(04-10-2020, 10:09 AM)Belsnickel Wrote: Hope everyone is doing okay in this cluster **** and doing their best to avoid getting sick despite the piss poor leadership taking place in Washington DC.
I have mostly been working from home, fishing, and tying flies. Now, however, Shenandoah National Park is completely closed because people don't have any common ***** sense. Same for a couple of lakes that are in recreation areas in the George Washington National Forest. Not long after the stay-at-home order, here, they were shoulder-to-shoulder at the lake because of trout stocking. So now the lake is shut down and VDGIF is not announcing any stockings.
Economics wise, the state is in a hiring freeze and they are currently looking at budget cuts because the decreased economic activity will hit the budget. There are currently hundreds of adjunct instructors across the state that will likely not have jobs in the fall, adding to the already high unemployment rates. My city, in particular, is tenth in confirmed cases per capita in Virginia, so we have that going for us. That is, of course, taking into account the students that are typically considered in our population so we'd probably be a little higher on that list if we remove the 20-ish thousand students that are typically here and counted in our population of 50-ish thousand. It's also already outdated data as there are 20 more cases in the city and county than what that is based on. Well, with this hit to our city we don't want to be increasing the personal property tax like we had planned to pay for our severely overcrowded high school to have a second one built. So now we will likely see a delay in that construction which will be a problem for the city, the construction company, and the children.
This is all just a grand ol' time.
As a state worker (and one who cannot really work from home) I am essentially on an extended paid leave until this blows over. I look at it as the paternity leave that I should have gotten when my son was born 8 months ago. So while that is all good and dandy, there is a voice in the back of my head that says that the other shoe is going to drop once all this is done, especially considering my union's CBA is currently being renegotiated. We will likewise likely be looking at hiring freezes, furloughs and wage freezes.
So while some are feeling the pain now, I'm going to feel the pain in the coming months.
we need to test everybody those that had it and recovered go back to normal. Those who currently have it isolation and treatment. Those that havent had it or caught it isolation its only way we get back to any kind of normal. theoretically those in group 1 could interact between groups 2 and 3 freely.
(04-10-2020, 01:09 PM)Bengalfan4life27c Wrote: we need to test everybody those that had it and recovered go back to normal. Those who currently have it isolation and treatment. Those that havent had it or caught it isolation its only way we get back to any kind of normal. theoretically those in group 1 could interact between groups 2 and 3 freely.
Agreed. Thats why its good to see that we are allocating resources to ramp up testing.
Oh wait....
Anyway. It's good to see that there will be an antibody test available within days. Like you said, those that have had it and got better (of which I have no doubt there are thousands out there that never got a test or had extremely mild symptoms.) Can get back to life as normal as we protect the most vulnerable and don't overflow the Healthcare system with those that are yet to get it.
(04-10-2020, 01:17 PM)CKwi88 Wrote: Agreed. Thats why its good to see that we are allocating resources to ramp up testing.
Oh wait....
Anyway. It's good to see that there will be an antibody test available within days. Like you said, those that have had it and got better (of which I have no doubt there are thousands out there that never got a test or had extremely mild symptoms.) Can get back to life as normal as we protect the most vulnerable and don't overflow the Healthcare system with those that are yet to get it.
Hope we are not getting the ones from England with serious accuracy issues
It's almost like Trump is exactly who he always was: A "man" sitting in his chair expecting everyone else to make him look good. Relying on his "instincts" that he trusts because he has never had to pay for his many, many, failures. Someone who does not listen to bad news if it means he might be harmed publicly.
The ‘Red Dawn’ Emails: 8 Key Exchanges on the Faltering Response to the Coronavirus
Red Dawn — a nod to [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRTzUHmx9ZA]the 1984 film with Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen — was the nickname for the email chain they built. Different threads in the chain were named Red Dawn Breaking, Red Dawn Rising, Red Dawn Breaking Bad and, as the situation grew more dire, Red Dawn Raging. It was hosted by the chief medical officer at the Department of Homeland Security, Dr. Duane C. Caneva, starting in January with a small core of medical experts and friends that gradually grew to dozens.
