Wednesday, March 31, 2021

Really Making America Great Again... President Biden's Plan


Former President Donald Trump called President Biden's jobs plan a "monstrosity" that "would be among the largest self-inflicted economic wounds in history."

"Joe Biden’s radical plan to implement the largest tax hike in American history is a massive giveaway to China, and many other countries, that will send thousands of factories, millions of jobs, and trillions of dollars to these competitive nations," Trump said in a statement. "The Biden plan will crush American workers and decimate U.S. manufacturing, while giving special tax privileges to outsourcers, foreign and giant multinational corporations."


Not surprising as it is exactly as expected. After all tRump, is America's 5 time bankruptcy king who has bilked contractors out of millions due them over the years. So there is that,

tRump is no economist nor is he an honest man. If there was any doubt before 2015 there certainly is none now. He is a liar, a charlatan, a con man, a seditionist, an insurrectionist, and a conspiracy theorist.  That sums up his atrocious four years in a single succinct and accurate statement.

tRump was, and is, all about huge tax breaks flowing to the huge mega wealthy corporation and the uber wealthy in society. Yes he did throw a bone to the middle class but those tax rate cuts expire. Soon. The corporate ones don't expire unless the Congress passes new legislation. We're cheering President Biden on on that.

Truth is investing heavily in rebuilding our infrastructure will CREATE hundred of thousands of good paying jobs and SPUR economic activity.  Biden deserves huge kudo's for doing the RIGHT thing for America and its people. We simply can not continue to ignore our infrastructure while watching it deteriorate into complete collapse. 

We rebuilt Europe after WW II. It is beyond time we pull up our bootstraps and begin seriously rebuilding our nation's infrastructure before it does collapse. 

tRump simply does not care one iota about the nation's welfare. He's proved that time and again. Ending with Insurrection Day at the Capitol.

On to the PLAN.


FACT SHEET: The American Jobs Plan

  STATEMENTS AND RELEASES

While the American Rescue Plan is changing the course of the pandemic and delivering relief for working families, this is no time to build back to the way things were. This is the moment to reimagine and rebuild a new economy. The American Jobs Plan is an investment in America that will create millions of good jobs, rebuild our country’s infrastructure, and position the United States to out-compete China. Public domestic investment as a share of the economy has fallen by more than 40 percent since the 1960s. The American Jobs Plan will invest in America in a way we have not invested since we built the interstate highways and won the Space Race.

The United States of America is the wealthiest country in the world, yet we rank 13th when it comes to the overall quality of our infrastructure. After decades of disinvestment, our roads, bridges, and water systems are crumbling. Our electric grid is vulnerable to catastrophic outages. Too many lack access to affordable, high-speed Internet and to quality housing. The past year has led to job losses and threatened economic security, eroding more than 30 years of progress in women’s labor force participation. It has unmasked the fragility of our caregiving infrastructure. And, our nation is falling behind its biggest competitors on research and development (R&D), manufacturing, and training. It has never been more important for us to invest in strengthening our infrastructure and competitiveness, and in creating the good-paying, union jobs of the future.

Like great projects of the past, the President’s plan will unify and mobilize the country to meet the great challenges of our time: the climate crisis and the ambitions of an autocratic China. It will invest in Americans and deliver the jobs and opportunities they deserve. But unlike past major investments, the plan prioritizes addressing long-standing and persistent racial injustice. The plan targets 40 percent of the benefits of climate and clean infrastructure investments to disadvantaged communities. And, the plan invests in rural communities and communities impacted by the market-based transition to clean energy. Specifically, President Biden’s plan will:

Article continues BELOW the FOLD


Remember When We Thought GWB Was Just About One Of The Worst? Time And Events Often Changes Perspectives And Loyalties...

 



Former President George W. Bush is right. President Biden is off a magnificent start! But the Trumpublican cons ain't gonna do anything but obstruct. 

Tuesday, March 30, 2021

The Immortal Trumpian Legacy... Ineptitude, Lack Of Empathy, Conspiratorial, and Authoritarian...

 



This ain't over until the fat lady sings! And when she sings justice will be her tune.

Full On Extreme Rightwing Trumper Matt Gaetz Considering Joining Conspiracy Rag Newmax...

 

Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images


Newsmax and Gaetz would be a match made in hell. Both Newmax and Gaetz are conspiracy theorists in support of authoritarianism and the seditionist/insurrectionist donald j. trump.

Go HERE for the scoop. 

Rupert Murdock, The Megaphone tRump The Seditionist and Insurrectionist Needed To Launch Trumpism...

