American Politics Discussion Thread

[Mjmd]

[T-hawk]

[quote removed by request]

I don't have the answers here - nobody does. Best I can offer is that quote about "democracy is the worst except for all the others" or however it goes. Democracy with strong checks and balances to guard the rights of the minority seems to be about the best we can do. A proportional-vote system rather than winner-take-all for every seat might help, though I'm not any political scientist to know for sure or the details of how to implement one.

At the least, actually follow the Constitution that we've got rather than ignoring it. Laws should come from legislatures, not the increasingly pervasive dictate by executive order that we've been seeing (by both parties.) The rights in the Constitution should be absolute - freedom of assembly, right to bear arms; if you want to curtail those (no assembly in a pandemic, no bearing nuclear weapons), then do it by amending the Constitution, which will be as difficult as it is supposed to be.

[Mr. Cairo]

At the least, actually follow the Constitution that we've got rather than ignoring it.  Laws should come from legislatures, not the increasingly pervasive dictate by executive order that we've been seeing (by both parties.)  The rights in the Constitution should be absolute - freedom of assembly, right to bear arms; if you want to curtail those (no assembly in a pandemic, no bearing nuclear weapons), then do it by amending the Constitution, which will be as difficult as it is supposed to be.

The power of the executive (The President) in America to issue Executive Orders comes directly from the Constitution (Article Two), as well as from from delegated legislation from Congress. Declaring that the President shouldn't be able to issue executive orders is ignoring the Constitution. If there are specific executive orders you think are unconstitutional then fine, that's what the courts are for. However, the reality is that no new laws are being made by Executive Order, the President is merely exercising powers already invested in the executive by the Constitution and by Congress. If you want to curtail those powers, then do it by amending the Constitution.

[Mjmd]

It can't be argued that the use and overall power of the executive branch has grown. A lot of that has had to do with speed the world moves combined with how slow even a functioning congress moves. In today's obstructionist environment its almost become essential. The first infrastructure bill should have been a slam dunk bipartisan effort, but the Republicans who voted for it were deemed traitors and "giving the democrats something to run on". We've needed for at least two administrations, but if things are bad its easier for the party in power to change even if the party it changes to caused it to be bad..........

That being said executive power is a horrible way to run political policy specifically. The obvious reason being that the next time the other side gets the presidency they can undo what you've done by the same executive power.

I do not claim to have a solution to either of these issues. Again "we're doomed" is about the best I got.

But ya where different powers lay and how far the stretch different branches of government have / are constantly fighting over. I am not a legal expert especially in differences between state and federal constitution, but the very political WI supreme court ruled that the power to dictate mask mandates lay with the legislature (again the power to do so the gov very much has, it was just where did that power lay in WI). At the time*** the Republicans said they were in favor of masks but were just objecting to our governor (democrat) implementing. Mind you they never even called the legislature to order let alone put forward any kind of bill. And obviously we've come a long way politically since then......

[BING_XI_LAO]

There's a lot of things that make me distrust the vaccines. Firstly three things that make me suspicious of the whole pandemic narrative and public policy:
-prior censorship of the pandemic regarding lab leak origin
(presumably that narrative was banned in 2020 because Trump was the anti-Chinese guy so it would've helped him, in 2021 Biden took up that mantle and so the narrative was legitimised with new supporting reports, instead of banned)
-prior bullshit statistics of the pandemic threat, namely "died with covid"
-Delta and Omicron getting covered as "deadly" even though they are of course less deadly and more transmissible as was to be expected.

