White House Told Federal Health Agency To Classify Coronavirus Deliberations (reuters.com) 287
The White House has ordered federal health officials to treat top-level coronavirus meetings as classified, an unusual step that has restricted information and hampered the U.S. government's response to the contagion, Reuters is reporting, citing four Trump administration officials. From the report: The officials said that dozens of classified discussions about such topics as the scope of infections, quarantines and travel restrictions have been held since mid-January in a high-security meeting room at the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), a key player in the fight against the coronavirus. Staffers without security clearances, including government experts, were excluded from the interagency meetings, which included video conference calls, the sources said. "We had some very critical people who did not have security clearances who could not go," one official said. "These should not be classified meetings. It was unnecessary." The sources said the National Security Council (NSC), which advises the president on security issues, ordered the classification. "This came directly from the White House," one official said.
Small wonder (Score:5, Insightful)
Can't have all that stupidity be leaked.
Re:Small wonder (Score:5, Funny)
Don't worry about the leaks. That's why Trump wears Depends.
Re: Small wonder (Score:3)
Re: Small wonder (Score:5, Insightful)
information could be used to play the stock market
It can also be used to coordinate response among many different departments (Federal, State, and Local).
Let's stop trying to protect the stock market at the expense of protecting people.
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Re: Small wonder (Score:5, Interesting)
Protecting the stock market IS protecting people. This pandemic will pass, and going by known facts, the vast majority of the population will be just fine. You think when we return to normal in a few short months, that if people's retirement accounts and mutual funds have been destroyed that's not going to be worse than this pandemic?
Right now, grandma is worried more about whether she's going to survive this crisis at all than she is about her retirement account (and I'm worried about her too). No one is suggesting a public takeover of financial institutions or private companies (which would permanently damage the market), but until the market sees that there's a clear path out of this crisis, simply saying "This is just a bad flu, most (young) people will be fine" isn't going to make things improve. Not everyone is so easily fooled, it's clear that this is *not* just a flu, entire countries don't go on lockdown for a flu.
No mutual funds are being destroyed, and the only a small portion of the market needs to worry about their retirement accounts (those that need to sell stocks for living money right now). The market will recover, but first the market needs to see the country on a path to recovery, and I just don't see that in our response so far. We've tested fewer suspected cases in total since this started than some countries are testing each *day* so we still don't even know the scope of the outbreak here.
He actually pissed himself (Score:2)
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Can't have all that stupidity be leaked.
There's a variety of reasons to classify a briefing, some of them good, some of them not. And since this was done, according to the article, at the behest of the National Security Council, perhaps there's a reason for it beyond Orange Man Bad. Not that it matters. I think you would have bitched regardless.
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Can't have all that stupidity be leaked.
There's a variety of reasons to classify a briefing, some of them good, some of them not. And since this was done, according to the article, at the behest of the National Security Council, perhaps there's a reason for it beyond Orange Man Bad. Not that it matters. I think you would have bitched regardless.
Well, a primary reason to classify things is, and will probably always be, that somebody screwed up royally and the classification is to hide that.
Re:Small wonder (Score:4, Insightful)
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"perhaps there's a reason for it beyond Orange Man Bad. "
Orange Man stupid?
Orange man only thinks of election because otherwise Orange man go prison.
Re: Small wonder (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yes, I do. Really. It shows the kind of person he is, especially that anyone whom he thinks he can get something out of is always "the best" and anyone in opposition to him is always "the worst". And yes, the other side does it too, and I don't like it when they do it. The difference is that Trump does it constantly. Every time he opens his mouth.
Re: Small wonder (Score:5, Insightful)
It's political bullshit and the other side has got their own political bullshit and they mock Trump just as much as he mocks them.
Claiming false equivalence is one reason we are in this shit show of an administration to begin with. Both sides have their own bullshit, but there is a gross difference in order of magnitude.
NATIONAL SECURITY!! (Score:3)
There's only one reason to classify something; National Security. We are at war with this corona virus! If our tactics get leaked, the virus could get the upper hand! Loose lips sink (cruse) ships!
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Can't have all that stupidity be leaked.
