U.S. to close..

[Yihang]

Originally Posted by SalingSue

Ahh the hubris of the self proclaimed “experts”

I guess you know the hoover institute is a conservative think tank ranked about the same as Fox Business on the conservative spectrum. I wouldn't get all my academic research from them.

[Exile]

Originally Posted by Wotname

That was the point. My comment only makes sense if the 'rights' were made up (initially) out of thin air.

Nothing wrong with that of course. At one point in time they did not exist and then the USA founding fathers (and others) made them up, most agreed with them and there is a process in place to ensure they stay in place.

That is why they exist in the USA and not in all places. Some other places haven't made them up.

At the end of the day, the 'rights' that exist in the USA remain in place by the consent of it's citizens via the mechanisms of the various arms of governance that were put in place by the citizenry.

The civil rights embodied in the US Constitution and its first 10 Amendments (commonly known as the 'Bill of Rights') were hardly made up out of 'thin air', but derived from centuries of English common law, custom and tradition. All made an imperative by the founders' first-hand experiences with what they viewed as a deprivation of many of those rights by King George III. In fact, these rights seemed so natural and obvious to them (hence the references to inalienable and derived from God), that a vigorous debate ensued amongst the founders as to whether they should be memorialized in the first 10 Amendments at all. One faction believed that memorializing them was not only unnecessary, but would run the risk of misinterpretation and manipulation. The other side wisely (in hindsight) believed that memorializing them was the best and probably only way to enforce their proper intent going forward.

You are correct that they still exist based on the consent of the citizenry, but they have also survived because of an independent judiciary. While they protect everyone from govt overreach, they also protect minorities from the 'tyranny of the majority', an obvious example being the rights they bestow on people accused of crimes. The Constitution purposely makes it difficult for a majority to alter these rights, requiring more of a super-majority of its citizens and states.

[Exile]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

I get that YOU didn't request or want this. I know for a fact that many do.

That's why we've been ASKED to take that step, and why many private businesses have CHOSEN to restrict access only to those wearing masks, maintaining distance, and respecting each other, during this TEMPORARY but serious crisis.

Your local hospitals overloaded yet?

By the end of this, you will know at least one person who died from it, and several who caught it. People will die for your inalienable right to be a jerk about a simple, temporary public health measure.

I liked this one, I really did. And I agree and adhere to mask usage (and social distancing) exactly for the reasons you cite. Except for the last paragraph that is. No need for drama, hyperbole, and calling someone a jerk who doesn't share your opinions (and mine). This thread's been pretty civil, relatively speaking that is. You've already proven you can articulate thoughtful and persuasive points without the nastiness that risks thread closure. So why revert back to your old ways now?

[Exile]

Originally Posted by Yihang

I guess you know the hoover institute is a conservative think tank ranked about the same as Fox Business on the conservative spectrum. I wouldn't get all my academic research from them.

Why not? Does this mean a conservative should be able to tell you not to get all your academic research from a liberal think tank, one that he/she personally believes may rank about the same as MSNBC? Why not rely on both so you can better understand where the other side is coming from? I bet it wouldn't even be that scary.

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by a64pilot

Any Military member with any longevity in the Service knows what Posse Comitatus is, and the few who don’t will certainly be educated by the old guys.
Yes I’m aware that in one instance it was broken, but I do not believe that in any real way any troops would fire on citizens, Kent State not withstanding, I believe that was the actions of a rare few and not representative of the rank and file Military.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act

History is ripe with examples.


It is not my intention to adjudicate the examples I mentioned earlier. But I suppose many here would feel more comfortable if we focus on non-USA events, so I'll offer fine Canadian examples:

https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia....general-strike

Or even more recent ones:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_G...ality_protests

The state -- no matter which state -- all too easily uses levers of brute force. Be they the military, or police, the effect is the same.

It only takes a cursory study of history to show this is true. It is the rare exception when military, or police, resist this. And this is the hope I hold for the future -- that there be more brave enough to do so.

[Yihang]

Originally Posted by Exile

Why not? Does this mean a conservative should be able to tell you not to get all your academic research from a liberal think tank, one that he/she personally believes may rank about the same as MSNBC? Why not rely on both so you can better understand where the other side is coming from? I bet it wouldn't even be that scary.