The “Red Dawn String,” Dr. Caneva said, was intended “to provide thoughts, concerns, raise issues, share information across various colleagues responding to Covid-19,” including medical experts and doctors from the Health and Human Services Department, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Homeland Security Department, the Veterans Affairs Department, the Pentagon and other federal agencies tracking the historic health emergency.
Everything else is at the link if anyone wants to read it. I did even though I knew Trump is a screw up because I wanted to see how bad it was. It is very bad.
Your anger and ego will always reveal your true self.
For all that DJT likes to tout his "closing the borders" to China he did nothing else for two months except downplay the risks out of political fear. Acting as the coward he always was.
Quote:By the time President Donald Trump first spoke publicly about the coronavirus, it may already have been too late.
Interviewed at Davos, a gathering of global elites in the Swiss Alps, the president on Jan. 22 played down the threat posed by the respiratory virus from China, which had just reached American shores in the form of a solitary patient in Washington state. “We have it totally under control,” Trump said on CNBC. “It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.”
In the 11 weeks since that interview, the coronavirus has reached every corner of the globe. It has infected more than 500,000 Americans and killed at least 20,000. It has rewritten the rules of society, isolated people in their homes, closed schools, devastated the economy and put millions out of work.
When Trump spoke in Switzerland, weeks’ worth of warning signs already had been raised. In the ensuing month, before the president first addressed the crisis from the White House, key steps to prepare the nation for the coming pandemic were not taken.
Life-saving medical equipment was not stockpiled. Travel largely continued unabated. Vital public health data from China was not provided or was deemed untrustworthy. A White House riven by rivalries and turnover was slow to act. Urgent warnings were ignored by a president consumed by his impeachment trial and intent on protecting a robust economy that he viewed as central to his reelection chances.
Twenty current and former administration officials and Republicans close to the White House were interviewed for this account about the critical weeks lost before the president spoke to the nation on Feb. 26. Most spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about private discussions. ___ ‘MYSTERIOUS PNEUMONIA’ On New Year’s Eve, China informed the World Health Organization of a “mysterious pneumonia outbreak” spreading through Wuhan, an industrial city of 11 million.
The government closed a seafood market at the center of the outbreak, moved all patients with the virus to a specially designated hospital and collected test samples to send to government laboratories. Doctors were told to stay quiet; one who issued a warning online was punished. He later died of the virus.
The Pentagon first learned about the new coronavirus in December from open source reports emanating from China. By early January, warnings about the virus had made their way into intelligence reports circulating around the government. On Jan. 3, the head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Robert Redfield, received a call from his Chinese counterpart with an official warning.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, was alerted to the virus around the same time — and within two weeks was fearful it could bring global catastrophe.
Quickly, U.S. intelligence and public health officials began doubting China’s reported rates of infection and death toll. They pressed China to allow in U.S. epidemiologists — both to assist the country in confronting the spread and to gain valuable insights that could help buy time for the U.S. response. U.S. officials also pressed China to send samples of the virus to U.S. labs for study and for vaccine and test development.
On Jan. 11, China shared the virus’ genetic sequence. That same day, the National Institutes of Health started working on a vaccine.
Ultimately, the U.S. was able to get China’s consent to send two people on the WHO team that traveled to China later in the month. But by then precious weeks had been lost and the virus had raced across Asia and had begun to escape the continent. ___ BALANCING ACT For much of January, administration officials were doing a delicate balancing act.
Internally, they were raising alarms about the need to get Americans on the ground in China. Publicly, they were sending words of encouragement and praise in hopes Beijing would grant the Americans access.
Matthew Pottinger, Trump’s deputy national security adviser, persistently urged more aggressive action in calling out China and sending teams there.
But while word of the virus was included in several of the president’s intelligence briefings, Trump wasn’t fully briefed on the threat until Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar called with an update on Jan. 18 while the president was at his private Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.
Trump spent much of the conversation wanting to talk about vaping; he was considering a new policy restricting its use. White House officials now believe Trump didn’t fully grasp the magnitude of the threat to the U.S. in part because Azar, who was feuding with several members of Trump’s inner circle, did a poor job communicating it.
