Careful now, they don't have many brain cells to spare.

That's cyberbullying, buster. I'm gonna have to call your mom if you keep this up.

You'd do no such thing, because you're a cowardly little bitch.

Also, if Clinton had been elected in 2016 the death toll from covid would be exactly the same as it is right now, because like with Trump the top priority of hers would be to keep the stock market happy.

If Biden were to be elected somehow what do you think he'd do differently? The only way out of this is for the government to pay people to stay home, and Biden is just as opposed to that as Trump is. The only thing that changes with Biden's election is how the media spins the deaths.

>>>Also, if Clinton had been elected in 2016 the death toll from covid would be exactly the same as it is right now, because like with Trump the top priority of hers would be to keep the stock market happy.

Jesus Christ, I keep forgetting how stupid you are!

Here's a little sixth grade economics. Letting everyone know that the health crisis was being competently handled would be GOOD for the stock market. Any idiot understands that, right? Well, you'd think so.

What either Clinton would have done, what either Bush would have done, what Reagan or Obama would have done, what Jerry Ford or Jimmy Carter would have done, what Bernie would have done, what you or I would have done, is put Dr. Fauci in charge and get the fuck out of the way. Trump made it all about him, because he can't help himself.

Trump's only priority is Trump. He's going to force some kind of crisis, not because he really wants to be president but because whenever he looses, he has to pretend he wins. That's why he psychotically declared that millions of illegals voted in California, robbing him of the popular vote. He didn't need to claim that absurd nonsense in order to have won the election. He did it because he's a little boy desperately trying to please his psycho daddy. It's out there for everyone to see.

This isn't normal. Either you're someone who doesn't get that, or someone who is pretending not to get that.

America is pretty much fucked at this point. The instant Trump said he wasn't going to wear a mask every cultist in the country locked down on that. At this point even if Trump said WEAR A MASK DAMMIT they would not. If Biden gets elected and says WEAR A MASK DAMMIT they will not.

Freedumb will be the death of America.

I just hope they keep the border closed until 70% of Canadians are vaccinated against this. But I suspect our brilliant leaders will open it back up too soon because of "DA CONIMY".

Dead people buy no socks.

John I don't need economics lessons from an unemployed man that lives in an attic. Clinton absolutely would not be advocating for a Canadian or South Korean style response, specifically because it would harm the stock market to pay people to stay home. We wouldn't have even got the measly $1200.

The passage of the 1,200 dollar package was overwhelming. To say that Biden or Clinton would not have proposed it is disingenuous in the extreme. Part of Trump's response has probably had to do with how easy he thinks people are to fool and how little he cares for people who don't express devotion to him. While Clinton and Biden are both establishment politicians, I think that they would have probably acted more quickly to take steps against the pandemic, if not exactly the steps that you might want to see. I can understand why you wouldn't like them as politicians, but they're not cartoons, which is essentially what you're suggesting.

I think either one of these two would have administrated the response better: not undercut the CDC, not made a cultural issue out of masks, etc. Some other president might have invoked the Defense Production Act. Most other presidents would have been more honest about the challenge that we were facing than Trump has been, though I sort of wonder about Reagan, who was also a fantasist prone to uncalled-for optimism and pretty much ignored AIDS for years.

Since the US simply does not have the experience that South Korea does with epidemics, a response as good as South Korea's was never really on the table anyway. But to think that no American outside some fantasy socialist would have done as badly as Trump has is really cynical. And wrong.

>>>John I don't need economics lessons from an unemployed man that lives in an attic.

You'd think so, yet here we are,

You're missing the fact that we already lived through a economic collapse with Democrats in control of all branches of the federal government, and they didn't send us $1200. They did nothing but streamline the foreclosure process for the benefit of the banks. And HRC is to the *right* of that guy.

What was the CDC gonna do? Are they gonna send us $500 a week and force our employers to close down? Because that's the only solution to this.

Masks wouldn't be a "cultural issue" when Hillary Fucking Clinton is telling people to wear them? Are you kidding me?

Your logic's not awful, but I still think you're comparing apples to oranges. It's true that the Obama focused on preventing further damage to the market, but I also think the crash could have been much worse than it was. Actually securing jail time for some of the people responsible and a more general program of economic revitalization -- beyond the stimulus -- would have been, well, the right thing to do.

Even so, I'm not sure it's correct to compare a pandemic to an economic collapse, even one as severe as the one we saw in 2008. I'm not sure if these events are the same in that many respects.

But if wearing masks had become an issue because Hillary said to do it, I'm not sure it would be on Hillary. No, she's not very likable. But Jeez, people.

Nothing is being done about the pandemic for purely economic reasons though. So while you are correct that this is not first and foremost an economic crisis, the same rules apply.

To get out of this crisis with minimal deaths would require bold use of executive authority on behalf of poor and working class people, which is as much of an anathema to austerity Democrats as it is to Trump Republicans. They'd literally have to force our employers to close, pay us our full incomes for 6 months or more, and let the stock market twist in the wind. You're delusional if you think anyone but "some fantasy socialist" would even entertain that. So you have to chose; do you want responsible management of pandemics, or do you want to vote for Joe Biden?

