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Shame Boy
Mar 2, 2010

FAUXTON posted:

To y'all thinking Jeb isn't too bad: Check out the 2000 debates between W and Gore. GWB seemed well-spoken and reasonable too. Blame 9/11 all you want for him falling off whatever wagon he was on, but now we are dealing with the party that took the Bush years and made them orthodoxy. Jeb will be just as bad, but with a better grasp of language.

As someone who came of age in Bush's Florida, please accept my warmest die-in-a-fire to everyone who thinks he's "not that bad."

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Elephant Ambush
Nov 13, 2012

...We sholde spenden more time together. What sayest thou?
Nap Ghost
Holy gently caress how does anyone think that a Republican of any stripe is an OK person to vote for?

Oh wait, poster Chris Christie is paranoid about his precious murder tools.

"Well, you see, this bigoted fascist oppressor isn't all that bad because there's this one pet issue I have and he caters to it. Also the world revolves around me and my desires and gently caress everyone else" - A child/A Republican voter


vvvvv Where's that Bugs Bunny gif? vvvvv

Elephant Ambush fucked around with this message at 05:05 on Apr 8, 2014

Gyges
Aug 4, 2004

NOW NO ONE
RECOGNIZE HULK

Parallel Paraplegic posted:

As someone who came of age in Bush's Florida, please accept my warmest die-in-a-fire to everyone who thinks he's "not that bad."

He's being graded on the Bush curve, which significantly ups his "quality". Plus in Florida we're currently under the heal of a record setting felon who looks like a serial killer, which also makes him look good.

pig slut lisa
Mar 5, 2012

irl is good


Elephant Ambush posted:

Holy gently caress how does anyone think that a Republican of any stripe is an OK person to vote for?

Oh wait, poster Chris Christie is paranoid about his precious murder tools.

"Well, you see, this bigoted fascist oppressor isn't all that bad because there's this one pet issue I have and he caters to it. Also the world revolves around me and my desires and gently caress everyone else" - A child/A Republican voter

Also the simplistic notion that the current court is "against property rights", despite the fact that there are about a gazillion types of property rights in both tangible and intangible property that have nothing to do with the specific eminent domain issue presented in Kelo, and despite the fact that 4 out of the 9 justices currently on the Court weren't there in 2005.

Chard
Aug 24, 2010




Doorstop posted:

Funny enough, I am a high school Biology teacher, and since I now get evaluated strictly on standardized testing (sucks) I have to adhere my classes really tightly to a set of GLEs that oddly does not include 'alternate theories'. I'm sure it will at some point, but thus far (six years) I've just started my evolution section off by gently making fun of 'I ain't no monkey' idiocy with a good powerpoint over hominid evolution. Since I teach in a pretty lovely place, economically, many of my kids don't come in with a strong, albeit wrong (Creationism), opinion, and they are pretty fascinated by Homo Habilis and Erectus, and think that the Australopithecines are interesting.

It's cool how all it takes to sway young people to question what they've been taught is just literally any other explanation or theory. I think that says a lot about those who cling to any untestable tenets, religious or otherwise; they will always strive to stamp out any dissenting thought, because deep down they fear that they're wrong, and the only thing keeping them in authority is the lack of an alternate interpretation.

VitalSigns
Sep 3, 2011

pig slut lisa posted:

Also the simplistic notion that the current court is "against property rights", despite the fact that there are about a gazillion types of property rights in both tangible and intangible property that have nothing to do with the specific eminent domain issue presented in Kelo, and despite the fact that 4 out of the 9 justices currently on the Court weren't there in 2005.

Yeah but as a white male, I'm not going to be the target of voter suppression ever, nor will I be kidnapped and waterboarded, so I could give a gently caress about the rights of those people.

But there's a 0.00000000000001% chance that my town might sell my land to a developer and give me a no-negotiation cash settlement for it, so I'll take a full court of Antonin Scalias please! :freep:

VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 05:36 on Apr 8, 2014

Dapper Dan
Dec 16, 2004
Probation
Can't post for 3 years!

