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Samurai Sanders
Nov 4, 2003

Pillbug

VikingofRock posted:

Remind me why everyday people need guns again?
Maybe our gun problems inside our country are just another expression of whatever drives our irresponsible use of military force around the globe. In other words, it's just who we are.

Samurai Sanders fucked around with this message at 01:25 on Oct 25, 2014

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Shageletic
Jul 25, 2007

Zeroisanumber posted:

Reagan also nominated Robert Bork to SCOTUS, and Bork was a frothing religious lunatic.

I'm at least six pages behind, but this sentence is breath-taking.

quote:

Compassion, if nothing else, should urge us to avoid the consequences of making homosexuality seem a normal and acceptable choice for the young.

Jesus, how can a person think like that?!

Joementum
May 23, 2004

jesus christ

VikingofRock posted:

Remind me why everyday people need guns again?

Why did you feel the need to use the word "everyday" in that question?

Joementum
May 23, 2004

jesus christ
This got picked up by a bunch of other news sources today, so I'm bumping it again because, well, it's worth it.

Joementum posted:

Gohmert of the day, "I've had people say, 'Hey, you know, there's nothing wrong with gays in the military. Look at the Greeks,' Well, you know, they did have people come along who they loved that was the same sex and would give them massages before they went into battle. But you know what, it's a different kind of fighting, it's a different kind of war and if you're sitting around getting massages all day ready to go into a big, planned battle, then you're not going to last very long. It's guerrilla fighting. You are going to be ultimately vulnerable to terrorism and if that's what you start doing in the military like the Greeks did ... as people have said, 'Louie, you have got to understand, you don't even know your history.' Oh yes I do. I know exactly. It's not a good idea."


See, this is where the powers of a Congressman should really be used. Can we get the Army War College to write up a study on the effectiveness of massages in counterinsurgency combat compared to classical phalanx maneuvers?

A Bag of Milk
Jul 3, 2007

I don't see any American dream; I see an American nightmare.

Shageletic posted:

I'm at least six pages behind, but this sentence is breath-taking.


Jesus, how can a person think like that?!

Tens of millions of Americans literally believe that.

got any sevens
Feb 9, 2013

by Cyrano4747

DeusExMachinima posted:

IIRC 4 people have to die (not counting the shooter) for it to qualify as mass murder, according to the FBI. You're all desperately grasping at straws while gun laws are looser than ever and murders are half of what they were 20 years ago.

But oh, let's not forget about the statistically insignificant white angels. They get more melodramatic all caps reactions than black kids in Chicago. :ironicat:

Too bad we don't count murder via corporations, I wonder if they're decreasing too. (Mcdonalds, walmart, etc)

got any sevens
Feb 9, 2013

by Cyrano4747

Shageletic posted:

I'm at least six pages behind, but this sentence is breath-taking.


Jesus, how can a person think like that?!

Well, rightwingers make life so hard for gays I would hope a child isn't gay, but once they're born it's already decided.

Proust Malone
Apr 4, 2008

Shageletic posted:

I'm at least six pages behind, but this sentence is breath-taking.


Jesus, how can a person think like that?!

Keeping someone out of the fire and brimstone of Christian hell is the most compassion act a person can do.

duz
Jul 11, 2005

Come on Ilhan, lets go bag us a shitpost


Joementum posted:

Why did you feel the need to use the word "everyday" in that question?

Sometimes I want to put holes in something that's over there?

Islam is the Lite Rock FM
Jul 27, 2007

by exmarx

A Winner is Jew posted:

That's only possible if she's shot by a white male. Anyone else and they're getting life.

*throws rock at gamergate* I know. :getin:

Really though she'll just land a ghost-write book deal and be Jill the Gunnie rather than Joe the Plumber.

Grouchio
Aug 31, 2014

Ron Jeremy posted:

Keeping someone out of the fire and brimstone of Christian hell is the most compassion act a person can do.

Sometimes I wonder if there's actually a hell. And then I get scared of dying and await the coming of age-stunting technologies so I could live a thousand years.

Anyways the spirit of Reagan must be crushed.

Propaganda Hour
Aug 25, 2008



after editing wikipedia as a joke for 16 years, i ve convinced myself that homer simpson's japanese name translates to the "The beer goblin"
I don't know if this thread has been following the stupid poo poo Don Young said about suicide in the last few days, but someone made this and I love it. Don Young with Mike Tyson comments:

http://imgur.com/a/994Ka

Aves Maria!
Jul 26, 2008

Maybe I'll drown

Pohl posted:

It was a valid and non crazy response. You are just being weird by picking on him/her.

How is immediately jumping into the conversation to tacitly imply that guns are not the problem after a school shooting in any way a valid or not crazy response? Or trying to minimize a bad thing because apparently being upset about school shootings means you don't care about black kids being killed in the ghetto?

woke wedding drone
Jun 1, 2003

by exmarx
Fun Shoe

420DD Butts posted:

How is immediately jumping into the conversation to tacitly imply that guns are not the problem after a school shooting in any way a valid or not crazy response? Or trying to minimize a bad thing because apparently being upset about school shootings means you don't care about black kids being killed in the ghetto?

Nobody does care though?

1stGear
Jan 16, 2010

Here's to the new us.

SedanChair posted:

Nobody does care though?

I think after the rash of mass shootings earlier in the year, we've just sort of accepted it. Maybe some day I get randomly killed by a crazy dude, whatever, freedom isn't free bro.

