As former CDC director Dr. Redfield stated we were in the early stages treating the virus like a naturally occurring SARS like virus. This caused us to grossly under estimate how easily this virus spread from human to human in the early stages and hopelessly put us on the back foot for the rest of the pandemic.
And knowing it wasn’t like the SARS virus — that fact would’ve made Trump a competent leader?
we could have earlier put pressure on China to come clean. The information on the creation of the virus could have been used to create treatments far quicker rather than starting at square 1.
Can you guaran-fuckin’-tee — with the absolute precision and supernatural omniscience of God Herself — that knowing about the exact origin of the virus at any point before…oh, let’s say February 2020…would have indisputably and unquestionably changed the course of the pandemic so it would be less deadly?
Now "force of government back it up" has to mean explicitly ordered the removal.
It always meant that. A government agent can point out alleged misinformation to a platform, but the platform is under no legal obligation to act upon that notice. The government can’t demand a platform remove the speech because of the First Amendment, after all.
The legal definition of a state action which makes big tech a state actor[:]
“[i]f the government coerces, influences, or encourages the performance of the act, it is state action”
As I said: A platform isn’t obliged to act in this situation. (If anything, a refusal to act would be legal, moral, and ethical.) But if the platform receives the notice, judges the situation outside of a lens of “the government sent us this”, and believes the speech violates the rules of the platform regardless of who reported the speech, I fail to see the overall problem other than the optics. (And the optics are bad, that I will admit.)
you don't have a legal leg to stand on as you again champion lawless vigilantism
If I thought what happened in the link you provided was censorship, I’d be the first one to say so. But what I saw was, at worst, a situation where the government shouldn’t have stepped in to inform a platform of alleged misinformation — an overstepping of boundaries, sure, but nothing that outwardly reeks of coerced moderation (i.e., censorship).
Your repeated defense of illegal acts is no different than someone claiming physical assault is justified because you didn't like what the other person said.
The only justifiable violence is violence in direct defense of one’s own self and others. All other violence is bullshit.
The protestors were being moved out before any discussion on trump walking to the church
So the timing of Trump walking to a church he’d never been to before and holding up a book he’d never read before for the sake of a photo-op was purely coincidental to the timing of the crowd being moved back, huh?
I believe in coincidences. Coincidences happen every day. But I don’t trust in coincidences.
the church the protestors assaulted and burned the day before
[citation needed]
I don’t align with him. I never did. It’s you who can’t separate agreeing with specific points and agreeing with the entirety.
If you donate to/vote for a Republican known for anti-queer bigotry and pro-racist leanings only because you agree with them on economic issues, it doesn’t matter if you disagree with their other bullshit. You’re still trying to put them in a position of power where they can act on that other bullshit and harm marginalized people. You can say “well I didn’t give them money and vote for them to do that”, but you still gave them money and voted for them regardless. At that point, you have to take responsibility for the fact that you tried (regardless of the success of that effort) to put a bigot into a position where they could turn their bigotry into the rule of law.
(Me? I don’t have to worry about that specific variant of this problem because I don’t vote for Republicans.)
The difference between Obama and Trump in how they handled their carriers was Obama eventually became a partisan player and Trump didn’t.
For once, you’re right — Trump didn’t become a partisan player. He was a partisan player from the get-go. Obama had to become a partisan player because Mitch McConnell, in his unnerving zeal to stop the first Black POTUS from being anything close to successful, prevented anything Obama wanted to push through Congress from getting through.
You love to bitch about partisanship, Lodos. Funny, then, how you also seem almost ecstatic to support the political party that is all about partisanship at all costs — including government shutdowns and a refusal to investigate an insurrection against American democracy (that was carried out in the name of the guy you voted for).
If Twitter gives you the boot, you can go to Parler or Gab or whatever. If they give you the boot, you can start your own fucking site/service and shout your inanity there. People may not visit your site/service, but as I said above, you’re not entitled to be heard and they’re not obliged to listen.