Elephant Ambush posted:

Holy gently caress how does anyone think that a Republican of any stripe is an OK person to vote for?

Oh wait, poster Chris Christie is paranoid about his precious murder tools.

What I don't get is that it is constantly stated that guns are a defense against a tyrannical government. This is when it comes down to its most basic level, above hunting, above self defense and all other pretenses. Like some high and mighty truth. When in fact, in today's day and age, they'd just drone strike and cruise missile your rear end to hell and back if it ever (read: it will never. This isn't a revolutionary fantasy or any such bullshit like that) came to that.

Guns pretty much mean dick in terms of preventing the American government from going all tyrannical. You'd have to make a case for heat-seeking rocket launchers if you want to defend yourself from the American government. And the people that are stockpiling guns in case a revolution ever comes, I want the American government to protect me from them.

Just eliminate that part of the argument and say you want them for self-defense and hunting. Cut the bullshit, because no 'militia' is ever going to defeat the United States Military (or even deter it) and it is just a far-right wet dream that it would. Welcome to the age of drone warfare, which gives no fucks if you have a pistol or a .50 caliber machine gun. The only thing that does and would deter the US military is killing fellow citizens. And that has nothing to do if we've got guns or not.

Not to mention America has a gun culture going back to pre-colonial times, and the government is never, ever taking your guns. That's a huge paranoid myth to drum up conservative votes contrary to all evidence and logic. Why? Because we've had shooting after shooting after shooting and nothing has ever happened. A psychopath shoots up a movie theater and even common-sense gun laws and laws related to gun ownership and mental illness are shrieked at from every lobbying group and conservative Republican. gently caress, we've even had toddlers getting shot in the double digits in one incident and nothing significant on a national level was ever done. Not even sane measures, which were all opposed by the NRA and conservative politicians pissing their pants that the NRA would give them the boot and label them anti-gun. That's all the proof you need.

Dapper Dan fucked around with this message at 06:31 on Apr 8, 2014

Shame Boy
Mar 2, 2010

Dapper Dan posted:

What I don't get is that it is constantly stated that guns are a defense against a tyrannical government. This is when it comes down to its most basic level, above hunting, above self defense and all other pretenses. Like some high and mighty truth. When in fact, in today's day and age, they'd just drone strike and cruise missile your rear end to hell and back if it ever (read: it will never. This isn't a revolutionary fantasy or any such bullshit like that) came to that.

Guns pretty much mean dick in terms of preventing the American government from going all tyrannical. You'd have to make a case for heat-seeking rocket launchers if you want to defend yourself from the American government. And the people that are stockpiling guns in case a revolution ever comes, I want the American government to protect me from them.

Just eliminate that part of the argument and say you want them for self-defense and hunting. Cut the bullshit, because no 'militia' is ever going to defeat the United States Military (or even deter it) and it is just a far-right wet dream that it would. Welcome to the age of drone warfare, which gives no fucks if you have a pistol or a .50 caliber machine gun. The only thing that does and would deter the US military is killing fellow citizens. And that has nothing to do if we've got guns or not.

Not to mention America has a gun culture going back to pre-colonial times, and the government is never, ever taking your guns. That's a huge paranoid myth to drum up conservative votes contrary to all evidence and logic. Why? Because we've had shooting after shooting after shooting and nothing has ever happened. A psychopath shoots up a movie theater and even common-sense gun laws and laws related to gun ownership and mental illness are shrieked at from every lobbying group and conservative Republican. gently caress, we've even had toddlers getting shot in the double digits in one incident and nothing significant on a national level was ever done. Not even sane measures, which were all opposed by the NRA and conservative politicians pissing their pants that the NRA would give them the boot and label them anti-gun. That's all the proof you need.

