"What is it that caused thousands of people to assault this building and tried to overturn the Constitution of the United States of America. What caused that? I want to find out."

So do I.

Personally, find the fear of ideas more dangerous than ideas themselves.

scientia potentia est.

Some of the more recent United States Governmental statistics indicate that about 2% of elementary schools in the U.S. use metal detectors, 7% of middle schools, and 10% of high schools. This is a fairly low number, with literally only 1-in-10 high schools utilizing metal detectors within the country. Aug 13, 2019
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I understand that "probably" all school shootings have been committed by real students. Students with hatred issues, respect issues, power issues or whatever. She got away with acting as a student and penetrating the security or lack of it. Granted I can't see just anyone getting away with her plan by "acting" as a student but she was able to gain unfettered access.

With 3D printers getting more sophisticated, metal detectors are not a catch all. I also think there can be better ways to recognise mental issues earlier to reduce the threat of would be killers. It's not foolproof but after a shooting there were usually signs of a violent nature of the shooter before hand.

Yes she may be a criminal but she was unarmed and had no violent intentions and was aware of the risks of her actions but still felt more was needed to be done. I believe more needs to be done keeping the public safe from people that want to cause harm just because they have the power to do it. That includes bullies who don't pick up guns but rather create rage in innocent people.

My initial comment was due to @jimnms comment which seemed to imply the woman was merely an attention whore and overlooked what her real intentions may have been.

EDIT: I also think your decision to not have children and perhaps grandchildren could have a HUGE impact on reducing the number of children killed or wounded anywhere in the world. If only...

You can't kill a living human being...

Death Penalty exists...

Abortion will always be a touchy subject, but if you have money to travel, you can get that abortion in places that support them. So what these abortion laws do is punish poor people who can't make that trip. Then those same people are forced to either put the child up for adoption (because we don't have a ton of children that can't be adopted already) or they can raise that child, most likely in the same situation that led to them being poor and not having a proper family unit.

Storytime, and god help me if my wife ever finds out I talked about this.

I was raised in a poor home, with an abusive family. My wife was raised in a poor home with a good family. When we started dating after High School back in 1992, you had two choices for safe sex, condoms or birth control (doctor visit with no insurance and it was Texas in 1992, they weren't just tossing it out like free candy). We had to use condoms because we couldn't afford birth control and because she was scared of using it. If you have ever read the side effects, you might be too, seeing as death can be one of them in rare instances.

So condoms were the watchword. But accidents happen; maybe one just didn't work right, maybe it was the one that broke one time, but we ended up getting pregnant. I told her that I would do whatever she wanted. We planned to marry soon anyway, so I said we could shotgun it if need be. She said she didn't think she wanted a child. So I said that it was HER decision, but I would be there through it.

It isn't easy. Unless you have been in that exact situation, you will never know the fear and uncertainty involved. We were 18 and 20, just starting out with shit jobs, living with parents, and with a 1968 Catalina as our only vehicle. Her parents would have forced her to have it if they knew, because they thought the same way as @bobknight33. We would have been stuck living with them, they already didn't like me because I wasn't deeply religious and not into ranch life. My parents wouldn't have taken us in because my mom didn't like my wife until years later. The stress and anger would have probably split us up, and both of us would have likely remained poor to this day.

Instead, my wife chose to not have the child and got an abortion in the first trimester. We kept it to ourselves, married later, and are still together today. We both fought our way out of being poor people to being on the upper spectrum of middle class. We decided we just didn't want kids and now we spoil our niece. I will swear right now that we would never have made it to where we are today if we had been forced to raise a child because of someone else's deranged idea that every child must be born regardless of the future in store for it.

So, yes, I can speak to what an actual poor person goes through in that situation. We were lucky, because there weren't laws rammed through by religious people who have no clue of the consequences, just a strong delusion that God wants all children born. Funny how those religious people wash their hands of the aftermath of their crusade. Even funnier are the ones that quietly send Mary Lou to California to 'visit an aunt' for a couple of months when they find out their spawn got knocked up.

TL;DR

If you fight against easy abortions, except those where the child has reached the capability to survive if it had to be medically removed from the mother, you and the rest of your ilk can go fuck yourselves.

I thought I addressed that. Travel was also open between states, and many countries with "free travel amongst nations" had no-travel/stay at home orders in place, unlike the U.S., and afaik, mandatory quarantine for all international travelers.

Again, because he eradicated the international Global Health Security and Biodefense unit, I can legitimately ascribe every single non Chinese death and most Chinese deaths to his actions directly. A pandemic on this level WAS foreseen after SARS, Ebola, and Swine Flu, it's why we created the GHSB. It's why we had a pandemic response plan that Trump completely ignored and actually denied it existed for months and months.

