China, was startled. “This is pure propaganda,” he said in an interview.
    Facing global anger over their initial mishandling of the outbreak, the Chinese authorities are now trying to rewrite the narrative of the pandemic by pushing theories that the virus originated outside China.
    In recent days, Chinese officials have said that packaged food from overseas might have initially brought the virus to China. Scientists have released a paper positing that the pandemic could have started in India. The state news media has published false stories misrepresenting foreign experts, including Dr. Kekulé and officials at the World Health Organization, as having said the coronavirus came from elsewhere. …

  • Fred C. Dobbs says:
    December 6, 2020 at 9:27 am

    NYT: … China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has led a vigorous effort this year to play down his government’s early failures in the crisis, instead arguing that the party’s success in containing the virus shows the superiority of its authoritarian system.

    ADVERTISEMENT

    Continue reading the main story

    The latest propaganda push gives Mr. Xi a fresh chance to stoke nationalist sentiment and distract from festering problems, including a lingering wealth gap. The government seems wary of inviting renewed scrutiny of its actions as the pandemic began to unfold, analysts say.
    Mr. Xi most likely sees the party’s missteps as a vulnerability and is eager to avoid potential challenges to his authority at home, said Erin Baggott Carter, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Southern California. “If Xi is able to escape blame for the coronavirus, that reduces one major source of discontent with his rule,” she said.
    In some ways, China’s strategy resembles efforts by American lawmakers to distract from missteps in that country by spreading fringe theories, including the unsubstantiated notion that the Chinese government manufactured the virus as a biological weapon.
    For months, Chinese officials openly spread conspiracy theories of their own, implying at one point that the United States military could have brought the virus to the city of Wuhan. Experts and officials are now going further, trying to give falsehoods about the origins of the virus the veneer of scientific fact.

  • Fred C. Dobbs says:
    December 7, 2020 at 7:52 am

    The Swiss Cheese Model of Pandemic Defense

    It’s not edible, but it can save lives. The virologist Ian Mackay explains how.
    The Swiss Cheese Model of Pandemic Defense – The New York Times (nytimes.com)

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