There's a variety of reasons to classify a briefing, some of them good, some of them not. And since this was done, according to the article, at the behest of the National Security Council, perhaps there's a reason for it beyond Orange Man Bad. Not that it matters. I think you would have bitched regardless.
There has been a breakdown somewhere in the nation's health surveillance system. We missed something. This got in sooner than we recognized, faster than expected, and/or through vectors not previously seen.
Now we have bigger problems. It's here. Likely two-thirds of us are going to get this. Fortunately, maybe 80% of those that do won't even recognize that this isn't just a cold. But the other 20% will get sick. That's 40 million people (in the US, 1 billion globally). And maybe 3% will die.
How fast
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Hmmm. Who chairs the National Security Council? The Orange Man.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Bolton gutted the NSC afterwards Trump put two in the chest and one in the head. The NSC as an independent entity no longer exists, "at the direction of the NSC" means Trump required the classification.
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And since this was done, according to the article, at the behest of the National Security Council, perhaps there's a reason for it beyond Orange Man Bad
If you knew that the National Security Council was chaired by the President and consisted only of Trump appointees, you would understand the ridiculousness of your statement.
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So information must hidden to allow to Trumps lies
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You can't let the public know something is about to happen until it happens, especially if you are trying to quarantine an area.
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Panic about the disease could end up doing more harm than the disease itself. So far, it's been pretty calm in the US and Canada - heck, I'm actually impressed by how crazy we're not being! But you can read about what's happened in places like Iran, which despite having a reasonably well-educated public has seen mobs burning down clinics with Corona sufferers inside.
So, there's certainly a balance to be found between informing the public and avoiding panic. People can certainly get crazy stupid about stu
Because of course they did (Score:5, Insightful)
Because this is what adult and responsible administrations do.
Trump is by far not the first president to do this but the idea is that anything that is a threat to Trump's popularity and re-election chances is a de facto threat to national security. For that reason classification is warranted.
That is really how they think.
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Re:Because of course they did (Score:5, Informative)
Trump is by far not the first president to do this but the idea is that anything that is a threat to Trump's popularity and re-election chances is a de facto threat to national security. For that reason classification is warranted.
That is really how they think.
No kidding here. Dershowitz made this exact argument - "If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment"
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I make no claims about myself, just stating: 'Way Smarter Than You' has to be one of the least intelligent posters to this website
Why do you have to try and put words into other people's mouths? Apparently (by your own actions) you are also a liar.
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Re: Yes and they should (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but by making the discussions classified and leaving out the experts that dont have security clearances (or high enough ones anyway) they basically left the adults out of the room
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The experts don't need to be "in the room". They can come in or call in, give their report and opinion, answer questions and leave during the discussions and others' reports. They are not decision makers.
My guess is you have never been "the expert" in any important situation. When I am invited into critical meetings with decision makers who far outrank me, it is often not because I am presenting information or even there to be asked questions. Often I am just there to interject as they discuss among themselves when I notice they misrepresent an issue where I am the expert (or closest thing they have to one). I routinely ask to be part of executive level meetings for the sole purpose of understanding where t
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Lesson from Italy (Score:5, Insightful)
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I mean look at what happened to toilet paper when the news media posted an article wondering if there will be a shortage - they caused the toilet paper panic by just wondering if there might be a toilet paper panic.
If this happens in China... (Score:4, Interesting)
we will be screaming non-transparency, censorship, authoritarian, ... or whatever negative words we can remember at the moment.
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Not really. China isn't my country, and they didn't promise to be honest or uphold the law or the US Constitution. I would certainly have trusted them more if they had been more open from the start, as it is I tend to think of their government as a bunch opportunistic sneaks and liars. And untrustworthy. But they didn't promise me that they'd be trustworthy.
I *want* to think more highly of the US government, but they've been making it very difficult these last few decades.
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As long as we give the government the power and authority to do things that they might not want the citizenry to know about we're always going to face this kind of problem. Remove the ability to hand out favors or engage in morally questionable behavior and t
Remember there is a lot at stake here. (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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If this were a government I trusted to act reasonably, I'd be willing to cut them a lot more slack.
This government has lied and attempted to deceive too often to merit any slack whatsoever. It is my current belief that anyone who trusts this government to act in any way except the office holder's perceived personal self-interest is a fool. The fact that the perceptions are often wrong doesn't improve things.
