Board 8 > Politics Containment Topic 384: Manchins of Madness

(+) Yeah! (+)

tony, there was no good way to handle this situation. hell, he tried using the trump playbook of closing borders but it was even dumber since it was already here by then. of course biden can lose due to covid, meaning that the sooner he transitions from zero policy attempts to those focused on living with covid, the better for him. on that end, this variant could be helpful to him.

if trump died it would have given his supporters a martyr and sent them into overdrive

red13n posted...

Nah still fully true. I think you are forgetting that I started with "most of the people" not "all of the people".

Didn't say Biden is blameless but the unvaccinated are making up a huge portion of deaths. And most of those are unvaccinated because Trump never attempted to reel in the MAGA crowd and lost control of the monster.

Okay fine it's fully true due to hedge words. Whatever.

It is not a persuasive argument and if the party line is to blame Trump that's gonna open them up to more of his inane lies that have often proven to make the truth irrelevant

HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

Okay fine it's fully true due to hedge words. Whatever.

Hey I was actually very intentional with those words.

HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

It is not a persuasive argument and if the party line is to blame Trump

Party line seems to be that the vaccinated are fine and the real worry is for the unvaccinated.

Dont think its effective but probably better than blaming Trump.

Leafeon13N posted...

Party line seems to be that the vaccinated are fine and the real worry is for the unvaccinated.

Dont think its effective but probably better than blaming Trump.

True, and I guess this was my earlier point I lost track of. I personally don't agree with the plan but I think the public seems to have bought it for now and I can't argue that point. We'll see if it holds.

I'm in full throw my hands in the air mode because by and large Americans dont give a shit.

Besides getting vaccinated anything we could expect people to do on even the smallest level to control covid people have basically reverted to full "cant someone else do it" mentality.

Leafeon13N posted...

I'm in full throw my hands in the air mode because by and large Americans dont give a shit.

Doesn't seem like democrats really did once it wasn't a Republican in power either.

Leafeon13N posted...

Besides getting vaccinated anything we could expect people to do on even the smallest level to control covid people have basically reverted to full "cant someone else do it" mentality.

I can't really blame this mindset because I'm of the opinion that individuals can't mitigate a global pandemic in a meaningful way. Any effective response has to be an organized and collective effort.

I would be positive and focus on how we've done a much better job of mitigating this pandemic globally than humanity ever has before with any previous pandemic.

HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

I can't really blame this mindset because I'm of the opinion that individuals can't mitigate a global pandemic in a meaningful way. Any effective response has to be an organized and collective effort.

Thats the thing, we have had measures put in place but they need to be followed on an individual level. They haven't been for a long time.

Corrik7 posted...

Doesn't seem like democrats really did once it wasn't a Republican in power either.

This is an unfair characterization. Soon after Biden took office, the vaccine came out and people started to get a sense of security (false or otherwise) with regards to how safe things were to return to normal. I don't think it's "Trump is gone! Everything is better now!"

red sox 777 posted...

I would be positive and focus on how we've done a much better job of mitigating this pandemic globally than humanity ever has before with any previous pandemic.

as trump said in the jonathan swan interview, "we're lower than the world in covid deaths"

Ok, I'm late to this, but the insistence that everything is the fault of disinformation campaigns by bots is pretty stupid/lazy. While I don't doubt that it is happening to some extent, there are more more than enough regular-ass bad faith actors that we don't need to attribute it all to the bots.

Unless...perhaps all of these conspiracy theories about bots are being pushed by US centrist bots?!

ask not for whom the bot posts, the bot posts for you

ive been a bot all along, living among you... learning your secrets

VintageGin posted...

While I don't doubt that it is happening to some extent, there are more more than enough regular-ass bad faith actors that we don't need to attribute it all to the bots.

It is a little of A and a little of B. It just happened to be a story i noticed an increase of bot activity hovering around.

China in general has been pushing more genocide denial bots into the fray. This is the main reason it has been more noticeable.