 

Monday, March 29, 2021

Like We Rational And Scientifically Predisposed Didn't Already Anticipate This... It Is After All The trumpian Way! ...

 

Extremist organizations are now bashing the safety and efficacy of coronavirus vaccines in an effort to try to undermine the government.


The looney tuners of the Q'Anon Q-GOP will stop at nothing to confirm their ignorance of science and the benefits humanity has derived from the voluminous and growing knowledge it has ALWAYS given humanity.

It is astounding the number of otherwise presumably intelligent people that are so steeped in fear and allegiance to ignorance that they actually attempt actions that could and undoubtedly have resulted in preventable deaths.

Chock it up to religion and ignorant politicians. Now on to the article which is important enough and informational enough to post the article in full in case it is behind a "pay wall".,

Adherents of far-right groups who cluster online have turned repeatedly to one particular website in recent weeks — the federal database showing deaths and adverse reactions nationwide among people who have received Covid-19 vaccinations.

Although negative reactions have been relatively rare, the numbers are used by many extremist groups to try to bolster a rash of false and alarmist disinformation in articles and videos with titles like “Covid-19 Vaccines Are Weapons of Mass Destruction — and Could Wipe out the Human Race” or “Doctors and Nurses Giving the Covid-19 Vaccine Will be Tried as War Criminals.”

If the so-called Stop the Steal movement appeared to be chasing a lost cause once President Biden was inaugurated, its supporters among extremist organizations are now adopting a new agenda from the anti-vaccination campaign to try to undermine the government.

Bashing of the safety and efficacy of vaccines is occurring in chatrooms frequented by all manner of right-wing groups including the Proud Boys; the Boogaloo movement, a loose affiliation known for wanting to spark a second Civil War; and various paramilitary organizations.

These groups tend to portray vaccines as a symbol of excessive government control. “If less people get vaccinated then the system will have to use more aggressive force on the rest of us to make us get the shot,” read a recent post on the Telegram social media platform, in a channel linked to members of the Proud Boys charged in storming the Capitol.

Credit...
Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York Times

The marked focus on vaccines is particularly striking on discussion channels populated by followers of QAnon, who had falsely prophesied that Donald J. Trump would continue as president while his political opponents were marched off to jail.

“They rode the shift in the national conversation away from Trump to what was happening with the massive ramp up in vaccines,” said Devin Burghart, the head of the Seattle-based Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, which monitors far-right movements, referring to followers of QAnon. “It allowed them to pivot away from the failure of their previous prophecy to focus on something else.”

Apocalyptic warnings about the vaccine feed into the far-right narrative that the government cannot be trusted, the sentiment also at the root of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. The more vaccine opponents succeed in preventing or at least delaying herd immunity, experts noted, the longer it will take for life to return to normal and that will further undermine faith in the government and its institutions.


Last spring, a common purpose among far-right activists and the anti-vaccination movement first emerged during armed protests in numerous state capitols against coronavirus lockdown measures. That cross-pollination expanded over time.

On Jan. 6, while rioters advanced on the Capitol, numerous leading figures in the anti-vaccination movement were onstage nearby, holding their own rally to attack both the election results and Covid-19 vaccinations.

Events overshadowed their protest, but at least one outspoken activist, Dr. Simone Gold of Beverly Hills, Calif., was charged with breaching the Capitol. She called her arrest an attack on free speech. She was one of several doctors who appeared in a video last year spreading misleading claims about the coronavirus. Mr. Trump shared a version of the video, which Facebook, YouTube and Twitter removed after millions of viewers watched it.


Dr. Simone Gold in a video for America’s Frontline Doctors, an organization accused of spreading misleading information about the coronavirus and possible treatments. She was later charged with breaching the Capitol.

In the months since inoculations started in December, the alliance grouping extremist organizations with the anti-vaccination movement has grown larger and more vocal, as conspiracy theories about vaccines proliferated while those about the presidential vote count receded.

With their protests continuing, far-right groups deployed many of the same talking points as the vaccination opponents. Prominent voices in both the “Stop the Steal” and the anti-vaccination movements helped to organize scattered rallies on March 20 against vaccines, masks and social distancing in American cities including Portland, Ore., and Raleigh, N.C., as well as in Australia, Canada and other countries around the world.

In April, a conference with the tagline “Learn How to Fight Back for Your Health and Freedom,” is set to bring together Trump allies like Michael Flynn and Sidney Powell along with high-profile members of the anti-vaccination effort.