The First Amendment protects your rights to speak freely and associate with whomever you want. It doesn’t give you the right to make others listen. It doesn’t give you the right to make others give you access to an audience. And it doesn’t give you the right to make a personal soapbox out of private property you don’t own. Nobody is entitled to a platform or an audience at the expense of someone else. Being denied that privilege isn’t censorship.
So what? Even if we discovered the source of the virus now, it wouldn’t do anything to stop the virus from spreading and mutating into deadlier variants. It wouldn’t have stopped the virus a year ago to the day, either. The source became largely irrelevant to the broader fight against the pandemic because…well, because there was a pandemic going on and we needed to care more about people dying than about where the virus came from.
The idea to close China flights was suggest by medical experts early on. And included closing access from other countries as needed.
How early on — before the virus “escaped”, or what? I mean, closing travel before the virus could become widespread in China might’ve helped, sure. But again, that is no guarantee that enough travellers would’ve been stopped from entering their home countries and spreading the virus.
Hindsight is always 20/20. But just like we can’t know how the events of 9/11 and its immediate aftermath would’ve turned out had Al Gore been POTUS, we can’t know whether stopping travel early on would’ve kept COVID-19 limited to China. None of us are God Herself; we don’t have that kind of absolute knowledge.
There’s no need to shut off travel from a country with 50 cases.
One case is all that a virus needs to spread. One case can, on its own, create a pandemic under the right conditions.
I have yet to read anyone in a position of power who said this, including Trump.
Wasn’t he the President of the United States who said that the U.S. only had a handful of cases that were going to go away about a month before the shit really hit the fan? Because I don’t recall anyone else acting as the President of the United States at the time. 🤔
Shutting down travel on the day the order was issued had the potential to greatly reduce the number of infections.
Millions infected and over a half-million dead — yeah, how’d that work out?
10 infected people can spread less than 100. It’s simple math.
Millions infected and over a half-million dead — yeah, how’s that math looking right now?
There you go again with the 100% false out of context statement.
It’s called exaggeration and paraphrasing, you burnt-out lightbulb of a person.
Don’t put quotes around your own interpretation of what was actually said.
Or else what, bitch?
The rest of your post is partisan nonsense not worth responding to.
Is it because you’re a coward, or is it because you know I’m right?
And yet, when it comes to cyberspace, you’re on the side of the people who want compelled hosting of speech — regardless of whether you like that fact. You defend their opposition to 230, you defend the idea that Twitter should be forced to host speech, you defend the idea of “moderation is censorship” no matter how much that idea might come back to bite you on the ass. Their side is your side, and your side doesn’t seem to care who gets silenced so long as your side gets to yell as loud as they want on any platform they want without consequences.
And if you think I’m exaggerating or lying, remember: You voted for Donald Trump.
For over the last decade American media has quickly slid to the American “left”.
The right wing side of American politics/media has slid into the acceptance and even propagation of lies and mistruths and conspiracy theorist thinking as modern American conservatism breathes its dying breaths. Right-wing politicians and pundits and “reporters” flatter the prejudices of their intended audience because feelings-before-facts thinking gets better ratings than facts-before-feelings reporting. This approach leads to people not giving a damn about facts, not even bothering to provide evidence of their claims because the claim “feels right”, and…well, basically, it leads to the Big Lie–fueled insurrection of the 6th of January.
If you want to blame something or someone for the “leftward” shift in American media — the shift towards checking facts, towards challenging those in power instead of appeasing them, towards treating queer people like people instead of disease-carrying vermin or freaks of nature to be gawked at — you can lay the blame at the feet of modern American conservatism and right-wing media. Nobody would have (much of) an issue with Fox News if it didn’t knowingly embrace the role of the propaganda arm for the GOP and Donald Trump at the expense of its integrity as a(n alleged) news organization. I mean, at least a “leans right” centrist version of Fox News that actually tried to be a serious journalistic outfit wouldn’t employ a bigot like Tucker Carlson.