I've seen people argue that other modern countries have had particularly strong armies yet armed overthrows were still possible. I mean disregarding the fact that the US military is like several orders of magnitude larger and more powerful and more technologically advanced than any of those countries ever were, I just don't see your average gun nut stockpiler waging guerrilla warfare for any length of time. In America, we've pretty much had it burned into our brains that we are to be comfortable before all else, and civil war is most definitely uncomfortable. No amount of tactical camouflage pants can fix that.

Also that and any kind of organizing would be socialist.

Time_pants
Jun 25, 2012

Now sauntering to the ring, please welcome the lackadaisical style of the man who is always doing something...

Spatula City posted:

Wow, every single goddamn teacher should leave Kansas as soon as they can.
Way ahead of you.

Assepoester
Jul 18, 2004
Probation
Can't post for 10 years!
Melman v2

SavageBastard posted:

I'm not sure where you got this from but it has traditionally been uncouth to talk about money amongst the upper class because they were stuck up waspy shitheads who wanted to PRETEND they were so rich they didn't care about money. The reason that CEO salaries have skyrocketed sure as hell isn't because "after a certain point money doesn't matter." Most of the research I've seen points to people WITHOUT money caring less about money as a measure of self worth and being more generous in their day to day dealings with it than richer folk.
http://www.voxeu.org/article/money-makes-people-right-wing-and-inegalitarian

http://www.andrewoswald.com/docs/SentVotingLottery12014PowdthaveeOs.pdf

"Why are you right-wing, left-wing, or in the middle? You probably believe that you made a genuine, calm, and ethical choice. But what were the deep causal forces upon those political preferences?

The scientific roots of people’s political views are poorly understood. One possibility (View 1) is that individuals’ attitudes to politics and redistribution are motivated by deeply moral views. Another possibility (View 2) – and this is perhaps some economists’ presumption -- is that voting choices are made out of self-interest and then come to be embroidered in the mind with a form of moral rhetoric. Testing between these two alternative theories is important intellectually. It is also inherently difficult. That is because so many of our attitudes as humans could stem from early in life and are close to being, in the eyes of the researcher, a ‘person fixed-effect’.

In most data sets, rich people typically lean right. The fact that high income and right-wing views are positively correlated in a cross-section has been repeatedly documented in quantitative social science (recently, for example, by Brooks and Brady 1999 and Gelman et al. 2007 in US data, and by Evans and Tilley 2012 in British data). An analogous result is reported, using quite different kinds of methods, in Karabarbounis (2011). Economists such as Di Tella and MacCulloch (2005) have also studied political views and their implications, and other influences have been examined using causal evidence on political views (such as in Oswald and Powdthavee 2010 and Erikson and Stoker 2011).

Fine – so the rich favour the right not the left. The difficulty is to know how to interpret this famous correlation of political science. Is it actually cause-and-effect, and if so in what direction? It would be nice to run a real randomised experiment where a treatment group are showered with cash, but that would be too expensive for social-science funding agencies. Hence it is necessary to look elsewhere for inspiration.

New evidence from the lottery

Our new study, Powdthavee and Oswald (2014), tries to get to the bottom of the issue. By looking at lottery winners through time, it provides longitudinal evidence consistent with the second, and some might argue more jaundiced, view, namely the View 2 of human beings. We exploit a panel data set in which people’s political attitudes are recorded annually. Our work builds upon an interesting cross-sectional examination by Doherty et al. (2007), which we learned about late in our own research.

In our data set, many hundreds of individuals serendipitously receive significant lottery windfalls. We find that the larger is their lottery win, the greater is that person’s subsequent tendency, after controlling for other influences, to switch their political views from left to right. We also provide evidence that lottery winners are more sympathetic to the belief that ordinary people ‘already get a fair share of society’s wealth’.

We are able to observe people before and after a win. Access to longitudinal information gives us advantages denied to most previous researchers on this topic. One reason this is important is because it seems plausible that personality might determine both the number of lottery tickets bought and the political attitudes of the person, and this might thereby lead to a possible spurious association between winning and right-leaning views. We provide, among other kinds of evidence, a simple graphical demonstration that winners disproportionately lean to the right having previously not been right-wing supporters.