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Clearly if the government is going to impose travel restrictions or other tough measures, it's going to need to be able to time the announcements so people don't get a chance to evade them.
Well if you're going to have that kind of discussion then classify that discussion instead of classifying all high level meetings. By comparison the USA has done fuck all for the first 2 months of the viral spread other than lie and try to hide information, without even talk of any "time sensitive" measures.
Don't use an edge case as an excuse for grand policy.
Actually a standard move here (Score:2)
Any time you have to discuss worst-case scenarios (nuclear war, natural disasters, famine, and so forth) you have to have some brutal conversations. If these doctors and officials discussed worst-case scenarios (and I'm sure they did) then the mainstream media will report it as "Trump administration thinks we're all gonna die plus he's a stupid head" etc etc.
This move makes sense given the fact that any reasonable d
Face it (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
He doesn't have to admit it. It's painstakingly obvious to any objective observer who heard what he had to say last night.
US politics used to be somewhat entertaining to watch from the outside with a man who was clearly trying to run his country like he would run a reality TV show. Now it is more resembling a horrific tragedy.
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People have been saying this for years and its is buried as fake news.
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"Every doctor says, 'Wow, how do you know so much about this?'"
-- President Trump
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How so? Trump openly talked about not wanting to bring a cruise ship home because it would increase the numbers. Those were his words. What is your proof that Democrats would rather people die?
Many people died on that very cruise ship and while we can't say for certain it was due to a delay in getting proper medical care on the mainland we know for sure that it didn't help.
Give me a single example of a Democrat being that callous about sick people?
I would do the same if I were in charge. (Score:3, Insightful)
Obviously. Who WOULDN'T do this? Consider the topics that will have to be discussed.
ACTUAL vaccine development time tables.
ACTUAL testkit deliverable schedules.
ACTUAL supply line status and then predictions.
ACTUAL expectations for the stock markets.
ACTUAL predictions of deaths.
Plans for mass quarantine.
Plans for mass treatment centers.
These are things that need to be discussed and the toilet-paper-hoarding public is not capable of accepting that. The markets would crash faster than they are now. There would be a run on banks and stores. We're on the verge of genuine mass panic, not just meme-worthy over-purchasing.
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Is your posts sarcasm?
Everything you listed should be public information so decisions can be made based on facts and reality. You want the gov't to hide facts and give you some Trump improved disinformation which ultimately must glorify Trump?
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The panic is caused by lack of trust, and the lack of trust is warranted. You can't trust any official pronouncement of this government, as the touch stone is not honesty but rather perceive personal self-interest. (Why didn't Trump forbid travel to his golf clubs?)
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You would keep the experts of the discussions? Sot that these time tables and schedules your talking about aren't actually acurate?
Please be serious.
Work with me on this- (Score:2, Funny)
The current gov't botches the handling of this pandemic (on purpose) ..which of course would be never.
The virus spreads, causing chaos.
Gov't declares Martial Law, and suspends the election "until the pandemic is under control"
Ergo, Trump stays in power until he dies.
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Alternative Scenario: (Score:2)
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Nobody is talking about impact on the military (Score:2, Insightful)
If research icebreaker boats in the arctic have coronavirus, then so do most Navy boats
I would imagine how weakened our military is, is a pretty important topic at the moment
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My best guesstimate is an absolute minimum of one billion (one kit per person, plus enough extra to determine that pretty much everyone no longer has the disease (two tests more than 24 hours apart showing no infection)), maximum of 100x that many (daily tests for everyone until midsummer).
So, do we have the ability to manufacture a billion test kits within a month? Doubt it. Within two months? Again, doubt it. Three months? Maybe.
And that's just f
They need time ... (Score:2)
Today's version of the mine shaft gap.
I see the scifi movie play out (Score:2)
Where the experts get ignored in the big government meetings, and then the majority of the population is wiped out by aliens or whathaveyou. Hey government people, you probably still want to hear what the experts are saying, K?
Some things can't really be public (Score:4, Insightful)
Look how insane people have gone so far. Can you imagine what would happen if some less-than-rosy predictions leaked out? I'm sure the Public Health Service (i.e. the quasi-military branch) has been having some very direct discussions in those meetings with the regular military and the Cabinet about stuff the public would freak out over if they heard.
