Will Joe Biden be the next president?

[Steve R.]

Trump was lambasted by the left. Yet they were pictures taken during the Obama era, mistakenly used by the Democrats. There was no outrage over them back then. So when Obama does it, nothing. When people (wrongly) think Trump did it, outrage. Double standards.(emphasis added)

I don't think it was a "mistake". The Democrats know how to manufacture moral outrage for their benefit. It is the emotional image of misery that counts, not the factual context.

 

[Jon]

My understanding is that the Democrats had to apologise for their mistake, but meanwhile, the damage was already done.

 

[Steve R.]

My understanding is that the Democrats had to apologise for their mistake, but meanwhile, the damage was already done.

While a different incident, that even Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post had to acknowledge: Harry Reid’s appalling defense of his attack on Mitt Romney’s tax record (note that the word "lie" was left out of the headline.)

And yet, the clip above shows Reid, in an interview with CNN's Dana Bash, not only refusing to apologize for the claim but defending it — in a very weird way.

"Romney didn't win, did he?" Reid said in response to Bash's question of whether he regretted what he had said about Romney.

Think about that logic for a minute. What Reid is saying is that it's entirely immaterial whether what he said about Romney and his taxes was true. All that mattered was that Romney didn't win.
Where to begin?
How about with the fact that this all-means-justify-the-ends logic — assuming the end is your desired one — is absolutely toxic for politics and, more importantly, democracy.(emphasis added)

Democrats make outrageous remarks to pander for votes. If caught, oops; sorry about that. To bad you lost. Tough luck.

Did the Democrats, if they even gave an apology for the "cages" get any blow-back from the left wing media, equivilent to Cillizza exposure of Reid? Have the Democrats lost anyone's vote over this lie? They should have.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Is that how you vote? You press a button?
Col

In Louisiana, we have a voting machine which is touch-sensitive. They place a thin paper overlay where the boxes overlap the touch plates. A light illuminates the paper from underneath at places where you can touch. Once you touch, the backlighting changes to an X in the box you touched. It is more complex than that behind the scenes because of laying out the paper ballot and programming which touch plates are active and which lights light up when you touch. But yes, we vote in Louisiana by pressing a button.

 

[Pat Hartman]

The world knows that Trump is a total idiot, he's embarrassing to the USA, he says untrue things

The world "knows" no such thing. You are accepting biased reporting as the Gospel truth.

Many people actually thought Trump would change once he got elected. That was crazy. People are who they are. Trump is not now, nor has he ever been, "politically correct". That is one of his best attributes. He says what he means and he means what he says which is a completely novel attribute for an elected official. I certainly didn't want him to change into a lying politician like all our other elected officials. I would be happier if he toned it down once in a while so he wouldn't antagonize so many people though. You would have a much better understanding of Trump if you read The Art of War or the Prince. Starting with their advice to "keep your friends close and your enemies closer"

Trump has been amazingly successful in spite of the stonewalling by Congress (including the Republicans who hate him almost as much as the Democrats because he is a threat to them as well as he cleans the swamp) and never ending attacks from the left. If Trump exaggerates, IT's A LIE - there he goes AGAIN!!! If he makes a joke, they impeach him. Trump is not a politician but he made the same kind of promises other politician makes when running for office. He fulfilled many of the ones that were actually within his power to do so and tried for all of him. Quite novel for an elected official. Usually once they take office, they completely forget what made people vote for them. But, the ones like replacing Obama care were never within his power. He thought (silly him) that because the Republicans had been making that promise since the HCA was passed that he'd have their support. He didn't. Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell made sure that didn't happen during the first two years while Republicans controlled both houses of Congress. Once the Republicans lost the house, it was never going to happen.

One of the things that most Americans don't understand is why medication is so expensive here in the US. One reason is that Congress (which is supposed to be working for the "people") passed a law that FORBIDS Medicare (the insurance plan for retirees) from negotiating drug prices and also forces Medicare to use third party administrators which increase the cost and suck off any "deals" made to reduce the price of the drugs by the manufacturer.. The result of that is that the US pays top dollar for drugs, the rest of the developed world like the UK and Europe get good deals, and the rest of the world gets drugs almost free. 60 minutes did a segment on this a few years ago and they presented the differential visually by using piles of pills. The US pile is 1 pill and the pile grows dramatically as you move your way around the world. France seems to be a really good negotiator In addition to paying top dollar for the finished product, we also fund a lot of the research from tax dollars so we're paying on both ends. It's like the problem with the UN and NATO, we're the patsy for the world. Trump is finally standing up for us and I am actually happy to vote for him again in November. And to make matters worse, previous administrations encouraged the manufacturing of drugs to be off-shored, largely to China. If we have a headache, we have to depend on China to give us an aspirin. Trump is bringing drug production back to the US as well as the production of PPE. The Chinese really damaged us (deliberately) in the early days of the COVID epidemic by hiding the problem long enough for them to corner the market on the world's PPE supply. We had no reserves because the Obama administration - yep Joe Biden - actively decided to let our supply be depleted but not restored during their Swine Flu epidemic.

 

[Jon]

Pat, I agree with everything you said there and you put it so eloquently. People distort what he says for their own political ends. They want to portray him as a danger to mankind, but just tot up the numbers of deaths from each president and you have your answer.

Arguments that Trump is responsible for more deaths from Covid than would have happened had the Democrats been in power hold no water because it is untestable.

 

[Isaac]

One of the things that most Americans don't understand is why medication is so expensive here in the US.