Then for the vaccines themselves there has been:
-censorship against reporting side effects
-banning and censoring ivermectin/hydroxchloraquine. For example my dad's immuno-suppressed due to an organ transplant, so would need every treatment he could get, yet his GP says he'd get in trouble for prescribing such things ahead of time. 
-Disparaging ivermectin as "dangerous" "horse dewormer" - how can you trust anything from a source which produces such idiotic lies?
-Russian and Chinese vaccines not treated as legitimate
-vaccines being in the hands of a few large corporations whose sales pitch is heavily dependent on government spending and policy, aka the archetypal Western grift
-histrionic pressure to force holdouts to get vaccinated even when the vaccination rate is already high across society
-constant weakening of the claims of vaccine efficacy made by its proponents and constant expansion of the number of necessary doses. So either they didn't know what they were talking about or they were using a gradual let-down expectation management strategy. Like with "2 weeks to slow the spread". Either way they can't be trusted any more.
 
However none of this is direct evidence of the vaccines being dangerous. It only means the elite is untrustworthy and would cover it up if the vaccine were dangerous.
Censorship of side-effect reporting doesn't prove anything. Being censored just means a narrative is inconvenient not that it is correct.
So there is still no good proof of mass vaccine deaths as far as I'm aware, as even anti-vaxxers themselves (who I have a lot of political sympathy for) admit. They're happy to go on posting innuendo and vague allegations that it's dangerous, and that it will produce long-term side-effects, but they can't quantify it. National data doesn't show significant excess mortality from what I've seen.
 
Take this page for example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_as...le_playing
It indicates heart attacks doubling in 2021 for footballers. That is a young healthy group which doesn't have many heart attacks, but actually does have more heart attacks than other young people, because they give their hearts lots of hard work. So I do think the vaccine is killing people with heart attacks, but we knew that already from even the official narrative and individual reports on social media. This issue of footballers dropping dead on the field at twice the rate they were before, well if you double a niche issue, it is still only niche. And maybe it is from a subcategory of vaccinations which are accidentally intravenous instead of intramuscular.

Do any of the vaxx sceptics in this thread have quanitifiable evidence of how many people are getting killed by the vaccine? I suspect it is a fraction of a percent, the kind of number we scoff at when it's dealt by Covid itself.

Then there is the question of motive, for those who think the elite might want to deliberately poison them. 
"Depopulation Agenda" - this is wrong because the elite is wealthier when they have more people to rule over. 
"Weaken the Masses" - the elite depends on psychological obedience more than on people being too weak to rise up against them physically
"Cause the Injury Supply the Cure" - give everyone side-effects so they become dependent on further therapeutics supplied by an alliance of state and corporate power. Uh, this one isn't so unreasonable actually, as it would explain the constant pressure to reach 100% vaccination, as well as all the boosters against a less and less dangerous disease. But I just don't think they'd expect to get away with something that big that effects their entire citizenry, that would be very different from destroying Middle Eastern countries.

Another thing to consider is that China and Russia are pushing vaccines despite not being part of the Western media and power structure. They can't be in on the hoax, in particular China can't be doing it to seize power for the state or profit for the corporations, because the Chinese state already has mass surveillance systems and controls the corporations.

[Mjmd]

That's a lot Bing.... I will cover some of it.

-Virus mutation I don't think was ever guaranteed to be less deadly but more transmissible. Omicron may end up being long term lucky but short term pain. The reason more transmissible equates to "deadly" is obviously statistics.

-I remember in the US that we found out about the very low instances of issues with J&J very fast and stopped using for a while (this was literally when my wife and I got our shots and my wife has some blood clotting issues so I made sure we weren't getting that one, but they had already stopped for that time). There is a whole system in place for reporting issues, so not sure where the cover up.

-source for Ivermectin efficacy.

-I mean yes you can't admit Russian and China do things well. Thats par for the course.

-Part of why there is pressure to get people vaccinated is again even small death % across a large population = a whole lot of death, but also the chance of mutation. I know the WHO has actually been pretty anti booster BUT because they want to see shots going to poorer countries to reduce overall number of deaths more plus reduce chance of mutation.

As far as any kind of government conspiracy generally historically governments try to cover up their inadequacies, which is part of the origination of why Republicans here don't like to admit Covid is an issue. Anyways, the fact that we have every freedom of press country saying the same thing is the key to me. 