The formal study draws upon a nationally representative sample from the British population. In our regression equations we focus particularly upon a sub-sample of people (a fairly large proportion, given the lottery’s popularity in the UK) who have ever had a lottery win. Within this group, we are especially interested in the observed longitudinal changes in political allegiance of the bigger winners compared to the smaller winners. Our key information stems from 541 observations on lottery wins larger than £500 and up to approximately £200,000. Figure 1 gives a flavour of our results; fixed-effects equations are given in the formal paper and have more tightly defined error bars.

The consequences of winning even a modest sum of money are fairly large – certainly a number of percentage points extra on your chances of favouring a Mrs Thatcher or a Ronald Regan. Thus money makes people right-wing and inegalitarian. Perhaps even you."

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!



Dapper Dan posted:

What I don't get is that it is constantly stated that guns are a defense against a tyrannical government. This is when it comes down to its most basic level, above hunting, above self defense and all other pretenses. Like some high and mighty truth. When in fact, in today's day and age, they'd just drone strike and cruise missile your rear end to hell and back if it ever (read: it will never. This isn't a revolutionary fantasy or any such bullshit like that) came to that.

Guns pretty much mean dick in terms of preventing the American government from going all tyrannical. You'd have to make a case for heat-seeking rocket launchers if you want to defend yourself from the American government. And the people that are stockpiling guns in case a revolution ever comes, I want the American government to protect me from them.
Leaving aside the nebulous identity issues which are probably the majority of them, I think the scenarios here are usually 'in the breakdown of law and order which is always just over the horizon, I need to be able to protect my family and/or form a sectarian militia in my subdevelopment.'

Dapper Dan
Dec 16, 2004
Probation
Can't post for 3 years!

Parallel Paraplegic posted:

I've seen people argue that other modern countries have had particularly strong armies yet armed overthrows were still possible. I mean disregarding the fact that the US military is like several orders of magnitude larger and more powerful and more technologically advanced than any of those countries ever were, I just don't see your average gun nut stockpiler waging guerrilla warfare for any length of time. In America, we've pretty much had it burned into our brains that we are to be comfortable before all else, and civil war is most definitely uncomfortable. No amount of tactical camouflage pants can fix that.

Also that and any kind of organizing would be socialist.

Yeah, it is really a terrible argument. There's really no nation comparable to the US in terms of military and technological might that's undergone a civil war by mostly its citizenry alone and won. In the modern era, Syria is the closest parallel and even with a crappy military they're winning. And Syria doesn't have fleets of drones with infrared cameras ready to bomb the poo poo out of their civilians.

And pretty much. Americans like their comfort. Revolutions haven't been our thing for over two hundred years. Gradual change (if any change at all) is the way we do things. Not to make things too uncomfortable for us.

God forbid you touch Medicare/Medicaid or Social Security though!

Nessus posted:

Leaving aside the nebulous identity issues which are probably the majority of them, I think the scenarios here are usually 'in the breakdown of law and order which is always just over the horizon, I need to be able to protect my family and/or form a sectarian militia in my subdevelopment.'

I forgot about the post-apocalyptic fantasies. The closest thing that history points to us are the Dark Ages after the fall of Rome. But there's been a ton of debate that the Dark Ages really weren't all that Dark. For society to break down in regards to the complete collapse of central government as well as local government, along with the police/National Guard for protection, we'd need 'The Road' (Super volcanoes, Asteroids, Nuclear Winter, Black Death and Spanish Flu amped up to 11, etc.) levels of cataclysm. And would you really want to live through that? The last time something like that happened, there were around 5-10k humans left.

Even the severe changes with Global Warming won't be so apocalyptic to cause a complete destruction of society (don't get me wrong, that's no reason to not and try and prevent it). So that doesn't hold weight with me either. Both are fantasies, just of different stripes.

