46th President of the United States, Joe Biden

46th President of the United States, Joe Biden

Author
Discussion

rscott

14,690 posts

190 months

Monday 8th March 2021
quotequote all
DB_11 said:
kowalski655 said:
The bill is trying to give money to businesses that will do something to combat climate change,and combat racism and sexism in corporate boardrooms, rather than to pals of Don, or churches, or billionaires,unlike the GOP version. Can't see much wrong
Exactly, we're not trying to solve climate change or racism/sexism with this bill. It's labelled as Covid relief and that's to scare the citizens into buy-in/support for the bill. If the people don't support it, they're anti-American. Only a small portion of the bill is for Covid and economic stimulus due to Covid. And much of that is slated for years 2022 and beyond.

And who is buying up that debt? The Chinese.

Meanwhile, there remains ~$1 trillion left unspent from the previous Covid bills.

Edited by DB_11 on Monday 8th March 05:37
So if only a small portion is for Covid/economic stimulus for Covid, please explain exactly what else it's for.

Could some of the previously unspent relief funding be because it was targeted poorly by the previous administration who drew up the rules for that.

AW111

9,455 posts

132 months

Monday 8th March 2021
quotequote all
DB_11 said:
OK - I misspoke about the U.K. Trump spoke up about other countries not paying. He did a lot of great things for the U.S. and in 45 days, "Biden" has undone a good chunk of it through Executive Orders. It was done just for spite. Killed off tens of thousands of pipeline jobs and support jobs so Biden could sniff Greta Thunberg's hair.
Hoo boy. We've got another dupe!

He actually thinks Trump cares about anything but DJT, and did "great things for the US".

Welcome, new comedy relief.


PS Why the quotes around Biden's name?

hidetheelephants

23,753 posts

192 months

Monday 8th March 2021
quotequote all
AW111 said:
DB_11 said:
OK - I misspoke about the U.K. Trump spoke up about other countries not paying. He did a lot of great things for the U.S. and in 45 days, "Biden" has undone a good chunk of it through Executive Orders. It was done just for spite. Killed off tens of thousands of pipeline jobs and support jobs so Biden could sniff Greta Thunberg's hair.
Hoo boy. We've got another dupe!

He actually thinks Trump cares about anything but DJT, and did "great things for the US".

Welcome, new comedy relief.


PS Why the quotes around Biden's name?
Because it's really Donny in a rubber mask! silly

DB_11

46 posts

38 months

Monday 8th March 2021
quotequote all
AW111 said:
DB_11 said:
OK - I misspoke about the U.K. Trump spoke up about other countries not paying. He did a lot of great things for the U.S. and in 45 days, "Biden" has undone a good chunk of it through Executive Orders. It was done just for spite. Killed off tens of thousands of pipeline jobs and support jobs so Biden could sniff Greta Thunberg's hair.
Hoo boy. We've got another dupe!

He actually thinks Trump cares about anything but DJT, and did "great things for the US".

Welcome, new comedy relief.


PS Why the quotes around Biden's name?
Because it's not "Biden" making all of these policy decisions. It's Obama, Clintons, Schumer, Pelosi, and the money people (Zuckerberg, Soros...). Poor Creepy Sleepy Joe is barely able to get out of bed every morning. They won't let him answer any questions (i.e. gets cut off when he tries to answer), and he always has a handler nearby (Jill, Kamala, AOC). The poor guy just babble and dribbles on sometimes. He has pushed off a "State of the Union" address beyond any other president (1st term).

anonymous-user

53 months

Monday 8th March 2021
quotequote all
Don't be so mean. He says nice stuff! He's not a nasty GOP DJT shill etc etc etc.

paulguitar

23,104 posts

112 months

Monday 8th March 2021
quotequote all
DB_11 said:
Because it's not "Biden" making all of these policy decisions. It's Obama, Clintons, Schumer, Pelosi, and the money people (Zuckerberg, Soros...). Poor Creepy Sleepy Joe is barely able to get out of bed every morning. They won't let him answer any questions (i.e. gets cut off when he tries to answer), and he always has a handler nearby (Jill, Kamala, AOC). The poor guy just babble and dribbles on sometimes. He has pushed off a "State of the Union" address beyond any other president (1st term).
Is this supposed to be a parody PH account?

