Hodad

That was a one of his better speeches. It's shocking- and damning- that there is "another side" of this argument.

Maybe, but will you have the integrity to admit that you were pushing batshit crazy conspiracy theories that didn't come true? I won't hold my breath. Shame, accountability and integrity are in short supply in some camps.

Yep, quantity means quality. That's how you know McDonalds makes the best burger around. I suppose we'll see if you have any integrity or not shortly. Because there is no plan or attempt by Democrats to suspend the election. That is the craziest shit I've heard in a long time.

You are truly delusional. What will you say when none of this comes to pass? Will come back and own it, or weasel away?

It's not simple. It's simplistic. I've explained it to you. The source you trust for numbers has explained it to you. Anyone else can explain it to you, but we can't understand it for you. You don't have a definition. Nor are you qualified to define it. Stop embarrassing yourself and leave that definition to the medical community (or supermarkets) whatever "authoritative" source you put your faith in. In this case, they all agree. Pfizer didn't "acknowledge" anything. The lack of testing on transmission was well known and established before the first public vaccine rollouts, but if you can reduce the viral load and prevent or reduce symptoms like coughing and sneezing you will, of course, reduce transmission. And, of course, the vaccines did reduce transmission. You realize that you're not linking to things when you underline them, right? That you've cited no evidence to support your erroneous claims. I know you think more highly of your personal opinions that those of all the medical authorities on the planet, but even with those delusions one would think it prudent to provide evidence if you want to contradict medical authorities like the: CDC NEJM BMJ No, Jenny McCarthy, they're not "jokes." But they are also not serious side effects. The vaccines are safe and effective and every medical body in the world backs that up. That's why we're still using them. You've seriously got to stop getting your medical advice from YouTube videos and hack sites. It's exhausting.

This is pure fiction. Perhaps we should stick to facts. Yes, everyone should vaccinate. The vaccines offer protection to everyone at every age strata, but even those at lower risk of dying themselves should vaccinate in order to curb community spread. Sure, 20-year-old is less to die from COVID, but they sure can spread it. They can surely kill Grandma. The vaccines make them less likely to catch it, less likely to be hospitalized, less likely to die and less likely to infect someone else. They are safe and effective. There is no downside outside of conspiracy nonsense. This is, again, pure fiction. Study after study demonstrated the efficacy of the vaccines--especially against the early variants against which they were formulated, though also offering substantial protection against the variations that followed. I know you don't trust medical journals or medical organizations, or health agencies or doctors or pharmacists or researchers or drug companies--basically anyone who can authoritatively speak to the subject-- but what you're saying is just plain wrong. Again, false. The death rates are not the same over the whole population for the whole time. They are close within your artificial, post-herd-immunity time box lacking variable control. And without controlling for variables like age you won't even get close to a judgment on efficacy. You know who has all of that data? The same source from which you trust the numbers. Also the same source and page which explains to you that: Between August 29, 2022 and September 25, 2022 , unvaccinated cases were 3 times more likely to be hospitalized and 5 times more likely to die from their illness, compared to cases with a completed primary vaccine series. During the same 4-week period, unvaccinated cases were 3 times more likely to be hospitalized and 5 times more likely to die from their illness, compared to cases with a completed primary vaccine series and 1 or more additional doses. Is that sinking in yet? They are not telling you the truth when it's convenient for you and then lying to you when it's inconvenient. They just understand statistics and know their data. Read the notes. It's not magic. They are controlling for age to get at the actual rates and efficacy. This is a massive Gish gallop and most of it appears to be pulled straight out of your ass or some weird chain email. "They" is apparently everyone in the conspiracy that is out to get you. No point getting into any of these tangents when you can't accept the plain facts on efficacy. For question 2 that is actually a good question. It's a line I've copied and pasted here multiple times. I didn't even notice that in this particular snip the numbers were omitted. That's my bad. -- They aren't rewriting the page with each new tranche of data. The numbers are populated by formula that is fed as the data comes in. They just changed their methodology (not for the first time) and the code that updates the page isn't in sync with the new data. I linked you one of the archived pages above with the data in place. But yes, the statement does make sense because they control for age. One individual may be in a different risk strata than another individual, but both may be many times less likely to die if they are vaccinated. You can take a look at age differentiation here. (This is US data. We don't have the same enviable vaccination rate as Canada, but hopefully you will agree that aside from detectable levels of maple syrup in our blood, Canadians and Americans are biologically indistinct).

Two very different things. Voters elect the electors. The electors (hypothetically) vote based on the voters who elected them, but they're not always required to do so. That's different than the partisan state legislature ignoring the voters and choosing their own electors. Yes, it's a stupid system and it never seems sillier than when trying to explain it. Like the episode of Friends in which Joey is practicing to host a game show called "Bamboozled." FWIW, I think there are actually a few states that split electors versus awarding them winner takes all.