Absolutely agree. More exposure the better. Go visit a so called third world country, talk to a devout muslim, talk to a card carrying trump supporter. Form your own opinions.

How many of us do that?

MSNBC and CAL are jokes...FYI

But comparing wearing face masks to burka is also stupid.

I never said you shouldn't use the hoover institute but I think a lot of people believe because they are attached to Stanford university they are somehow moderate and infallible. Infact the hoover institute has a very uneasy relationship with Standford.

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by Exile

Why not? Does this mean a conservative should be able to tell you not to get all your academic research from a liberal think tank, one that he/she personally believes may rank about the same as MSNBC? Why not rely on both so you can better understand where the other side is coming from? I bet it wouldn't even be that scary.

When it comes to social science & humanities research (not hard sciences), I completely agree with you. In fact, this is one of the growing failings of academia; the continual diminishment of the conservative professoriate at most colleges and universities in both the USA and Canada (I can't speak for other areas).

My leanings tend to place me rather left on the political spectrum (although rather deep into the libertarian zone), but I value a broad perspective when it comes to the human psyche. My personal daily news cycle usually starts with the the CBC and CTV (because I'm Canadian), then the BBC, by then I need a Fox hit. BNN is good for business, then Reuters, CNN and Al Jazeera before heading back to CBC.

No one, and no institution, is without bias. The best we can do is try and understand the biases -- both theirs, and ours.

Originally Posted by Exile

The civil rights embodied in the US Constitution and its first 10 Amendments (commonly known as the 'Bill of Rights') were hardly made up out of 'thin air', but derived from centuries of English common law, custom and tradition. All made an imperative by the founders' first-hand experiences with what they viewed as a deprivation of many of those rights by King George III. In fact, these rights seemed so natural and obvious to them (hence the references to inalienable and derived from God), that a vigorous debate ensued amongst the founders as to whether they should be memorialized in the first 10 Amendments at all.

Agreed. Which is to reinforce the point that these "rights" are all very humanly created. And they can be as easily removed if we are not vigilant.

[Exile]

Originally Posted by Yihang

Absolutely agree. More exposure the better. Go visit a so called third world country, talk to a devout muslim, talk to a card carrying trump supporter. Form your own opinions.

How many of us do that?

MSNBC and CAL are jokes...FYI

But comparing wearing face masks to burka is also stupid.

Yes, kinda stupid. Same with the politicization over masks, etc., imo. But the larger overall point about relinquishing civil liberties in times of crisis is not. There are some legitimate concerns over some restrictions imposed over Covid which should be fully aired, whether they prove to be well-founded or not. Calling people with such concerns bad names or trying to label them as part of a group someone personally doesn't approve of only serves to squash such an airing and thus deny the rest of us the benefit of the debate. These days I'd say we need less opinionating and more listening, but I don't think that sort of blasphemy will go very far.

Sorry, gotta go read some Paul Krugman.

P.S. Not my fav, but I know a lot of people who don't think MSNBC is a joke. What's CAL?

[Yihang]

CAL is UC Berkley...........If you live in California...

Anyway. The scary thing is moderate views never gets funding. So its always both extremes screaming their heads off at each others.

Chris Wallace is probably seen a traitor by the fox crowd and I doubt anyone on MSNBC will ever say anything positive about trump. Chris Wallace is way too much of an institution to really care.

You need hyperboles like sailingsue's for the news to stay interesting, instead of everything being 'it depends'. Sad but true.

[Supercat568]

I'm no expert but i have an interesting perspective on this situation. I'm not anti vaccine but i am anti flu vaccine for healthy young people. So every fall for the past 6 years i research the cdc.gov website and take notes. I then formulate the most intelligent csse to show my daughter's mother, to not inject an unneccessary substance into our two young daughters perfect immune systems. In 2017 the usa had 79k seasonal flu deaths and it didn't even make the nightly news. With covid, when we were at 10k nationwide, they had helicopter views of mass graves being dug...really? At 10k? When we had almost 80k deaths 3 years ago and nothing? Over dramatization.
The US sees over 95k alcohol related deaths per year, 261 per day. Cigarette smoking causes over 480k deaths per year, or 1300 per day. Second hand smoke causes 41k deaths per year.
And the big whopper, heart disease leads to 650k deaths per year. And hardly a thing is done. If cigarettes were covid, the govt would've shut down all sales. Same with alcohol. But they ignore those deaths, and have a hard on for covid. I don't understand.
Seasonal flu deaths by year, cdc.gov
2015 23k
2016 38k
2017 79k
2018 34k
2019 34k
2020 22k

