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But earlier you said you want to hold Biden accountable for lying about the reason he's holding a small inauguration. Were you lying then or are you lying now?

Do you buy the "narrative" of Republican elected offical Brad Raffensperger, who is actually the one (not CNN or WAPO) who accused Trump of lying? You keep pretending there is a "media" narrative here. There is not. There are two men and one truth. One Republican just called another one a liar. Which Republican is telling the truth? Raffensperger, or Trump?

Just stop. The Georgia secretary of state said, on Twitter, "Respectfully, President Trump: What you're saying is not true. The truth will come out." He then released the recording. There. Is. No. Spin. The Republican GA Sec of State just called out Trump for lying, and then released incontrovertible proof that he was, indeed, lying. There is no CNN or WaPo involved. "The media" doesn't play into this story at all. We have all of the direct communications between these two people, released directly by the two people themselves. He was caught lying, and you don't care.

OK, if you want to cut to the chase you can start with this article, which is sourced (via direct conversations with county officials and medical experts) and therefore more thorough than I can be with only Google at my fingertips. 1. If you want take a step back though, consider the Sagan standard that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." There have been 360,000 deaths attributed to COVID thus far, or approximately 300,000 more than in a very bad influenza year. The claim that COVID numbers are "inflated" by accident victims (or other reasons) to any significant degree is truly an extraordinary claim. We're talking about a significant portion of the 300,000 "additional" COVID deaths to be recorded on fraudulent death certificates, by 10s of thousands of doctors willing to risk their careers to pad the numbers. In addition, there are thousands or 10s of thousands of county, local, and state officials, plus hospital staff, who have access to those death records and would therefore be in a position to blow the whole scam wide open, simply by presenting evidence. Some states have public death records, so the whole thing could be exposed by simple public records requests. In states that don't, the families of accident victims fraudulently recorded as COVID deaths could release the death certificates themselves. Certainly a large number of the thousands upon thousands of people mentioned above are COVID deniers or staunch conservatives who would even have a vested interest in producing such evidence. It is simply beyond reason that a conspiracy of this size could go on without producing an extraordinary amount of evidence. And yet, every time we hear this claim, it's presented without such evidence, and that can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. 2. So what about the cases we do know about? My Google-fu found a handful, to varying degrees of believability/concern. While "a handful" is not the "extraordinary evidence" required, in the interest of completeness, let's look at them. One case, popularized by FL governor Ron DeSantis and probably the source of the urban legend, is of a motorcycle fatality which was listed as a COVID death. This was corrected once it was pointed out. Followup examinations by local news organizations found a few others, but all were caught and corrected. Part of the problem is that dead people who test positive for the coronavirus are reported, by necessity, as having the coronavirus, even though they may not have died from it. It's important for case numbers and tracking to know that a gunshot victim had the virus, and so that gets marked on a spreadsheet and set up with the official numbers, even if it doesn't get listed on the official death certificate. That appears to be the case for some of these -- the death certificate didn't say COVID for an accident victim, but they tested positive for coronavirus, and there was simply an error when sending up the data. Errors on a small scale like this happen, and are not in and of themselves reason to question the scope of the government's reporting. The other problem is that people may enter the hospital for one thing and die of another thing, as was the case with a PA man who died of COVID after being hospitalized for a motorcycle accident. As an anecdote, my wife's aunt was diagnosed with cancer 7 or 8 years ago, and had a really tough fight (she's now in remission). However, at one point during one of her hospitalizations, she got a staph infection, MRSA, which is something that happens in hospital environments. The MRSA led to sepsis, which led to a double foot amputation. She's alive, as I said, but she could have died. Which leads us to... 3. Causes of death aren't always clear. In my wife's aunt's case, had she died, would the cause of death been organ failure? Caused by sepsis? Caused by the staph infection? Exacerbated by a weakened immune system from chemotherapy treatments? Or the cancer that exposed her to all of that shit in the first place? It's likely that all of those would have been listed on the form in the cause of death section. So what would you make of the 50 year old man who catches COVID in the hospital after a motorcycle accident? Hospitals are all swimming in coronavirus, and if you get hurt and get COVID there and die, is that really any different than getting hurt and having your wound get infected by staph bacteria in the hospital? 4. It's true that hospitals get paid more if a patient has COVID. This is because patients with COVID cost more to treat, so congress authorized funding to provide hospitals with much needed cash to help fight the pandemic. That just makes good sense. Now, an economics 101 understanding of the world does indeed lead one to the possibility that paying hospitals extra for COVID patients may incentivize them to "come up with" more COVID patients. However, there have been 21 million COVID cases so far in the US, and roughly 10% of those require hospitalization. That's over 2 million hospitalizations for COVID. If any significant fraction of those were fraudulently reported, say, the same 83% we used in point 1 above, that's 1.75 million fraudulent claims that doctors and hospitals have submitted. That many fraudulent claims would produce a mountain of evidence, and as yet there is no evidence that doctors and hospitals are risking their careers to do this. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and that which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. 5. I hope at this point I've shown why we have every reason to be skeptical of general claims that COVID is being overreported, and specific claims that accident victims are being logged as COVID deaths to any meaningful degree. But consider now that there are people with a vested interest in misleading the public with these claims. People who, like Exodus insinuated, want to convince the public that the lockdowns and extraordinary measures that our governments have taken to curb the spread of the virus weren't really necessary. By all means, be skeptical of the data and evidence the government is putting out in regards to the severity of COVID. But you should be even more skeptical of anyone suggesting that the government is putting out false numbers without presenting the extraordinary amount of evidence required to counter the government's ample evidence.