“Likely” does not mean “certain” or “factual”. Either prove a lab was the source or stop acting like you have the omniscience of God Herself.
if the IS shut down travel from China based on the known evidence that was buried, it’s likely other countries would have followed likewise
This assumes that travel would’ve been shut down before, not after, the virus reached other continents. You can’t guarantee, with the precision and omniscience of God Herself, that shutting down travel from China any earlier would’ve prevented COVID-19 from reaching the United States.
the only people who believe this are those with their face buried in politically controlled liberal media
Tell me something: How many families of COVID-19 victims did Donald Trump call to console? How many times did he openly mourn the deaths of COVID victims — or, hell, any victim of violence (e.g., Heather Heyer)?
He is a man devoid of compassion and empathy. He cares not about the pain and suffering and misery of others unless it amuses him — his enthralled and enraptured reaction to the insurrection proves as much. He wouldn’t have ever cared about anyone who died from COVID-19 if his lack of compassion (and the inaction it caused) would’ve improved his polling numbers.
And from the moment the virus neared the doorstep of the U.S., Old 45 was adamant in ignoring the threat of COVID-19 even as it became the deadliest pandemic in a century and tore through the country like a tornado tears through a trailer park. “It’ll just go away,” he said. “It’s under control,” he claimed. “We should look into injecting people with disinfectants,” he mused. Every time he was given a chance to act like a leader and reassure the country that the pandemic was under control, he was anywhere from days to months late with that reassurance — and all because he wanted to keep the economy open, since that was the one thing he was running for reëlection on (until COVID fucked all that up).
Donald Trump is a narcissistic sociopath who cares not about whether someone suffers so much as he cares about whether the right people (i.e., his ideological “enemies”) suffer — and whether he gets to make them suffer. If he thought signing a bill to legalize state-sponsored executions of queer people for being queer would somehow hurt Democrats, he’d probably sign it within an hour of its passage in Congress. He doesn’t — can’t — care about other people; it’s not who he is, and it’s not who he’ll ever be.
A vote for Donald Trump was, is, and always will be a vote for the suffering of the marginalized. Fuck him and his supporters.
What if there was a conscious decision by Nintendo to leave money on the table because of some animus towards "fans" or desire for control beyond what money could provide?
Then Nintendo higher-ups made a foolish decision that makes the company look even less fan-friendly than it already does.
Are you upset because I dared to insult your Dear Leader, or are you upset because I’m right?
if the world were quickly informed about the true laboratory source there would have been considerably less pushback against closing travel from China. Just to start.
Three things.
Although the possibility of the virus coming from a laboratory is plausible, it is not yet verifiable fact, and you’d do well to stop acting like it is — unless, say, you want us to consider you to be little better than people who spread QAnonsense.
Stopping travel from China would’ve done nothing to stop travel to/from Europe, which is most likely the way COVID-19 entered the United States in the first place, or interstate travel by infected persons within this country.
Stopping travel from China also would’ve done nothing to make Donald Trump a more caring and compassionate person or a more competent/less corrupt leader.
Yes or no: Would knowing the origin of the virus on any of those three dates have done anything to change the course of the pandemic, including the response to the pandemic from then-President Donald Trump and his administration?
If “no”: I see little reason to care about those emails.
If “yes”: You need to explain, in great detail, how knowing the origin of the virus would’ve prevented the hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of infections in the United States alone, never mind the millions of deaths and infections around the world, and would’ve suddenly turned an incompentent, naccissistic, corrupt-to-the-core asshole into a competent leader who actually gave a damn about the American people in general, but especially the ones who didn’t vote for him.
I skimmed through that article and got the gist of it. Can you show me where it says the office of the California Secretary of State, or a duly designated representative thereof, ordered the removal of those videos?
I’m not saying the removals are entirely on the up-and-up. I’m not saying this looks good for that office, either. But I didn’t see any orders, threats, or other language that looks like the office (or any representatives thereof) demanded the videos be taken down.