One really strange thing is on cdc.gov there's a pandemic preparedness plan. I did a 40 minute YouTube video about this document that cost taxpayers $6B between 2000 and 2005 or thereabouts, and not one time in this pandemic preparedness plan is the US President mentioned. Public health officials are, or were supposed to be responsible for everything during a pandemic..which makes perfect sense. I wish that President Trump had been made aware of this $6B plan. The funniest thing is...if 5 of us cruisers forum members got together with one computer and a search engine, we could've penned the plan. It's all total basic stuff, border control, social distancing, etc. And it cost us $6B and took 5 or 6 years to write!

THIS IS THE MOST INSANE THING...RIGHT OFF CDC.GOV
This is an exact quote from cdc.gov: "CDC uses a mathematical model to estimate the numbers of influenza illnesses, medical visits, hospitalizations and deaths in the US, as well as the impact of influenza vaccination on these numbers. This model was used to retroactively calculate influenza deaths going back to 2010."

Wait....what? Why don't they just add up the number of death certificates that have flu as the cause of death? Why do they use a mathematical model to calculate all these things? Hospital data is excruciatingly complete and available. This makes no sense whatsoever. After further digging i read that the cdc uses data from specially designated areas which include only 9% of the US, to feed into their model to calculate nationwide burden. Not a bad sample size, but with all the nationwide data available, why do they use a model? Further, the loacations of these 9% population sites is apparently not public information. No matter how i try to get in, the links take me to secure sites requiring login credentials. If these locations contain mostly elderly populations then the model will make junk data. Garbage in garbage out.
The cdc does not disclose how they verify their claim that "even if the flu vaccine efficacy is under 20%", which isn't uncommon, that "if you do get the flu, it will be much less harsh." Ya, no data to back that up. Wishful thinking.
Follow the money: GlaxoSmithKline generates $1.6B per year by selling a flu "vaccine" that admittedly is under 20% effective. Further, there's only one single product that's sold in the US that has no associated manufacturers liability, that's all vaccines. Google "vaccine injuries" and see what happens to some people when they get that crap injected into their bodies, and US taxpayers foot the entire bill for their vaccines causing injuries. According to hrsa.gov, US taxpayers have paid over $4.4B between 2006 and 2018. However, it's important to note that the payments to claimants does not mean that the vaccine caused the injury...because vaccine injuries are just a myth, right? Ya, they're a $4.4B paid out to date myth.
To conclude, this was mostly seasonal flu data. If the annual, each and every year seasonal flu can have so many inconsistent, unusual and perplexing attributes to how they calculate and define it then i believe that covid is even worse. I believe...i don't know for sure....It's my feeling..not data proven. There were stories coming from nurses secretly taking video of really strange things happening during the peak of the spring outbreak, apparently doctors getting paid for each covid death, hospital emergency drills being filmed by news crews as if it were covid activity, and many more, who knows...i wasn't there so i don't know the truth about any of this. (the hospital emergency drills being filmed by local news crews and fed to the public as covid apocalypse IS true)

So...to quote someone who i can't remember their name, "there is no longer truth, there are no longer facts, there is only who you choose to believe." And i believe that both seasonal flu and covid are partly a money grab.

Hard to believe that my years of digging into seasonal flu stats to protect my daughters would've led to this? The worst thing is that each year, their mother would just bring them to get a flu shot behind my back. Life, don't ya just love it!

[SeanPatrick]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

I purposely broadened the question to apply to all military and all nations, not just the US, because I don't think the US is exceptional in this case. My answer was simply to say it is quite common for the military to be used against the people of the nation they are supposed to defend. To think it unlikely is to be historically naive.

I think the instances in which it has happened were influenced by many factors. Each situation is a microcosm of events. Things like government, politics (internal and international), the economy, religion, etc. are all just factors which contribute to an outcome. That's why I purposely limit the question to the U.S.


In the same way, I think that there is a tendency to think in absolute terms when it comes to these factors. People say things like "Country 'X' is socialist." When it is much closer to the truth to say that practically every society has varying degrees of socialism, or whatever example you like - and that is what works for them.