I told my son the story of the boy who cried wolf (because he kept misbehaving after saying he would behave) and I find the Russian vaccine efforts morbidly funny. People there are so used to the government lying there and in that case I don't blame them for hesitancy.

[Jowy]

There's a lot of things that make me distrust the vaccines. Firstly three things that make me suspicious of the whole pandemic narrative and public policy:
-prior censorship of the pandemic regarding lab leak origin
(presumably that narrative was banned in 2020 because Trump was the anti-Chinese guy so it would've helped him, in 2021 Biden took up that mantle and so the narrative was legitimised with new supporting reports, instead of banned)

The "lab leak origin" is a conspiracy theory. It is not impossible that Covid could have leaked from a lab, but there is absolutely no proof that it did.

-prior bullshit statistics of the pandemic threat, namely "died with covid"

Conspiracy theory about doctors worldwide in every country making up numbers. Also you can just look at excess deaths compared to pre-Covid if you want to.

-Delta and Omicron getting covered as "deadly" even though they are of course less deadly and more transmissible as was to be expected.

Conspiracy theory that there is some worldwide media conspiracy to make Covid dangerous (because antivaxxers don't believe it is).

Then for the vaccines themselves there has been:
-censorship against reporting side effects

Conspiracy theory that there is some campaign by all countries in the world to hide side effects from the vaccinations. The reason you aren't allowed to spread your misinformation freely is because it fucking kills people.

-banning and censoring ivermectin/hydroxchloraquine. For example my dad's immuno-suppressed due to an organ transplant, so would need every treatment he could get, yet his GP says he'd get in trouble for prescribing such things ahead of time. 

Same as above. None of that crap has been proven to work against Covid (unlike the vaccines that you fear so much).

-Disparaging ivermectin as "dangerous" "horse dewormer" - how can you trust anything from a source which produces such idiotic lies?

Those are not lies. It is used as a dewormer for horses, and it can be dangerous to take it (especially in high doses). Most drugs have chances of side effects, it's not recommended to take random drugs that you don't need. Additionally, taking useless drugs against Covid can give you a false sense of security when you really need to get real medical help.

-Russian and Chinese vaccines not treated as legitimate

I don't even know what this has to do with American politics and haven't heard anything about this.

-vaccines being in the hands of a few large corporations whose sales pitch is heavily dependent on government spending and policy, aka the archetypal Western grift

The governments don't just blindly buy these things, everything is scientifically tested and proven. Just because you don't know or understand how they work doesn't mean the government is just blindly administering a mystery substance to their citizens. There were way more vaccines being made, but guess what, they didn't pass the trials and that's why they aren't being mass produced and given to people unlike those that did pass the trials.

-histrionic pressure to force holdouts to get vaccinated even when the vaccination rate is already high across society

America is at fucking 60% fully vaccinated, that is not enough. 2000 people are dying every day to Covid. It is one of the top causes of death in America. It would be the clear #1 without vaccines. Most people dying are unvaccinated.

-constant weakening of the claims of vaccine efficacy made by its proponents and constant expansion of the number of necessary doses. So either they didn't know what they were talking about or they were using a gradual let-down expectation management strategy. Like with "2 weeks to slow the spread". Either way they can't be trusted any more.

That's how science works, you constantly learn more. It's not like pandemics are commonplace. The reason why more doses are needed is because not enough people are vaccinated and the disease is still around and mutating. We did know from the beginning about needing high vaccinations rates and the possibility of mutations if the virus sticks around. Some other things we did not know from the beginning and have learned since then. What you want and what is very common for antivaxxers is that you want the world to be very simple and easy to understand and that's why you fall for misinformation that makes it seem like so.
 

However none of this is direct evidence of the vaccines being dangerous. It only means the elite is untrustworthy and would cover it up if the vaccine were dangerous.
Censorship of side-effect reporting doesn't prove anything. Being censored just means a narrative is inconvenient not that it is correct.
So there is still no good proof of mass vaccine deaths as far as I'm aware, as even anti-vaxxers themselves (who I have a lot of political sympathy for) admit. They're happy to go on posting innuendo and vague allegations that it's dangerous, and that it will produce long-term side-effects, but they can't quantify it. National data doesn't show significant excess mortality from what I've seen.
 