Byker28i

58,826 posts

216 months

Monday 8th March 2021
quotequote all
RonaldMcDonaldAteMyCat said:
Don't be so mean. He says nice stuff! He's not a nasty GOP DJT shill etc etc etc.
I'm not a trumpette but ...
your trolling is tedious

Byker28i

58,826 posts

216 months

Monday 8th March 2021
quotequote all
Kate Sullivan
@KateSullivanDC
Biden has nominated two female generals to four-star commands, the Defense Department announced over the weekend, after their promotions were reportedly delayed for months over fears that Trump would reject them because they are women.

Byker28i

58,826 posts

216 months

Monday 8th March 2021
quotequote all
Obscured by other parts of President Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus package, which won Senate approval on Saturday, the child benefit has the makings of a policy revolution. Though framed in technocratic terms as an expansion of an existing tax credit, it is essentially a guaranteed income for families with children, akin to children’s allowances that are common in other rich countries.

The plan establishes the benefit for a single year. But if it becomes permanent, as Democrats intend, it will greatly enlarge the safety net for the poor and the middle class at a time when the volatile modern economy often leaves families moving between those groups. More than 93 percent of children — 69 million — would receive benefits under the plan, at a one-year cost of more than $100 billion.

The bill, which is likely to pass the House and be signed by Mr. Biden this week, raises the maximum benefit most families will receive by up to 80 percent per child and extends it to millions of families whose earnings are too low to fully qualify under existing law. Currently, a quarter of children get a partial benefit, and the poorest 10 percent get nothing.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/07/us/politics/chi...

Byker28i

58,826 posts

216 months

Monday 8th March 2021
quotequote all
Democrats in the Senate narrowly passed a mammoth coronavirus aid package Saturday morning that is likely to become a landmark for progressive legislation. The $1.9 trillion deal includes another round of stimulus checks, an extension to federal unemployment benefits, billions in aid for cities and states, and an increased child tax credit.

In fact, the legislation includes so many notable, big-ticket provisions that it’s gaining almost no attention for another notable feature: rescuing the pensions of more than a million workers and retirees.

The Senate bill, like the version that recently came out of the House, addresses what has become a crisis among multiemployer pension plans. These plans are negotiated between unions and employers in fields where workers tend to change jobs a lot, like construction, trucking and mining. Some of them have fallen into rough shape as industries have changed and union jobs have disappeared.

As the most troubled funds start to run out of money, so will the multiemployer pension program at the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), the government-run entity that insures the plans. Due to the bad fiscal shape of more than a hundred multiemployer plans, the PBGC projects that its insurance program would become insolvent by 2026. If that happened, the PBGC would fail to cover the benefits retirees are owed, leaving many with pennies on the dollar.

After years of trying and failing to pass a fix in Congress, Democrats decided to attach one to the COVID-19 relief plan, arguing it was essential to the retirement security of more than a million people. The provision approved by both the House and Senate provides $86 billion in direct aid for the pension funds that need it, paid from the Treasury through the PBGC.
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/covid-19-re...

anonymous-user

53 months

Monday 8th March 2021
quotequote all
Byker28i said:
I'm not a trumpette but ...
your trolling is tedious
Don't be a hypocrite, Byker. You've spent the last however long happy to insult and see others insult Trump. Suddenly it's your pet cause and it's no longer OK to say anything bad about the pensioner in charge?

DB_11

46 posts

38 months

Monday 8th March 2021
quotequote all
paulguitar said:
It's like Fox News has learned to type. Even managed to get Soros in there, hilarious!
Why not go all out and start quoting CNN?

paulguitar

23,104 posts

112 months

Monday 8th March 2021
quotequote all
DB_11 said:
paulguitar said:
It's like Fox News has learned to type. Even managed to get Soros in there, hilarious!
Why not go all out and start quoting CNN?
I don't have CNN, troll.




DB_11

46 posts

38 months

Monday 8th March 2021
quotequote all
paulguitar said:
I don't have CNN, troll.
You have internet access - you have CNN troll.

deckster

9,630 posts

254 months

Monday 8th March 2021
quotequote all
DB_11 said:
I don't know what you mean by PHer. I've never been banned here or any other website.
If that is true (which I doubt) it won't be for much longer I'm sure.

