[POLL] 2020 U.S. Presidential Election

[Foxi4]

Trump supporters really scares me, because this man has made too may contradictions and lies and he is an extremist who falls short on his promises. As I said earlier in this thread, it's really not about political side. As an example, I don't think I'd vote for the Republican Party, I could vote for a man like him. That's decency and dignity, and that's what Mr Trump lacks.

Quick question, was Arnie full of dignity when he was screwing his maid, or Brigett Nielsen, or the multitude of other mistresses he had over the years and won't name? I'm asking since you've mentioned decency. Not saying that Trump is a paragon of virtue, but he also doesn't shine a virtue signal out of his window - we know he grabs women by the... front. Nothing against Arnie, he's a nice and affable guy, but out of all the Republicans you picked a weird one to contrast against Trump.

 

[Deleted User]

Out of plain curiosity, if we assume for 5 minutes that it is, what's the difference between that and death sentences? In both cases you are killing for convinience, with a degree of justification, at least from my point of view. Why support one, but (presumably) not the other? Is it because a prisoner with a life sentence has an infinitesimal chance of being retried with new evidence that may prove their innocence, or that they may be released early for some unspecified reason? Genuinely curious.

My stance is pretty simple. I would support it, if it wasn't for two things.
1. Why trust the government? We can all agree the (united states) government is not exactly good, and no I am not just talking this administration, previous included. I would not want them to have that kind of power.
2. Because of the government is not exactly good and money speaks louder than facts, this can result in people who should of not died dying, people who had genuine innocents.
If we lived in a perfect world, where that nonsense didn't happen, where the government wasn't corrupt and in favor of money interests, I would reconsider.

 

[Foxi4]

My stance is pretty simple. I would support it, if it wasn't for two things.
1. Why trust the government? We can all agree the (united states) government is not exactly good, and no I am not just talking this administration, previous included. I would not want them to have that kind of power.
2. Because of the government is not exactly good and money speaks louder than facts, this can result in people who should of not died dying, people who had genuine innocents.
If we lived in a perfect world, where that nonsense didn't happen, where the government wasn't corrupt and in favor of money interests, I would reconsider.

That's a very reasonable and sort of libertarian response, I did not expect that. Not only you're right, that's also a pretty compelling argument to me. My only issue is the cost of keeping a felon alive for, potentially, decades on end. Of course all the armchair economists will now jump out of the woodwork to tell me that "actually, the death penalty is more expensive because of all the associated legal costs", but I have a feeling that even I could make some cuts here and there to make it entirely affordable, within the range of the cost of electricity, pun intended. I personally support it, but only in instances where guilt can be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, like when someone is caught red-handed or when there's a clear recording of the event, a piece of evidence that objectively, can't be argued with. Still, I like your response - I also don't trust the government because it sucks at everything it does and everything it touches turns to dust. I don't think it's necessarily about money, it's more a matter of the government being a "pointing-guns-at-people machine" by design, that's its stated purpose. It's why I'd like to see it distance itself from anything it has no business doing, but that's a different subject. Sadly, the government only grows, it never shrinks, at least in my experience.

 

[KingVamp]

"Affects virtually nobody."

​

 

[Foxi4]

"Affects virtually nobody."

The population of the US is around 328 million, not sure of the exact number, I'd have to check the census. You're at 6.88 million cases and 200 thousand deaths, give or take. That's 2% of the population infected, out of which 2.9% have died and the remaining 97.1% either recovered or is still in medical care. That means the deaths account for 0.06% of the population. All things considered there are certainly things that affect larger swathes of the population - in December 2019 the unemployment rate in the U.S. was sitting at 3.5%, right now due to all the lockdowns it's at 8.4%, so it's more than doubled. In other words, more people lost their jobs, as in the means by which they support themselves and their families, than have caught the virus, let alone died from it. You can make the argument that people have been affected by lockdown unemployment more than they have by the virus, although it'd be a tough sell.

He's also right when he says that the elderly and people with pre-existing conditions comprise the bulk of patients affected by COVID, especially in terms of death. This is consistent with all statistical data regarding the virus. That doesn't mean you can't catch it if you're young and spry, but odds are you'll be alright if you do.



I personally err on the side of caution, I wear my mask and avoid large gatherings, but overall I don't feel threatened by it, and I don't think anyone in similar circumstances should. Don't tempt fate and be an idiot, but don't panic over it either.

