Absolutely not, IMO.
It’s not self defense if you hunt your victim, he did.
It’s not self defense if the people you shoot were not armed. You can’t use a gun in defense from a fist. He did.

It’s not self defense if you hear a pop (no shot was fired AT Rittenhouse, if the defense is to be believed, someone else shot into the air to get the gun toting aggressor to leave and stop threatening everyone with death). Rittenhouse had no idea if he heard a gun, firecracker, or plastic bag being popped.

It’s not self defense if you murder people trying to escape from the first murder you committed in public, the second and third victims were preforming legal citizens arrests on an armed, aggressive murderer attempting to flee the scene of his crimes.

What he did is 100% not self defense, if that idiotic defense works, it’s open season. All anyone has to do is say they had to shoot up that preschool, those kids were coming right for them….SHOOT EM NED!!

Hypothetical scenario….I had to shoot your family….I broke into your house because I thought you might do drugs in there, and I’m, on my own accord, protecting your town from drug users even though I have no authority, and when you yelled at me in your bedroom doorway and threw a clock it was scary, so I shot your wife and shot you in the dick and chest, then your kids came out screaming at me and one threw a doll, so I shot them too, then left without reporting any of it, and fled the state immediately. Self defense. Almost exactly the same thing.

If a jury accepts self defense in these circumstances, they are not impartial.
If a jury accepts a self defense claim, the next Trump rally is going to be a blood bath, and the attackers will claim self defense.
If a jury accepts a self defense claim, it will send a clear message that hunting humans for pleasure will be legal in the US, because that’s exactly what he did.

FUCK these people.

Fuck them with a rake.

Fuck them. Fuck their "muh FWEEDUMS!" bullshit. Fuck their double-digit IQs and fuck anyone who encourages these cocksuckers to be the Typhoid Mary motherfuckers who need to be put on an island and neutron bombed until the carbon in their cells gives up and bails.

I've mentioned before that one of my clients is a major healthcare provider, the largest on west coast. The worthless fucking parasites who refuse to be vaccinated are going to jack your insurance rates into the stratosphere because they're being treated first in the ER (major profit center for hospitals) and then the ICU (where $10k a day is the low end). The best case scenario is that they get on with it and go have a talk with Hitler in Hell, but no -- these cunts have to hang on and take up a bed that won't be available for the guy who just had a massive coronary, take up doctor's and nurse's time while they cover their distance between living dumbfuck and dead dumbfuck at a snail's pace, and fuck us all by running up multi-million dollar bills that they can't pay, they won't pay, and that they'll dump on the rest of us when they're done gasping the oxygen that belongs to people who aren't idiots.

These goddamn parasites can't die fast enough. I laugh whenever I hear some moron bewailing the fact he didn't get the vaccine and now Death is check his watch outside the door. You want to exercise the "right" to not be vaccinated (which you don't legally have in the first place), fine: die at home, hopefully in agony, and let your family leave your corpse on the sidewalk as an abject lesson in why being a complete fucking idiot doesn't pay.

Fuck I hate these goddamn people.

why education should be one of our highest priorities. on the same level as national defense.

as a comedian once said (about Reagan cutting educational funding), it does not seem too smart to cut back on education. after all, we are relying on most of our service people, who protect this country, having some quality of education. would hate to see this scenario play out...

"OMG! WHY! Why did you launch those missiles!!!"
"Well...I got hungry, so I pressed the button with "Lunch" on it?"

Eh, at some point very early on, Stelter should have realized the man had a genuine complaint. He really wasn't being listened to. If someone questioned my integrity like that I would lay out my research process bare and say "We do get it wrong sometimes, and it's important to acknowledge and correct it when we do, but we also don't always get that perfect! But we're willing to make corrections when we have it wrong. That is paramount to becoming a trusted source of information."


That sentiment seems far from conception here, which is concerning. If he's going to laugh off what seemed like a very sober book salesman...who accuses him of not listening...and he just laughs and barely recognizes the accusation for what it is...

His journalistic integrity was being called into question by a man wanting to be taken seriously. He should have said - "Pick a story we got wrong and show me where we're mixed up."