Azar was trying to walk a fine line between Trump’s upbeat statements and preparing the government for what might lie ahead. “America’s risk is low at the moment,” he later told House lawmakers. “That could change quickly.”
Moreover, the president was in the middle of his Senate impeachment trial and focused on little else, punctuating nearly every White House meeting with complaints about the Democrats out to get him, grievances he would continue late into the night on the phone from his private quarters.
Trump also had little desire to pressure Beijing or criticize its president, Xi Jinping, with whom he wanted to secure cooperation on ending a yearlong trade war before the reelection campaign kicked into high gear. When Trump fielded his first question about the virus in Davos, he enthusiastically praised Xi’s response, going well beyond the calibrated risk-reward messaging his aides were encouraging.
___ INFIGHTING The West Wing was adrift.
By late January, acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney held the post in name only as rumors swirled of his impending, post-impeachment departure. He was on the initial coronavirus task force, which was plagued with infighting. At the same time, the White House Office of Management and Budget was clashing with Azar’s HHS over money to combat the virus. HHS wanted to send a special coronavirus funding request to Congress but the White House budget office resisted for weeks, insisting that HHS should instead repurpose $250 million of its existing budget to bolster the national stockpile by buying protective equipment. HHS, however, claimed that without congressional authorization it could not buy the needed quantities of masks, gowns and ventilators to rapidly bolster the national stockpile
Eventually, an initial request went to Congress for $2.5 billion in virus aid, an amount that lawmakers of both parties dismissed as too low. The bill that Congress quickly passed and Trump signed — the first of three so far — was for $8 billion.
Even as the two agencies fought, there was no influential voice in Trump’s orbit pushing him to act swiftly on the pandemic. Trump had surrounded himself with loyalists and few in the administration, including national security adviser Robert O’Brien, were able to redirect the president’s attention. In mid-January, meetings were being held at the White House, but the focus was on getting U.S. government employees back from China, which was still playing down how contagious the virus was.
A Jan. 29 memo from senior White House aide Peter Navarro accurately predicted some of the challenges faced by the U.S. from what would become a pandemic, though he was hardly the first to sound the alarm. But he, like Pottinger, was viewed by others in the White House as a “China hawk” and their concerns were rejected by others in the administration who did not bring them to the president.
On Jan. 30, the WHO declared the virus a global health emergency while Trump held a packed campaign rally in Iowa. The next day, the Trump administration banned admittance to the United States by foreign nationals who had traveled to China in the past 14 days, excluding the immediate family members of American citizens or permanent residents.
Trump styled it as bold action, but continued to talk down the severity of the threat. Despite the ban, nearly 40,000 people have arrived in the United States on direct flights from China since that date, according to an analysis by The New York Times.
The White House denied that it was slow to act.
“While the media and Democrats refused to seriously acknowledge this virus in January and February,” said spokesman Judd Deere. “President Trump took bold action to protect Americans and unleash the full power of the federal government to curb the spread of the virus, expand testing capacities, and expedite vaccine development when we had no true idea the level of transmission or asymptomatic spread.” ___ ‘VERY, VERY READY’ On Feb. 10, Trump stood before thousands of supporters packed into a New Hampshire rally and declared: “By April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.”
The crowd roared its approval at Trump’s unproven assertion. The Senate had acquitted Trump on the impeachment charges and the president shifted his focus toward reelection even as others in the administration keyed in on the virus.
Federal officials put the CDC solely in charge of developing a test for the virus and left out private interests, a choice that cost precious time when the resulting CDC test proved faulty.
Trump spent many weeks shuffling responsibility for leading his administration’s response to the crisis. He put Azar in charge of the administration’s virus task force before replacing him with Vice President Mike Pence toward the end of February. Even as the virus spread across the globe, prevailing voices in the White House, including senior adviser Jared Kushner and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, urged the president to avoid big steps that could roil financial markets.
The president had firmly linked his fate to Wall Street, and it took a tumble by the markets for Trump to ratchet up his response. In late February, while Trump was on a trip to India, the Dow Jones plummeted 1,000 points amid rising fears about the coronavirus.
Trump stewed about the collapse on his Feb. 26 flight back to Washington and lashed out at aides over comments made by a top CDC official, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, during a briefing the prior day, when she warned Americans that they would have to prepare for fairly severe social distancing.