On the post: Senator Wicker Introduces Bill To Guarantee The Internet Sucks
And knowing it wasn’t like the SARS virus — that fact would’ve made Trump a competent leader?
Can you guaran-fuckin’-tee — with the absolute precision and supernatural omniscience of God Herself — that knowing about the exact origin of the virus at any point before…oh, let’s say February 2020…would have indisputably and unquestionably changed the course of the pandemic so it would be less deadly?
On the post: Senator Wicker Introduces Bill To Guarantee The Internet Sucks
It always meant that. A government agent can point out alleged misinformation to a platform, but the platform is under no legal obligation to act upon that notice. The government can’t demand a platform remove the speech because of the First Amendment, after all.
As I said: A platform isn’t obliged to act in this situation. (If anything, a refusal to act would be legal, moral, and ethical.) But if the platform receives the notice, judges the situation outside of a lens of “the government sent us this”, and believes the speech violates the rules of the platform regardless of who reported the speech, I fail to see the overall problem other than the optics. (And the optics are bad, that I will admit.)
If I thought what happened in the link you provided was censorship, I’d be the first one to say so. But what I saw was, at worst, a situation where the government shouldn’t have stepped in to inform a platform of alleged misinformation — an overstepping of boundaries, sure, but nothing that outwardly reeks of coerced moderation (i.e., censorship).
The only justifiable violence is violence in direct defense of one’s own self and others. All other violence is bullshit.
On the post: If David Cicilline Gets His Way; It Would Destroy Content Moderation
Yes, there was.
So the timing of Trump walking to a church he’d never been to before and holding up a book he’d never read before for the sake of a photo-op was purely coincidental to the timing of the crowd being moved back, huh?
I believe in coincidences. Coincidences happen every day. But I don’t trust in coincidences.
[citation needed]
If you donate to/vote for a Republican known for anti-queer bigotry and pro-racist leanings only because you agree with them on economic issues, it doesn’t matter if you disagree with their other bullshit. You’re still trying to put them in a position of power where they can act on that other bullshit and harm marginalized people. You can say “well I didn’t give them money and vote for them to do that”, but you still gave them money and voted for them regardless. At that point, you have to take responsibility for the fact that you tried (regardless of the success of that effort) to put a bigot into a position where they could turn their bigotry into the rule of law.
(Me? I don’t have to worry about that specific variant of this problem because I don’t vote for Republicans.)
For once, you’re right — Trump didn’t become a partisan player. He was a partisan player from the get-go. Obama had to become a partisan player because Mitch McConnell, in his unnerving zeal to stop the first Black POTUS from being anything close to successful, prevented anything Obama wanted to push through Congress from getting through.
You love to bitch about partisanship, Lodos. Funny, then, how you also seem almost ecstatic to support the political party that is all about partisanship at all costs — including government shutdowns and a refusal to investigate an insurrection against American democracy (that was carried out in the name of the guy you voted for).
On the post: Senator Wicker Introduces Bill To Guarantee The Internet Sucks
If Twitter gives you the boot, you can go to Parler or Gab or whatever. If they give you the boot, you can start your own fucking site/service and shout your inanity there. People may not visit your site/service, but as I said above, you’re not entitled to be heard and they’re not obliged to listen.
The First Amendment protects your rights to speak freely and associate with whomever you want. It doesn’t give you the right to make others listen. It doesn’t give you the right to make others give you access to an audience. And it doesn’t give you the right to make a personal soapbox out of private property you don’t own. Nobody is entitled to a platform or an audience at the expense of someone else. Being denied that privilege isn’t censorship.
On the post: Senator Wicker Introduces Bill To Guarantee The Internet Sucks
So what? Even if we discovered the source of the virus now, it wouldn’t do anything to stop the virus from spreading and mutating into deadlier variants. It wouldn’t have stopped the virus a year ago to the day, either. The source became largely irrelevant to the broader fight against the pandemic because…well, because there was a pandemic going on and we needed to care more about people dying than about where the virus came from.