 

[gregory-samba]

My stance is pretty simple. I would support it, if it wasn't for two things.
1. Why trust the government? We can all agree the (united states) government is not exactly good, and no I am not just talking this administration, previous included. I would not want them to have that kind of power.
2. Because of the government is not exactly good and money speaks louder than facts, this can result in people who should of not died dying, people who had genuine innocents.
If we lived in a perfect world, where that nonsense didn't happen, where the government wasn't corrupt and in favor of money interests, I would reconsider.

"You can't trust the Government" is exactly why I'm against adopting socialism. If you think that giving the Government almost complete control over every single person is somehow going to magically make the corruption disappear you're on crack. The Government is obsessed with power and that has never not been the case nor will it ever not be the case. I support anyone that wants to get laws rescinded or make the Government smaller. We don't need any new laws, regulations or taxes. Socialism is just a bad idea because it creates much more of those and gives these untrustworthy assholes complete control over everything and everyone. Some people need to wake up and realize that we're never going to live in a perfect world.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

The population of the US is around 328 million, not sure of the exact number, I'd have to check the census. You're at 6.88 million cases and 200 thousand deaths, give or take. That's 2% of the population infected, out of which 2.9% have died and the remaining 97.1% either recovered or is still in medical care. That means the deaths account for 0.06% of the population. All things considered there are certainly things that affect larger swathes of the population - in December 2019 the unemployment rate in the U.S. was sitting at 3.5%, right now due to all the lockdowns it's at 8.4%, so it's more than doubled. In other words, more people lost their jobs, meaning the means by which they support themselves and their families, than have caught the virus, let alone died from it. You can make the argument that people have been affected by lockdown unemployment more than they have by the virus, although it'd be a tough sell.

He's also right when he says that the elderly and people with pre-existing conditions comprise the bulk of patients affected by COVID, especially in terms of death. This is consistent with all statistical data regarding the virus. That doesn't mean you can't catch it if you're young and spry, but odds are you'll be alright if you do.

The virus does indeed kill people, but not that many. Our reaction was an over reaction. The fallout from shutting down the economy over something that's not even that deadly is far worse than the virus itself. There's other things that kill way more people per year and we don't shut down over them.

 

[Foxi4]

The virus does indeed kill people, but not that many. Our reaction was an over reaction. The fallout from shutting down the economy over something that's not even that deadly is far worse than the virus itself. There's other things that kill way more people per year and we don't shut down over them.

The problem with that is that it's talking about the matter in a purely statistical fashion and in absolute numbers, in reality we are dealing with human lives, people's loved ones. We're not necessarily shutting down for ourselves, we're shutting down for the benefit of people in vulnerable, immunocompromised groups who will catch it from us if we don't. It's a lose-lose no matter how you look at it, people would've died regardless of what was done. Any pondering on whether it would be more or less, or sooner or later, is a thought experiment with zero controls - coulda shoulda woulda. There are countries that did everything right and are in a bad shape, there are countries that did almost nothing and are doing great. Battling the virus by being responsible, maintaining high standards of hygiene etc. is something the society has to do, it's not something the government can mandate and enforce unless they put a police officer on every street corner and force people to follow the guidelines China-style, which is totalitarian, antithetical to any concept of freedom or independence and wholly unacceptable in the western world, regardless of circumstances.

 

[gregory-samba]

The problem with that is that it's talking about the matter in a purely statistical fashion, in reality we are dealing with human lives, people's loved ones. We're not necessarily shutting down for ourselves, we're shutting down for the benefit of people in vulnerable, immunocompromised groups who will catch it from us if we don't. It's a lose-lose no matter how you look at it, people would've died regardless of what was done. Any pondering on whether it would be more or less, or sooner or later, is a thought experiment with zero controls - coulda shoulda woulda. There are countries that did everything right and are in a bad shape, there are countries that did almost nothing and are doing great. Battling the virus by being responsible, maintain high standards of hygiene etc. is something the society has to do, it's not something the government can mandate and execute unless they put a police officer on every street corner and execute the guidelines China-style which is totalitarian, antithetical to any concept of freedom or independence and wholly unacceptable in the western world, regardless of circumstances.

Nice insight, but I don't think shutting down helped at all. We simply delayed in inevitable. I also don't blame the players that were forced to play the game for failure (Other Countries Leaders, Including Trump). I blame the creators of the game (China).

Edit: I also agree it's pointless to say "we should have done X", but it would be helpful to say "We're not going to shut down again, because we did X and X didn't work".