“It’s not so much of a question of if this will happen anymore but rather more of a question of exactly when this will happen,” she said.
The White House announced that Pence would brief the media about the response that night. But Trump took the podium instead and has not relinquished the stage much since, belatedly making himself the face of the battle against the virus.
When Trump first took the lectern in the White House briefing room to speak about the virus, the U.S. had 15 coronavirus patients.
“We’re at that very low level, and we want to keep it that way,” Trump said. “We’re very, very ready for this.”
Your anger and ego will always reveal your true self.
Then he puts Pence in charge...despite his lack of ability.
Then he announces Jared is in charge or something...as if yo prove Pence wasn't so bad.
I'm surprised Scott Baio and Kidd Rock aren't running parts of the government by now.
Meanwhile he leads all the press conferences so he can get his camera time and "fight" with the press to show how tough he is for his brainless base. And if your network doesn't cover him he won't allow people to go on those channels to speak because his ego is bigger than his brain.
He's a coward. And a dumb coward. And he's in charge...and the people around him are too afraid to argue with him.
Good luck.
Your anger and ego will always reveal your true self.
And one of the guys who tried to at least tell Trump about it early is now out there trying to defendefens Trump.
Navarro gets slam dunked during 60 Minutes Overtime.
He challenged 60 Minutes’ record - “Show me episodes during the Obama and Bush administrations that said the global pandemic was coming, and then you will have some credence in attacking the Trump Administration.”
He couldn't force them to close and he can't force them open.
Does no one in this administration talk to him before he tweets?
....It is the decision of the President, and for many good reasons. With that being said, the Administration and I are working closely with the Governors, and this will continue. A decision by me, in conjunction with the Governors and input from others, will be made shortly!
(04-13-2020, 01:39 PM)GMDino Wrote: He couldn't force them to close and he can't force them open.
Does no one in this administration talk to him before he tweets?
....It is the decision of the President, and for many good reasons. With that being said, the Administration and I are working closely with the Governors, and this will continue. A decision by me, in conjunction with the Governors and input from others, will be made shortly!
Even if it were up to him, I'm not going back about my normal life... And this is from someone essential (ie not a waitress, retail cashier, or bartender apparently), who is still out working. You'd think that someone who had accomplished as much as the president has in 3 and a half years wouldn't have to hang his hat so much on his economy... But what do I know?
I'm gonna break every record they've got. I'm tellin' you right now. I don't know how I'm gonna do it, but it's goin' to get done.
We have had the discussion about whether Trump's tweets are "official" or not. If they carry weight.
I suppose he is in the "have your cake and eat it too" boat with him declaring them official but also claiming he's not endorsing everything he retweets.
Quote:President Donald Trump was asked about his weekend re-tweet of a post that included the hashtag “#FireFauci” during the press briefing Monday, to which he replied “I don’t know.”
“I like him,” Trump said of Fauci. “Today I walk in, I hear I’m going to fire him. I’m not firing him, I think he’s a wonderful guy.”
“That’s somebody’s opinion. All that is is an opinion … I said I’m not firing him,” Trump said in crosstalk.
“I think he’s terrific…this was a person’s view. Not everybody’s happy with Anthony. Not everybody’s happy with everybody,” the president also said.
Trump continued to talk, until another reporter asked about him and Dr. Fauci being “on the same page.”
“Yeah, we have been from the beginning. I don’t know what it is exactly. But, if I put somebody’s opinion up–I don’t mind controversy. I think controversy’s a good thing, not a bad thing. But I want it to be honest controversy,” Trump said. “Now, when I got a call, I got a call–not very quickly and nobody you know saw that as being any big deal–they said, ‘How are you doing with Dr. Fauci?’ I said I’m doing great. And I didn’t talk to Dr. Fauci, even until we just got here. Dr. Fauci asked one of the people if he could get up and speak. And he did. And they totally misinterpreted him. I saw what they did.”
Quote:A Month After Emergency Declaration, Trump's Promises Largely Unfulfilled
Updated at 10:10 p.m. ET One month ago today, President Trump declared a national emergency.