Dapper Dan fucked around with this message at 09:05 on Apr 8, 2014

SnakePlissken
Dec 31, 2009

by zen death robot

BiggerBoat posted:

No, I get all that.

I just think Jeb is much more qualified for the office than George could ever dream of being and at the very least isn't a walking, retarded punch line like his idiot brother. I even said I wouldn't vote for him. But also that by modern Republican standards, he fits the bill as a reasonable GOP candidate. I thought I made my point clear but maybe not.

I haven't watched Stone's movie or read about their lives much, but I always felt that JEB was the chosen one originally. W's presidency was never part of the master plan, was my impression. It was supposed to have been JEB all along.

JT Jag
Aug 30, 2009

#1 Jaguars Sunk Cost Fallacy-Haver

Parallel Paraplegic posted:

As someone who came of age in Bush's Florida, please accept my warmest die-in-a-fire to everyone who thinks he's "not that bad."
As someone who also came of age in Bush's Florida, he really doesn't look that bad compared to Rick Scott.

Jeb and Christie are the only two Republican candidates who I think are a threat in the general. Jeb because he can win Florida and that alone makes it a race, and Christie because he's a good speaker and not crazy. Christie can't win a primary though.

America Inc.
Nov 22, 2013

I plan to live forever, of course, but barring that I'd settle for a couple thousand years. Even 500 would be pretty nice.

SnakePlissken posted:

I haven't watched Stone's movie or read about their lives much, but I always felt that JEB was the chosen one originally. W's presidency was never part of the master plan, was my impression. It was supposed to have been JEB all along.
Theodore Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy weren't originally the Chosen Ones among their siblings either, but they turned into great presidents compared to GWB. GWB served a purpose to those who controlled him and was the end result of a decade of behind-the-scenes planning.

pig slut lisa
Mar 5, 2012

irl is good


Dapper Dan posted:

What I don't get is that it is constantly stated that guns are a defense against a tyrannical government. This is when it comes down to its most basic level, above hunting, above self defense and all other pretenses. Like some high and mighty truth. When in fact, in today's day and age, they'd just drone strike and cruise missile your rear end to hell and back if it ever (read: it will never. This isn't a revolutionary fantasy or any such bullshit like that) came to that.

Guns pretty much mean dick in terms of preventing the American government from going all tyrannical. You'd have to make a case for heat-seeking rocket launchers if you want to defend yourself from the American government. And the people that are stockpiling guns in case a revolution ever comes, I want the American government to protect me from them.

Just eliminate that part of the argument and say you want them for self-defense and hunting. Cut the bullshit, because no 'militia' is ever going to defeat the United States Military (or even deter it) and it is just a far-right wet dream that it would. Welcome to the age of drone warfare, which gives no fucks if you have a pistol or a .50 caliber machine gun. The only thing that does and would deter the US military is killing fellow citizens. And that has nothing to do if we've got guns or not.

Not to mention America has a gun culture going back to pre-colonial times, and the government is never, ever taking your guns. That's a huge paranoid myth to drum up conservative votes contrary to all evidence and logic. Why? Because we've had shooting after shooting after shooting and nothing has ever happened. A psychopath shoots up a movie theater and even common-sense gun laws and laws related to gun ownership and mental illness are shrieked at from every lobbying group and conservative Republican. gently caress, we've even had toddlers getting shot in the double digits in one incident and nothing significant on a national level was ever done. Not even sane measures, which were all opposed by the NRA and conservative politicians pissing their pants that the NRA would give them the boot and label them anti-gun. That's all the proof you need.