Or maybe an analogy; if you got pulled over and the cop in the window said "You don't have a license!" You'd probably just pull your license out to prove you had it. You wouldn't just laugh at him. (scenario requires a response here to illustrate the point, police are not part of the metaphor)

PS
And I understand that he's not actually levying anything but a cursory very generalized complaint. It's just, whatever he thinks the show gets wrong over and over, i believe he believes it and was being serious.

The effort to analyze the growing influence of the media maximizes the possibilities because of all functional resources involved. The certification methodologies that help us deal with the commitment between the teams, entails a process of reform and modernization information flow. Regardless of, perception of the difficulties can lead us to consider restructuring return expected long term. I would like to emphasize that the clear definition of objectives adds value to the establishment the desired indexes.

Above all, it is essential to point out that the growing influence of the media plays an essential role in shaping the desired indexes. We realized increasingly that an increased dialogue between the different productive sectors provides a better overview technique in the recycling investment.

We realized increasingly that the fair trial of eventualities provides a better overview return expected long term.

Above all, it is essential to point out that the challenging global scenario, ensures the contribution of an important group in determining postures of the governing bodies with regard to its responsibilities. We realized increasingly that an increased dialogue between the different productive sectors provides a better overview the preferred directions towards progress.

However, we must not forget that the consensus on the need for qualification promotes leverage postures of the governing bodies with regard to its responsibilities. All these questions, properly considered, raises doubts about whether an increased dialogue between the different productive sectors hinders the appreciation of the importance of all functional resources involved. The accumulated experience shows that the fair trial of eventualities encourages standardization normative rules of conduct. We can already glimpse the way the growing influence of the media adds value to the establishment the financial and administrative requirements.

I usually say "the American voter" but since so many of these delusional traitors didn't vote, I modified it to fit the scenario. I never knew where it came from, but I knew it was a quote or paraphrase from someone.

I could hope with all my hope and it would be a thimble in an ocean of pessimism and dispare over the stupidity of any large group of humans. A person can be smart, I've yet to see evidence that people can.

There is no "try".

Well, we got the moron in the Whitehouse for 4 years, when do we reach our heart's desire? How is that even possible when the desires of the plain folk often contradict each other....they / we aren't homogeneous.

just saw the percentage of steam-powered and electric cars...
(#37 @ https://www.boredpanda.com/weird-history-twitter/?utm_source=duckduckgo&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=organic)
...that were being driven by the populace. impressive.

know electric trollies were also a thing, but they were sabotaged by gasoline concerns (killed) because read the history of the one that use to run in our small mid-western town.

anyway...electric vehicles were viable then and if other concerns (like GMC) were kept at bay...100 years later we just might be driving all-electric vehicles (maybe flying them - we were supposed to have those by now).

necessity being the mother of invention, it only makes sense to keep the future (electric cars, solar-power, etc) alive. if the nation doesn't, china (or other visionaries) may capture the solar-driven land speeder market.

[trump is guilty btw. but GOP is GMC in that scenario. will be seen as a big mistake too. maybe 'big carrot' has something to do with it. he is orange.]

Claims without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

Hrmph, looks like your bullshit has run the gamut of newtboy's patience as well. Can't say i blame him. What blinders?


Is this the section you're referring to ?


"Though much of this activity took place on the left, it was separate from the Biden campaign and crossed ideological lines, with crucial contributions by nonpartisan and conservative actors. The scenario the shadow campaigners were desperate to stop was not a Trump victory. It was an election so calamitous that no result could be discerned at all"


"crossed ideological lines, with crucial contributions by nonpartisan and conservative actors"
"crossed ideological lines, with crucial contributions by nonpartisan and conservative actors"
"crossed ideological lines, with crucial contributions by nonpartisan and conservative actors"

I'm trying to wrap my head around this. Did you read that and did your eyes go fuzzy and then your brain said "THE LEFT DID IT"???


"The scenario the shadow campaigners were desperate to stop was not a Trump victory. It was an election ... w/no result"
"The scenario the shadow campaigners were desperate to stop was not a Trump victory. It was an election ... w/no result"
"The scenario the shadow campaigners were desperate to stop was not a Trump victory. It was an election ... w/no result"

Did you read that, hit yourself in the face with a rolling pin, and then see "THEY ONLY WANT TO STOP TRUMP"???