In a Rose Garden address, flanked by leaders from giant retailers and medical testing companies, he promised a mobilization of public and private resources to attack the coronavirus.
"We've been working very hard on this. We've made tremendous progress," Trump said. "When you compare what we've done to other areas of the world, it's pretty incredible."
But few of the promises made that day have come to pass.
NPR's Investigations Team dug into each of the claims made from the podium that day. And rather than a sweeping national campaign of screening, drive-through sample collection and lab testing, it found a smattering of small pilot projects and aborted efforts.
In some cases, no action was taken at all.
Target did not formally partner with the federal government, for example.
And a lauded Google project turned out not to be led by Google at all, and then once launched was limited to a smattering of counties in California.
The remarks in the Rose Garden highlighted the Trump administration's strategic approach: a preference for public-private partnerships. But as the White House defined what those private companies were going to do, in many cases it promised more than they could pull off.
"What became clear in the days and weeks or even in some cases the hours following that event was that they had significantly over-promised what the private sector was ready to do," said Jeremy Konyndyk, senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development.
In response to this story, the White House said Monday night that the president had taken "bold and decisive actions" to combat the coronavirus crisis.
"President Trump and this Administration are using the full power of the federal government and working in close partnership with the private sector to respond to the health and economic challenges posed by COVID-19," White House spokesperson Judd Deere said in a statement.
Drive-through testing largely nonexistent at retail partners
During the Rose Garden address, the president introduced a series of leaders from major retailers to suggest there would be cooperation between the federal government and private sector companies for drive-through testing.
"We've been in discussions with pharmacies and retailers to make drive-through tests available in the critical locations identified by public health professionals," President Trump said.
NPR contacted the retailers that were represented there and found that discussions have not led to any wide-scale implementation of drive-through tests.
In the month since the announcement, Walmart has opened two testing sites — one in the Chicago area and another in Bentonville, Ark. Walgreens has opened two in Chicago; CVS has opened four sites. Target has not opened any. In fact, the company said it had no formal partnership with the federal government and suggested that it was waiting for the government to take the lead.
"At this time, federal, state and local officials continue to lead the planning for additional testing sites," a Target spokesperson said. "We stand committed to offering our parking lot locations and supporting their efforts when they are ready to activate."
Home testing promised, but not implemented
The president also welcomed Bruce Greenstein, an executive vice president of the LHC Group, to the microphone. Greenstein's organization primarily provides in-home health care, and he pledged that it would be helping with testing "for Americans that can't get to a test site or live in rural areas far away from a retail establishment."
NPR called more than 20 LHC sites in 12 states, and none of them is doing in-home testing one month following the Rose Garden address. Employees at the LHC sites said they lacked both testing kits and the training to administer kits.
In response to NPR's reporting, Greenstein said their primary focus so far has been getting proper personal protective equipment, or PPE, for their nurses and working with hospitals on transitioning recovered COVID-19 patients home. He says they'll start working with one New Orleans hospital "as soon as next week" to provide in-home testing and to expand the service later.
No screening website to facilitate drive-through testing
During the March 13 Rose Garden address, the president also promised that Google was working to develop a website to determine whether a COVID-19 test would be warranted, and if so, to direct individuals to nearby testing.
The president said there were 1,700 Google engineers working on it, and the vice president said that guidance on the website would be available in two days.
"Google is helping to develop a website," the president said. "It's going to be very quickly done, unlike websites of the past, to determine whether a test is warranted and to facilitate testing at a nearby convenient location." Dr. Deborah Birx, the coronavirus response coordinator at the White House, said the website would screen patients, tell them where to receive drive-through testing and provide testing results.
No such screening and testing website has been developed by Google.
A pilot program was developed by Verily, a sister company to Google owned by the same parent company, Alphabet. Verily's program, called Project Baseline, was created to support California community-based COVID-19 testing from screening to testing to delivery of test results.
Verily has rolled out six testing sites primarily in coordination with the California state government — not the federal government — and is currently available only to residents of five counties in California. "We work in partnership with local public health agencies, the California governor's office, and the California Department of Public Health," a spokesperson for Verily said, adding that its COVID-19 testing program was "federally supported."