PRTVR

7,072 posts

220 months

Monday 8th March 2021
quotequote all
deckster said:
DB_11 said:
I don't know what you mean by PHer. I've never been banned here or any other website.
If that is true (which I doubt) it won't be for much longer I'm sure.
Ah the cancel culture at work, you must be so proud..........

southendpier

5,254 posts

228 months

Monday 8th March 2021
quotequote all
DB_11 said:
paulguitar said:
I don't have CNN, troll.
You have internet access - you have CNN troll.
hang on, anyone glancing at this or the Trump thread has CNN - thanks to Byker repeatedly linking every single story at 6am


JeffreyD

6,155 posts

39 months

Monday 8th March 2021
quotequote all
RonaldMcDonaldAteMyCat said:
Don't be a hypocrite, Byker. You've spent the last however long happy to insult and see others insult Trump. Suddenly it's your pet cause and it's no longer OK to say anything bad about the pensioner in charge?
You are very quick to be critical of many posters - what's your take on the post from DB11?

Does he get a free pass because he supports the other side?

HM-2

12,467 posts

168 months

Monday 8th March 2021
quotequote all
gumshoe said:
You don’t stumble anywhere near a rounded approach.
Because I acknowledge that all data sets present their own challenges, rather than cheerleading for the data set that happens to support my assertions whilst ignoring any potential issues with it and roundly failing to address other data points in any meaningful or coherent way? I've never said or suggested that deaths aren't an important factor, just that there are multiple different statistics worthy of consideration.

gumshoe said:
It’s patently obvious cases are problematic.
There are problems with using cases as a data set, just as there are problems with using excess deaths as a data set. In isolation, neither answers the question of "did state X do better than state Y", because "doing better" can mean one, or more, of a variety of things. I would argue that controlling disease spread is part of the question of "doing better", so statistics such as recorded cases per 100,00 alongside data points such as the rate of testing per 100,000 and the percentage of tests that return positive results are very useful in exploring the question of which approach works better.

gumshoe said:
Hence excess deaths are more suitable. It is difficult to fudge death figures.
The issue with death figures when taken in isolation is that they don't necessarily provide a picture that's specific just to the impact of Covid-19. There are other factors at play, some of which are directly related to Covid, some of which are tangentially, and some of which are entirely separate.

I've already alluded to direct and indirect impact of wildfires, especially their interaction with respiratory illness, as one of the factors that needs consideration. Another would be the impacts of the significant increase in road deaths, 8% in total and 24% per 100m miles travelled, from 2019 to 2020 and where these fall. And there are lots of other statistically significant changes in the various categories of death in addition to the "other" one in which Covid-19 is recorded in which need to be accounted for. I've only got California figures for 2020 to hand so haven't had chance to compare myself, but we've also seen:

> A 10% increase in alzheimer's related deaths (up 1,500 in total)
> A 13% increase in diabetes related deaths (up 1,000 in total)
> Increases in a variety of other factors of between 3 and 10%, comprising hundreds of additional deaths

In fact, if you look at the 42,614 additional deaths recorded across 2020 (excluding categories where deaths fell), over 10% of them are ostensibly unrelated to Covid-19. I say ostensibly unrelated as I have no way of gauging how many of these deaths are indirectly related to Covid-19. What did pique my interest, though, is a reported 8% decline in reported fatalities due to lower respiratory tract infections. I wonder how much of that might be captured within Covid-19 fatalities.

gumshoe said:
What? Look back at the posts, and look at the context. You quoted me and another poster’s exchange. It was in relation to excess deaths.
Er, you don't actually appear to be addressing my point here. I provided some clarity after I made the initial claim as to exactly what I was referring to, but you still seem to be failing to address the basic fact you falsely asserted I said something I haven't. Please point to where I've said that Florida has done worse than California or concede that's not a claim I ever made.

gumshoe said:
If we start filtering out the data, some will complain and we never come to a consensus. ...There’s a diminishing return in doing so.
Sounds a bit like you're using a Nirvana Fallacy as an excuse not to have to consider other contributing factors. For the record, I'm not expecting there to be any single massive differentiating factor, but ignoring other factors that may be unique to individual states makes direct statistical comparison problematic. Quite honestly, I don't know whether these factors are statistically significant enough to explain any of the difference, but I don't think dismissing them offhand is sensible either.