IMHO, this is what causes a lot of suffering, not just in the geo-political sense. But what does a simple Buddhist like me know?

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

Your constitution, just like every other Earthly tome, was written by people. Unless you can show me a sworn affidavit from Mr. G that he was there, I'm going to go with reality .

I don't think god really has anything to do with it. What is important is that our supreme law thinks so. And that it restricts men from taking away those rights. And I do have the signatures to prove that is indeed the case.


Now ... I PROMISE I'll shut up.

[Exile]

Originally Posted by Yihang

CAL is UC Berkley...........If you live in California...

Anyway. The scary thing is moderate views never gets funding. So its always both extremes screaming their heads off at each others.

Chris Wallace is probably seen a traitor by the fox crowd and I doubt anyone on MSNBC will ever say anything positive about trump. Chris Wallace is way too much of an institution to really care.

I think his father Mike Wallace was more the real deal. Chris is more the showman, which of course is what reporters have largely become. The more successful ones who get rich selling their own books that is. I amuse myself every morning clicking back & forth btwn CNN & Fox to see which obviously newsworthy events are not being covered, and in turn which events that are obviously not newsworthy are!

Yup, I always figured the funding went to the extreme views, which only allows both of them to mainly scream about how extreme (and therefore bad) the other extreme is. What a world. But it is scary how polarized things have become in the US, with ordinary people as well as members of Congress no longer talking or interacting with each other. But then hating the "other side" has always been easier than the hard work of finding consensus. The tragedy is that there's huge amounts of middle ground in almost all of the complex issues of our time that we're being told not to compromise over. Instead it's either winner-take-all or gridlock, with the pendulum potentially swinging wildly every election cycle. I think most Americans are weary of it. I know I am.

[SalingSue]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

I get that YOU didn't request or want this. I know for a fact that many do.

That's why we've been ASKED to take that step, and why many private businesses have CHOSEN to restrict access only to those wearing masks, maintaining distance, and respecting each other, during this TEMPORARY but serious crisis.

Your local hospitals overloaded yet?

By the end of this, you will know at least one person who died from it, and several who caught it. People will die for your inalienable right to be a jerk about a simple, temporary public health measure.

Not remotely overrun, but I do know some people who have been sent home from hospitals due to lack of work.

Highly doubt I’ll have that “empty chair” at the dinner table, GREAT image and marketing for whomever thought that line up by the way.

It’s a 99% survival rate, I would say my survival rate constantly fighting for my rights that my busy body neighbors gave away on me, that would be much more bloody and risky.

I honestly laugh at many of the government “experts”, tons of photos of them not following their own mandates, give it a rest when you don’t even buy the product that you’re pitching to me.

Also what about all the businesses that have been destroyed, the massive number unemployment leading to addiction, taking ones own life, having your families whole lifestyle forced to change because folks fell victim to mass hysteria and forced you into that spot.

Originally Posted by Yihang

I guess you know the hoover institute is a conservative think tank ranked about the same as Fox Business on the conservative spectrum. I wouldn't get all my academic research from them.

What’s your point?

I’m not sure what that has to do with the ideas communicated.

On that note you’re in China, same place the virus came from, a place that embraces communism, in many ways the anthesis of American values, I would say the two different cultures of China and the US are very much incompatible.


Again, I’m 100% ok with others wearing masks, deciding not to go out, deciding to close down or destroy their own business, what I am not OK with is others making that choice for me or my friends. It reminds me of the religious people who would use force to convert others to their religion, or to a extreme burn them alive, all to “save them”.

Just race your own race and don’t meddle with strangers.

[Yihang]

Originally Posted by SalingSue

What’s your point?

I’m not sure what that has to do with the ideas communicated.

On that note you’re in China, same place the virus came from, a place that embraces communism, in many ways the anthesis of American values, I would say the two different cultures of China and the US are very much incompatible.


Again, I’m 100% ok with others wearing masks, deciding not to go out, deciding to close down or destroy their own business, what I am not OK with is others making that choice for me or my friends. It reminds me of the religious people who would use force to convert others to their religion, or to a extreme burn them alive, all to “save them”.

Just race your own race and don’t meddle with strangers.

I think everyone else got the point.

[Singularity]

Perhaps strategic use of the ignore list feature can keep this thread alive.