 

[KingVamp]

The population of the US is around 328 million, not sure of the exact number, I'd have to check the census. You're at 6.88 million cases and 200 thousand deaths, give or take. That's 2% of the population infected, out of which 2.9% have died and the remaining 97.1% either recovered or is still in medical care. That means the deaths account for 0.06% of the population. All things considered there are certainly things that affect larger swathes of the population - in December 2019 the unemployment rate in the U.S. was sitting at 3.5%, right now due to all the lockdowns it's at 8.4%, so it's more than doubled. In other words, more people lost their jobs, as in the means by which they support themselves and their families, than have caught the virus, let alone died from it. You can make the argument that people have been affected by lockdown unemployment more than they have by the virus, although it'd be a tough sell.

He's also right when he says that the elderly and people with pre-existing conditions comprise the bulk of patients affected by COVID, especially in terms of death. This is consistent with all statistical data regarding the virus. That doesn't mean you can't catch it if you're young and spry, but odds are you'll be alright if you do.

Putting aside the downplaying of 200,000 deaths, what he said in that video is literally the opposite what he said on those tapes.

 

[Foxi4]

Putting aside the downplaying of 200,000 deaths, what he said in that video is literally the opposite what he said on those tapes.

Those tapes are also old. They're also not recorded during a rally. The whole "secrecy" angle is still a hard sell for me, Trump obviously knew he was talking with a journalist and it was on record, likely to be released. It's far more likely that he flip-flopped based on new data or campaign advice. It's not like he hasn't in the past, he flip-flops all the time and says a bunch of stuff that's obviously just meat for the base.

 

[Lacius]

Out of plain curiosity, if we assume for 5 minutes that it is, what's the difference between that and death sentences? In both cases you are killing for convinience, with a degree of justification, at least from my point of view. Why support one, but (presumably) not the other? Is it because a prisoner with a life sentence has an infinitesimal chance of being retried with new evidence that may prove their innocence, or that they may be released early for some unspecified reason? Genuinely curious.

A stranger is about to die, and the only way he can survive is if he gets a kidney donation from a perfect match. You are the only match. Should you give it to him? It'd be morally righteous, but it's not immoral to say "no," and it's not murder to say "no." What would be immoral is for a government to violate your right to bodily autonomy and forcibly remove your kidney to save the stranger.

The only flaw with this analogy is the stranger is sentient, has a sense of self, etc. The fetus does not.

 

[Foxi4]

A stranger is about to die, and the only way he can survive is if he gets a kidney donation from a perfect match. You are the only match. Should you give it to him? It'd be morally righteous, but it's not immoral to say "no," and it's not murder to say "no." What would be immoral is for a government to violate your right to bodily autonomy and forcibly remove your kidney to save the stranger.

The only flaw with this analogy is the stranger is sentient, has a sense of self, etc. The fetus does not.

That's not the only flaw. By taking away my kidney for a perfect stranger you are depriving me of something - a kidney. That's my kidney, I have it now, and I am missing it afterwards. It's far more accurate to say that I discover that, unknowingly, I had a hobo living in my attic for a few months, and it's the dead of winter. I can kick the hobo out into the snow where he will surely die, or I can let the hobo live there for a few months until the winter passes and he can leave. Not only did I save a life, my only loss was the loss of time. That's an imperfect analogy as well since it doesn't account for the trauma of giving birth, but it's better than pretending that I've incurred any kind of loss in terms of my body parts.

 

[Lacius]

That's not the only flaw. By taking away my kidney for a perfect stranger you are depriving me of something - a kidney. That's my kidney, I have it now, and I am missing it afterwards. It's far more accurate to say that I discover that, unknowingly, I had a hobo living in my attic for a few months, and it's the dead of winter. I can kick the hobo out into the snow where he will surely die, or I can let the hobo live there for a few months until the winter passes and he can leave. Not only did I save a life, my only loss was the loss of time. That's an imperfect analogy as well since it doesn't account for the trauma of giving birth, but it's better than pretending that I've incurred any kind of loss in terms of my body parts.

I suggest you learn how human pregnancy works.

Edit: Forgive the snark, but I don't have much patience left for you.

 

[Foxi4]

I suggest you learn how human pregnancy works.

I'm well-aware of how pregnancy works, I'm not sure you do. I can assure you that your uterus doesn't get removed along with the baby, the woman is still perfectly capable of getting pregnant again. Meaning, she hasn't "lost a kidney" as you suggested.

 

[Lacius]

I'm well-aware of how pregnancy works, I'm not sure you do. I can assure you that your uterus doesn't get removed along with the baby, the woman is still perfectly capable of getting pregnant again. Meaning, she hasn't "lost a kidney" as you suggested.

