Posts Made By: Rod Kaufman

Originally Posted by James Brown

Also, Manafort and WikiLeaks is a far cry from any reasonable interpretation of this:  "She said the president had "other agendas" while in the White House and hopes that one day it becomes known who exactly the president was "beholden to" and "who pulls his strings.""

There is exactly the same amount of evidence that Trump was "beholden to" Putin, or that he was a puppet with Putin pulling the strings as there is evidence of massive election fraud.  Look, there is a lot to not like about Trump.  If one is inclined to believe that he was a Russian stooge throughout his term, then I would say that that partisanship has blinded that person exactly to the same degree that partisanship leads some to believe that the election was stolen.

I personally do not believe that Trump believes the election was stolen.  Trump used that lie to rally his sycophants.  I personally do not believe that Clinton believes that Trump was a Russian stooge.  HRC is using that lie to rally her sycophants.  The symmetry is remarkable.

Jim

Originally Posted by James Brown

Rod, sometimes I think you and Rich are the same person.  Just because Trump is dirty and bad that does not make Clinton beating on Russia at this point in time any better!

Originally Posted by Patrick Keafer

Hopefully he doesn't try to steal things from the oval office on the way out like the Clinton's did.

Originally Posted by Patrick Keafer

They took furniture that belonged in the White House and shipped it to their personal residence.  They later had it return it.

Originally Posted by James Brown

Hi Patrick:

I agree with what you posted above.  My disagreement is quantitative, i.e. how do we define "worse".  Yes, Trump made things "worse" but not much worse according to my guess.  On the other hand, I certainly do not think his politically motivated indifference and denial helped!  My point is that I do not think a different president would have made a difference.  

For example, some states have "followed Trump's lead" and all but ignored masks and lockdowns, like South Dakota, (one of my kids lives there).  Some of these states, like SD, have high death rates (but no higher than many still locked-down Northeastern states).  Would the fiercely independent South Dakotans have embraced mask wearing and lock downs under president Biden or President Bush?  I doubt it.   A while back I posted a chart that had one of the pandemic's impacts, Deaths/M, divided by red and blue states.  It is slightly dated, but reproduced below.  To some extent, the red states are presumably more influenced by Trump than the blue states.  The virus does not seem to care.  Jim

Originally Posted by Mel Maki

Yes, it is not as bad as the Biden team is saying. Their goal is 100 million in the next 100 days. The Bloomberg Vaccine Tracker is claiming the last day of Trump they did 1.5 million. The average for the week is 912,000 a day. So it could be said during Trump, starting from nothing, they are on the pace Biden's team is talking about. It is too low and will be difficult to sustain but there is some Biden hype here.