You're not entirely wrong here either, but I don't think the logic of the pandemic was entirely economic either. The first stimulus record package was both enormous -- at least in real terms -- and surprisingly bipartisan. But I think we got a lot less out of it than we would have in just about any other administration, and I think a lot of has to do directly with Trump's incompetence. The fact that he did or didn't believe it was serious depending on what his needs were at the moment. His decision to make Jared Fucking Kushner in charge of materials distribution and testing. His decision not to back face covers and social distancing when it mattered. His decision to tell the governors to, in effect, handle it themselves and stop bothering him. His government's inability to get a contact tracing system going at all. This wasn't necessarily a question of money. I think there was a gigantic management failure at the top, especially on the last few items. How expensive would setting up a contact tracing network be, anyway? But Trump, it turns out, can't focus, gets bored easily, and doesn't especially care about people who aren't going to vote for him anyway. Predictable things happened.

I think that just about any major presidential candidate we've had since Carter would have handled this better, except for maybe Palin. But it has put us in a pre- and post-containment landscape. We really did blow our chance to contain this thing. I don't know if an across-the-board work stoppage for six months is now the only way to stop this thing. That might have been a reasonable thing to ask of the American government -- and the American people -- in February, but I think we missed that shot, too, and I'm not sure if the political will for that sort of thing is still there on any level. I do think that a Biden administration would probably be better at handling whatever options are still available to us, even though you're right to say he's unlikely to propose something that extensive and its endgame may not be complete containment. But just for comparison's sake, Trump held an indoor rally two days ago. This may not be the hard choice that you imagine it to be for everyone, you know? I don't know how much better the management of the pandemic would be, at this point, under Biden, but I'm betting we'll see some improvement on the ground, at least. Our options aren't what they were once. But I'm not sure that voting to punish somebody who's screwed up this badly is an unattractive choice, either. You-know-who should not be continued to govern after the country's suffered this much relatively avoidable pain.

So does anyone else think the 'but the other candidate would do X' argument is as stupid as I think it is?

You can hypothesize about what might have happened in a parallel universe but the fact is that Trump is in office and he sucks at his job.

Stimulus sufficient to both a) avoid severe economic downturn and b) keep people home (which is the *only* way to avoid mass death) would increase inflation (we'd print money). This would be counter to the interests of those who hold dollar denominated assets. Joe Biden has spent his entire career defending banks and credit card companies, whose balance sheets would be wiped out if the loans they hold were swamped with inflation. Wallstreet is giving him fuck tons of money now. Obama saved them in 2008. Biden's only significant policy plank has been opposition to giving everyone healthcare, so as not to take on the insurance industry.

I disagree with Mr. Smack in so far as I think there are meaningful differences between Biden and Trump and that Biden is marginally preferable at least in the short term.

But, thinking that somehow that a blue D in office is going to change economic realities, or denying that the Democratic Party isn't who they are, makes you as floridly delusional as any given QAnon person.

I'd like to thank Ashtar for recognizing that while the choices aren't great, "somewhat better" is preferable to "even worse."

I'm not sure that you need a reason to vote for somebody other than "he'd be better than this guy." I'm not expecting a miracle here. Bare competence would be okay, plus a relatively normal Twitter account.

>>>Masks wouldn't be a "cultural issue" when Hillary Fucking Clinton is telling people to wear them? Are you kidding me?

No, you doofus. Im not kidding you. In his endless exploding narcissism, Trump made Covid all about him. From the beginning, it was a "Democratic Hoax" Nobody else would do that. Not Clinton, not Obama, not Reagan, not Nixon. No one else would claim that the people who were trying to manage the crisis were doing it because they were trying to hurt him. He makes everything about himself, and he turns himself into a wedge. Its his only move. Its not about ideology. He's a dangerous man.

You all do not need to convince me that Trump is a disaster, or that Biden would be marginally better on paper, short-term.

What I am opposed to is taking something that is barely marginally better than Trump and deciding that this is what the Democratic Party is now, and in perpetuity. Currently this dumbass party is the only vehicle we have for progressive change, and we're gonna put the guy that wrote the 1994 crime bill on top of it, with a particularly nasty cop as his sidekick? In the year 2020, with all that is happening!? Fuck that. I will have no part in doing this. This isn't a ticket that deserves to win any more than Trump does.

Electing Biden/Harris is giving a mandate to some of the worst people in the world to deliver draconian austerity and war. This isn't hyperbole. Those Lincoln Project leftovers from the Bush administration, all of the worst Clinton orbiters, Rahm Fucking Emanuel. You're rehabbing these losers and putting them in charge. We're going to be fighting against this until we are all senior citizens.
And for what? So we don't have to tough it out for another 4 years of Trump? That seems insane to me. We survived Bush, we can survive Trump. And we can start the process of rebuilding in 2024 instead of 2028 or 2032. And we can put these scumbags out to pasture where they belong.