Take this page for example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_as...le_playing
It indicates heart attacks doubling in 2021 for footballers. That is a young healthy group which doesn't have many heart attacks, but actually does have more heart attacks than other young people, because they give their hearts lots of hard work. So I do think the vaccine is killing people with heart attacks, but we knew that already from even the official narrative and individual reports on social media. This issue of footballers dropping dead on the field at twice the rate they were before, well if you double a niche issue, it is still only niche. And maybe it is from a subcategory of vaccinations which are accidentally intravenous instead of intramuscular.

Do any of the vaxx sceptics in this thread have quanitifiable evidence of how many people are getting killed by the vaccine? I suspect it is a fraction of a percent, the kind of number we scoff at when it's dealt by Covid itself.

Then there is the question of motive, for those who think the elite might want to deliberately poison them. 
"Depopulation Agenda" - this is wrong because the elite is wealthier when they have more people to rule over. 
"Weaken the Masses" - the elite depends on psychological obedience more than on people being too weak to rise up against them physically
"Cause the Injury Supply the Cure" - give everyone side-effects so they become dependent on further therapeutics supplied by an alliance of state and corporate power. Uh, this one isn't so unreasonable actually, as it would explain the constant pressure to reach 100% vaccination, as well as all the boosters against a less and less dangerous disease. But I just don't think they'd expect to get away with something that big that effects their entire citizenry, that would be very different from destroying Middle Eastern countries.

Another thing to consider is that China and Russia are pushing vaccines despite not being part of the Western media and power structure. They can't be in on the hoax, in particular China can't be doing it to seize power for the state or profit for the corporations, because the Chinese state already has mass surveillance systems and controls the corporations.

Conspiracy theory about some conspiracy that every country in the world are intentionally trying to poison their citizens. Completely ridiculous and impossible to manage anything like this. But it is in the same vein as Flat Earth conspiracies and Q-Anon conspiracies. The Venn Diagram between antivaxxers and the former two is a circle.

Anyway probably not gonna engage in the vaccination talk after this. Everyone who could be persuaded to get it have taken it.

[Charriu]

I can't know were you live, I for one live in Europe and from my European media consume I get a different picture then you:

-Delta and Omicron getting covered as "deadly" even though they are of course less deadly and more transmissible as was to be expected.

There's a lot of media hysteria trying to get the next story especially in the 24 hour news cycle TV programs. It's true that Delta is not deadlier then the original version and in case of Omicron there are hints that it might cause less severe cases, but more research has to go into that. Nonetheless it is possible that both variants cause more death. That's because they are more transmissible therefore more people get infected and may end up in ICUs and if those are full more people die.

-censorship against reporting side effects (of vaccines)

That might be a thing on your side. Here on my European side the news and the government are pretty transparent about the side effects. When side effects popped up governments paused the usage of that vaccine for further inspection. In the end they found that the risk of these side effects were very low and/or Covid has a higher risk. They even stopped the use of some vaccines for specific age groups entirely just to be safe. In my book that does not count as censorship.

-banning and censoring ivermectin/hydroxchloraquine. For example my dad's immuno-suppressed due to an organ transplant, so would need every treatment he could get, yet his GP says he'd get in trouble for prescribing such things ahead of time.
-Disparaging ivermectin as "dangerous" "horse dewormer" - how can you trust anything from a source which produces such idiotic lies?

All of these drugs are perfectly fine drugs for their specific diseases, but and that's a big but there is no overwhelming medical evidence that those drugs work against Covid. They are labelled dangerous not because they are bad drugs, but rather because it is dangerous to take drugs if you don't have the disease related to that drug. Like for example you wouldn't take Insulin if you are an otherwise healthy person. That can seriously mess with your body and may even be dangerous.