A fun game is to tell people like this that you agree that their guns are a vital line of defense against government overreach because, after all, America's military has a piss-poor record against lightly armed insurgencies over the past several decades. Then you get to watch them twist themselves into pretzels trying to explain why they could defeat the military, but wait America's military is the greatest thing in the world and can't be beat, but wait...

empty whippet box
Jun 9, 2004

by Fluffdaddy

pig slut lisa posted:

A fun game is to tell people like this that you agree that their guns are a vital line of defense against government overreach because, after all, America's military has a piss-poor record against lightly armed insurgencies over the past several decades. Then you get to watch them twist themselves into pretzels trying to explain why they could defeat the military, but wait America's military is the greatest thing in the world and can't be beat, but wait...

The sand people were cheating, of course. But with Obama in the white house the military is an extension of the usurper, and thus it is ok to cheat.

Sephiroth_IRA
Mar 31, 2010

joepinetree posted:

As far as I know, none of the currently implemented school voucher systems in the US allow kids to choose another public school to attend. The way they've been implemented is that families under a certain income threshold can choose to take their kids out of their local public school and get a voucher to enroll them at a private one.

Awhile back I know but my guess is if they ended the current system and gave kids vouchers to attend any public school they wanted it would be like desegregation all over again. "YOU MEAN THEY GONNA LET A BUNCH OF N... URBAN YOUTH IN MY DAUGHTER'S SCHOOL!? AH HELL NO! WE MOVED OUT HERE TO GET AWAY FROM THAT!"

greatn
Nov 15, 2006

by Lowtax
We were driving down Vaughn road in Montgomery Alabama and noticed just a huge row of private schools founded all in 1954 and 1955. Were like "I wonder why all these schools opened around the same time?" Then were like "Oh! OOOOHHHHHHHH..."

anonumos
Jul 14, 2005

Fuck it.
I moved to Florida in time for Charlie Crist's administration, but I paid particular attention to Jeb's reign, because my folks were here and the whole hanging chad bullshit. Sad to say, Voldemorte [Rick Scott] is running everything into the ground here, and never have I seen anyone so blatantly loot-and-pillage. He makes anyone else look good.

That said, if Jeb gets any power outside of Florida, I weep for this country.

Sephiroth_IRA
Mar 31, 2010

greatn posted:

We were driving down Vaughn road in Montgomery Alabama and noticed just a huge row of private schools founded all in 1954 and 1955. Were like "I wonder why all these schools opened around the same time?" Then were like "Oh! OOOOHHHHHHHH..."

lol, I really need to look into what happened in my area around that time.

zoux
Apr 28, 2006

Ughhhh We are so going to have open carry in this state soon. I watched a bit of this hearing, these people are loving nuts. I don't get how goddamn gunrights are peoples' #1 political issue, and they are completely ignorant of economic, education and other huge issues that affect their day to day lives more than the fantasy that some dude is going to kick down their suburban door in the middle of the night to murder their families for no reason.

greatn
Nov 15, 2006

by Lowtax
I feel like I'm more fine with open carry than concealed carry. At least with open carry you know who to avoid.

zoux
Apr 28, 2006

greatn posted:

I feel like I'm more fine with open carry than concealed carry. At least with open carry you know who to avoid.

Nah, as much as they tout themselves as only the most chivalrous of knights who would never harm an innocent soul, being in a grocery store and seeing some numbnuts walking around with a gun on his hip is going to make me very uncomfortable.

Eggplant Squire
Aug 14, 2003


zoux posted:

Ughhhh We are so going to have open carry in this state soon. I watched a bit of this hearing, these people are loving nuts. I don't get how goddamn gunrights are peoples' #1 political issue, and they are completely ignorant of economic, education and other huge issues that affect their day to day lives more than the fantasy that some dude is going to kick down their suburban door in the middle of the night to murder their families for no reason.

I think at this point I'd be willing to just acquiesce on open carry and all that if it meant we could get idiotic single issue voters to start thinking about how economic and social issues are screwing them or people they care about. Gun rights people won that battle anyway since they cultishly care more about that issue than anyone else cares about anything.

