The Orange Needler

[dannno]

If you want to say that fungibility means that no sources of income to the federal government can be tied to any specific spending, because money is fungible, then the fair conclusion from that would be that the amount of Mexico's contribution to paying for the wall is equal to the ratio of federal revenue coming from Mexico to federal revenue from all sources.

I don't know what that percent is. But tariffs account for 2% of federal revenue (they were 1% before Trump increased them). Imports from Mexico account for 14% of all imports to the USA. So we could reasonably estimate that the amount of the wall that was paid for by Mexico is about 0.3% of it, due to the fungibility of money. Digging into the details may result in a slightly different number than that, but that's in the ballpark.

And that's if we grant the dubious premise that those tariffs really are paid by Mexico and not American consumers.

They also put their military at the border in the meantime as a temporary stop-gap. That's even better than helping pay for the wall, because the effects are seen sooner while we build. Not sure what happened with that, they probably pulled out when Biden came in.

 

[jmdrake]

"Other Disinfectants"


Testing the power of alcohol to destroy the virus with cheap isopropyl alcohol before using more expensive food grade alcohol on patients makes sense.
I specifically didn't say isopropyl alcohol was commonly found in the human bloodstream, just alcohol.


See above, your use of strawmen is tiresome.



Some disinfectants can be injected and UV is a disinfectant.
What Trump said wasn't stupid, the spin you and the MSM put on it is.



When you stop repeating them I will stop pointing them out.



ALL of the studies that went against hydroxychloroquine were biased and most of them were retracted for blatant flaws and lies.
You are repeating MSM propaganda again.

Trump didn't push other cures because when he pushed hydroxychloroquine they made up the kind of lies you cited and tried to outlaw its use.
If he had pushed other cures they would have done the same to them.

Yaha yahda...bvllshyt. You and [MENTION=7656]donnay[/MENTION] can't even get your Trump defense straight. And no. There has been no actual attempt to use any kind of alcohol as some sort of internal disinfectant for COVID-19. You just made that shyt up. Just like you made up the "Trump is floating red flag laws to protect the second amendment" bvllshyt.

 

[jmdrake]

There's nothing creditworthy about that.

It worked pretty good for Iceland.

 

[jmdrake]

In March 2020, Trump placed a travel ban on flights from China and 26 European states--.exempting U.S. citizens and some others, but he did not shut down the borders completely.

Now Joe Biden is allowing anyone and everyone free access to come in to the U.S. without as much as a quarantine to roam the country and allows the lockdowns of U.S. citizens to continue and pushing vaccines and masks on all of us.

You really have no credibility because you are the same as [MENTION=75029]Invisible Man[/MENTION]. Both of you are vectoring. If you were honest you would give Trump credit where credit is due and blame where blame is due. Instead you use the phony "MSM talking points" vector. The MSM isn't always wrong. Like when they reported Trump's support for red flag laws.

 

[Invisible Man]

It worked pretty good for Iceland.

1. Worked to accomplish what though? Postponing the inevitable? You can't keep a whole country quarantined forever. Eventually, the virus will infect it, and it will spread until herd immunity is attained. And in the mean time, the quarantine not only stops the spread of that one virus across their borders, but other infectious diseases as well, weakening the population's immune system, and just setting them up for a future enhanced susceptibility to multiple illnesses sweeping through their land, like history has seen happen so many times to people groups who had been kept separate from others. Prior to last year, when an uninterrupted flood of pro-lockdown propaganda has been convincing people that this kind of response to pandemic is scientific, it was actually the scientific mainstream to oppose such measures.

2. Worked at what cost? Shutting down borders is no small thing. The travel restrictions Trump imposed came at an enormous economic cost. I haven't looked into what they did to Iceland's or New Zealand's economy, but it can't possibly have been good. All to get no real long term benefit.

3. To the extent that travel restrictions did accomplish anything in countries like Iceland and New Zealand, you really can't compare the situations in those two island countries with relatively low populations, who imposed those restrictions before the virus had an uncontainable presence there, with the USA which has so many more ways in, so many more international travelers (including its own citizens) to worry about, and in which the virus already had an uncontainable foothold from which it was bound to spread through the population before the travel restrictions were put in place.