How early on — before the virus “escaped”, or what? I mean, closing travel before the virus could become widespread in China might’ve helped, sure. But again, that is no guarantee that enough travellers would’ve been stopped from entering their home countries and spreading the virus.
Hindsight is always 20/20. But just like we can’t know how the events of 9/11 and its immediate aftermath would’ve turned out had Al Gore been POTUS, we can’t know whether stopping travel early on would’ve kept COVID-19 limited to China. None of us are God Herself; we don’t have that kind of absolute knowledge.
One case is all that a virus needs to spread. One case can, on its own, create a pandemic under the right conditions.
Wasn’t he the President of the United States who said that the U.S. only had a handful of cases that were going to go away about a month before the shit really hit the fan? Because I don’t recall anyone else acting as the President of the United States at the time. 🤔
Millions infected and over a half-million dead — yeah, how’d that work out?
Millions infected and over a half-million dead — yeah, how’s that math looking right now?
It’s called exaggeration and paraphrasing, you burnt-out lightbulb of a person.
Or else what, bitch?
Is it because you’re a coward, or is it because you know I’m right?
On the post: If David Cicilline Gets His Way; It Would Destroy Content Moderation
And yet, when it comes to cyberspace, you’re on the side of the people who want compelled hosting of speech — regardless of whether you like that fact. You defend their opposition to 230, you defend the idea that Twitter should be forced to host speech, you defend the idea of “moderation is censorship” no matter how much that idea might come back to bite you on the ass. Their side is your side, and your side doesn’t seem to care who gets silenced so long as your side gets to yell as loud as they want on any platform they want without consequences.
And if you think I’m exaggerating or lying, remember: You voted for Donald Trump.
On the post: If David Cicilline Gets His Way; It Would Destroy Content Moderation
He’s also a racist asshole. But I guess you can overlook that because he makes you go ha-ha-ha every once in a while, huh.
On the post: Nintendo Hates You And The Company Most Certainly Does Not Want You To Co-Stream 'Nintendo Direct'
You’re literally the only person who believes in this.
Did your mother drop you on your head as a child? Because I’m beginning to believe she didn’t stop at one drop.
On the post: If David Cicilline Gets His Way; It Would Destroy Content Moderation
The right wing side of American politics/media has slid into the acceptance and even propagation of lies and mistruths and conspiracy theorist thinking as modern American conservatism breathes its dying breaths. Right-wing politicians and pundits and “reporters” flatter the prejudices of their intended audience because feelings-before-facts thinking gets better ratings than facts-before-feelings reporting. This approach leads to people not giving a damn about facts, not even bothering to provide evidence of their claims because the claim “feels right”, and…well, basically, it leads to the Big Lie–fueled insurrection of the 6th of January.
If you want to blame something or someone for the “leftward” shift in American media — the shift towards checking facts, towards challenging those in power instead of appeasing them, towards treating queer people like people instead of disease-carrying vermin or freaks of nature to be gawked at — you can lay the blame at the feet of modern American conservatism and right-wing media. Nobody would have (much of) an issue with Fox News if it didn’t knowingly embrace the role of the propaganda arm for the GOP and Donald Trump at the expense of its integrity as a(n alleged) news organization. I mean, at least a “leans right” centrist version of Fox News that actually tried to be a serious journalistic outfit wouldn’t employ a bigot like Tucker Carlson.
On the post: Senator Wicker Introduces Bill To Guarantee The Internet Sucks
“Likely” does not mean “certain” or “factual”. Either prove a lab was the source or stop acting like you have the omniscience of God Herself.
This assumes that travel would’ve been shut down before, not after, the virus reached other continents. You can’t guarantee, with the precision and omniscience of God Herself, that shutting down travel from China any earlier would’ve prevented COVID-19 from reaching the United States.
Tell me something: How many families of COVID-19 victims did Donald Trump call to console? How many times did he openly mourn the deaths of COVID victims — or, hell, any victim of violence (e.g., Heather Heyer)?