Also regular update that the IRS still owes me money. In a couple months they'll hit the point where they've owed me for a whole year.

How are they even supposed to get this years taxes done when they havent even caught up on last years.

that's just how they roll

they let me screw up my taxes for like three years before being like "hey you owe us more money btw"

It's worth noting that you were not supposed to file an amended tax return for the extra unemployment return, and that red did so anyways against IRS recommendations.

red13n posted...

Also regular update that the IRS still owes me money. In a couple months they'll hit the point where they've owed me for a whole year.

How are they even supposed to get this years taxes done when they havent even caught up on last years.

Anything requiring manual review is absurdly backed up.

If you file your 2021 taxes, and if you file them electronically, and if no errors are made that causes the new taxes to need to be reviewed, then your new taxes will process very swiftly. Each year is stored separately so a delay on 2020 will not necessarily cause the processing of 2021 to be frozen as well.

If you filed a 2020 amended return that has still not completed processing then you will likely need to use your original information for your security questions when you attempt to file electronically, rather than amended.

Corrik7 posted...

It's worth noting that you were not supposed to file an amended tax return for the extra unemployment return, and that red did so anyways against IRS recommendations.

I thought red's situation was that the unemployment change qualified him for a credit that was not originally claimed? So without the amendment we would automatically change specifically the unemployment income + reduction of tax, but would NOT add the new credit that was not originally eligible.

Pretty sure he already went over this with you and those recommendations were not for his situation.

Forceful_Dragon posted...

I thought red's situation was that the unemployment change qualified him for a credit that was not originally claimed? So without the amendment we would automatically change specifically the unemployment income + reduction of tax, but would NOT add the new credit that was not originally eligible.

That's news to me.

Well I can't remember if that was red's situation anymore because it's been awhile.

But that is how the automatic Unemployment (UE) changes worked.

It was most commonly an issue in conjunction with the Earned Income Credit (EIC). If his original total income, counting all of the UE benefits, put him out of the range of claiming EIC, it would not have been on his original return. And if removing the first 10,200 of UE benefits as income put him below the threshold to claim EIC then it's something that would not automatically be added.

The automatic UE changes:
-Looked for accounts with original 2020 tax returns that included UE Income.
-Compared the UE claimed to the income documentation that was reported to us by your state's UE office.
-If the entire UE was claimed, we removed the first 10,200 from the return. (people who didn't file until after march were able to include the reduction themselves with their original return)
-After removing that income tax is recalculated, and the various credits already claimed were recalculated.
-Credits not yet claimed were not calculated in this change.

This is possibly because total income is only one of several things that could possibly disqualify someone from claiming a credit so we would still need the specific person to verify that they meet all relevant requirements.

But for a variety of reasons amended returns have become backed up to the point that they are averaging 7+ months rather than the previous "16 weeks or less"

Dang that's crazy. Maybe you will get them processed before this tax season... oh wait. Lol

Corrik7 posted...

red did so anyways against IRS recommendations.

I waited specifically until the IRS issued guidance on what to do when claiming a new credit.

Which puts me behind people in the same situation that jumped the gun and filed an amended return before the IRS issued guidance.

wow the Biden speech today hellmurdered Trump.

Irish Joe

Trumps definitely running again now.

https://twitter.com/kenklippenstein/status/1478942724434841607?s=21

Absolutely insane

Fuck that guy.

ChaosTonyV4 posted...

https://twitter.com/kenklippenstein/status/1478942724434841607?s=21

Absolutely insane

Each day on Twitter there is one main character. The goal is to never be it

I guess I know why many people dislike Nate Silver now!

Nate Silver's been twitter's main character like probably 5 times or so by now

Silver's opinions on the pandemic have consistently been really bad, IIRC.

The Iraq example is terrible, but the kids doing remote learning for large sections of two years wasnt a big deal people are also full of shit

https://twitter.com/ChrisMurphyCT/status/1479150703671132162

the party of back the blue

more people died at astroworld so it wasn't a big deal, obviously

xp1337 posted...