I'm not arguing pregnancy necessarily results in the loss of organs, and I don't feel like arguing against your strawman arguments.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maternal_physiological_changes_in_pregnancy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maternal_death

Oh, and:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analogy

 

[notimp]

You're at 6.88 million cases and 200 thousand deaths, give or take. That's 2% of the population infected, out of which 2.9% have died and the remaining 97.1% either recovered or is still in medical care

Actually deathrate in western democracies with hospitals not being overrun is around 0.375% so if 2.9% of US people died, real infection rate is around 4-8 times higher than the one you noted (confirmed infections).

And its good that its that way, because growth is the problem, and you really dont want to talk about the issue in 'well only 3% of citizens died' terms. So you're lucky that mortality rate is actually around 0.375% with hospitals being able to take the influx.

And again, in about february of next year you will reach more covid deaths than US deaths in the second world war. And this will go on for 2 more years, probably.

Also - its a 'close to exponentially' spreading disease so 'its only 2%' can become a raging epidemic in two weeks (if people stop following all measures) - moreso, because the US doesnt control/monitor clusters. Because you just have too many people infected to follow up on most of their contacts for the week prior to them becoming contagious..

That said, to a far lesser extent in more thinly populated areas of the country.

edit:

Here Mr moderator, learn something new today: https://www.businessinsider.com/us-...-real-scale-estimates-charts-2020-7?r=DE&IR=T

 

[Foxi4]

I'm not arguing pregnancy necessarily results in the loss of organs, and I don't feel like arguing against your strawman arguments.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maternal_physiological_changes_in_pregnancy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maternal_death

Oh, and:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analogy

God forbid grown adults face mild consequences of irresponsible decisions. Again, there's an agreed upon cut-off point, we're not taking about a blanket ban here, so don't colour the discussion to look like we are. We're talking about a failure to use (or accidental misuse/faulty batch) contraception, followed by not using a morning after pill, followed by not seeing a reproductive specialist in regards to the unwanted pregnancy for weeks on end, until the fetus develops to such an advanced stage that it would be viable even outside of the mother's body (which is right about the time of the current legal cut-off, by the way). That's a lot of boo-boos one after the other.

Your patience isn't really my concern, you are under no obligation to answer queries or provide additional justification. I simply said that your position is based on your own personal perception of what's "right", not on science. Since you refuse to accept, or even consider, any widely available evidence (scientific evidence, not religious or crackpot evidence) in regards to early brain development or sentience as you do not ascribe value to it (after claiming that you did) and instead focus on the bodily autonomy of the mother (all the while denying even the concept of the fetus having bodily autonomy of its own, or even personhood for that matter) I kind of have no other choice *but* to interpret that as a dogmatic belief.

You can take offense to that if you wish, I don't mind one way or the other. If you, in earnest, believe that the fetus has no rights up until the point it exits the vagina, which is what you seemingly suggested, then I have to disagree wholeheartedly and there can be no "explaining" that, it's flat-out wrong. If you do not believe that, you haven't made that position clear, the goalpost keeps moving from "sentient" to "autonomous" to "separated from the mother", or at least that's what I've gathered so far. At this point I don't know what you think, which is odd because the more you explain it the less I gleam from it.

By the way, the woman's body suffers the same changes after abortion as it would after a miscarriage, or even a full-blown pregnancy if it's late term. We're talking nausea, milk leakage, pain and bleeding, mood swings, sore breasts, the lot. Check what constitutes post-abortion care before posting irrelevant data.

Actually deathrate in western democracies with hospitals not being overrun is around 0.375% so if 2.9% of US people died, real infection rate is around 4-8 times higher.

And again, in about february of this year you will reach more covid deaths than US deaths in the second world war. And this will go on for 2 more years, probably.

Also - its a 'close to exponentially' spreading disease so 'its only 2%' can become a raging epidemic in two weeks (if people stop following all measures) - moreso, because the US doesnt control/monitor clusters. Because you just have too many people infected to follow up.

Math is not your strong point, is it? Run those numbers again, I'm sure you'll figure out where you've made a mistake.

Edit: You know what? Nevermind, I'll do it for you. A death rate is a rate of deaths per 100000. The 2.9% figure is case fatality, as in how many people out of the infected group have died due to the virus. 2.9% of Americans didn't "die from covid", that'd be 9 million people, you'd be tripping over dead bodies. You're comparing two numbers that are wildly different. Let's have a look at case mortality in those European countries of yours, just so that we're comparing apples to apples, courtesy of John Hopkins:

United States of America - 2.9%, as I calculated, confirmed by John Hopkins
United Kingdom - 10.4%
Italy - 11.9%
France - 6.9%
Ireland - 5.4%
Spain - 4.9%
Netherlands - 6.3%
Switzerland - 4.1%
Germany - 3.4%
Hungary - 3.6%
Finland - 3.8%


https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality

Are there any other European counties you'd like us to look at? Because it's not looking so great thus far. I must've picked the less-developed ones, I guess.