I also am going by facts. My facts say that at least four things Trump did against professional advice took us from prepared to minimise any pandemic to at worst a foreign epidemic to a place where months after pandemics start our leader denied any danger and made no moves to stop it.
1) Eradication of the GHSB, missed opportunity one to have zero US cases and avoid a pandemic completely.
2) Repeated early public denial of the danger while encouraging others to do the same and go about business as usual, missed opportunity two to have zero US cases, and a missed opportunity to minimize any spread if quarantining travelers (something else he failed miserably to even consider early on) failed.
3) Encouragement of those who trust him to ignore all mitigation efforts, don't mask, don't social distance, don't shut down non essential businesses, don't close schools, don't listen to medical professionals....missed opportunity number three to minimize US infections to thousands instead of hundreds of thousands. Remember the many months he said grandma would gladly die to get people back to work, pretending many months in that only feeble octogenarians get sick?
4) Denial of a prepared response plan, never following it and claiming total ignorance, missed opportunity number four to follow prepared plans based on science from day one, missing the opportunity to keep our infection rate at S Korean levels.

That's four well researched and vetted moronic, irrational, and irresponsible mistakes he personally made that multiplied our infection rate by 100- infinity times (if we could have had zero without his multiple massive and stupid mistakes, which is not just possible but likely, he can be said to have CAUSED every single US case, multiplying our infections by infinity.). There were more, but I'm beating a dead horse.
Remember, his real plan was natural herd immunity, with an expected 3-60 million deaths depending on who you asked.

I say if intelligent decisions could have avoided all US infections, and that's undeniable IMO, you can lay the blame for as high a percentage as you like on the leader who made bad dangerous decisions out of pure narcissistic ignorance and hatred of his predecessor...up to 100%. 80-90% still seems like I'm coddling him, at least two failures could have made cases zero, and others minimized it to under 10% of what we have. All four I listed almost certainly allowed >90% giving every doubt and giving him all possible credit....so yes, I'm satisfied I'm not exaggerating.

Obama's responsible and responsive planning and execution stopped Ebola from ever spreading here despite it making it to our shores, and it was FAR more contagious and deadly. Had we had Trump then doing the same things, there would be tens of millions dead and likely still spreading disease, imo.


Edit: let me try analogy...If a mayor removes the stop signs from 4 way highway intersections, they are responsible for every wreck that happens, even though other towns with stop signs still have wrecks at intersections. Trump pulled the signs, removed the flashing red light, and cut first responder funding, and claimed there never was a highway code to follow and he takes no responsibility for the jump in highway deaths.

Yes, they had isolation we don't, but also had fewer resources to work with by far, and are much closer to the outbreak in China with tons of travel between countries. I would say having a reasonable, thoughtful population that wanted to avoid being someone who spread the virus and killed people, so followed instructions nearly without exception, compared to the U.S. who had a leader denouncing closings, masks, and social distancing and a population that was happy to spread the disease for political reasons. I think that has WAY more to do with our horrific , worst on the planet per capita despite the most resources by far outcome.

We only have two borders to close. Canada is easy, just ask nicely and they'll stay home. The border with Mexico is a problem, granted, I found it odd Trump didn't use emergency powers to finish his fence when he had a legitimate reason, but that would mean admitting Covid is dangerous, but if we cooperated with Mexico to secure the border we could have minimized all international travel early.

Back to Canada, with two open borders. They have 23000 and a population of 37.59 million, so they also have a per capita death rate well under 1/2 ours, close to 1/3, and they also could have done better if we had done better. It's impossible to figure out what percentage of their infections came from the U.S., but it's definitely a significant number.

Other nations have divisions, if not states, provinces, prefecture, or some other separation of areas. I don't agree that because we have states in our country we are like the EU, because a federal law or executive order covers all states and territories, the EU has no such mechanism as far as I know.

We were the only nation with an international Global Health Security and Biodefense unit, with teams in China and elsewhere, designed to identify new diseases early to avoid pandemics. Trump is totally responsible for dismantling that office, meaning there's a likelihood every non Chinese death and most Chinese deaths would have been avoided had Trump not been butt hurt over a good system set up by Obama. His racist and political hatred put the planet at risk. That alone puts most deaths, U.S. and global, directly on his hands.

Also, the EU population is double ours, meaning with all the multiple open borders and haphazard mix of regulations from different countries, and the enormous immigrant populations, and some actual temporary lockdowns in some of their countries (but not all by far) their infection/death rates are barely over 1/2 what ours are per capita. That's not on par, sorry.

Some of their leaders have some blood on their hands because of poor or slow decisions, but few actually fought against all science and public health measures, denying the mortality rates and doctor's recommendations to convince their populations to do nothing at all to mitigate the pandemic...Brazil did....look at them now. Yes, the president of Brazil absolutely has blood on his hands, and his response mirrored Trump's.

I'm regurgitating the numbers Dr Birx used, and comparing our outbreak to other nations that took it seriously like S Korea and New Zealand. If we had used the same serious action S Korea had, our death rate per 100000 would be an astonishing 1/60th of what our death rates were in the first 6 months or so. Just universal mask wearing would have cut our deaths by an estimated >1/4, 130000 fewer deaths, and slowed the rate of new cases significantly, but Trump fought against them.

Here's the link on that data...., granted slightly dated.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/10/23/how-many-coronavirus-deaths-are-truly-attributable-trump/

Remember, the Whitehouse said 100000-240000 possible deaths, around the same time Trump said deaths would never rise over 20000, using the lower of those numbers and blaming Trump's policies for the excess we are >80% his fault now, using Trump's promised numbers over 96% are blood on his hands.