Fried Chicken
Jan 9, 2011

Don't fry me, I'm no chicken!
I don't think there is a contradiction between supporting 2nd Amendment rights and recognizing that the current American gun culture is a sick and twisted thing we would be better off without. Go to a gun show and see how much of it is grounded in white fear and outright white supremacism rather than safe and sensible gun ownership as a means to empowerment and it becomes very readily apparent that something is very wrong here. I last went to one in 2007 and there was tons of confederate and nazi stuff around with people pushing copies of the Turner Diaries, incredibly racist anti Muslim stuff, and McVeigh conspiracies. Mixing that kind of fear with weapons is a very dangerous combination, and I feel it is fundamentally at odds with responsible gun ownership. Guns are tools, but means you are taking as a given the possibility that the tools may be used for their intended function - to kill. In which case you had better have a clear mind when you make that decision because that bell cannot be unrung


Here is a decent left wing defense of gun rights that people may find persuasive
http://thatjohnbarnes.blogspot.com/2012/06/if-they-take-away-our-guns-how-will-we.html?m=1

Fried Chicken
Jan 9, 2011

Don't fry me, I'm no chicken!

zoux posted:

Ughhhh We are so going to have open carry in this state soon. I watched a bit of this hearing, these people are loving nuts. I don't get how goddamn gunrights are peoples' #1 political issue, and they are completely ignorant of economic, education and other huge issues that affect their day to day lives more than the fantasy that some dude is going to kick down their suburban door in the middle of the night to murder their families for no reason.

I can't post it now but there is a good Mark Ames article on how people have been supplanting actual empowerment with the perceived empowerment of owning a gun. I find it a very useful view in understanding their passion for the issue. For many it is as fundamental as voting rights are to you - a way to ensure their voice is heard. That breaks down when examines, but that is how they perceive it

Fried Chicken fucked around with this message at 14:50 on Apr 8, 2014

zoux
Apr 28, 2006

Fried Chicken posted:

I can't post it now but there is a good Mark Ames article on how people have been supplanting actual empowerment with the perceived empowerment of owning a gun. I find it a very useful view in understanding that stuff

Oh I understand it, and I'd think it was sad if the activists weren't such smug shitbags.

Old James
Nov 20, 2003

Wait a sec. I don't know an Old James!

Radish posted:

I think at this point I'd be willing to just acquiesce on open carry and all that if it meant we could get idiotic single issue voters to start thinking about how economic and social issues are screwing them or people they care about. Gun rights people won that battle anyway since they cultishly care more about that issue than anyone else cares about anything.

They won't stop at open carry. Next step will be to expand it in to the private sector so they can walk into a church, business, or private home with their gun (rights of the property owner be damned!).

hobbesmaster
Jan 28, 2008

Old James posted:

They won't stop at open carry. Next step will be to expand it in to the private sector so they can walk into a church, business, or private home with their gun (rights of the property owner be damned!).

Most states explicitly delineate which types of businesses you're allowed to carry in.

zoux
Apr 28, 2006

hobbesmaster posted:

Most states explicitly delineate which types of businesses you're allowed to carry in.

Yeah and those are the laws they'll go after next.

Fried Chicken
Jan 9, 2011

Don't fry me, I'm no chicken!

Old James posted:

They won't stop at open carry. Next step will be to expand it in to the private sector so they can walk into a church, business, or private home with their gun (rights of the property owner be damned!).

That would require the SCOTUS to accept a broad scope incorporation interpretation of the 14th amendment. That was one line of argument used in heller vs dc but only Thomas accepted that position, the other 8 were unanimous in rejecting it while accepting the other arguments (on split lines)

An expanded 14th would be really good for liberal aims, but is also intensively anti rich which is why you won't see it

Pirate Radar
Apr 18, 2008

You're not my Ruthie!
You're not my Debbie!
You're not my Sherry!