No, faithless electors are not breaking the law, but they are breaking the trust of their party. Honestly, that we still utilize actual, human electors casting votes is probably the silliest aspect of this already archaic system. FWIW, I think I could name all of those actors as well as a couple of their most notable projects.

You don't know the definition of a vaccine. Full stop. That is why you, an inexpert layperson, continually contradict every medical authority on the planet in making this erroneous claim. Hell, you tried some weeks back to tell us that that the annual flu vaccine isn't a vaccine--citing supermarket ads as evidence (when even the supermarkets identify it as a vaccine). The reason that doctors, pharmacists, manufacturers, researchers, journals and every medical organization on the planet refer to the COVID vaccines as vaccines is because they are vaccines. The fact that you want to contradict them with whimsy and supermarket flyers if farking mind boggling. And whatever delusions of grandeur make you think that you are qualified to contradict an entire field of study and redefine vaccines for yourself is something you should probably work out with a therapist. There is a pattern. It's your continued abuse and misuse of statistics. You are at least looking at a sort of rate now, but you're artificially timeboxing it to a set of conditions that will only reinforce your biases--whether you are aware of that or not. I have to think that Canadians are generally reasonable people, open to research, science and expertise, because the nation's vaccine response was rapid and very successful. Canada itself is overwhelmingly vaccinated, which provides significant protection to the unvaccinated free riders. But more importantly, your timebox of the whole population does not control for obvious variables-even ignoring age. To explain why that is problematic, in Canada during the time period you want to examine, nearly 99% of people aged 80+ are fully vaccinated, And the other 50-year+ age groups aren't far behind. So it's a scenario in which the most vulnerable people are also the vaccinated people. A vaccinated 70-year-old is more likely to be hospitalized or to die than an unvaccinated 20 year old. You look at the raw numbers (or even your proportions) and incorrectly assess that the vaccines don't help, but you're doing it wrong. Apply some critical thinking. An unvaccinated 70-year-old is much more likely to be hospitalized and to die than a vaccinated 70-year-old. And the same is true for a 20-year-old. The total vaccinated population is disproportionately at higher risk, and the unvaccinated population is disproportionately at lower risk. To evaluate vaccine efficacy you'd want to compare like to like. -- And compounding your problem are the infection rates. Young people (at low default risk and making up the bulk of the unvaccinated) are infected at much higher rates--the case count goes up so they are overrepresented in a view of the whole population. And I'm not going to hold it against you that you don't understand all of this on your own, but please have the humility to respect the authorities that do. Again, the authoritative source from which you get your numbers tells you this on the exact same page: From August 29, 2022 to September 25, 2022, compared to fully vaccinated cases, unvaccinated cases were times more likely to be hospitalized and times more likely to die as a result of their illness. They are not confused. They are not lying to you. They are not part of some conspiracy. They simply know the data better than you do. For you to latch on to the numbers that you mistakenly think support your argument and then to casually dismiss the explanation and analysis of that data from the same exact source is something you should be talking over with a therapist. You are wrong on each of those points, just regurgitating bullshit you took in from somewhere other than a qualified source. No vaccine can stop a virus from entering the body, but they certainly do alter the way the body reacts to that invader to reduce spread of disease within the body, which in turn reduces symptoms, which in turn reduces risk of transmission to others. That's the nature of vaccines, including the COVID vaccines. You are contradicting the CDC, PHAC, the Mayo Clinic and every other health and medical authority on the planet. Vaccines do reduce transmission, they do reduce hospitalizations, they do reduce serious complications and they do reduce death. Again, they are not lying to you or part of some conspiracy. They are just MUCH better at doing their jobs than some random dude on the internet, no matter how grand his delusions. If you want to criticize the vaccines for being less effective against the mutated strains, fine. They still improve outcomes against the variants, but as one would expect, they are somewhat less effective. I'd like to see you actually consume and learn from trusted, verifiable and authoritative sources of information, so that you stop regurgitating politically motivated misinformation that has the side effect of killing people. And, FWIW, I don't think you know how to STFU, or you would have a long time ago. Epps believed and repeated all of Trump's "big lie" nonsense. That whole crowd did. And yes, he's on video, linked here multiple times by your fellow conspiracy theorists claiming that they should enter the Capitol peacefully. No, you don't. You have wild speculation and a vivid imagination--and apparently an inability to ingest evidence that explicitly contradicts your conspiracy.

