You watch: autopsy will clearly show he died due to side effects from the COVID vaccine. It also drove him to kill her. This entire thing is summed up plainly by a comedy genius:
You got it backwards. He got COVID and then killed her out of frustration and anger that people just won’t take the fucking vaccine. Then he recovered, and killed himself. So he died not due to COVID, but due to the people who aren’t vaccinated.
I will say this...I admire the balls Elon Musk has shown regarding this World Food Bank thing. These big NGOs are notoriously corrupt and, IMO, can drift into the arena of fostering dependency from entire nations. When I lived and volunteered in Uganda in 2008, the dream my fellow Ugandan volunteers had (who were all university educated and career-focused) was to land a job at a major NGO. That represented the best-paying, highest rung of the middle class. Which is a problem, because it points to systemic dependency on charity rather than local industry. And this is just a small NGO that I was with. All that aside, when a snarky tweet demanding $6B to solve world hunger came out, Musk's reply of, "I'll do it right now, if you provide a full public accounting of where every dollar goes and prove how it helped," really hit at the heart of it. The goalpost moved, and it immediately became "Well, it won't solve hunger but it will prevent instability!" and, again, Musk replied with, "Okay, but do it publicly." And now no word on whether or not those same officials are even going to the meeting. If throwing money at a problem actually fixed it, we'd have less problems. I'm curious how this plays out.
I like how Musk called bullshit on the "we only need $6bn". Those figures are complete and utter horseshit. It's more accurate to say "we can eradicate world hunger with $6bn, and a fleet of dragons, 175 unicorns, 8 trolls and the entire graduating class of Hogwarts". That said, there's been a ton of progress getting the developing world on the lower rungs of the development ladder, and yes it takes a LOT of money that folks are willing to lose. For example, you have a subsistence tomato farmer. Get a community of them together, now it's a bit more stable. Get them to pool some resources, and they can and preserve tomatoes. From subsistence farming to salsa manufacturing sounds simple and easy, but each step of the way you are fighting the urge for someone to screw over the group...it's the prisoner's dilemma, but often with starvation as one choice and climbing the social ladder on the next. So, yeah in a lot of cases, it's $1 of every $10 that actually does what it's supposed to. Also, for many of the smaller developing nations, they need protection from international markets. If imported salsa is cheaper than what's produced locally, it's a toss up. If the supply coming in is overwhelming, entrepreneurs see no hope of getting it off the ground. I saw this in Puerto Rico with coffee: the coffee farmers & manufacturers were inundated with stuff brought in by Wal-Mart, to the point they had to consolidate to be competitive or artesan where they only break even. However, the world's richest man could stand to pay some fucking taxes. Musk's cult of personality schtick is getting a bit old, especially as he politicizes shit like moving to Texas. Tesla's $1t valuation compared to $80bn for GM and $55bn for Honda, both of whom have a far broader array of products will eventually evaporate. Him staying in the news is part of keeping the stock price up, but eventually he's on the wrong side of the moment, and it tanks.
Is anyone following the Rittenhouse trial? I have to confess...when the shit went down, I was only sort of aware of it. I knew some guy got arrested while wearing a Black Rifle Coffee t-shirt and it put the company in a quagmire, but that's about it. Now, suddenly, my Youtube feed is flooded with suggestions for it (WTF, Youtube?) so I finally watched the cell phone videos of what went down. They're admittedly chaotic and it takes some explanation to see who is who in the melee that ensued. My thoughts... 1. If I had kids, there is zero percent chance I would allow them to attend a riot and/or mass civil unrest for any reason, no matter their intent or how trained they were. Whoever this guy's parents are should be swatted with a sack of marbles, because what a dumb, dangerous thing they allowed to happen. At the very least, I think his parents should be charged with something. 2. This "crossed state lines" thing is a technicality and part of the narrative people are pushing. I checked with Google Maps...the kid drove 20 miles. That's about what I drive when I go to a neighboring town to visit my family, or slightly more than I drive when I cross into Michigan to go to Menards. I'm sure no one makes that drive and considers that they're switching states. Now, if you own a weapon it's on you to know the ins and outs of the laws. If what he did was technically illegal, it would be his fault (or his guardians'), if they broke it. I would imagine that people carry concealed daily and never think about driving from Kenosha to Antioch. 3. Regardless of intent, the event must be looked at in its totality, but only for this specific time. Examining the shootings in a broader context of protest and race relations won't fly. The only two questions are: would any reasonable person feel threatened in that exact situation, and did he truly believe - correctly or incorrectly - that he was about to be assaulted or murdered? If "yes" to both, then self defense is warranted. And looking at the videos...how did we get to first degree murder? The kid was chased, knocked down, shots fired (not him), and then chased again and beaten with a skateboard while a handgun was pointed at him. Maybe there's video leading up to the event that shows him antagonizing or somehow threatening the rioters that could be construed as instigating or directly threatening them and they themselves were acting in self defense. If so, I'll stand corrected. Looking at the situation from the time Rittenhouse was first chased to the moment he ran up to the police officers (which was something like 3 minutes?), I can't see how this isn't straight self-defense. First degree murder just blows my mind. Unrelated to this incident, but if people insist on factoring in who the people are and their past as it relates to this event: the first guy shot was a convicted pedophile. 10 years for sexually abusing five boys, originally a 15 year sentence. Had been released from the hospital an hour before due to a suicide attempt. The third guy shot had a felony assault conviction for strangling his grandmother and holding a knife on his brother (I may have that reversed). We aren't talking about a group of upstanding citizens who were super well-balanced. Does it factor into this shooting? I don't think so, and I can't see why it would be brought up. But if one side wants to talk about who Rittenhouse is, then tit for tat. The people who were shot should also be discussed. On the whole, I think this is a failure on the civic and state level to control the crowds and stop the civil unrest. That citizens felt they should travel to Kenosha to try and protect property - even though they were unasked - it points to a bigger issue that set the stage for this kind of thing to happen.