HOLD ON, newt, gotta speak thenidiot language. I'll translate.


No collusion! No collusion! Hoax, the fake news media. Hillary! Hoax! Lock her up! Beautiful delicious wall. No collusion! Unfair!

------


Seriously though, newt I think you're missing something. You missed what he said here. Bob said that voters determined the election.

OMFG...can you even fucking read?
From your article I found on my own.....

...the forces of labor came together with the forces of capital to keep the peace and oppose Trump’s assault on democracy.

The handshake between business and labor was just one component of a vast, cross-partisan campaign to protect the election–an extraordinary shadow effort dedicated not to winning the vote but to ensuring it would be free and fair, credible and uncorrupted. For more than a year, a loosely organized coalition of operatives scrambled to shore up America’s institutions as they came under simultaneous attack from a remorseless pandemic and an autocratically inclined President. Though much of this activity took place on the left, it was separate from the Biden campaign and crossed ideological lines, with crucial contributions by nonpartisan and conservative actors. The scenario the shadow campaigners were desperate to stop was not a Trump victory. It was an election so calamitous that no result could be discerned at all, a failure of the central act of democratic self-governance that has been a hallmark of America since its founding.

Their work touched every aspect of the election. They got states to change voting systems and laws and helped secure hundreds of millions in public and private funding. They fended off voter-suppression lawsuits, recruited armies of poll workers and got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time. They successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation and used data-driven strategies to fight viral smears. They executed national public-awareness campaigns that helped Americans understand how the vote count would unfold over days or weeks, preventing Trump’s conspiracy theories and false claims of victory from getting more traction. After Election Day, they monitored every pressure point to ensure that Trump could not overturn the result. “The untold story of the election is the thousands of people of both parties who accomplished the triumph of American democracy at its very foundation,” says Norm Eisen, a prominent lawyer and former Obama Administration official who recruited Republicans and Democrats to the board of the Voter Protection Program.

For Trump and his allies were running their own campaign to spoil the election. The President spent months insisting that mail ballots were a Democratic plot and the election would be “rigged.” His henchmen at the state level sought to block their use, while his lawyers brought dozens of spurious suits to make it more difficult to vote–an intensification of the GOP’s legacy of suppressive tactics. Before the election, Trump plotted to block a legitimate vote count. And he spent the months following Nov. 3 trying to steal the election he’d lost–with lawsuits and conspiracy theories, pressure on state and local officials, and finally summoning his army of supporters to the Jan. 6 rally that ended in deadly violence at the Capitol.

You call that defrauding America? You are absolutely totally bat shit crazy, it describes a bipartisan effort defending democracy from Trump's baseless partisan attacks on it, on voting, and on truth....claiming if he doesn't win, it's rigged, if he wins, it's perfect. No where did anyone even imply voting machines defrauded anyone, it clearly states the obvious opposite, that they not only didn't have any serious issues, but also a physical paper backup that, in multiple recounts, still matched the results the machines gave.

You are such a non stop and just dumb liar. No doubt it effects your family life horribly.

Sorry to be the little grey raincloud on this Hate The Hedges party, but you might want to understand the implications of what just happened

Y'know that fund that's getting all attention, Melvin Capital? Yeah, fuck them, right? Fuckin' shorters all shortin' and shit -- they played, they paid!

There's a reason they were bailed out and with all due haste.

Here's the issue: they were VERY good at the shorting game. So good that they actually had to turn away business. They made money like horses makes shit. When clients couldn't get in at Melvin, they went elsewhere. That opened the door to a lot of other firms basically mirroring exactly what MC was doing, which included shorting the fuck outta GME.

Fuck those guys too, right? It's their money, so why should I care?

Let's go back a few year, shall we, to the glorious chapter in finance and economics that was the 2008 Crash. Remember when Paulson lost his shit because he realized that in about 36 hours, the basic system called Western Capitalism was going to shit the bed; the bedroom; the whole house and pretty much every surface above the ocean within a planetary radius? This is sorta like that. Only worse.