Yes, it's a vaccine. Yes, vaccines reduce transmission. Yes, they reduce hospitalization. Yes, they reduce death. These aren't matters of opinion. These are known, established facts that you can find in any medical journal or authoritative agency-or even through your own analysis (well, maybe not your analysis, but any capable person). And when you say these absurd things you're just making a clown of yourself. It's flat-Earth territory, where you can see- literally see- the evidence that proves you wrong and still can't manage to admit it. Oy. Do you really think you're going to convince people that the public claims and exhortations of the President of the United States of America -- the most powerful person on the planet--are in any way comparable to those of some random dude in a crowd who simply repeats the president? It's nonsense. It's absurd. You're just clowning yourself again. Much like yourself, Ray Epps is a victim of misinformation. The greater sins by far lie with those influential who are suckering you. You haven't any evidence, let alone video, that Epps is anything other than what he (and all available evidence) indicates he is: just a MAGA kook from Arizona. Your flights of fancy are not evidence. Nope. Spinning wild yarns is your turf, though I'd encourage you to stick to harmless diversions like fantasy and sci-fi instead of cheap political fan fiction.

To me there's quite a big disparity between BLM and the Jan 6 insurrections. Obviously, rioters should be punished in a nation of laws. But even then, not all riots are created equal. I have zero sympathy for rioters in Philly after the Eagles won the super bowl. That's just wanton destruction. But I do have sympathy for an oppressed people whose protests against injustice sometimes included violent elements. -- Don't you have a soft spot in your heart for the Boston Tea Partiers, who destroyed the property of a "private" business in defiance of an oppressive government? Whoever is on tape there is welcome to his opinion, but I don't Jan 6 has been blown out of proportion. Groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers had talked loudly and openly about violence, about civil war, about bloodshed, about dying for the cause--about killing Pence and Pelosi. What happens if a group of those men corners Pence or Pelosi on that day of lawless violence? I think the mob mentality ends in murder--and specifically murder to secure for Trump the office he couldn't maintain through democratic means.

I've been a registered independent for most of my voting life, primarily because I think party politics are poison to democracy--and with every passing year that opinion is more validated. I'm socially liberal and economically literate, and from my perspective the Democrats haven't changed or moved as much as re-messaged. There are fewer "Blue Dog" democrats and probably more (relative) progressives, but the bulk of the party is still pretty moderate. In the rest of the world the Democrats would be the conservative party. We don't have an actual liberal party in the US. There's a lot to unpack in your post--it's sort of a broad indictment-- but if you break it down to a few of the specific policies, what do you see as being radically different? Or what, particularly, do you think isn't working? Presidents have a limited amount of control over the economy, but they definitely can have an effect. Clinton doesn't get all the credit for his great run, but he also managed it effectively and- more importantly- didn't screw it up. And when you look all the broad indicators of the economy -- GDP, jobs, stocks and deficit/debt -- pretty consistently fare better under Democratic presidents. And it's not close. So what are they getting wrong? Top marginal tax rates are about the same Clinton, Obama and Biden (proposed) so where is the wrong turn? How are they not working for Americans? Or the abortion thing- there's no real change there, it's a change in message but everyone who supports a woman's right to choose thinks legal, safe and rare is right. Nobody says "rare" anymore because it creates an unnecessary stigma, but nobody (and I mean nobody) wants abortion to become more common. It's (typically) stressful, inconvenient, expensive--and like any medical procedure it includes some risk. So nobody wants anything but rare--and the way to make them rare is through sex education and contraception. And indeed the rate has declined significantly and steadily since Roe. Once you get past the sort of ingrained dogma and tribalism I think Democrats clearly have the winning economic record, and their social policies are aligned with mine (and I think favor freedom and fairness for individuals) so they get my vote far more often. I don't see the radical movement you mention, but I'd explain that by the rise of niche media.

Basically all of the facts you offered. I believe you got her age wrong, you definitely got her sentence wrong, but materially and meaningfully, you either didn't know or deliberately misrepresented what she had done. You said that what Epps had done was worse that what she had done and attempted to use that to support the conspiracy theory. When, in fact she, was part of the mob inside the capitol and he was not. That fact absolutely destroys the comparison you were attempting to make. It's been said many times--and you've quoted it many times yourself--people who were on the grounds but didn't storm inside the capitol are largely unpunished. People who went inside are going to prison. -- Both she and Epps are being treated in a way that is consistent with everyone else.

Are we at the "Just throw shit at the wall and hope something sticks!" phase? Was the protest at Pelosi's office (not the Capitol, BTW) a violent attempt to overthrow the government? (That's not hyperbole, BTW, it's the literal consequence of killing Pelsoi, Pence etc. and negating the outcome of the election.) How many people died as a result of the climate protest? None? So these events have very little in common and would be rightfully handled differently? Okay then.