Maligning the coronavirus vaccines is obviously not limited to extremist groups tied to the Capitol riot. There is deep partisanship over the vaccines generally.

One third of Republicans surveyed in a CBS News poll said that they would avoid getting vaccinated — compared with 10 percent of Democrats — and another 20 percent of Republicans said they were unsure. Other polls found similar trends.

About 100 members of the House of Representatives, roughly one-quarter, had not been vaccinated as of mid-March, according to Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the House minority leader.

It is unclear where Mr. Trump will fit into the vaccine battle. The former president, who has been vaccinated, endorsed getting the shot recently, provoking some disbelief in QAnon and other chatrooms. “I would recommend it, and I would recommend it to a lot of people that don’t want to get it, and a lot of those people voted for me frankly,” he said in an interview with Fox News.


Credit...
Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images

Across right-wing channels online, certain constant memes have emerged attacking the vaccine, like a cartoon suggesting that what started with mask mandates will end with concentration camps run by FEMA for those who refuse vaccinations.

Numerous channels link to the government website called VAERS, for Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, to energize followers. It had reported 2,216 deaths among people vaccinated for the three months before March 22, with 126 million doses administered. The Covid-19 vaccines in use, like most vaccinations, are considered overwhelmingly safe, but inevitably a small percentage of recipients suffer adverse reactions, some of them severe. The deaths have not been directly linked to the vaccinations.


The raw, incomplete VAERS statistics are meant for scientists and medical professionals, but are widely used among extremist groups to try to undermine confidence in the vaccine. One video consisted of a person reading the details from the chart aloud barking “Murder” where the chart said “Death.”

On Telegram, channels frequented by tens of thousands of QAnon followers are full of videos warning of the dire consequences of taking the vaccine. For example, David Icke, a British serial conspiracy theorist, posted a video called “Murder by Vaccine” saying that it transformed the nature of the human body. (The claims that the vaccines change human DNA are false.)

Mr. Icke was previously best known for pushing the idea that the world was controlled by shape-shifting alien lizards who inhabited a global network of underground tunnels.

The general proliferation of conspiracy theories by QAnon followers for years has helped to create a shared vocabulary among far-right organizations, experts said, which smoothed the way for spreading false information about the vaccines. “The last year with Covid has just been a perfect storm that whatever your crazy conspiracy belief is, there is someone who has a Covid conspiracy to match it,” said Melissa Ryan, chief executive of Card Strategies, a consulting firm that researches disinformation.


The raw, incomplete VAERS statistics are meant for scientists and medical professionals, but are widely used among extremist groups to try to undermine confidence in the vaccine. One video consisted of a person reading the details from the chart aloud barking “Murder” where the chart said “Death.”

On Telegram, channels frequented by tens of thousands of QAnon followers are full of videos warning of the dire consequences of taking the vaccine. For example, David Icke, a British serial conspiracy theorist, posted a video called “Murder by Vaccine” saying that it transformed the nature of the human body. (The claims that the vaccines change human DNA are false.)

Mr. Icke was previously best known for pushing the idea that the world was controlled by shape-shifting alien lizards who inhabited a global network of underground tunnels.

The general proliferation of conspiracy theories by QAnon followers for years has helped to create a shared vocabulary among far-right organizations, experts said, which smoothed the way for spreading false information about the vaccines. “The last year with Covid has just been a perfect storm that whatever your crazy conspiracy belief is, there is someone who has a Covid conspiracy to match it,” said Melissa Ryan, chief executive of Card Strategies, a consulting firm that researches disinformation.


The vaccines are sometimes referred to as a “potion,” sometimes as a “bioweapon,” and there are claims that vaccinated people are “shedding mutant viruses.”

Telegram is the locus of much of the disinformation and fear mongering. On one channel, there are claims that the vaccine is an instrument of depopulation. “A massive death wave will be witnessed later this year among those who took the vaccine,” read one posting.


In Idaho, the far-right activist Ammon Bundy helped to push for a proposed state law to ban any mandatory vaccines, although work stalled after the legislature suspended its work on March 19 for more than two weeks because too many lawmakers contracted the coronavirus.

The question is where this newly forged alliance goes from here. Some analysts believe its life span will prove limited, with the far right pivoting to some other issue, like immigration. Eventually, hundreds of millions of Americans will be vaccinated, they noted, and vaccine skepticism is not the same thing as being anti-vaccination. Some doubters will soften if time proves the vaccines effective.

new report by the Network Contagion Research Institute at Rutgers University noted, however, that although the de-platforming of extremist groups made their campaigns harder to follow, the alliance has the potential to meld disparate factions into a large anti-government movement united around public health issues.