It also helps to look at Russia and China as some people seem to trust them more then the West. But even they do not use those drugs against Covid to my knowledge.

-Russian and Chinese vaccines not treated as legitimate

I think it was ok to be cautious of the Russian Sputnik V in the beginning, because they did not wait for the whole phase III result of clinical triels. But in the end that phase went through fine and I agree it is a problem not to treat them as legitimate.

-constant weakening of the claims of vaccine efficacy made by its proponents and constant expansion of the number of necessary doses. So either they didn't know what they were talking about or they were using a gradual let-down expectation management strategy. Like with "2 weeks to slow the spread". Either way they can't be trusted any more.

I have a problem with the word constant expansion, because that's just not true. So far most vaccines needed 2 doses from the very beginning. We (Germany) now started with a 3rd dose mainly because we learned that Omicron does manage to bypass the immune system better, but with a 3rd doses that risk is lowered.

The bigger problem though is that we kept the vaccine for us 1st world countries, when we should have started vaccinating the whole world to decrease the potential of mutations.

-histrionic pressure to force holdouts to get vaccinated even when the vaccination rate is already high across society

The vaccination rate is high, but not high enough to reduce severe Covid cases to a level that the healthcare system can manage it.

Take this page for example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_as...le_playing
It indicates heart attacks doubling in 2021 for footballers. That is a young healthy group which doesn't have many heart attacks, but actually does have more heart attacks than other young people, because they give their hearts lots of hard work. So I do think the vaccine is killing people with heart attacks, but we knew that already from even the official narrative and individual reports on social media. This issue of footballers dropping dead on the field at twice the rate they were before, well if you double a niche issue, it is still only niche. And maybe it is from a subcategory of vaccinations which are accidentally intravenous instead of intramuscular.

I recommend this youtube channel.



He's a known cardiologist in the UK and of course knows a lot of stuff when it comes to the heart.

However none of this is direct evidence of the vaccines being dangerous. It only means the elite is untrustworthy and would cover it up if the vaccine were dangerous.
Censorship of side-effect reporting doesn't prove anything. Being censored just means a narrative is inconvenient not that it is correct.
So there is still no good proof of mass vaccine deaths as far as I'm aware, as even anti-vaxxers themselves (who I have a lot of political sympathy for) admit. They're happy to go on posting innuendo and vague allegations that it's dangerous, and that it will produce long-term side-effects, but they can't quantify it. National data doesn't show significant excess mortality from what I've seen.

...

Do any of the vaxx sceptics in this thread have quanitifiable evidence of how many people are getting killed by the vaccine? I suspect it is a fraction of a percent, the kind of number we scoff at when it's dealt by Covid itself.

Then there is the question of motive, for those who think the elite might want to deliberately poison them.
"Depopulation Agenda" - this is wrong because the elite is wealthier when they have more people to rule over.
"Weaken the Masses" - the elite depends on psychological obedience more than on people being too weak to rise up against them physically
"Cause the Injury Supply the Cure" - give everyone side-effects so they become dependent on further therapeutics supplied by an alliance of state and corporate power. Uh, this one isn't so unreasonable actually, as it would explain the constant pressure to reach 100% vaccination, as well as all the boosters against a less and less dangerous disease. But I just don't think they'd expect to get away with something that big that effects their entire citizenry, that would be very different from destroying Middle Eastern countries.

That's because the vaccine isn't more dangerous then the disease it prevents. The vaccines are now in mass use for a year and guess what there was no mass deaths.

Another thing to consider is that China and Russia are pushing vaccines despite not being part of the Western media and power structure. They can't be in on the hoax, in particular China can't be doing it to seize power for the state or profit for the corporations, because the Chinese state already has mass surveillance systems and controls the corporations.

Very important remark that should give every conspiracy activist and anti-vaxxer pause.