Things like triage methods, real chances for a vaccine development in time, or death predictions if this virus mutates into something way more deadly would scare most people. Plans for the military restricting movement by force or plans for walling off quarantined cities would get the doomsday preppers riled up. Discussions about military readiness (I'm sure there are infections in the military as well) or possible deliberate acts are national-security level issues that we shouldn't just give away to our enemies.
Not everything can be declassified or should be. During the Cold War the government didn't tell everyone that nuclear war essentially wasn't survivable once weapons stockpiles went beyond a certain level. Their goal is to let this pass, hope it doesn't get worse and hope it doesn't destroy the economy...and the last thing they need is a bunch of conspiracy theorists on Facebook riling the villagers up.
Trumps buddy does that too (Score:2)
Re: More at play than just a virus? (Score:3)
Re: More at play than just a virus? (Score:5, Informative)
China?
You mean the country that tested aggressively, made hard choices, quarantined large segments of their population and that is now seeing a HUGE decline in new cases?
In US, blame game goes:
1. US Administration that got rid of their existing CDC staff who had prepared for this
2. US Administration that suppressed attempt to test widely
3. US administration that has attempted to blame everybody else on the planet
4. US President who appeared on TV as a drooling idiot
where is this headed?
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There may be a good outcome yet!
5. Drooling idiot catches Corona and goes away.
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Re: More at play than just a virus? (Score:4, Interesting)
Pence is an abominable theocrat and the GOP is a bunch of corrupt cash-grabbers, but I still think their party has some competent people who would be able to hire experts and put together some kind of a plan to deal with the pandemic much easier without Trump in the way. Like, neutral evil rather than chaotic evil.
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Oops. So this was probably not as funny as I thought. My apologies.
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You mean the country that tested aggressively, made hard choices, quarantined large segments of their population and that is now seeing a HUGE decline in new cases?
If you for a moment think that China has actually had such a massive decline I have a bridge to sell you. For a population that size, even with their (incredibly delayed) quarantine process 80000 cases is no where near the inflection point for a sustained population that size. Hell the city where the virus first came out has the population of a small country.
To be clear the quarantine process was absolutely the correct approach, however it also was too late to prevent spread internationally, to say nothing
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Ah yes, China the one that did everything right.
Arrested doctors who warned others about a new disease.
Covered up the existence of this new disease for over two months.
Punished anyone that talked about it until they could no longer deny it.
Did everything the same as the SARS epidemic and made everything worse up until it had reached the stage that infected people were traveling and infecting the rest of the world.
I don't applaud the US actions here, but don't think for a minute China did the right thing her
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Obvious astro-turfing troll is obvious
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TL;DR: the problem is not that China is lying about their containment of the virus. The problem is Western nations like the US and the UK have chosen to ignore the lessons from China and have thus chosen to not contain the virus which will end up being a death sentence for millions of people. So sad ...
China could also be lying about current infection rates in China. They have motivation to downplay infection rates if only to keep panic to a minimum.
That is extremely unlikely and probably impossible. For example, read this interview with the WHO epidemiologist Bruce Aylward who visited China [vox.com]. To carefully craft the numbers day after day to make it
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We know how this works for you cultists. Trump is responsible for all good things. Trump's enemies and the bad kind of foreigners are responsible for all bad things.
It's quite elegant in its simplicity.
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"Religion is Bullshit" --- George Carlin
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Bringing up how many people die from the flu is irrelevant whether you're trying to convince people that it's more or less serious than currently believed, because this is not the flu. Covid-19 is airborne, and carriers can fail to show symptoms for two weeks. Stop trying to equivocate them.
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Well, actually, as of a week ago, the CDC web site said the means of transmission was not yet known.
And nowhere have I been able to find an estimate of how long the virus would remain active on various materials, except that it was more than half an hour on steel and less than half an hour on copper. Either this isn't known, or they don't feel they need to tell us.
Re: Can't blame them (Score:2)
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Not living in fear here, just opening my eyes to what is obviously before me
What is is like being dependent on other people believing the same lies that you believe in order to listen to them?