I'm in full agreeance with your post. He acted in self-defense, but people want to see the young white kid punished for playing Patriot. The biggest takeaway from all of it is exactly what you said in the first point. The kid should never have been there in the first place. There was literally no need for a kid to be there helping patrol businesses during a riot. He'll get convicted on some of the technicalities, crossing state lines with a weapon, etc, but he's going to get off on all of the murder charges and it's going to be this giant 1 week gnashing of teeth from the media and left wingers about white kid shoots people and then it'll be forgotten.
I think the kid is a piece of shit. But 1st degree murder is an overcharge. Was he charged that strongly? I see that there are less severe charges that he might be convicted of though. Reckless homicide, intentional homicide, recklessly endangering safety. He was also 17 at the time so the gun he had wasn’t even legal for him to have. What I want to know is…why was he being chased? He’s running around like a soldier in urban combat waving a rifle around. Would he have been chased if he wasn’t swinging his AR-15 around like a dipshit? I honestly don’t know much more than that. It feels like he went out his way because he wanted to get some.
Precisely why it was such an exquisitely bad idea to allow him there in the first place. This is why, historically, frontline soldiers were always 16-25 and gung-ho. Someone needed to be the adult in the room and tell all of those assholes to go home.
A 17 yo didn't need to have an AR-15 and be at the scene. He was clearly out of his element, not mature enough to be "helping" or whatever he thought he was doing, and not a trained soldier or law enforcement. However, I haven't seen any video or still photos of him "waving a rifle around" or "swinging it around like a dipshit" until the point he was turning to engage his attackers or defend himself. In the pictures and video I have seen of him before the incident and after when he approached the officers to report what happened, he was carrying it forward, pointed down, and in a non-combative posture. The 4 people he shot or shot at: the first was chasing him, after the compiled video shows the chaser hiding behind a car and jumping out to chase him; the second kicked him; the third hit him with a skateboard; the fourth pointed a gun at him.
One thing that stood out from the videos: the kid appeared to have been trained with weapons and had fairly good discipline about actually pulling the trigger. He didn't hit any bystanders he wasn't aiming at, he didn't fire until directly under attack and, as Rush says, was in control of the muzzle at all times (on the videos, at least). His presence there WITH the rifle was a bad idea; it doesn't appear that he was careless or trigger happy as a gun user, though.
It sounds to me like the water is muddy enough to provide enough doubt to prevent a murder conviction. That’s all the defense has to do to keep him out of jail.
Self-defense hinges on reasonableness, and it's just fundamentally unreasonable to travel to an area of active civil unrest, where a curfew was in place, and play grabass with a rifle. I also don't consider it particularly good handling of a weapon to hear a gunshot and respond by shooting a completely separate unarmed person.
https://globalnews.ca/news/8351999/rittenhouse-shooting-trial-witnesses/ So far, I haven't really seen a prosecution witness give testimony that would favour the prosecution's case. All have suggested that the guys who were shot were violent and aggressive, and made the first move. Let's hope there isn't a riot when this kid is found not guilty.
Haven’t been watching but I hear his defense attorney are not up to par either but the prosecution is blowing it.
After the 1979 concert for The Who, how is "people getting crushed to death" not a higher priority for every concert, ever? I don't understand why there is still general admission / no reserved seating on the floor at concerts. Such a preventable, senseless way to die. https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/06/us/what-is-the-astroworld-festival-intl/index.html