 

[Lacius]

God forbid grown adults face mild consequences of irresponsible decisions. Again, there's an agreed upon cut-off point, we're not taking about a blanket ban here, so don't colour the discussion to look like we are. We're talking about a failure to use (or accidental misuse/faulty batch) contraception, followed by not using a morning after pill, followed by not seeing a reproductive specialist in regards to the unwanted pregnancy for weeks on end, until the fetus develops to such an advanced stage that it would be viable even outside of the mother's body (which is right about the time of the current legal cut-off, by the way). That's a lot of boo-boos one after the other.

Your patience isn't really my concern, you are under no obligation to answer queries or provide additional justification. I simply said that your position is based on your own personal perception of what's "right", not on science. Since you refuse to accept, or even consider, any widely available evidence (scientific evidence, not religious or crackpot evidence) in regards to early brain development or sentience as you do not ascribe value to it (after claiming that you did) and instead focus on the bodily autonomy of the mother (all the while denying even the concept of the fetus having bodily autonomy of its own, or even personhood for that matter) I kind of have no other choice *but* to interpret that as a dogmatic belief.

You can take offense to that if you wish, I don't mind one way or the other. If you, in earnest, believe that the fetus has no rights up until the point it exits the vagina, which is what you seemingly suggested, then I have to disagree wholeheartedly and there can be no "explaining" that, it's flat-out wrong. If you do not believe that, you haven't made that position clear, the goalpost keeps moving from "sentient" to "autonomous" to "separated from the mother", or at least that's what I've gathered so far. At this point I don't know what you think, which is odd because the more you explain it the less I gleam from it.

By the way, the woman's body suffers the same changes after abortion as it would after a miscarriage, or even a full-blown pregnancy if it's late term. We're talking nausea, milk leakage, pain and bleeding, mood swings, sore breasts, the lot. Check what constitutes post-abortion care before posting irrelevant data.

We can continue the conversation when you've conceded that kidney-removal is analogous to pregnancy.

I don't know what my breaking point was yesterday, but you broke me. Respectfully, I've realized the conversation with you is futile, and I'm not going to waste my time.

 

[Deleted User]

"You can't trust the Government" is exactly why I'm against adopting socialism. If you think that giving the Government almost complete control over every single person is somehow going to magically make the corruption disappear you're on crack. The Government is obsessed with power and that has never not been the case nor will it ever not be the case. I support anyone that wants to get laws rescinded or make the Government smaller. We don't need any new laws, regulations or taxes. Socialism is just a bad idea because it creates much more of those and gives these untrustworthy assholes complete control over everything and everyone. Some people need to wake up and realize that we're never going to live in a perfect world.

Ummm, sorry to burst your bubble. Socialism doesn't do that, it doesn't enable complete government control. Now someone is bound to call me double standard here, but I'm fine with socialist ideas for the united states, as it would help the smaller less wealthier individual who doesn't run a mega conglomerate business.And technically some of those policies from socialism would help cap capitalism from going completely out of hand (which right now it definitely is)
So... Why would I say socialism and regulation is fine (when I say socialism, I mean socialist policies, health care being one of them), and not the death sentence?
simple
severity. The death sentence can be HELL of abused, someone you don't like? just kill them, create some fake charge, and then kill them. This can be political motivated, grude motivated, and have faaaar too much impact.
However socialist polices have pretty much a net 0 if for whatever reason, get's so botched that it's worthless.
say that it's botched, and makes the rich for some reason get free health care.
they already practically do, it doesn't change the status quo. Tbh the government isn't corrupt because it''s the government, it's corrupt because rich people have more say than the poor. That is a statistical fact in the united states, your vote or your communication with your senator or house representative or local official, has a lot less power than that of a man who can higher a couple hundred to do his bidding, and lobby for him.

 

[Foxi4]

We can continue the conversation when you've conceded that kidney-removal is analogous to pregnancy.

I don't know what my breaking point was yesterday, but you broke me. Respectfully, I've realized the conversation with you is futile, and I'm not going to waste my time.

I'm not going to do that because it's not. In fact, if you consider the fetus to be a part of the woman's body for some undisclosed reason (it's not), abortion is *more* analogous to kidney removal as it is the removal of a body part that, according to you, belongs to the mother. Now, admittedly, it is a removal by request of the mother, however you will have a hard time finding a clinic that will remove your kidney because that's your fancy, and put it into medical waste. That's not a thing, I'm afraid.