Silver's opinions on the pandemic have consistently been really bad, IIRC.

Anything that might inconvenience him as a rich white dude with access to the best medical care money could buy and easy access to COVID testing he is strongly against.

LordoftheMorons posted...

The Iraq example is terrible, but the kids doing remote learning for large sections of two years wasnt a big deal people are also full of shit

You know there was a pandemic, right?

ChaosTonyV4 posted...

You know there was a pandemic, right?

Yes, and there were times where shutting down schools made sense (particularly early on when we didn't yet know that schools drive relatively little spread and perhaps again now when omicron is probably going to make it hard to even staff some schools for a few weeks). But it was always a very large tradeoff that was going to have very negative effects on many kids, and it's insane that as a society we didn't prioritize keeping schools open as much as possible over even stuff like bars and restaurants. Masks should be required (or even better masks+vaccines), but generally there should be a high priority placed on keeping kids in school now unless absolutely necessary.

There are people arguing not that it's a necessary tradeoff but that remote learning is a totally equivalent substitute for in person learning which is ridiculous for young kids.

LordoftheMorons posted...

keeping schools open as much as possible over even stuff like bars and restaurants.

People whined incessantly about the lack of bars and restaurants immediately. It took a couple more months before they tired of having their kids around.

LordoftheMorons posted...

and it's insane that as a society we didn't prioritize keeping schools open as much as possible

As a teacher, I agree that virtual learning is no substitute for in-person learning. This is especially true in areas where we just don't have the infrastructure in place for virtual learning (Something we should be working on, but of course aren't). Many of my students barely had basic internet. I barely had basic-internet at home. Which meant my interaction with students was limited when I had to work from home, and my kids interaction with their teachers was limited as well. But the simple fact is we were in a pandemic. Containing the spread as best we could was our best option. Reopening schools only creates risk for students, students families, and staff. If you want to open schools as much as possible, you had to get things done ahead of time. Which we didn't. We did too little, too late. Especially in a country where roughly half the population refuse to take simple precautions such as wearing a mask. Saying "Oh, there was little spread' is discounting the spread there was. Public health should be a high priority. Maybe if we had a better equipped healthcare system, maybe if we had people who took the virus seriously, maybe if we had better infrastructure in place, we would've come off better than we did. But we aren't going to do that, so we did the only thing we could do.

I sympathize with that view. My big issue is with the people who are acting like there isnt a big tradeoff being made.

Honestly that's probably just spin. I don't know how else you would sell it to people. We don't have a lot of data on the long term effects of learning loss or if it can be mitigated in the future and Americans don't seem to take being told to suck it up and deal with it to prevent the pandemic well so what else is there to be said?

https://twitter.com/onrockytopse/status/1479265057120960513?s=21

Tuckers consistent effort to whitewash 1/6 has gotten to the point where hes bringing GOP Senators on to bully them into his point of view

It's pretty difficult to believe that people are just now becoming concerned with the status of Education in this country.

Education has always been an issue that's easy for people to just say they support without really caring much about. Test scores are falling? Teachers are underpaid? Class sizes are getting bigger? Sure these are problems, and people love to say they want to FIX these problems but what was honestly and earnestly being done about it?

But now that it's a personal inconvenience for parents to play an integral role in their child's education (which is something they should already be doing) now we have to think of the children and our poor education system. It's a bit hard to believe that this position is purely from a position of selflessness.

Yeah honestly if our education system was more robust people would have a lot more confidence in its ability on functioning through and recovering from shutdown.

People love to point out how closures and remote learning have disproportionally hurt low income and marginalized students and it's like. Damn guys. I have some bad news about how the system works when it's "functional"!

Okay, Ted has to get off on self-abasement, right

https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1479272140625092614

This may be a new record for most pathetic thing he's done

Allowed in America: crowded bars full of unvaccinated, unmasked patrons
Not allowed in America: masked, vaccinated, socially-distanced school classrooms.