Just so you know, there were nearly double the COVID deaths under the Biden administration for the same period as under Trump. This is not excusing Trump's insanity, but it is Biden who proclaimed the pandemic to be "over." It is Biden who 6 months ago said masking and other protective measures were a "personal responsibility," just like…
Just so you know, there were nearly double the COVID deaths under the Biden administration for the same period as under Trump. This is not excusing Trump's insanity, but it is Biden who proclaimed the pandemic to be "over." It is Biden who 6 months ago said masking and other protective measures were a "personal responsibility," just like the Trump administration. It is Biden who has removed mask mandates for health care facilities. This is disastrous public health policy, or it is actually a mockery of it, so we should be cautious in our divisive rhetoric and desire to clickbait certain demographics for our own personal gain.
You know, you ought to be cautious about accusing Thom Hartmann of producing the fact-based, rationally interpreted explications such as above for the sake of divisive rhetoric and out of his desire to clickbait certain demographics (proud to plead guilty, for one!) for his own personal gain.
I appreciate Thom's wisdom that's why I have been listening to him and subscribe to his report. But in the past 7 years Thom's facts have become selective and are presented in a biased fashion that does not help solve problems or mobilize people into action. His obsession with (obvious) Republican malfeasance and propping of of Trump by constantly giving him airtime is what he has to do to maintain the liberal audience. This is not the Thom Hartmann of 20 years ago, as erudite as his writings may be. He has called Nancy Pelosi a progressive, Hillary Clinton was a "brilliant" Secretary of State and was an "identical" candidate to Bernie Sanders. These and so many other false assertions lead to a complacency among the liberal base and Americans in general that they accept the crumbs thrown to them by neoliberal Democrats and a foreign policy based on escalation of war and interventional war steeped in a nationalism that Thom himself is stoking. His show has become a form of state-run media, existing almost exclusively to protect the Democratic Party which precludes the critical thinking vital to sustain the "democracy" he claims to be protecting.
Over the last several months I have asked a number of Republican friends to list 10 good conservative Republican ideas about how to make America better for everyone . . . the Republicans have no good ideas. If they do they must be classified top secret and nobody has clearance.
Just so youy know, TRUMP had a short window of opportunity to act fast to contain the virus before it spread and became uncontainable . . . in January, February, maybe March, 2020, long before Biden became president a year later . . . Trump sat on his hands for a year . . . and hundreds of thousands of people died.
He needs to be prosecuted and convicted for hundreds of thousands of counts of negligent homicide, involuntary manslaughter. See my post above.
Thom calls it the Trump "genocide," and cites the reasons why. The reversal of policy to the day the reporting came out that the virus was supposedly a smart, selective virus killing Democrats. Of course, I remember when the cruise ship was denied disembarcation in San Francisco because Trump said, out loud and up front, that he didn't want more positive cases counted to make him look bad. After that , its a litany of monstrous, calculated manipulations to lead more Americans to die. I can't believe that the Post Office is still cursed with DeJoy, who clearly vandalized the nation's infrastructure hoping to lessen the vote count of virus-leery Democrats, while Trump nursed the delusion of his own voters that it was "just the flu." In a way, is it understandable that our social and legal systems aren't adequate to counter such evil?
While I agree if we are going to hold presidents accountable for intentional mass murder than Obama and Biden should be convicted as well eg Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somolia and Pakistan to name a few. Both Trump and Biden have used "the science" as a convenience blowing in the political winds. So Trump was aggressively ignorant and Biden's ignorance is more benign. Take a look at the statistics and see that we ignore that hundreds per day are still dying of COVID and your fearless leader declared that the pamdemic was "over" months ago. If Trump had said that I wonder what morally relativistic liberals would be saying now.
Last I checked the Biden administration is still urging people to get the boosters . . . conducting wars are official acts for which a president has immunity, acts of national policy . . . NIXON V. FITZGERALD (1982) the Supreme Court held that the president has absolute immunity for (a) official (b) legal acts, no immunity for (c) unofficial and / or (d) illegal acts.
Trump's lawyers would have to argue that he decision to do nothing and declare that the virus would soon "just disappear like magic" was an official act, even if it killed hundreds of thousands of Americans, and was not a crime, even though it obviously meets the (simple) test for negligent homicide.
I wish I was in a position to prosecute Trump on this, but I'm not in the DOJ, it would be a slam dunker, he has no defenses. You're the doc, I'm the lawyer.
Biden saying that "the pandemic is over" in 2023 is 100% irrelevant to Trump's gross negligence in 2020. I could make a good case for first degree murder on Trump, since he refused to lift a finger to even try to protect Americans from the virus and he knew from CDC and NIH briefing that his failure to act would kill people, a lot of people, this establishes (a) ani intent to kill, with (b) pre-meditation and deliberation.