I would disagree to some extent. He's a conventional Republican, or an actual Republican of the Nixon, Reagan, Bush variety. Trump is truly the RINO. He and his inexplicable cult of personality did effectively take over the Republican party, alienating principled Republicans like Brooks. If the inmates continue running the asylum in the GOP, Brooks may indeed become a RINO. Or he may abandon the party altogether if it no longer represents his views, as other principled conservatives have done. But Brooks status is currently TBD as the civil war inside the GOP shakes out. But, honestly, if Trump's brazen parade of inexcusable behavior hasn't lost him the populist base then things aren't looking good for traditional conservatives.

Nah, Tucker is just the favorite megaphone boosting conspiracy nonsense right now. As expected, your facts aren't correct. This woman, Pam Hemphill of Idaho did, in fact, enter the capital. You can see the evidence in the complaint. What's worse, this wasn't her first Rodeo. She claims to have also broken into the state capital in Boise. She's an Alex Jones nutter type and frankly got off lightly. But to circle back to the point, this is totally consistent with what we've generally seen so far. People who stormed into the capital get charged, people who were in the crowd outside do not. Can I assume that you'll stop holding her up as a contrast to Epps? To the earlier point about Tucker-- and maybe it wasn't him, but you listented to someone of his ilk who told you that Ray Epps was an FBI plant and blah blah, and to convince you they told you about this woman. "If a 60-something grandmother is being prosecuted for "parading" and Epps isn't being prosecuted then it's evidence of special treatment." When in fact, as I've said before, there's nothing unusual about the picketing and parading charge and indeed that was a plea down from more serious charges. Whoever it was that you were listening to, they told you lies and manipulated you to further their conspiracy theory. The way you fight back against being manipulated by misinformation is to turn it off. Turn it off.

There was a time when I would have thought that conspirators planning to kidnap and murder any person -let alone a state governor- would be indefensible. But political forums have disabused me of that notion. And of course, we see here again that some people will defend *anything* if it suits their politics. There is no right and wrong for them, there is only tribal identify.

It's called prosecutorial restraint. You think they should put everyone who passed the barricade in prison? I wouldn't mind, but I think it's reasonable to reserve serious consequences for the more serious offenders. If you want me to speak to the issue of the 65 year old grandma you'll have to identify her. I don't mainline Tucker's bullshit.

Have you not followed the Stewart Rhodes Oathkeeper trial for seditious conspiracy? Pre planned well in advance, with documentation to support. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2022/10/20/us/politics/oath-keepers-jan-6-trial.amp.html

I rejectt the premise. The "MSM" thinks he's and idiot, but in terms of "a pass" he seems to have been treated as like transgressors by the law. The only reason the media has any reason at all to talk about Epps is because of the cockamamie conspiracy theory. Otherwise he's just another red hat atop an empty head in the crowd of many.

It says in the quote you've quoted multiple times that that violation- going onto the grounds- has largely gone unpunished. I thought you understood what it meant, but just to be clear they are not saying that it has largely gone unpunished in Epps case. They are stating, as I did, that people who went on the grounds but not into the capital have largely gone unpunished. Meaning Epps is being treated like everyone else who didn't enter the building. Also, I believe you misunderstand Shroyer's legal situation, which began prior to Jan 6. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/case-multi-defendant/file/1428181/download&ved=2ahUKEwiPy9-P0IH7AhUxlIkEHVz2AMUQFnoECAwQAQ&usg=AOvVaw0QNp9F4SceTYPJV0JtDV6E

I am a bit confused, because the Trump apologists have spent the last 7 years telling us that "no" sometimes means "yes"-- whether it comes to women or the electorate. But more seriously, people are going to prison for planning a pre-meditated, violent insurrection, and you honestly believe that the best your twisted version of the FBI could come up with was an unknown dude from Arizona with no organization and no influence? That makes sense in your mind?

You could indeed accuse me of being a person who knows that the Republican-led Senate Intelligence committee report established Russian "collusion" and that the COVID vaccines reduce transmission. Both of those things are factually true. And yet you've provided no evidence. Hm... He did not, in fact, cross the Rubicon. He did not enter the capitol and was indeed able to turn aside from that ruinous course. Where I see a dipshit political hobbyist with little brains and less courage you see that the FBI asked some random dude with no network or influence to transform a peaceful gathering into a murderous mob. Because Epps is apparently the world's most charismatic and influential man. While you're weaving a conspiracy of wild speculation and zero evidence, you might as well wrap in the Illuminati and the lizard people.

That video is weird. -- At any rate, both of the other guys you mention entered the capitol. People who entered got prosecuted. General rabble rousers outside did not.

Wow, that is a deeply paranoid group. -- Given how many had already planned to storm the building with violence I wonder if they are changing "Fed" because he added "peacefully?"