 

[jmdrake]

1. Worked to accomplish what though? Postponing the inevitable? You can't keep a whole country quarantined forever. Eventually, the virus will infect it, and it will spread until herd immunity is attained. And in the mean time, the quarantine not only stops the spread of that one virus across their borders, but other infectious diseases as well, weakening the population's immune system, and just setting them up for a future enhanced susceptibility to multiple illnesses sweeping through their land, like history has seen happen so many times to people groups who had been kept separate from others. Prior to last year, when an uninterrupted flood of pro-lockdown propaganda has been convincing people that this kind of response to pandemic is scientific, it was actually the scientific mainstream to oppose such measures.

So far the data shows that it worked much better than what pretty much everyone else was doing, which was locking down the local economy by keeping global travel going. Please explain why you think that was a better idea? Global travel is not "natural." It was not a thing for most of human history. Name a global pandemic before the 20th century. And yeah, Sweded didn't lock down global travel or local travel. And they paid a price for it. They were better off than Italy, but didn't fair as well as the Nordic neighbors. Iceland has been an unqualified success story. Also now COVID-19 survival rates are MUCH better than they were early on in the pandemic. Doctors know better than to just through everybody on a ventilator. The most effective treatments are now well known. And while I don't trust this current round of vaccines, eventually through trial and error the safest vaccines will be well known. Iceland will be best positioned to benefit from everyone else's painful experiences.

2. Worked at what cost? Shutting down borders is no small thing. The travel restrictions Trump imposed came at an enormous economic cost. I haven't looked into what they did to Iceland's or New Zealand's economy, but it can't possibly have been good. All to get no real long term benefit.

Worked at a much better cost than the local lockdown approach. And people voluntarily quit traveling anyway once the pandemic hit their countries so that was bascially ZERO additional cost.

3. To the extent that travel restrictions did accomplish anything in countries like Iceland and New Zealand, you really can't compare the situations in those two island countries with relatively low populations, who imposed those restrictions before the virus had an uncontainable presence there, with the USA which has so many more ways in, so many more international travelers (including its own citizens) to worry about, and in which the virus already had an uncontainable foothold from which it was bound to spread through the population before the travel restrictions were put in place.

Ummm....yeah you can. The U.S. also has so many more resources than Iceland. And most international traverlers come through the air, especially travelers coming through the initial affected regions (Asia). More comprehensive travel restrictions would have made a helluva lot more sense than what we did, which is basically let Dr. Fauci "strongly encourage" all the governors to lock down their own people. Why do you think that was a better idea?

 

[enhanced_deficit]

This would be very under-handed tactic if Trump's twitter ban is lifted as part of such a plot:

When president, Donald Trump fast-tracked the development of a vaccine for COVID-19.

Take a bow, Donald, then tell your wary followers to get the ‘TRUMP’ vaccine | Opinion

By Steven P. Grossman

May 20, 2021

Reports are now appearing almost daily about people rejecting COVID-19 vaccines. The failure of substantial segments of the population to get vaccinated threatens the herd immunity that the medical professionals regard as the best way to stop the spread of the virus.

But there is an obvious solution.

...Trump can make special appeals to some of his special followers. The QAnon folks can be told that the government is engaged in a reverse conspiracy, something like: The Swamp dwellers in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Biden administration know that if they advocate for taking the vaccine, freedom-loving white folks will not take it, thus furthering the plan to replace them with people of color, including undocumented immigrants, when the freedom lovers die off. The best way to prevent this is to take the vaccine.

Should he be allowed back on Twitter, it is not so hard to imagine a series of tweets from @DonaldTrump such as: “TAKE THE VACCINE! The Big Lie purpatrated (sp) by fake news is that we don’t want to take it. The virus is real. I never called it a hoax.”

Or: “The way to stop the China Virus is by taking the TRUMP VACCINE!!!!”

miamiherald.com/opinion/op-ed/article251563173.html