It would be tons of fun to watch his defense lawyers try to spin that.
Second degree murder would be even easier, since it doesn't require specific intent to kill, only doing an act (or failing to act) with conscious and reckless disregard of the safety of another, or others, resulting in the death of another.
Maybe you should stick to medicine.
"Conservatism" is not a coherent idea, not a coherent political philosophy, psychological it's little or nothing but a fear of change, a phobia of change, a phobia of the other, the different, the new, a phobia of progress. Conservatives are stuck in the mud, endlessly trying to "conserve" the past as if the past were something that can be conserved like jam in a jar.
All progress by definition is always made by progressives, liberals, always has been, always will be, I used to be a very conservative Republican, time, life, experience, education, opened my eyes to the intellectual vacuity of what passes for "conservative philosophy." Even the seminal book sparked the "conservative movement" in the 1950s - THE CONSERVATIVE MIND: FROM BURKE TO ELLIOT, by Russell Kirk - nutshell, is little but "our great grandfathers knew best and we need to conserve their legacy and obstruct change and progress as much was we can," the past is good,, the new is bad, change is bad, new ideas are scary.
The problem with this is that all the problems we have now didn't get fixed, or solved, by what we've done in the past, to fix anything we must do what we haven't done before, which means that conservative Republicans can't fix anything 'cuz they're allergic to doing anything but whatever failed to fix it last year, or fifty years ago.
I remember when the Republican party was howling about new laws requiring seat belts in cars and motorcycle helmets, an assault on their "freedom" to die in motor vehicle accidents, since then seat belts and helmets have saved many thousands of lives and prevented millions of much more serious injuries and many billions of dollars (trillions?) in medical expenses and the costs of disability and death . . . not the brightest rocks in the box.
I am only concerned with the public health policy and the outcomes, not parsing the degree of negligence or political expediency. Of course it is easy to say that Trump's handling of the pandemic or immigration was "worse" than Biden's, but due to the extreme degree of Trump's ignorance that relativism is irrelevant. Biden can be bad and Trump can be awful, it is not a binary choice of one "good" and one "evil." Unless of course your vested interests are enmeshed with those of the defense industry, Wall Street, the health care conglomerates or the Democratic Party. And what the leader of the free world says does indeed have consequences: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/19/biden-says-covid-pandemic-is-over-despite-us-daily-death-toll-in-the-hundreds
Just so you know, there were nearly double the COVID deaths under the Biden administration for the same period as under Trump. This is not excusing Trump's insanity, but it is Biden who proclaimed the pandemic to be "over." It is Biden who 6 months ago said masking and other protective measures were a "personal responsibility," just like the Trump administration. It is Biden who has removed mask mandates for health care facilities. This is disastrous public health policy, or it is actually a mockery of it, so we should be cautious in our divisive rhetoric and desire to clickbait certain demographics for our own personal gain.
You know, you ought to be cautious about accusing Thom Hartmann of producing the fact-based, rationally interpreted explications such as above for the sake of divisive rhetoric and out of his desire to clickbait certain demographics (proud to plead guilty, for one!) for his own personal gain.
I appreciate Thom's wisdom that's why I have been listening to him and subscribe to his report. But in the past 7 years Thom's facts have become selective and are presented in a biased fashion that does not help solve problems or mobilize people into action. His obsession with (obvious) Republican malfeasance and propping of of Trump by constantly giving him airtime is what he has to do to maintain the liberal audience. This is not the Thom Hartmann of 20 years ago, as erudite as his writings may be. He has called Nancy Pelosi a progressive, Hillary Clinton was a "brilliant" Secretary of State and was an "identical" candidate to Bernie Sanders. These and so many other false assertions lead to a complacency among the liberal base and Americans in general that they accept the crumbs thrown to them by neoliberal Democrats and a foreign policy based on escalation of war and interventional war steeped in a nationalism that Thom himself is stoking. His show has become a form of state-run media, existing almost exclusively to protect the Democratic Party which precludes the critical thinking vital to sustain the "democracy" he claims to be protecting.
Over the last several months I have asked a number of Republican friends to list 10 good conservative Republican ideas about how to make America better for everyone . . . the Republicans have no good ideas. If they do they must be classified top secret and nobody has clearance.
Just so youy know, TRUMP had a short window of opportunity to act fast to contain the virus before it spread and became uncontainable . . . in January, February, maybe March, 2020, long before Biden became president a year later . . . Trump sat on his hands for a year . . . and hundreds of thousands of people died.
He needs to be prosecuted and convicted for hundreds of thousands of counts of negligent homicide, involuntary manslaughter. See my post above.