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Re:Can't blame them (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't recall how Fox, and fellow travelers in the media, have put a bad spin on this Administration. Could you please point out where that's happened? And then there's Trump's obsession with Russian and claiming no collusion when few were accusing him of collusion. The accusations were that Russia wanted Trump elected. Collusion is a straw man raised by the Trump Derangement Syndrome crowd, i.e., the people who will believe anything he says regardless of any facts and total contempt with which he treats his supporters. He thinks the TDS crowd will believe anything he says, and he's right.
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So, when the Chinese do this it's bad. When Trump does it, it's good. I think I'm getting the message.
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So, when the Chinese do this it's bad. When Trump does it, it's good. I think I'm getting the message.
Indeed. "Other dictatorship bad!"
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Re:Can't blame them (Score:5, Informative)
Several issues with this. First, the mortality rate is at least 10 times greater than for flu (and it seems to be about 50 times greater if the healthcare system is overwhelmed which is true in some places already and inevitable elsewhere). Second, the case numbers are still climbing exponentially. That comparison with flu by number of deaths may not look so good as soon as April. Death numbers are growing exponentially right now (https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-death-toll/). Finally, the deaths are gruesome. People are suffocating to death in their own blood and mucus because their lungs are overflowing from inside. This virus is far better at terror than flu ever was.
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Do remember that case numbers are highly sensitive to how many and which people are tested. Those numbers climbing exponentially is not evidence that the infection numbers are increasing exponentially. Especially when until recently part of the official US definition was (paraphrase)"and can be traced to foreign travel".
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3% of potentially 300 million infected citizens is 9 million dead citizens.
I tend to think that 9 million suffocating in their own blood and mucus is probably more gruesome than 50,000 doing similar.
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So first of all, I am not a virologist but I am in fact using my expertise right now to do research on this virus. I know the literature somewhat, although perhaps not as well as a clinical virologist.
Now, the estimates from epidemiological literature are still in review stages mostly but pre-print literature suggests 30% infection rate. If you listen to Angela Merkel (who is a scientist by training and a major world leader with good scientific advisors) then the number is more like 60%-70%. So you are righ
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Pneumonia is a not a virus it is not something that is passed from one person to the other. It is the result of a viral or bacterial infection. And that mortality rate of 3% for COVID-19, well they mostly died from pneumonia.
Re:Can't blame them (Score:4, Informative)
That's called Pneumonia, which kills around 50,000 people a year in the US and has a mortality rate of 15%
Please go back to remedial reading class, from the very information you linked [cdc.gov] to:
Deaths per 100,000 population: 15.1
That's 0.015%. You're three orders of magnitude off and you don't even realize it, WTF is wrong with you?
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The question is "Are 'understandable' and 'excusable' the same?".
Yes, I can certainly understand why this might be done by a political figure. And there *are* reasons that would be excusable. But is there any reason to think that they apply? And why would "security clearance" be a reasonable metric? One of the world's foremost virologists is a Canadian, who would be a strong asset to the purported task of the meeting, but I'm rather certain he doesn't have a high US security clearance.
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Gee, you are right. A Conspiracy!! It could be the Chinese did it over Trump's policies (Rush Limbaugh). It could even be the aliens....or those sneaky brown people Trump hates so much.
Re:No win situation (Score:5, Interesting)
The attempt at some sort of a win has delivered confusion, panic, billions of dollars promised to big business, and the substantially unchecked and unmeasured spread of the disease among ordinary people.
The people running the country are probably less competent and more mendatious than any employee where you work. Why do you want to give them a pass?
Re: No win situation (Score:2)
Given too many people are assholes and/or easy to frighten, what would be a win?
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Why? People who trade based on fear provide market swings that profit people who understand.
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Your claim is false and does not contribute to the discussion, or the progress of this nation at all.
Conservatives don't always lie, neither do liberals. Both sides of the political spectrum have smart honest members and smart dishonest members as well as dumb members who are
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I disagree. It is far, far worse: The typical conservative does not lie, they believe their deranged fantasy about how the world actually is is the truth! Liars and con-men may stop when things get bad enough or important enough, true believers will just continue on the wrong path to the bitter end.
Re: All they do is lie (Score:2)