Fried Chicken posted:

Here is a decent left wing defense of gun rights that people may find persuasive
http://thatjohnbarnes.blogspot.com/2012/06/if-they-take-away-our-guns-how-will-we.html?m=1

See, this I still don't like because it's still reliant on the idea of Americans using guns in armed rebellion against the system. Rather than that, why not just cover how both sides of the debate (consciously or not) use the gun issue as a distraction from the realer causes of violent crime?

woke wedding drone
Jun 1, 2003

by exmarx
Fun Shoe

BiggerBoat posted:

No, I get all that.

I just think Jeb is much more qualified for the office than George could ever dream of being and at the very least isn't a walking, retarded punch line like his idiot brother. I even said I wouldn't vote for him. But also that by modern Republican standards, he fits the bill as a reasonable GOP candidate. I thought I made my point clear but maybe not.

Dubya was no idiot.

-Post-9/11 imperial overreach was systemic, the product of institutional collusion between neocons and their plants in State, Defense, CIA etc. Bush just signed off on it. Gore would have gotten us into Afghanistan and I think it's possible that flagging popularity could have caused him to go into Iraq as well (remember that Clinton did more than anyone else to destroy Iraq pre-Bush)

-Bush is smarter than Obama, and more polished and eloquent than Obama in off-the-cuff situations. Judgments of him as dumb or slow are due entirely to his regional accent and image (which he cultivated masterfully)

-Bush had massive charisma, different than Obama's but still evident, and unprecedented emotional/relational intelligence

Beliefs like yours ("Bush was dumb") will pave the way for someone with his talents to blindside us yet again.

Swan Oat
Oct 9, 2012

I was selected for my skill.
Hasn't a state already gotten rid of laws that prohibit guns from being carried into bars?

Eggplant Squire
Aug 14, 2003


Swan Oat posted:

Hasn't a state already gotten rid of laws that prohibit guns from being carried into bars?

Why yes! North Carolina

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/07/23/4185241/lawmakers-pass-bill-to-allow-concealed.html#.U0QOiXAg3gw

esto es malo
Aug 3, 2006

Don't want to end up a cartoon

In a cartoon graveyard

Welp, polished and eloquent used to describe GWB. I guess I've seen it all.

I think attributing the systematic fleecing of the american public that occurred during his tenure to his own Grand Design is just about on the level of yelling about the president somehow controlling the price of gas via a lever on his desk like the well known political cartoon.

Toph Bei Fong
Feb 29, 2008



zoux posted:

Nah, as much as they tout themselves as only the most chivalrous of knights who would never harm an innocent soul, being in a grocery store and seeing some numbnuts walking around with a gun on his hip is going to make me very uncomfortable.

I've always wondered how this (PURELY HYPOTHETICAL) scenario would play out: I see a guy walking through the parking lot of a grocery store with a rifle slung on his back. Being a patriotic citizen who cares about his fellow human beings, I assume he's up to no good, because who in their right mind would bring a rifle into the grocery store unless they were going to shoot the place up? Feeling a legitimate fear for my safety and the safety of those around me, I walk up and shoot him in the head, then call 911 to say that I've just shot a dangerous gunman who was about to commit a heinous massacre. I place my weapon on the ground, don't resist when the police arrive to inspect the scene, etc. Guy is of course not a mass murderer or spree killer, he's just a guy going to buy some groceries.

What would happen next?

Fake edit: I already know the answer if I'm white the the rifle guy is black, but if we're both white? or if I'm a woman?

Taerkar
Dec 7, 2002

kind of into it, really

Bobby Jindal was on NPR's On Point this morning and was talking up both how "The Republican Party needs to improve (with me at the head)" and how his healthcare plan totally is better than Obamacare, honest.

Among his many fabulous talking points he claimed that allowing health insurance to be bought across state lines would break up the cartels.

Suuuure it will, Bobby. But they'll all be located in Deleware for some strange reason.

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anonumos
Jul 14, 2005

Fuck it.

Spoilers Below posted:

What would happen next?

Fake edit: I already know the answer if I'm white the the rifle guy is black, but if we're both white? or if I'm a woman?

Are you rich or poor? How well-connected is 'rifle guy'?

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