There's also the fact that after knowing about the uncontrolled epidemic in WuHan Trump let over 40000 people (just not Chinese nationals) back in the country from that region with no tests available and no quarantine except for those obviously extremely sick. An immediate and actual travel lockdown could have made our deaths zero, and definitely would have made them exponentially lower.

Then there's the dismantling of the Global Health Security and Biodefense unit he closed that likely could have identified the outbreak in China much earlier and again, made our numbers zero. It's exactly what they were created to avoid.

I honestly feel 80- 90% was being generous, in fact there's a real possibility that a thoughtful adult president would have made any number of intelligent decisions, any one of which could have avoided the pandemic altogether or minimized infections enormously, even minimizing the Chinese epidemic.

I do agree, Biden is doing much better at taking it seriously and acting like rapid vaccination is important, but still isn't doing enough. I would prefer an enforced national mask mandate, mandatory social distancing, school closings until vaccination saturation, etc until we have herd immunity....not half assed measures like 50% capacity at bars and restaurants, with few business shutdowns and zero enforcement, pretending it's over every time infection rates dip.

My Pops had a prophet 2000 the mid 80's. The first home digital sampling synth. It had all these options and more to apply to either the basic hum or to any sample. It had reverb, attack, sustain, decay, multiple preset wave forms, speed (of the sample), pitch and tone, and probably 1/2 dozen more I can't recall, all in a keyboard size unit, not a full pipe organ size. The samples came or could be recorded on 3 1/2" floppies, and you could store a huge number of presets to modify them as you wished at the push of one button, not a complete retuning with multiple dials. I had fun remixing James Brown and Prince, but never learned to play well.
Amazing the advancements they made in just 15 years.

Limit of all news media to 1 hr / day and ban it from social media.

5 second clip out of context pushed with a slanted bent does nothing but divide people.

Biden tripping on AF1 Stairs, should be a non story Same with Trumps Walking slowly down a ramp should also be a non story. Both sides push the 5 second clip bent on hell to ding / impune the POTUS.


Media is the problem of the day. If reported news fairly then America becomes stronger and united.


Biden as you secretly agree is not presidential. Joe just is not up to the task. This is sad. Sad for Americans. It makes America weaker on the global stage. People surrounding him pushing "this is what is needed" and going with it.

All that yo say below about trump and his media is the same for Biden and his media lapdogs, and that IS the problem.


Have a great day,

Could be a tribute to Oscar Wilde, about your *edit - could you have mixed up the personas?

Oscar Wilde
Born: October 16, 1854, Westland Row, Dublin, Ireland
Died: November 30, 1900, Paris, France

Bob Ross
Born: October 29, 1942, Daytona Beach, Florida, United States
Died: July 4, 1995, Orlando, Florida, United States

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Let's say they actually get the votes, I still think it's a waste of time. They bar him from being elected again, but nothing can stop him from naming an 'heir'.

If you think about it, that is even worse than him running again. If he runs, he will still unite every liberal leaning person and most fence sitters against him. If he designates a person for his supporters to align behind, they will get the almost half of voters that voted for him AND a lot of the middle who might be sick of Biden/Dems by 2024.

A victory here is, at best, a moral one. It won't stop a future President of Trump's nature from trying the same thing because that is the way a person like him acts. It does nothing but provide a feel good moment while wasting more of my tax money.

But that’s the thing....they don’t have to prove his thoughts, nor his intent, only the results....because this isn’t a criminal trial and there are very different standards, they only have to show he didn’t preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, violating his oath and duty, because the only possible sentence is for him to be bared from office. His lack of action during the attack alone far exceeded that bar.

It’s becoming more likely (but still unlikely) they could get the votes because he’s barely putting up a defense. To me it seemed like a mockery of the senate, like they were just proving the point that his defense could be someone standing at the podium shouting “Bababoui, Bababoui, Howard Stern’s penis!” and still he would not be convicted...and I think that’s pissing off some Republican senators....but there are also many who are reading books and unrelated documents among other distractions and clearly not paying attention at all, proving the defense correct, they could say anything and still get him off without presenting any defense. A sad state.
On the contrary, the prosecution’s case is straight forward with video evidence and records of what Trump tweeted and did (or didn’t do like not calling in the national guard) during the attack on top of the horrific personal experiences of the same senators hearing the case....hard to forget a lynch mob looking for you and your family to hang less than a month ago.

Remember, there is no possible prison term here, no fine, nothing but baring him from office, that’s it. There should be a criminal trial for treason IMO, but it wouldn’t be a slam dunk. I think the standard isn’t what he meant, it’s what a reasonable person would think he meant. That’s not prosecuting thought crime, it’s prosecuting speech and actions that it’s plainly foreseeable will incite real crimes.

I barely remember the inauguration riots, the million pussy hat march made more news....Trump’s “biggest crowd ever” nonsense got more airtime, and damages and injuries were fairly minimal so, especially when faced with the fresh scars from 2020, they’re easy to forget. That said, I don’t disagree....by 2022 new scandals and a desire to forget will erase this from many people’s memories.