The thing about short squeezes is that the losses can be infinite, and that's exactly why WallStreetBets did what they did. They knew if they bought and held -- diamond hands -- the stock would have to rise as the shorters had to cover their bets. Melvin Capital and a shit-ton of other, smaller firms had to do that and ran out of liquidity long before GME was even at $50. For every share of stock they shorted, they need to cough up another share at a higher value -- and they HAD to actually have the higher-priced share.

And here's where things get VERY ugly.

Shorting GME was such a sure thing that a huge number of shorts were placed. In fact, more shares of GME were shorted than actually existed. Oops. But hey, SURE THING, BABY and what's the worst that can happen?

Yeeeah, y'see where this is going now?

So these firms, not only are they broke, they don't have the shares, either. They need to come up with shares, pronto, at any price, because contractual obligations are a motherfucker in the finance world. But again, more shorts than there are shares and the people who have the shares, WSB and 4chan's /biz/, aren't letting them go. The longer they hold, the higher the price will go as short after short faces having to cough up the shares they borrowed.

A lot of people are about to lose a LOT of money -- the kinda losses that have so many zeros attached that looking at the number bores the eyes.

Back to 2008: the reason the whole world almost started Mad Max LARPing back then is that a narrow number of highly-important financial institutions were a wee bit thin on liquidity because they were having to pay it out by the boatload. That's bad. What would be better is if risk were more distributed, and how could that little plan POSSIBLY go wrong? Maybe a Black Swan event involving a huge amount of money that needs to be paid out by all of them due to this annoying bird.

That's where we are now, but no one even remotely knows what that figure is going to be. Again, (potentially) infinite losses multiplied by 150% times the number of shares actually available, multiplied by the dogshit risk factor on the loans and the leveraged payouts -- your best case scenario might be a loss of about $500 billion. Someone has to come up with that money, be it the Fed or other banks/investors, but that latter group has to come up with the money themselves, which is generally accomplished by selling profitable holdings. We all know what happens when a lot of people have to sell, right?

I always wanted to live in interesting times, thus proving what an utter fuckwit I am.

Nice summary, Newt! My thoughts exactly.

The police seems to favour a bunch of (probably armed) hysterical Karens shouting incoherent nonsense over people who actually have reasons to protest and a clear reasonable agenda. Hockey mums shouting at the referee without understanding the rules.

The only slightly face-saving moment was the guy in Pelosis office writing a message and leaving her cell phone on the table instead of dropping his pants and defecating on it. It is possible that these people will yet come through to realize that no, once again, this is not the end of the world that their prophet is calling for.

Trump thinks this is a reality show and anything goes. Theatrical tactics to make it look like he was cheated out of a big win. Also always backs out of everything he says - not his fault this time either?

Security agencies from top to bottom made to look stupid and weak and slow to react. Look at how many police cars are there, how many policemen in fancy dress. It takes hours to control a few hundred Karens who could have been expected from the moment the president called for a march on the Capitol.

What shall you do with a president who calls for a march on the Capitol?

Edit: just found out there had been violent clashes on Tuesday already - what happened yesterday was either incredible incompetence bordering on mental retardation, or a purposeful extension of Trumps narrative. That the police favour Trump so they let the Trump mob storm the building is a nice scenario for some conspiracy theories of our own now :-)

The US govt last week updated the survival rates (i.e., IF infected) for Covid19:

0-19 99.997%
20-49 99.98%
50-69 99.5%
70+ 94.6%


https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scenarios.html

So, sounds to me like the alpha male theory is correct, just not the reasons why people think one becomes alpha and another doesn't.
Aggression and force are not what makes an alpha, strength, intelligence, and a calming temperament seem to be more representative of alpha traits.
Also, being the guy who feeds them makes a huge difference in the dynamic.
On top of that, when they're pups, I hold their nose/snout in my mouth gently but firmly. That's one way canines assert dominance without aggression or fear. I don't recall where I learned that, but seems to work.