“It increases the opportunity for a big tent enemy,” said Joel Finkelstein, a fellow at Rutgers who runs the institute. “If you are feeling dispossessed, like all these right-wing groups are, boy do I have a tent for you.”



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The Q-GOP's Poster Girl...,

 

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The Cons Of America Stopping At Nothing To Show Their Bigotry And Racism...

 The interesting and post relevant starts at the  1 minute and  50 seconds into the video.


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tRump Don... Americas Mobster Ex President...,

 

The Encroaching Authoritarianism Of The Q-GOP And Its Lying Members...,

 

Q-GOP Candidates Groveling For tRump's Support In Quest For Election To Office... The Only Question To Be Answered Is Will The Q-GOP (or any GOP) Even Be Around In 10 Years... WQe Hooe Not!

 

Thursday, March 25, 2021

Trump’s Presidency Likely Cost Over 300,000 Unneeded Deaths Due To Covd-19... All From His Egregious Mishandling Of The Pandemic...

The Washington Post One year after the coronavirus pandemic began, the United States has been reshaped in remarkable ways. One of every 600 people alive at the beginning of last year has died of covid-19, the disease caused by the virus. Millions more have been infected with it, with some part of that group enduring lingering symptoms. Millions of people remain out of work.

The ship is turning. Multiple massive economic support packages have passed — the most recent by the Democratic-controlled Congress and White House. Millions more people have been vaccinated against the virus than have contracted it over the past several months. But there’s still the nagging question: What could have been different?

Such questions are hard to answer in real time, depending on the slow gathering and analysis of information. But we're starting to find some answers, including ones that offer a pointed political lesson.

It’s likely that the government’s response to the pandemic led to hundreds of thousands of deaths that could have been prevented. And it’s likely that the pandemic response cost Donald Trump the presidency.


Full Stop.

We mourn the loss of thousands of lives lost  to the Covid-19 pademic. And, we decry trump's early denial, followed by his lack of leadership and egregious mishandling of the serious health threat to millions of Americans.

The primary, and certainly biggest lesson to be  learned is to never again entrust our government and the country's welfare and security to a liar, conspiracy nut, anti democratic authoritariawith a known and demonstrated  thug mentality.

As long as the nation purges Trumpism and the Q-GOP Trumpers from power and restores faith in our democracy and the values it has supported for over 200 years we will be fine. But if on the other hand we ever allow another dishonest authoritarian trump type to gain power again? Well, we'll derserve whatever tryranical fate awaits us.

On to more of the feature article.


The first point is a particularly contentious one. In the past, there's been analysis comparing the U.S. response to other countries, finding it lacking. Last summer, for example, researchers compared the American response to other countries, showing how their more muscular approaches tamped down the relative death toll.

More recently, research from Andrew Atkeson of the University of California at Los Angeles determined that implementation of robust efforts to halt the spread of the virus last May — widespread testing, mask mandates — could have held the country’s death toll below 300,000 in total. His model estimates that the country will reach 672,000 deaths overall as vaccines are rolled out, one of every 490 Americans alive at the beginning of last year. That’s a gap of nearly 400,000 deaths.


Trump didn't embrace such mechanisms. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were recommending the wearing of masks as early as April of last year, but Trump declined to do so. That helped bolster a partisan response to the pandemic, with Trump advocating for states to stay hands off — largely, it seems, out of concern that reductions in economic activity would hurt his reelection bid.


Ayup. Hit that nail on its trumpian head. In fact the ONLY thing driving the trump agenda was whatever trump deemed most benefitted his, god forbid, reelection. IOW his attitude was to hell with the Ameican people's health as long as he got reelected.

Back to thge article.


Other research suggests that it was instead the lax approach to the pandemic that led to Trump’s eventual defeat. His own pollster, Tony Fabrizio, produced research showing how those who voted against Trump were more likely to view his response to the pandemic critically. There’s necessarily a chicken-egg question here, with preexisting Trump skeptics probably being less likely to say that they thought he did a good job on the pandemic. But there’s a correlation.


For us anti conspiracy type who demand and expect truth, honesty at all times from our government, and the burning desire to preserve, protect, and defend our democracy, trump losing the election by both a popular vote and Electoral College vote landside was a very good and very neccessary occurance.

Let us never again elect a charlatan con man and conspiracy theorist to the highest office in the land. For if we do se shall deserve whatever nefarious and tyrannical fate that awaits us.


Find the rest of the article HERE.