He is a man devoid of compassion and empathy. He cares not about the pain and suffering and misery of others unless it amuses him — his enthralled and enraptured reaction to the insurrection proves as much. He wouldn’t have ever cared about anyone who died from COVID-19 if his lack of compassion (and the inaction it caused) would’ve improved his polling numbers.
And from the moment the virus neared the doorstep of the U.S., Old 45 was adamant in ignoring the threat of COVID-19 even as it became the deadliest pandemic in a century and tore through the country like a tornado tears through a trailer park. “It’ll just go away,” he said. “It’s under control,” he claimed. “We should look into injecting people with disinfectants,” he mused. Every time he was given a chance to act like a leader and reassure the country that the pandemic was under control, he was anywhere from days to months late with that reassurance — and all because he wanted to keep the economy open, since that was the one thing he was running for reëlection on (until COVID fucked all that up).
Donald Trump is a narcissistic sociopath who cares not about whether someone suffers so much as he cares about whether the right people (i.e., his ideological “enemies”) suffer — and whether he gets to make them suffer. If he thought signing a bill to legalize state-sponsored executions of queer people for being queer would somehow hurt Democrats, he’d probably sign it within an hour of its passage in Congress. He doesn’t — can’t — care about other people; it’s not who he is, and it’s not who he’ll ever be.
A vote for Donald Trump was, is, and always will be a vote for the suffering of the marginalized. Fuck him and his supporters.
On the post: Nintendo Hates You And The Company Most Certainly Does Not Want You To Co-Stream 'Nintendo Direct'
Then Nintendo higher-ups made a foolish decision that makes the company look even less fan-friendly than it already does.
On the post: Nintendo Hates You And The Company Most Certainly Does Not Want You To Co-Stream 'Nintendo Direct'
The evidence that you are at least somewhat intellectually disabled continues to pile up.
On the post: Nintendo Hates You And The Company Most Certainly Does Not Want You To Co-Stream 'Nintendo Direct'
…fucking what
On the post: Senator Wicker Introduces Bill To Guarantee The Internet Sucks
Are you upset because I dared to insult your Dear Leader, or are you upset because I’m right?
Three things.
Although the possibility of the virus coming from a laboratory is plausible, it is not yet verifiable fact, and you’d do well to stop acting like it is — unless, say, you want us to consider you to be little better than people who spread QAnonsense.
Stopping travel from China would’ve done nothing to stop travel to/from Europe, which is most likely the way COVID-19 entered the United States in the first place, or interstate travel by infected persons within this country.
On the post: Senator Wicker Introduces Bill To Guarantee The Internet Sucks
Yes or no: Would knowing the origin of the virus on any of those three dates have done anything to change the course of the pandemic, including the response to the pandemic from then-President Donald Trump and his administration?
If “no”: I see little reason to care about those emails.
On the post: Senator Wicker Introduces Bill To Guarantee The Internet Sucks
I skimmed through that article and got the gist of it. Can you show me where it says the office of the California Secretary of State, or a duly designated representative thereof, ordered the removal of those videos?
I’m not saying the removals are entirely on the up-and-up. I’m not saying this looks good for that office, either. But I didn’t see any orders, threats, or other language that looks like the office (or any representatives thereof) demanded the videos be taken down.
On the post: If David Cicilline Gets His Way; It Would Destroy Content Moderation
There is no greater hate than “Christian love”.
On the post: Nintendo Hates You And The Company Most Certainly Does Not Want You To Co-Stream 'Nintendo Direct'
No, it’s exactly like that.
On the post: Nintendo Hates You And The Company Most Certainly Does Not Want You To Co-Stream 'Nintendo Direct'
And still no new F-Zero or Kid Icarus… 😭
On the post: FBI Ignored Its Own Warrant And Search Policies To Seize Millions From People's Safety Deposit Boxes
I’d just like to say “bravo” on the GIF usage here. 😁
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