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Re: Current Events Thread
Until Christmas?? Man, that's awful. We're arguing about masks right now. If folks don't want to get vaccinations, okay, but they're clogging up hospitals.
Just read that out of the 15 dogs, 10 were puppies, and a mother who just had a litter. 
- monkeychow
- Rep: 661
Re: Current Events Thread
Well it's not officially Christmas...but the state I live in has a "lets lock down until we get back to zero" agenda...which will take a very long time with Delta and even if we can it's highly likely the other state that leaked it here in the first place will do so again cos our border controls are not smart.
Meanwhile the other state in a bad way has a lockdown (which our state considers too soft) that may or may not work...but is saying they will open up like the UK as soon as they can get the vax rate up...but then realistically between the vaccine hesitancy and the lack of government supply the timeline for that is kinda like october or november if not later.
Both these states are run by opposing political parties so whatever they do will be designed to shame the other. Like mine will lock down longer in the hopes to get lower numbers to prove the other opened up too fast, or, the other will open up faster to restore business faster to prove our lockdown wasn't necessary etc. It's all about politics at this stage sadly even though people are dying and there's a strong chance of more people dying if we don't work out a national plan that doesn't suck.
- Randall Flagg
- Rep: 139
Re: Current Events Thread
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/pol … 244854002/
Midterms are 14.5 months away, and the election another 38, so this means nothing. But this is the first non-rasmussen poll to look at Biden since the fiasco in Afghanistan. A ten point in the negative swing is huge. Pelosi bought herself some more time with her Infrastructure bullshit, but when Sinema and Manchin tell you the 3.5 trillion isn't getting their vote in the Senate, you have to wonder why she pays any attention to the Squad at all. It's not like their voter base is going to swap to a GOP candidate. And it's not like the progressives won't primary one of their own to the detriment of the party (see AOC). Pelosi's the 2nd most disliked politician in America (behind McConnell) so I don't know what machinations she has going on. Virtually a zero percent chance she is the speaker come January 2023, so I have to wonder if this isn't her last parade before calling it quits.
Re: Current Events Thread
Until Christmas?? Man, that's awful. We're arguing about masks right now. If folks don't want to get vaccinations, okay, but they're clogging up hospitals.
This is an important. It doesn't matter if you live in a red or blue state, the health care system is getting swamped and can't handle the patient overload from the unvaccinated assholes. I mean these people are on ventilators and shit and sucking up resources because they DIDN'T get a vaccine.
Meanwhile, if I need to get some procedure done at the hospital I have to wait and suffer because I chose to do the right thing. Makes no sense.
- Randall Flagg
- Rep: 139
Re: Current Events Thread
misterID wrote:Until Christmas?? Man, that's awful. We're arguing about masks right now. If folks don't want to get vaccinations, okay, but they're clogging up hospitals.
This is an important. It doesn't matter if you live in a red or blue state, the health care system is getting swamped and can't handle the patient overload from the unvaccinated assholes. I mean these people are on ventilators and shit and sucking up resources because they DIDN'T get a vaccine.
Meanwhile, if I need to get some procedure done at the hospital I have to wait and suffer because I chose to do the right thing. Makes no sense.
Where are you getting that hospitals are swamped and can't perform procedures? I work for one of the largest hospital systems in the US, and my soon to be wife (24 more days!) is a provider at our flag ship hospital. Even if ICU beds were at capacity, and they're not - one hospital in a major urban center does not a region make - it has nothing to do with normal procedures. Last April when the US Medical System essentially ended all elective procedures because of COVID fears, yea, it sucked to get something a MD didn't tell you was fatal immediately. But we're far from that point. No one is being denied elective procedures, and we're not storing dying patients in the halls. If you have a urology appointment, the only way that's impacted by COVID is if your Operating Room gets taken by a priority. And that's true every day of week.
Get the vaccine and it's not going to be an issue. But these aren't healthy, young people going into the ICU and ER today. Look at the numbers, it's almost entirely geriatrics, as it's been the entire time of COVID. Quit buying into the hysteria put forth my a media who needs your fear to keep you glued to their readouts.
Re: Current Events Thread
(CNN)President Joe Biden's approval rating is at its lowest point in his presidency. In the average of polls, he stands at about 47%. That's a steady decline from the beginning of this month (51%), last month (52%) and beginning of June (54%).
It would be easy to assign Biden's decline to the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan, but, as the data shows, Biden has been trending downward for a while. The truth is that he is losing ground on a number of key issues.
The coronavirus pandemic, for example, had been one of Biden's best issues. He was trusted more than former President Donald Trump to handle it in poll after poll during last year's election. Trump likely would have won in 2020 had people trusted him more.
Biden's approval rating on the coronavirus had consistently been in the 60s for the first six months of his presidency. That declined to the high 50s in July and has been sunk to the 50s in the month of August.
Biden's overall approval rating has declined at a similar rate to his coronavirus pandemic approval rating.
The problem for Biden is that people are reacting to what they see on the ground. Coronavirus cases and hospitalizations are the highest they've been since the beginning of the year, as the Delta variant has taken hold in the US. More people fear catching the coronavirus than they have since the beginning of the spring when vaccines became widely available. Most Americans think the worst of the virus is still ahead of us, which is a shift from earlier this year.
Biden's also seen his numbers on the economy drop. During August, Biden's average approval rating on the economy has been just 47%. That's down from the 51% it averaged during the month of July.
Again, this drop can be assigned to a reaction to real world events. Consumer sentiment declined greatly during the first half of August, according to the University of Michigan.
The decline of Biden's economic approval rating should be worrying to him. As I noted previously, Biden's economic approval rating has been closely tied to his overall approval rating. Right now, both of them are at 47% in the average of polls.
Worse for Biden is that the economy is viewed as the second most important problem (behind the coronavirus), according to Gallup. It shouldn't be surprising, therefore, that a drop in Biden's economic approval rating coincides with a drop in his overall approval rating.
Biden's declining approval ratings on the coronavirus and economy has been punctuated by how Americans see him handling the troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.
In July, before the troop withdrawal, Biden averaged a 58% approval rating when it came to getting the troops out of Afghanistan.
Biden's average approval rating on Afghanistan stands at a mere 34% today. You rarely see anything close to a 24-point drop on a president's handling of an issue in such a short period of time.
The fact that three big issues are going against Biden at the same time makes it difficult to figure out what is driving his overall approval rating down. It's probably all three to some degree.
Indeed, the entire mood of the country has taken a dive recently. Just 33% of the country say the country is going in the right direction in an average of recent polling.
This 33% is notable because optimism in the country under Biden had been reaching levels it hadn't seen in a long time. At the beginning of last month, 43% of Americans agreed the country was going in the right direction. The last time 43% said the country was going in the right direction was back in 2009.
The current 33% is much more like the readings we saw on this metric during the Trump administration.
The big question going forward is how do American minds change from here. An issue for Biden is that even when the last American troops leave Afghanistan that probably won't change people's perceptions on the coronavirus or the economy.
Still, the fact that Biden's ratings have shifted as much as they have over the last month may be an indication that Biden's once stable ratings are more susceptible to shifting around that was previously thought.
Re: Current Events Thread
I've always thought that corona and the effects on the economy would sink him more than the Afghanistan stuff. Because at some point the Afghanistan stuff will fade away but the pandemic? That will stay for a while. Weird thing is he has less control over the pandemic stuff than Afghanistan.
- Smoking Guns
- Rep: 330
Re: Current Events Thread
https://twitter.com/QTRResearch/status/1431770747031146497?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1431770747031146497%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=