My father was in the pharmaceutical industry all his working life, and one other big thing he always pointed out to us is the length of time drug makers are allowed to hold on to original patents, during which time only they can make the drug, and until the expiration of which, a generic cannot be made. If this exclusivity time frame were shortened, it would really help generics flood the market sooner, and it's a major reason why RX is so ridiculously priced sometimes. I'll admit to not knowing a whole lot of advanced details about this area of law, but I'm pretty sure it's still a major factor in market prices to this day.

Another factor is the USA's drastic over-kill when it comes to the difficulty of FDA approval. New medicines are generally available in other developed parts of the world much faster than here.

 

[pbaldy]

If this exclusivity time frame were shortened, it would really help generics flood the market sooner

True, but it's a balancing act. Too short and it won't be worth the investment to research and develop new drugs and we don't get new cures. There have certainly been too many instances of price gouging during that protected period of time though. I'm not sure what the right answer is.

 

[Jon]

I think the cost of developing a drug to market is typically about $1bn dollars and that only 1 in 200 drugs reach the market. It is a high stakes game where the pharmaceutical companies need enough reward to make the gambles.

 

[moke123]

Buy the company , sell off its assets and keep the drugs.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/scienc...on-to-save-money-on-hepatitis-c/#187d771871a2

 

[Pat Hartman]

That's an interesting concept moke. I like it. Too bad the government can't run anything efficiently. At the moment, drug companies are "for profit" businesses and are entitled to to make a profit for their investors. But there are classes of businesses, drugs, medical care, natural gas, electricity, that are utilities. People are a captive market. They need what they need and in most cases, have no options. Should that mean that these businesses should be run as not-for-profit or with government dictated maximum profit? California tried this with their electric utility company and look where that's gotten them. Rolling brownouts and the highest prices in the country. Of course California stomped down on the actual running of the business leaving PPG(?) no flexibility. Clearing brush by using controlled fire is one issue. The tree huggers refused to allow the practice so we have alternating years of massive fires in California. Many of these could have been avoided by using controlled burns to get rid of excess brush after a particularly lush growing season as the dry season started. Fires in nature are natural. It's only in the last 100 years or so that humans have had any ability at all to even think about fighting a forest fire once it started. Climate "scientists" blame these fires on GLOBAL WARMING completely discounting the effect of people building houses in the middle of a forest where they would naturally be in the way of any fire started by lightning, which is how most forest fires start.

 

[Isaac]

True, but it's a balancing act. Too short and it won't be worth the investment to research and develop new drugs and we don't get new cures. There have certainly been too many instances of price gouging during that protected period of time though. I'm not sure what the right answer is.

@pbaldy & @Jon - You make a good point, very true. I had momentarily forgotten about that aspect when I typed my post.
Having said that, I like to believe that at least a portion of that expensive R&D...'D' to include the process of years of testing and red tape...Might be reduced at least a little via slightly lower regulation. But I'm not sure on that.

 

[moke123]

Turn on your television

A report from the California-based Institute for Health and Socio-Economic Policy stated that in 2015 out of the top 100 pharmaceutical companies by sales, 64 spent twice as much on marketing and sales than on R&D, 58 spent three times, 43 spent five times as much and 27 spent 10 times the amount [3].

 

[ColinEssex]

I saw the most famous widow-in-waiting, what's her name Melanie? Speaking on TV, that's the first time I've heard her speak, for a foreigner, I thought she did well reading a script written by Orangeman.

So Doc, I'm guessing the electronic voting is linked to a super computer somewhere. That explains how the Russians can easily manipulate the USA voting.
Col

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Col,

No, they are dissociated from a computer entirely. (not counting the computer inside the booth.) No network connections at all. Instead, some clerks and some state police officers visit each polling place after it closes and hook up a system to do a local download of the tabulated results. The police are there to assure that nobody screws around with the results. The local commissioners have counted voters and can tell if there is a count discrepancy. They do some kind of TLS handshake but I'm not up on the exact method used at the low-level protocol levels. All I know is that there is no central contact for the "live" voting machines.

There are other procedural safeguards in place but I have no clue as to how many of them apply (and in what order) when considering a single voting ward & precinct.

 

[CJ_London]

Back to fires - didn't Yellowstone Park nearly die off because man attempted to stop all the fires not realising that the fires form a natural part of the regeneration process? Without them, undergrowth prevented reseeding, smothering the ground below, some trees use fires as a 'trigger' to release seed, etc.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

CJ, check my comments in Steve R's thread about corporate lawsuits. All SORTS of bad things happen when you interfere with natural ecological cycles.

 

[AccessBlaster]

Col,

No, they are dissociated from a computer entirely. (not counting the computer inside the booth.) No network connections at all. Instead, some clerks and some state police officers visit each polling place after it closes and hook up a system to do a local download of the tabulated results. The police are there to assure that nobody screws around with the results. The local commissioners have counted voters and can tell if there is a count discrepancy. They do some kind of TLS handshake but I'm not up on the exact method used at the low-level protocol levels. All I know is that there is no central contact for the "live" voting machines.

There are other procedural safeguards in place but I have no clue as to how many of them apply (and in what order) when considering a single voting ward & precinct.

Diebold optical scan voting machines have been hacked in the past.

Hacking Democracy - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Hursti Hack - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[NauticalGent]

I wavered on mentioning the Diebold issue... It is just one of the reasons I hold firmly to my conviction that voting is pointless.

 

[Jon]

There are also mathematical reasons why it is irrational for the individual to vote.