[Serdoa]

Just to add a little to this discussion:

I like to believe the saying of "Don't attribute to malice which can be explained by ignorance". Working myself in the health care sector for some years now, I don't believe that any one step in terms of covid-prevention/response was done out of malice, but many nonetheless lead to issues. Three examples (one before covid):

a) Germany pays clinics so they provide more hospital beds for covid patients. So beds are being repurposed, beds are being withheld from patients which can have postponed treatment because the clinic earns more money reporting empty, available beds for covid-patients than filling those with non-covid patients. They also made money for having beds, even if the personnel was lacking. 

The idea of what was done here from the state made sense (make sure enough resources are available if it gets bad). The implementation was shit. Partly because people who do not work in healthcare have no clue whats going on in this business and the rules showed that and partly because for some reason some politicians believed that economic considerations would not influence clinics. Mind you, every clinic has since years not only personnel but even automated routines to find the best (read: most profitable) combination of invoicing reports. Some might not know: It makes a difference in how much money you get under what category you put a patient, even if the treatment was the same.

And just as an aside: Official health care insurance companies are by law not allowed to check all the invoices they get. Even if errors are found in the ones they do check it needs to reach a certain threshold before they are allowed to check more. Basically impossible to reach the highest threshold. So they in turn have started implementing AI routines and analytics to find the invoices with the most likely occurence of errors/misreports. It is all really stupid tbh.

b) Right now, the above has been corrected (kind of), but clinics are now getting more money if they treat someone with covid. The reasoning is that they have more expenses doing so, which makes sense. But what it does lead to is that patients will be reported as being "covid-patients" even if they are treated for something else in the clinic. How many? No one knows. Could be most, could be nearly none. How many patients are treated this year with a cold or the flu in comparison to 2017/2018/2019? No clue, but given the workings of the system I would be surprised if it is many, if any at all. Because again, clinics will report the category that gets the most money if they have the choice and in the case of cold, flu, covid they do, without any controlling instance. If they could even reasonably differentiate those infections (which they can only in case of bacterial infections) - and if they wanted to. Make tests, which costs money, in order to lose money? Sure, if the patient needs it, but else? 

c) One from before covid: Healthcare insurance providers do get money depending on how severe the cases are that they provide insurance for. More patients with severe issues the more money. Because these are more costly. It's called M-RSA (Morbiditätsorientierter Risikostrukturausgleich for the Germans). When that was introduced what happened was that providers realized they could get more money if they had more severe diagnoses within their insured - and save costs if they were only diagnosed like that but wouldn't incur the actual treatment-costs. And one of these diagnoses was diabetes. But insurance providers cannot themselves decided the diagnosis, it has to come from a doctor. So, they paid doctors - for their additional work *cough* - if they diagnosed diabetes. This happened ... a lot. Enough that the data is unusable for any discussion about prevalence for diabetes in the populace. But diabetes HAS risen as well, we know that, so this does not mean diabetes is a hoax or that we all can get fat (one risk factor for diabetes). Just to be wary when you see health insurance providers in Germany claim certain diseases have risen. For some the data is good, for the 90 or so in the M-RSA is it questionable at best.


All of these examples are just to show how easy data (in Germany) currently becomes unusable because it is driven by factors outside of simple medicinal considerations. This data nonetheless is now used to influence decisions, even to base those on it. We will by the looks of it get mandatory vaccinations, based in part on this data. And even though I am vaccinated myself, this is not something I can agree with.

[CFCJesterFool]

Status of the SARS-CoV-2 variant Omicron in Denmark published by Statens Serum Institut on page 8 shows 91.5% of individuals infected with omicron variant have had at least one shot of the gene therapy. The unvaccinated make up 8.5%. Read the report for yourself. I don't think the Danes are right wing trump supporters either. From the data presented, it would seem that the "vaccines" actually are making the problem worse. To be fair though, most in Denmark have been "vaccinated" with at least one shot. Might be interesting to find out if the unvaccinated are catching omicron less frequently that what would be expected from their share of the population.