Thom calls it the Trump "genocide," and cites the reasons why. The reversal of policy to the day the reporting came out that the virus was supposedly a smart, selective virus killing Democrats. Of course, I remember when the cruise ship was denied disembarcation in San Francisco because Trump said, out loud and up front, that he didn't want more positive cases counted to make him look bad. After that , its a litany of monstrous, calculated manipulations to lead more Americans to die. I can't believe that the Post Office is still cursed with DeJoy, who clearly vandalized the nation's infrastructure hoping to lessen the vote count of virus-leery Democrats, while Trump nursed the delusion of his own voters that it was "just the flu." In a way, is it understandable that our social and legal systems aren't adequate to counter such evil?
While I agree if we are going to hold presidents accountable for intentional mass murder than Obama and Biden should be convicted as well eg Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somolia and Pakistan to name a few. Both Trump and Biden have used "the science" as a convenience blowing in the political winds. So Trump was aggressively ignorant and Biden's ignorance is more benign. Take a look at the statistics and see that we ignore that hundreds per day are still dying of COVID and your fearless leader declared that the pamdemic was "over" months ago. If Trump had said that I wonder what morally relativistic liberals would be saying now.
Last I checked the Biden administration is still urging people to get the boosters . . . conducting wars are official acts for which a president has immunity, acts of national policy . . . NIXON V. FITZGERALD (1982) the Supreme Court held that the president has absolute immunity for (a) official (b) legal acts, no immunity for (c) unofficial and / or (d) illegal acts.
Trump's lawyers would have to argue that he decision to do nothing and declare that the virus would soon "just disappear like magic" was an official act, even if it killed hundreds of thousands of Americans, and was not a crime, even though it obviously meets the (simple) test for negligent homicide.
I wish I was in a position to prosecute Trump on this, but I'm not in the DOJ, it would be a slam dunker, he has no defenses. You're the doc, I'm the lawyer.
Biden saying that "the pandemic is over" in 2023 is 100% irrelevant to Trump's gross negligence in 2020. I could make a good case for first degree murder on Trump, since he refused to lift a finger to even try to protect Americans from the virus and he knew from CDC and NIH briefing that his failure to act would kill people, a lot of people, this establishes (a) ani intent to kill, with (b) pre-meditation and deliberation.
It would be tons of fun to watch his defense lawyers try to spin that.
Second degree murder would be even easier, since it doesn't require specific intent to kill, only doing an act (or failing to act) with conscious and reckless disregard of the safety of another, or others, resulting in the death of another.
Maybe you should stick to medicine.
"Conservatism" is not a coherent idea, not a coherent political philosophy, psychological it's little or nothing but a fear of change, a phobia of change, a phobia of the other, the different, the new, a phobia of progress. Conservatives are stuck in the mud, endlessly trying to "conserve" the past as if the past were something that can be conserved like jam in a jar.
All progress by definition is always made by progressives, liberals, always has been, always will be, I used to be a very conservative Republican, time, life, experience, education, opened my eyes to the intellectual vacuity of what passes for "conservative philosophy." Even the seminal book sparked the "conservative movement" in the 1950s - THE CONSERVATIVE MIND: FROM BURKE TO ELLIOT, by Russell Kirk - nutshell, is little but "our great grandfathers knew best and we need to conserve their legacy and obstruct change and progress as much was we can," the past is good,, the new is bad, change is bad, new ideas are scary.
The problem with this is that all the problems we have now didn't get fixed, or solved, by what we've done in the past, to fix anything we must do what we haven't done before, which means that conservative Republicans can't fix anything 'cuz they're allergic to doing anything but whatever failed to fix it last year, or fifty years ago.
I remember when the Republican party was howling about new laws requiring seat belts in cars and motorcycle helmets, an assault on their "freedom" to die in motor vehicle accidents, since then seat belts and helmets have saved many thousands of lives and prevented millions of much more serious injuries and many billions of dollars (trillions?) in medical expenses and the costs of disability and death . . . not the brightest rocks in the box.
I am only concerned with the public health policy and the outcomes, not parsing the degree of negligence or political expediency. Of course it is easy to say that Trump's handling of the pandemic or immigration was "worse" than Biden's, but due to the extreme degree of Trump's ignorance that relativism is irrelevant. Biden can be bad and Trump can be awful, it is not a binary choice of one "good" and one "evil." Unless of course your vested interests are enmeshed with those of the defense industry, Wall Street, the health care conglomerates or the Democratic Party. And what the leader of the free world says does indeed have consequences: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/19/biden-says-covid-pandemic-is-over-despite-us-daily-death-toll-in-the-hundreds
What should Biden do to reduce Covid harm now? You tell us.