Panduh, the recording was released by the GA Secretary of State's office in response to Trump lying about the contents of the phone call in a Sunday morning tweet. In other words, Republican elected officials released this in order to hold Trump accountable for lying. Do you think it's "fair game to call out this admin on spin, lies and bullshit." Or do you "not give a shit." Your words say that one of your principles is calling out people for lying, but your actions say otherwise. You should be applauding Raffensperger for release this recording to expose Trump's lies, and excoriating Trump for not only lying, but for making this disgusting phone call in the first place. Where are your principles?

I read through the transcript this morning... holy shit. My favorite part is where the GA SoS is trying to explain to Trump that "people are saying" isn't actually evidence: Trump media. Where everything is true. Humor aside, I hope the house impeaches Trump today, I hope he's removed from office prior to the inauguration, and I hope he serves prison time over this. Every American should be fed up over this coup attempt.

I noticed you didn't disagree with anything I said though. That's telling.

So that's a no, you're not interesting in learning how your friend might have given you some bad information?

Mace, are you interested in learning why you might be misinformed about this topic?

At the height of a pandemic that is killing 3000+ Americans a day, Joe Biden, who has consistently shown a willingness to listen to the advice of public health experts, who has consistently chosen not to hold large rallies in compliance with that advice, is actually, according to you, holding a small inauguration event because he's afraid of being outclassed by Trump? I disagree with your original statement. On what planet is "Coronavirus is really bad right now so we're limiting attendance at the inauguration" spin, lies or bullshit? It's 100% the truth, buddy. Hey remember when conservatives said "Democrats will all forget about coronavirus after the election?" Trump said, "Just watch, it will all magically go away." Meanwhile it's been the #1 cause of death in the US for the last, what, month? It did not go away, and Democrats are still the only ones acting like it hasn't gone away. Can you imagine why this libertarian refuses to vote R until the Republicans start living in the same reality that I do? My prediction: You are not going to act like an adult and move on. You are going to spend the next 4 years whining about Biden over things you pretend he's doing badly. Old man bad. Biden derangement syndrome. Echo, echo, echo....

I guess moving on like an adult includes making drunken 2am posts about Biden's size.

Armalitecoin

Assault Bitcoins or the regular kind?

Hey at least we get this little hit of nostalgia:

Assault RV jokes are pretty hot right now, cash in boys!

How did you want me to respond? Let's take "insult" off the table. I could have ignored it, or I could have.... what? What were you going for with that post?

Not going to clarify what the heck you meant by accusing me of being "pro socialism?" Shocker you resulted to drive-by non-sequiturs. eta: I will gladly have an insult-free conversation with you about whatever you'd like, but you never seem interested in actually engaging beyond a completely superficial level. Why is that?

Didn't you see the NYT front page with a list of all the victims?

Do you even think before you hit the reply button or are all your posts generated by your spinal column?

Lol, I hadn't seen that, but that was good. Thanks for the chuckle. "I'm going to send this bill back to a congress that won't exist in 4 days, telling them that I'm not going to spend the money in the way they want me to as long as I'm president, which is only 3 more weeks. Also, they're going to spend their next 4 days finally getting to the bottom of VOTER FRAUD and SECTION 230." What are we going to do without this genius in charge? Who is this message even for? Just trying to stop Newsmax from turning against him on his way out the door?

Oh I agree. I think part of the problem is that people never learn that money is fungible, or if they do it's as an academic exercise and they don't apply the concept strictly enough to their every day experiences. I learned this when I was in college and I'd tell my friends I couldn't go out drinking because I only had money for groceries. And then my dad would slide me some money for groceries and guess what! Then it slowly dawned on me that he wasn't paying for my groceries, he was paying for my drinking, because I was gonna buy those groceries regardless. I'm sure on some level he knew that, but if he actually saw how I lived my life he never would have given me a dime. So people say, "No, you've got it all wrong. It's not SOCIALISM, they're just giving me back MY MONEY that I paid in TAXES." And it's like, MOTHERFUCKER, WHAT DO YOU THINK SOCIALISM IS.

I must confess to being a little bit confused that conservatives are mad about Republicans doing exactly what they've been electing them to do for decades. If anything, there shouldn't have been a stimulus at all, because Coronavirus is just the flu and every should just get over it already, industries should just dig into their rainy day funds and if they can't they deserve to fail, the stimulus is 100% deficit spending which is the worst sin imaginable, and it's not the government's place to redistribute wealth. This isn't a partisan critique, I just don't understand. Nothing about the Republican platform would suggest that they'd agree to a $2000 "clean" stimulus like Trump (briefly) demanded. Nothing. So why is anyone surprised that it's dead in the water?

I got a small amount for the kids the last go-round, but playing with the numbers, our income was very close to the drop-off point. An extra 10k in AGI and I would have gotten half of what we got, and an extra 20k in AGI and it would have gone away altogether. At least I think, I'm terrible with numbers and money. This go-round, I don't think I'm eligible for anything. The income cutoffs are lower I believe.

This me trying to spend as little money as possible: Playseat Evo from CL, "gaming computer" I built 2 years ago for the kids with a "friend price" 1070 from an old friend who was upgrading, cheapest 144Hz monitor I could find, Logitech G920 on sale from Amazon and the cheapest, Chinesiest headphones I could find. Built the monitor stand myself. Still way too much money for yet another toy I don't need. I've got a contract to have a 16x20 finished room built where this sits right now, should be done sometime in February. My wife has been asking for it for years so the kids have somewhere to watch TV and play xbox out of our hair. I've procrastinated on cleaning out that part of the basement and I swear the fact that I finally did it is because I'm a good husband and the timing of me building a sim rig and having no place to put it is entirely a coincidence.

Late to the party but I finally set up a rig about a month ago to stop my friends from pestering me. Now I'm hooked. It's fun and nerve-wracking and frustrating just as advertised.