ozimoron

Nothing peaceful about repeatedly pointing an AR15 at protesters after being told by the police to leave.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/11/15/kyle-rittenhouse-provoked-everything-prosecution-says

Rittenhouse brought an AR15 and repeatedly pointed it at demonstrators. Did any of the demonstrators have a semi automatic rifle with them? Rittenhouse knew the first person he shot was unarmed. He also shot him in the back after he was wounded.

Again...

He was no less entitled to point his gun at an active shooter as Rittenhouse was at someone he thought was going to kill him.

No, I am saying that only you appeared to know what his motive was at the time of the shootings. Others saw him as an active shooter. Many active shooters go on to continue the shootings at the next unsuspecting location. Rittenhouse had just shot and killed someone but you think the people who tried to stop him were unjustified in attempting to do so.

You seem to have a deep insight into his intentions. He could easily have been going to shoot police. If you assume that it was the job of the police to maintain law and order then that disqualifies Rittenhouse motive for even going there. There is no doubt that at the very least he was a vigilante.

They should let an active shooter escape?

That is the defense claim. The prosecution claim is that he went there armed to the teeth as a vigilante and created an active shooter situation where some heroes among the crowd felt that they needed to disarm him to prevent more killings.

Firstly, the economy isn't doing too badly during covid. Your assumption that health services have been adversely affected by lock downs appears to be at odds with medical opinion which universally maintains that failure to lock down will overwhelm the health system. Finally, Why would anyone imagine that the economy would do well during a period of rampant pandemic? What we are likely to see is lock downs for the unvaccinated and close to normal life for the vaccinated. See Austria and Australia. https://www.brookings.edu/research/11-facts-on-the-economic-recovery-from-the-covid-19-pandemic/

It's truly amazing how they can thrive on falsehoods and yet still manage to fly a helicopter on Mars.

A lot of people criticize Al Gore over this issue as if to suggest that it somehow invalidates his message. It's a classic case of shooting the messenger. Others criticize Greta Thunberg by saying that she isn't even a scientist as if somehow one needs to be a scientist to understand that climate change is a threat to our existence. Ironically, most of those who do criticize her aren't scientists either. I very much agree that there should be steep sliding tax scale places on excess wealth. I thought the most egregious example of the waste of excess wealth was putting a car into orbit playing david bowie songs in a vacuum.

It's quite possible to be a globalist and not worship rich people. The left are nowhere near as tribal as the right wing. Most educated people would describe themselves as globalist while still recognising the threat of an oligarchy. Issues like this aren't black or white, they are more nuanced.

This would be true even if the vaccine was 99% effective in preventing transmission. Your are deliberately misinterpreting and distorting what Fauci said to mean something he clearly didn't say. Fauci said that the vaccines were not totally effective, that's a world away from being ineffective as you are trying to imply. Stop spreading misinformation.

You don't understand statistics, simple as that. When most people are vaccinated then more vaccinated people become infected as a proportion of the population. From a medical point of view, vaccinated people have been proven to be less likely to catch, transmit or become seriously ill. Unless you can properly substantiate your claim in a way that isn't just misinterpreting statistical data then you are just spreading misinformation. You have not in any way substantiiated your claim that vaccinated and unvaccinated people are equally likely to become infected or transmit the virus.

This has been explained over and over and over ad nauseum in this thread. It is beyond challenge that we now have a pandemic of the unvaccinated and that fully vaccinated people are far, far less likely to either become infected or to transmit the virus.

You nevertheless explicity stated that they should bear some responsibility for their own infections and deaths. My point, again, is that the greater responsibility lies with those who have an even greater ability to control the outcome but choose not to.

Nobody denies that comorbidities play a big part in death from covid-19 but the blame doesn't lie with the victims so much as the antivaxers who are disproportionately responsible for infecting them.

You act like there only risk is comorbidities or that it's the victim's fault that they have comorbidities. Very often that's not the case. The real reason they died from covid-19 is that got infected by somebody. It is incumbent upon everybody who can to get vaccinated so viral transmission is minimised.

I just think that some of them should pay at least some tax sometime. </sarc> If the world minimum tax agreement is ever enforced it will be the best thing that has happened to the economy since the end of the second world war.

It was quite a coup to convince a large segment of the population that home schooling is a good thing.

Are you suggesting that any news (or political opinion) media are "good"? If so, which ones?

The discourse in this thread leads me to a gut feeling that the real number of unvaccinated in the US is much lower. For a start, folks really aren't that willing to die on the hill of their convictions. Many here are admitting that they have had the vax but oppose vaccinations on the principle that "Folks should have the right to choose and the gubmint shouldn't be allowed to force people to vaccinate". We have seen gross misreporting on polls before where the respondents weren't willing to state their true opinion for fear of vilification from one side or the other. The previous guy failed to be elected for a second term largely on the strength of mishandling the response to covid-19 and the right wing don't want to see the new guy succeed so there is a strong political motivation to misreport and attempt to influence others.

What we really have is an oligarchy where the rich own most of the wealth and control the message through the media.

A vanishingly small number of people who describe themselves as globalists support a single world government. Efforts to suggest that they do are just another attempt to corrupt the term into an epithet against people who support globalism.