I've never bullied my dogs into submission, I've only used positive reinforcement to train them, but when I command them I'm firm and there's never been any question about who is the alpha. They might run through a door before me, but they listen and obey when commanded, and have never once been aggressive towards me or challenged my authority, I'm on my fourth dog.
There's a definite difference in how they react to my wife, who would be beta in this scenario. They listen to her, but not as well and they take their time when she calls them.

Newt,

This is in response to your comment on my statement about Biden needing to lose in '20.

I recently wrote this as a reply to one of my readers (I write under a number of different names in other places).:

Dear <name>,

>I took some time to absorb what you wrote. It's a lot to juggle. The Atlantic has an article in the July-August issue on the worst and best case scenario in CLO defaults. I'll read more.

I read the article you mentioned, and while it's certainly good, it also misses a very important point that explains the mess we're in: the collapse of Lehman and Bear-Stearns, while catastrophic in their own ways, were not the nightmare that caused the Fed to freak out in 2008 -- AIG was. Had AIG gone under and the counterparty default contracts triggered, we'd be on the barter system right now. We came within hours of not having an economy in the western world. The $700b ($.7t) the Fed coughed up to stop this from happening calmed the panic, but did nothing to resolve the underlying issues. These issues continued to compound during the 2011-2020 stock run-up and now we're at the point where the Fed is throwing trillions of dollars at every piece of bad debt they can find just to keep the whole thing from imploding into an economic black hole. It is important to note that in September '19, the credit markets started freezing because of the debt that was already on the books then, -before- CV-19 started rolling, and it took $3t just to get them unlocked again. Absolutely nothing has gotten better since then, and I would argue things have gotten dangerously worse.

In an odd coincidence, the NYT ran an article today about the looming bankruptcy crisis. They're calling for 30-60 days before things start imploding, but I'll stick to my estimate of ~90 days. There's some talk about extending the $600 benefits (we'll see) and chatter about another stimulus check, but that's kicking the can as well as telegraphing how bad things really are. When the Republicans are getting behind free money, you know we're in some uncharted territory. For all intents and purposes, Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) -- the reason the Fed is backstopping debt and printing money like crazy -- is the hill the US economy will live or die on. Should the US dollar come unpegged as the world's de facto currency or should inflation begin (and there's already worrying signs this is happening), that's game over.

Please don't take anything I say as the Word of God; please do your own research and come to your own conclusions. Everything I've said is an opinion based on my education, experience and way of thinking. Your mileage may vary.

Here is the article I mentioned: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/18/business/corporate-bankruptcy-coronavirus.html -- might be paywalled, but clear your cookies for the NYT and you should be able to read it.


>Frankly, it's the physical danger in my area of the States that concerns me. There are the guns and bullying. During some BLM demonstrations in the Midwest, locals were standing around with semi-automatics. I drive a Prius for the fuel efficiency. Pick up trucks enjoy tailgating, trying to intimidate me. This behavior isn't going to change with a change of President but will get worse is we don't change. This ideological push to takeover the country instead of ruling by compromise started around the same time we came to the US in 1981, Reagan's first year. I was so shocked when I heard talk radio for the first time; this wasn't the country I had left in the 1970s.


And now we come to the giant pile of sweaty dynamite that's just waiting for the right shock to set it off. I could give you a prolonged lecture about how this all started in 1978 with California's Proposition 13, or how David Stockman's tragically prescient warnings were blatantly ignored, but Haynes Johnson does a far better job at this than I ever could in his 1991 book "Sleepwalking Through History", as does Kevin Phillips in 2006's "American Theocracy". Honestly, at this point, the prelude is academic. The reality of the situation is that a large swath of adult Americans are appalling ill-educated, innumerate and devoid of even the most basic critical-thinking skills. These people are now locked out of the Information Economy. They lack the most basic skills required to compete in the 21st century job market and thus will watch their standard of living sink into the abyss. These people are not blind to this fact because they're living with the reality of their situation every single day. They're totally without hope, cut off from all avenues of control over their own lives and they feel utterly abandoned by the very people who're supposed to be helping them. The reason you're seeing bullying and behavior like that is because these same people are totally removed from any avenues of recourse and the only people they can take their anger out on are people like you and me. Their anger is being stoked on a daily basis. FOX News and the GOP are experts at this and have a host of boogeymen to keep the anger from being pointed their way: ANTIFA, BLM (black Americans have always made a perfect target), "coastal elites" and, of course, Liberals.