I wonder why you're so convinced that a Dem would naturally follow Trump. You can argue that after eight years of Trump, the American people will be willing to vote for someone like Bernie's policies, but that's pure speculation, and I wouldn't bet on it. Who the hell knows what damage Trump will do in the meantime, and I don't take that lightly. And last week he "joked" about not leaving after two terms. You can continue to wait, or work for, your dream candidate, but I think that Trump has to be out of office before the nation goes back to halfway normal. That's not great, but it would be preferable. You seem to be waiting for someone who may never arrive. But I've got a choice to make in six weeks, you know?

>>I'd like to thank Ashtar for recognizing that while the choices aren't great, "somewhat better" is preferable to "even worse."

I would like to clarify. The choices are "very bad" and "extremely bad."

Biden does not represent incremental progress, but, rather, slightly arrested collapse. It's like driving into a wall; 60 mph is better than 70, but they are both unacceptable.

I don't actually have a normative project here. I'm just trying to describe things as I think they are. I have no idea what to do about it.

Miss Henson I'm not betting that 4 years more of Trump will make people any more or less accepting of "Bernie's ideas" so much as I'm saying what the Democrats are offering isn't different enough for me to sweat it much.

And let's be honest, if Bernie was the nominee right now he'd be romping Trump. All that bullshit about how they'd call him a socialist and scare the normies looks real fucking retarded right about now as Trump runs commercials saying Biden is the leader of Antifa and Kamala Harris is the reincarnation of Mao. The only difference with Bernie as the nominee is that we'd have a conscious, alert person with good ideas and the ability to articulate them instead of a walking corpse with a long history of being a corrupt scumbag.

What does it say about me, an anonymous stranger that gets mentioned in comments on videos that I have nothing to do with, in this particular case being threatened with violence?

I told crackersmack nothing about myself that could truly hurt me. That would be like handing a four year old a loaded pistol. I wanted to see if he'd be a dick.

I like being in the attic, it comes with a lot of storage space. And I'm not unemployed; I'm retired.

If anyone threatened crackersmack with violence, I'm against that.

Oh wait, I remember now. It was SolRo, of course. Not cool.

Bitch the only reason I know you live in an attic is because you posted a pathetic call for sympathy when the video website comment section disagreements got too much for your delicate sensibilities to handle.

And I actually felt bad for you and called for a truce, which you broke. Suck my dick.

AH, THE MARKETPLACE OF IDEAS!

I remember that. I think its a valid question to ask a why the poe community, which overall didn't support Biden for the nomination, needs to be subjected to your drivel in the middle of the pandademic. What's the endgame. If I ask why you want to torment us, and I did use myself as an example, to make it personal, its because there's nothing else to be accomplished or gained.

I usually try to be kinder, but crackersmack does claim to represent the disadvantaged ... and yet when Trump wins, he's going to post a ten hour laugh track video. That's about 47 different kinds of stupid, cynical, and cruel. And pointless.

He’s doing because we are the Deep State that used reptilian psychic Kung fu to cheat in the primary AGAIN.

I don't claim to represent anyone other than myself, but you're lying to yourself if you don't think that my views are representative of the views of a significant amount of people. No matter how much drama is generated around this election, something like 40-45% are going to choose not to participate. My people are the plurality.

Encouraging a Trump victory "to punish the Dems" is the epitome of privilege that people on the bottom just don't have.

Jesus Christ, Smack, look who's delusional now.

I'd bet money that we have lower turnout than 2016 even.

If you did, you'd need another stimulus check pronto.

because he's a shitty rich kid with shitty rich kid politics

god how I wish that were true

Portal of Eternally Gaslit

Incidentally, I did once say that I would like to kill crackersmack with a shovel, and that was wrong. I didn't intend it as a threat. It was just how I was feeling that day.

At this point I just want all the Americans to shut the fuck up about their bullshit stupid-ass politics already. It's figuratively using up all the oxygen in the room and stifling any other possible conversation. There is no point in arguing further, no one is changing their minds, people are just walking away.

Gosh, jfcaron, I'm sooooo sorry that some of us are bothered that 200,000 Americans are needlessly dead. How wrong of us to "stifle the conversation" in a video specifically about Woodward's proof that Trump knew he was lying I want to apologise to you personally for using up your precious, precious oxygen.

As for Crashtarsmack, forget him, he's a zero credibility troll who has admitted several times now that he's trolling. He deserves a punch in the teeth the same way someone making fart noises at a funeral does, but he's no thread. (The thousands of paid trolls on Facebook, now they are a thread.)

Trump has suspended the payroll tax, which has defended social security, and if isnt restored, I could be homeless within a year.

Or so I'm told. This isn't bullshit to me. Im terrified. All the time now. Real terror.

Arguing with trolls doesn't help with the problems you have identified. The irony of telling me that my telling you to stfu is inappropriate given the video topic is amazing.

You’re one to talk about irony, Mister “Don’t criticise Trump it’s stiiiifling”

Look, I can't blame jfcaron_ca for being sick of all of this. I'm sick of all of this, and I'm an American.

Well, let’s all pray you only have a few more months to deal with it.

Look, Hazlenut, I'd like to live to a ripe old age, you know?

All the more reason to hope America recovers its sanity

>>>our white President, speaking in a Texas drawl

IE ABOUT THE COLLAPSE