Liberty

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/australian-intelligence-knocks-back-us-government-s-wuhan-lab-virus-claim-20200504-p54pk3.html

Also:

That's crazy talk. Biden would be 100x better because he's not a corrupt imbecile narcissistic sociopath conspiracy theorist and he'd surround himself with competent people and listen to them rather than get his ideas from hours of daily cable TV (and not even cable TV generally, but the one channel that tries to tell him what he wants to hear in the first place, making the whole thing intellectually incestuous to the max and a total echo chamber). I'd take George W. Bush any day of the week at this point. I know that Trump has sold the idea that he's for the the middle class or the blue collars or whatever (while sitting on his gold toilet in his kitch mansion in the sky spending borrowed money and stiffing his contractors, cheating on his wives and sexually attacking a busload of women, and living high on tax-fraud millions inherited from his father), but that's just talk. He's not done anything to help these people, he's destroyed the economy by mismanaging a crisis and weakened institutions and alliances... How's the coal industry or the steel industry been doing since Trump promised to save them? I get that things need to change and politics as usual sucks. But I want them to change for the better, and you don't do that by putting an incompetent liar who only cares about himself in charge. It's like if you have a company with kind of mediocre management and you want to improve things. Do you put someone like Trump in charge? I'll take the mediocre management over the actively poisonous one...

Meanwhile, here's the man in charge of the US response to the pandemic: "The President says the Spanish Flu of 1917 probably ended World War I" (video) He just can't help BS about stuff he doesn't know (but stuff he should've learned about months into a pandemic).

Thread on Trump admin projections for new COVID19 cases and deaths: Strange how they're predicting an increase in the rate of deaths and infections yet aren't really acting like it... HHS document: https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper/6926-mayhhsbriefing/af7319f4a55fd0ce5dc9/optimized/full.pdf#page=1

Meanwhile, in Russia: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8282033/Third-Russian-doctor-plunges-coronavirus-hospital-window.html

Well, you have to have a pretty big ego to even run for president, that's not in question. But Trump is a different species.

Very unusual. My ex-wife was raised by politicians and from a young age she was coached by her father to "admit nothing, deny everything, and never put anything in writing". This raises a child who cannot take responsibility. I think it's common in a lot of these powerful families and nurtures narcissism and sociopathy. Meanwhile Trump is talking about how unfair this whole situation is to him and how badly he's being treated in front of the Lincoln monument...

Pence: ‘I should have worn a mask at the Mayo Clinic’ “I didn't think it was necessary, but I should have worn a mask at the Mayo Clinic and I wore it when I visited the ventilator plant in Indiana” two days later, Pence said at a Fox News virtual town hall on Sunday, nodding sheepishly. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/03/pence-should-have-worn-mask-mayo-clinic-233360 Wow, a non-sociopath reaction. We’re not used to that.

Skeptical take on intubation: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/ventilators-doctor-movement

The man is too bland to be a predictable distraction. But floating rumors about the US defaulting on its debt to China or Remdesivir or whatever... Or... Donald Trump speaks out on bombshell UFO Pentagon footage https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1276235/Donald-Trump-pentagon-UFO-video-alien-footage How could I forget that one. And wasn’t Kudlow talking about the China trade deal (phase 1, ha!) too? Anything to change focus... Remember when they teased that one every other day like it was Groundhog Day last year?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandinavia https://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/eu.htm You dont mind comparing US with Korea on other side of globe or US with Germany across atlantic but dont want to compare Sweden which is close to UK and Netherlands. New York to Seoul : 6867.74 miles New York to Berlin: 3977 miles Stockholm to Amsterdam: 700 miles https://www.mapdevelopers.com/distance_from_to.php If New york to Seoul or New York to Berlin comparisons are O.K., then Stockholm to Amsterdam comparision is just fine. No. He said there was a reason to compare to those and you said you didn’t see it. I pointed it out. You can still also compare to everything else including the moon, but Scandinavia is a thing.

Tomas Pueyo thread on masks and decisions under uncertainty: Also, how someone way over their heads sounds BS’ing their way through everything:

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/01/anthony-fauci-blocked-from-testifying-at-house-coronavirus-hearing.html “ White House blocks Fauci from testifying at House coronavirus hearing” ???

Yeah, I'm not saying there's no possible signs, but the thing is, a lot of non-sociopaths have a lot of these too, right? It's a lot harder to stay balanced under certain stresses and pressures and spotlight (as a lot of regular people who become wealthy/powerful celebrities find out). Maybe he's a very pro-social sociopath, as he seems quite obsessed with old-school science-fiction ideals of saving the world through rationality and ingeniosity. But who knows?

I don't think Musk is a sociopath. Possibly Asperger's, if I had to guess, though. Finance people keep trying to read him from the CEO mold/pattern, but he makes a lot more sense if you look at him as the kind of uber-geek that grew up on Slashdot and Ars Technica forums and Hacker News and Reddit humor and trolling, who through sheer force of will and vision ended up a billionaire CEO but was never really of that species, and never took all that seriously, just wants to build cool sci-fi stuff. Obviously the stress and lack of sleep and all that is affecting him. It'd affect anyone under those circumstances.. I wish he'd find better high level people to offload a bunch of stuff (like Shotwell at SpaceX, maybe 3-4 more like her), but delegation doesn't seem his strong suit and ultra-intense, single-minded and brilliant people don't tend to be easy to work with or for up-close...

I'd take Musk as president over Trump any day.

The man is too bland to be a predictable distraction. But floating rumors about the US defaulting on its debt to China or Remdesivir or whatever...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandinavia

Pence's wife had a different story to tell. She said that Mike didn't know about Mayo Clinic's rule, although she acknowledges that his staff knew about the rule. Liars have conflicting stories to tell. The M.O. of everyone involved here is just to make stuff up and change it until it either goes away on its own because they jam the news cycle full of daily stupidities and scandals and nobody can keep up, or one of the variants they made up works better than the others ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ The man is in charge of a COVID task force, there must be signs all around Mayo about the rule (how do you think they get people to comply?), everyone around him is wearing masks, but oops, he didn't know. Not very convincing.

Pence was in a hospital where there is an explicit rule about everybody wearing masks (everybody else was following that rule), and he was visiting patients. He wasn't in a press conference room in a federal building where everybody gets screened constantly. See also: https://medium.com/@casanderson/mike-pence-and-the-bystander-effect-a698bbbe4d18 I am not defending Dr. Fauci logic. But Dr. Fauci logic is if someone is tested negative, atleast in immediate future, they dont have to wear masks. Pence is using the same logic (as his expert Dr. Fauci told) that Pence got recently tested negative. No, you don't understand. Pence was in a HOSPITAL with PATIENTS, where there's a RULE that EVERYONE wear masks. Some places are at higher risk than others, and some places have different rules. Taking a walk alone in the park isn't the same as sitting in a full airplane across the pacific ocean, for example. The fact that Pence wore a mask after that (in a less sensitive place than a hospital) shows he realized he was just being an ass, and that whatever BS reasons they gave before were in fact BS.

Pence was in a hospital where there is an explicit rule about everybody wearing masks (everybody else was following that rule), and he was visiting patients. He wasn't in a press conference room in a federal building where everybody gets screened constantly. See also: https://medium.com/@casanderson/mike-pence-and-the-bystander-effect-a698bbbe4d18

"A militia group stands in front of the governor's office." Nice suppressor on that rifle. WTF is wrong with people? ::) https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/30/michigan-protests-coronavirus-lockdown-armed-capitol#img-1