There were never 1,700 engineers engaged in the project, as the president had claimed, according to Verily.
"As we initially ramped this program, we had nearly 1,000 volunteers from across Alphabet supporting a variety of functions," a Verily spokesperson told NPR.
Verily is in discussions with other health care organizations to support this kind of testing project outside of California, but there has been no announcement of future plans to do so.
A Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson pointed out that Apple had released a screening tool in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the White House. That screening tool does not have the functions outlined in the March 13 Rose Garden address.
The president's federal agency promises
In declaring the national emergency last month, the president also proposed several policy changes that were solely within the realm of the federal government to execute. On these, the administration largely followed through.
President Trump promised to waive interest on student loans held by government agencies, for instance. That policy was implemented by the secretary of education on March 20.
And the president made good on pledges to waive regulations and laws to give medical providers flexibility to respond to the health care crisis.
But there were exceptions. The president said he would waive license requirements so that doctors could practice in states with the greatest needs, for example. But medical licensing is a state issue, and the president does not have the authority to waive it. "There's no statutory authority for the federal government to take over the delivery of health care services," says Dale Van Demark, a partner advising health industries at the law firm McDermott Will & Emery. Added Iris Hentze, policy specialist at The National Conference of State Legislatures: "These occupational licenses are really more or less completely controlled and regulated by states." What the federal government was able to do is to waive in-state requirements for health care providers that serve people enrolled in Medicare, Medicaid and CHIP, so they can get reimbursed for the out-of-state care they provided.
The promises weren't limited to matters of health care. The president announced that his administration would "purchase, at a very good price, large quantities of crude oil for storage in the U.S. Strategic Reserve."
"We're going to fill it right up to the top," he said, "saving the American taxpayer billions and billions of dollars."
The Trump administration has not done so. The president made the promise without first securing the funds from Congress, and the Department of Energy puts the responsibility on Congress' shoulders.
"Despite strong efforts from the Administration, Congress would not provide funding for the purchase of oil for SPR in the Stimulus bill," a Department of Energy spokesperson said. "The Department continues to work with Congress to deliver on the President's directive to provide relief to the American energy industry during this tumultuous time."
A failure in public-private partnerships Later in that March 13 press conference, when asked whether he took responsibility for the apparent lag in coronavirus testing in the United States, the president responded, "I don't take responsibility at all."
He also suggested that laboratory capacity for testing would soon greatly expand. And he singled out two companies:
"I want to thank Roche, a great company, for their incredible work. I'd also like to thank Thermo Fisher," he said.
Trump noted that the FDA was approving their processes and then made a prediction. "It'll go very quickly," he said. "It's going very quickly — which will bring, additionally, 1.4 million tests on board next week and 5 million within a month. I doubt we'll need anywhere near that."
Roche and Thermo Fisher Scientific said they were able to get millions of tests distributed on schedule to labs in the United States, one of the rare bright spots in the coronavirus crisis. These tests are what are used at labs to check whether samples contain the coronavirus.
But those tests were not the primary reason for inadequate testing. The United States lags behind in sample collection kits — the swabs and tubes that front-line medical workers send to labs.
And those labs themselves struggled with processing capacity.
In the days before the March 13 Rose Garden address, leaders of diagnostic testing labs such as LabCorp and Quest went to the White House with three core requests. And during the Rose Garden address, the CEOs of those two organizations stood with the president as the coronavirus task force pledged to wield government resources for their partnership.
More than a month later, the diagnostic testing labs — and the group that represents them in Washington, the American Clinical Laboratory Association — still have those three requests: government funds to build new testing facilities, national standards to prioritize who gets tested and government support for the supply chain. Konyndyk said it was an indication that the public-private partnerships the president touted on March 13 were a one-way street.
"What you want to have is a constructive partnership between the federal government and the private sector. Instead, what we see, I think, is a game of 'not it,' " said Konyndyk, who served in the Obama administration at USAID, leading the government response to international disasters.
Although the federal government needs the help of the private sector, the federal government has only limited power over those companies. So to make things work, there needs to be close cooperation and advanced negotiation before announcing what companies will do, and that didn't happen, Konyndyk said.