Trump's election was a warning, not an outlier. Trump was the primal scream of these people and Liberals and the Democrats as a whole chose not to listen because they found the sound so abhorrent. The rage will only get worse and the number of people enveloped by this rage will only grow as economic conditions worsen. At this point, it no longer matters who wins in '20. Winning the election will be like winning the deed to the World Trade Center one second after the first jet hit. The damage has already been done and no steps are being taken to repair it; if anything, people are actively making it worse either through ideological blindness, deliberate malfeasance or outright stupidity. It took almost 50 years to get to this point and the endemic issues will not be undone in a single generation, much less a single election. Until the people who voted for Trump feel a sense of real hope, a sense of control over their lives and a genuine expectation of recourse for their grievances, they will keep right on voting for Trump, or people like him.

My unfortunate suspicion is that this country will rip itself to shreds long before those reforms are enacted.

Side note: the fundamental difference between the United States and Europe is that European history has forced the nations of Europe to live with the consequences of their actions. Not so the United States. Europe has suffered for her sins. Not so the United States. The two bloodiest wars in human history were fought on European soil. Not so the United States. The United States has never faced true suffering, nor has it ever had to live with the ramifications of its own actions. Both these facts are about to change and a nation whose character is built on a mythology of individual action and violence is going to have to face reality. The people of this nation are not prepared for this and they will not like it.

Second side note: many people are erroneously comparing the current situation to the Wiemar Republic. This is a lack of historical understanding. A more apt comparison would be to Spain in late 1935.


>As for re-opening, we could have gotten some control if the "leader" had simply donned a mask and used realistic thinking. People could go back to work more safely, wash hands, stay a certain distance. But his hubris led the way, so now we'll have a roller coaster for months and years that will affect the economy even more. France is a good comparison because they were unprepared also, having slashed the public healthcare budget for the last twenty years. But when they laid down the rules, troops patrolled the streets to be sure they were followed. So far, they've flattened the curve (for now), and used different economic incentives, such as paying part of employees' salaries to keep them employed.

At this point, the pace of re-opening is a difference between very bad and much worse. Had $3t been used to pay the yearly salary of every American, we could have saved lives and the economy, but we didn't. The history of 2020 will be littered with "what-ifs". However, the first thing you learn when studying history is that what-ifs are useless because things are what they are and you can't change that. It's already obvious we're going into a second wave. If previous pandemics are any indication of what's to come, this second wave will be many times worse than the first. The wait for a vaccine is indeterminate, but if we're going for herd immunity, ~70% of Americans will need to catch the virus. To date, ~1.5% have. If the US population is ~330 million, ~230 million will need to catch the virus. Call the mortality rate 2%, that means ~4.6 million Americans will die. That's a lot of dead Americans and grieving families.

Take care,

(my actual name)

Nope. Watched them closely.
Hitting a car flat at 60 km or mph is going to stop you in <1/10 of a second. I counted >4 seconds to stop with a flop in the video. Same kinetic energy absorbed. Δv = 30mph (around 50'/sec) Δt= .1 vs 4. Do the math. 500ft/sec/sec vs 12.5'/sec/sec...that's 50g vs 1.2g. Case closed.

Fine. God forbid you listen to someone with extraordinary personal experience in this matter and a grasp of physics.
You go for the dead stop next time you're in a wreck, I'll turn my wheel.

There are variables in car wrecks. You want to compare best case scenario sudden stops with absolute worst case rolls. Feel free to think that way. It's not reasonable. I'm done.

Then look at the dummy data if immutable physics laws aren't enough for you, but no citation is needed to conclude that exponentially higher G forces cause higher level injuries, even if the angle isn't the worst possible for a specific spinal injury.

I've given you my personal vast experience, physics, and common sense. You give me apple to oranges, and exaggerate the juiciness of the apples while only mentioning dehydrated oranges. I'm done. Believe what you want, but I hope you don't have to test your theory.