IIRC the entire point being made initially was that comparison of California and Florida wasn't a viable way of making an assessment as to whether or not states that lock down perform better than those that don't.

gumshoe said:
This is actually being borne out (not on that scale of course) by people committing suicide and failing to get necessary healthcare.
Not in the case of California it's not- not according to the data I posted above.
2020 saw a 15.4% decline in deaths due to suicide.

gumshoe said:
What you quoted says nothing of the sort.
Regardless of whether it was you intent, that's what it reads as. I don't know how anyone could construe the quoted line above as meaning anything other than what I suggested it reads as, but if that wasn't what you meant then fine.

gumshoe said:
First off, Florida could claim hurricanes from the past could have accelerated deaths such that some of their excess is not due to covid. So where do you draw the line?
What's the direct interplay between hurricanes in the past and Covid-19, then? This is an obvious case of false equivalence.

> Covid-19 mortality being significantly elevated by preexisting respiratory conditions is undeniable fact.
> Respiratory condition mortality being significantly elevated by particulate pollution, such as that caused by fires, is undeniable fact.

Therefore it absolutely stands to reason that the combination of Covid-19 and increased particulate pollution is likely to result in significantly higher levels of mortality amongst those with preexisting respiratory conditions than either factor in isolation.

gumshoe said:
I also pointed out to you that 2017 and 2018 had bigger death tolls due to wildfires in California.
You still seem to be struggling to address the point at hand. The direct death tolls are not what I've ever been interested in.

gumshoe said:
Why did you pick up on the 2020 wildfires but ignored the earlier 2014-2019 wildfires?
Because they're not relevant to the discussion of the potential for Covid-19 comorbidity and its impacts on the likelihood of death.

gumshoe said:
It further goes to highlight another point: people with underlying issues will unfortunately die from various factors and futility of the aggressive lockdown is exposed. So your argument is a complete fallacy
If you think this renders my argument "fallacy", you still don't understand my argument.

gumshoe said:
So maybe that raises questions over how appropriate it is.
An entirely reasonable and valid point, which begs the question why that models was used if it falls foul of several of the core criteria that limit its efficacy.

gumshoe said:
We agree excess deaths are worse in California?
I'm fairly sure I said as much previously.

gumshoe said:
I’ve already explained several times why it is the best measure we have. I've already explained above that even factoring in cases, it does not bode well on California's lockdown strategy.
I'm not sold on the notion that Covid-19 mortality is the best numerical indicator of the efficacy of the principal of lockdowns. Even putting aside the cherry-picking of California and Florida as points of comparison in the first place, rather than looking at a blended per-capita average across states that locked down versus those that didn't, the core point of lockdowns is to prevent transmission. That would be best explored from a numerical perspective by looking at testing per capita, and proportion of tests returning positive results.

gumshoe said:
It was obvious your intention was to give California a mitigation for their failure. That comes across as bad faith.
Again, I really think you've simply misunderstood my point here. I'm not excusing Californian failures, I'm pointing out that there are additional external influencing factors that are worthy of examination. I've made no judgement as to whether these factors are enough to address the per-capita differences in mortality, just pointed out that they may be statistically significant (backed up by an academic citation) and postulated that it may warrant consideration.

Earthdweller

13,429 posts

125 months

Monday 8th March 2021
quotequote all
DB_11 said:
Because it's not "Biden" making all of these policy decisions. It's Obama, Clintons, Schumer, Pelosi, and the money people (Zuckerberg, Soros...). Poor Creepy Sleepy Joe is barely able to get out of bed every morning. They won't let him answer any questions (i.e. gets cut off when he tries to answer), and he always has a handler nearby (Jill, Kamala, AOC). The poor guy just babble and dribbles on sometimes. He has pushed off a "State of the Union" address beyond any other president (1st term).
There are a couple of take outs from that I feel should be discussed

Biden has yet to give a Press conference and field any questions

He has not addressed the houses as is historically precedent on appointment, and seemingly has no plans to do so

Harris seemingly is doing things that a VP would not ordinarily do

The Press, for some reason seem to be very “hands off” any probing or critical questioning

Whilst not having to listen 24/7 to Trump is a blessing we seem now to have an invisible President who is not being taken to task for being missing in action

Maybe I’m wrong and Biden is totally on the ball with his finger firmly on the pulse or maybe the American public are being hoodwinked and he is merely a puppet being played, and protected by others who are really running the show

I hope it’s not the above because that would be very bad for democracy but it’s increasingly looking that way

Can you convince me that Biden is 100% on the ball and in charge ?