Private companies did part of what was promised in the Rose Garden address — there is more testing today than a month ago. But by over-promising what private sector companies would do — and in some cases, without adequate consultation about what they could do — the White House left other pledges that day unfulfilled.
Your anger and ego will always reveal your true self.
Tl;dr: OPEC+ wanted to cut oil production to raise costs, Mexico didn't want to because it costs them money. So, Trump agreed to cut US production even more to make up some of the difference. So, to be clear, we are decreasing our own oil production which is counter to filling up our reserves in an effort to make sure oil prices increase which will mean gas will cost more for the end consumer.
"A great democracy has got to be progressive, or it will soon cease to be either great or a democracy..." - TR
"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." - FDR
Tl;dr: OPEC+ wanted to cut oil production to raise costs, Mexico didn't want to because it costs them money. So, Trump agreed to cut US production even more to make up some of the difference. So, to be clear, we are decreasing our own oil production which will is counter to filling up our reserves in an effort to make sure oil prices increase which will mean gas will cost more for the end consumer.
And he never even sought the authorization/money to fill up our reserves anyway.
Your anger and ego will always reveal your true self.
Tl;dr: OPEC+ wanted to cut oil production to raise costs, Mexico didn't want to because it costs them money. So, Trump agreed to cut US production even more to make up some of the difference. So, to be clear, we are decreasing our own oil production which is counter to filling up our reserves in an effort to make sure oil prices increase which will mean gas will cost more for the end consumer.
I think he tweeted it would be great for the oil and energy business. F the consumer though. Little insight into how his mind works.
(04-14-2020, 01:34 PM)oncemoreuntothejimbreech Wrote: I think he tweeted it would be great for the oil and energy business. F the consumer though. Little insight into how his mind works.
He doesnt even bother to lie to us about how they are going to give us all awesome jobs as a response.
![[Image: 4CV0TeR.png]](https://i.imgur.com/4CV0TeR.png)
![[Image: 92598828_3284390714923389_40432428920288...e=5EB56992]](https://scontent.fpit1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/s960x960/92598828_3284390714923389_4043242892028805120_o.jpg?_nc_cat=108&_nc_sid=110474&_nc_ohc=D7NDqqTaGtYAX-G64Jq&_nc_ht=scontent.fpit1-1.fna&_nc_tp=7&oh=6e50a8844e2975dbb6931f0e1f637813&oe=5EB56992)
![[Image: giphy.gif]](https://media0.giphy.com/media/1kwsTjL8BNqlszNtnCE/giphy.gif)
![[Image: AA1QDGO.img?h=24&w=24&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f&f...&l=f&f=png]](https://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/AA1QDGO.img?h=24&w=24&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f&f=png)
![[Image: us-map-0411_sq-10f727d9a581a569263c4cd72...00-c85.png]](https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2020/04/11/us-map-0411_sq-10f727d9a581a569263c4cd72843e7a478c8060e-s300-c85.png)
![[Image: gettyimages-1207018460_custom-5ad6acf523...00-c85.jpg]](https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2020/04/12/gettyimages-1207018460_custom-5ad6acf5230490db5a08037c988b94a4b8d3edff-s800-c85.jpg)
![[Image: gettyimages-1207018407_custom-7504817728...00-c85.jpg]](https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2020/04/12/gettyimages-1207018407_custom-750481772878223aea78b2fc3dfcf881057c4a50-s800-c85.jpg)
![[Image: gettyimages-1207019271_custom-8f145c94ec...00-c85.jpg]](https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2020/04/12/gettyimages-1207019271_custom-8f145c94ec909551a30dfea63cd1d546ca9bca68-s800-c85.jpg)
![[Image: gettyimages-1212254928_custom-26b9e85a8c...00-c85.jpg]](https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2020/04/12/gettyimages-1212254928_custom-26b9e85a8cc928a0898158520759a082d28cc4d3-s800-c85.jpg)
![[Image: gettyimages-1212251553_custom-6313dafcb1...00-c85.jpg]](https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2020/04/12/gettyimages-1212251553_custom-6313dafcb186dddca57545dcffe181ac9e868135-s800-c85.jpg)
![[Image: ulVdgX6.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/ulVdgX6.jpg)