Homura and Sickle
Apr 21, 2013
edit: actually nevermind carry on with stupid gun chat

Homura and Sickle fucked around with this message at 05:13 on Oct 25, 2014

Grouchio
Aug 31, 2014

The funny thing was, I dismissed the whole Sandy Hook thing as another Columbine (well, it happened again, and that's it). Given that I had just walked out of the theater with a friend when I first heard of it, and was far more worried at the time of the Mayan End times (that simply could not go away BECAUSE it was so implausible).

I still wonder why Obama sent out an executive order demanding the NRA stop it's bullshit and fold to new regulations. He can do that, right?

Killer robot
Sep 6, 2010

I was having the most wonderful dream. I think you were in it!
Pillbug

Joementum posted:

Why did you feel the need to use the word "everyday" in that question?

Because that's pretty much the primary debate. The right and the left broadly agree that rich dudes having expensive sporting shotguns at the club is okay, and that they should be able to hire armed guards. They also broadly agree that the urban poor should be disarmed for everyone's good. What's left is whether you feel curiosity or fear when a coworker talks about going to the range, or your neighbor pulls a rifle case out of the trunk of the car, or when you see someone on the street with a holstered handgun peeking out from under his jacket when he moves just so. Secondarily, it's whether you relax a bit when you find out the weapon in question has a woodgrain finish. For the most part, debate and especially policy proposals about guns in the US are about those questions.

Goatse James Bond
Mar 28, 2010

If you see me posting please remind me that I have Charlie Work in the reports forum to do instead

Grouchio posted:

Sometimes I wonder if there's actually a hell. And then I get scared of dying and await the coming of age-stunting technologies so I could live a thousand years.

You don't need a hell for that, silly.

(Matjek Chen Was Right)

Aves Maria!
Jul 26, 2008

Maybe I'll drown

SedanChair posted:

Nobody does care though?

Cool, good, thanks for the heads up.

Pirate Radar
Apr 18, 2008

You're not my Ruthie!
You're not my Debbie!
You're not my Sherry!
The right and left wings in America disagree fiercely over whether the proletariat should be armed, basically.

Pope Guilty
Nov 6, 2006

The human animal is a beautiful and terrible creature, capable of limitless compassion and unfathomable cruelty.

Chantilly Say posted:

The right and left wings in America disagree fiercely over whether the proletariat should be armed, basically.

It would be more accurate to say that they disagree fiercely over which members of the proletariat should be armed.

VikingofRock
Aug 24, 2008




Joementum posted:

Why did you feel the need to use the word "everyday" in that question?

I wanted to leave the military and police officers out of the question. It's hard to imagine having an effective military without guns, and I wasn't really interested in getting into the "should cops have guns" debate. But judging by this

Killer robot posted:

Because that's pretty much the primary debate. The right and the left broadly agree that rich dudes having expensive sporting shotguns at the club is okay, and that they should be able to hire armed guards. They also broadly agree that the urban poor should be disarmed for everyone's good. What's left is whether you feel curiosity or fear when a coworker talks about going to the range, or your neighbor pulls a rifle case out of the trunk of the car, or when you see someone on the street with a holstered handgun peeking out from under his jacket when he moves just so. Secondarily, it's whether you relax a bit when you find out the weapon in question has a woodgrain finish. For the most part, debate and especially policy proposals about guns in the US are about those questions.

"everyday" was probably not the right word to use. There was no classism intended here.

UrbanLabyrinth
Jan 28, 2009

When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence


College Slice
So how's Season 2 of Alpha House? (TV IV doesn't have a thread, so I assume this is the closest currently)

Shageletic
Jul 25, 2007

Here's a two-fer to start your Saturday the right way.

How secret money buys Wisconsin's laws.

quote:

When billionaire Chris Cline’s company bought an option to mine a swath of northern Wisconsin in 2010, the company touted the project’s potential to bring as many as 700 well-paid jobs to a hard-pressed part of the state.

But the Florida-based company wanted something in return for its estimated $1.5 billion investment—a change to Wisconsin law to speed up the iron-mining permit process.

So, Cline officials courted state legislators and hired lobbyists. And, unbeknownst to Wisconsin voters and lawmakers, the company waged a more covert campaign, secretly funding a nonprofit advocacy group that battered opponents of the legislation online and on the airwaves.

Since the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling, which allowed corporations and unions to spend unlimited amounts on politics, hundreds of millions of dollars have flooded into the political system—much of it through nonprofit groups that have no legal obligation to identify their donors.

Usually such efforts remain hidden from view, leaving voters unaware of who’s paying for the gush of campaign calls, flyers, and attack ads. But a court filing recently made public by a federal appeals court in Chicago provides a rare look at how “dark money” groups helped one company get what it wanted.

The document shows how, in its push for a new state law, a Cline Group subsidiary gave $700,000 to a conservative nonprofit in 2011 and 2012. That group, in turn, donated almost $3 million in 2012 to a second, like-minded nonprofit that also campaigned to change the mine-permit process, tax filings show.

Both nonprofits worked to pass the mining bill. One helped to write the measure and launched a radio campaign even before it was introduced. The other tried to pressure a Republican holdout. Together, the two groups played a critical role in defeating a freshman Democratic state senator who’d voted against the bill, paving the way for its passage months later.

After the 2012 elections, some observers downplayed the impact of dark money groups after most of the candidates supported by the largest one, Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS, lost. As this year’s elections approach, the Cline Group’s strategy in Wisconsin reveals the much bigger impact such groups can have in state races. Here their money goes much further, in some cases dwarfing the amount candidates themselves spend on their campaigns.

quote:

Still, documents and interviews show that Gogebic’s money secretly made its way into the political battle over the mining law—and that the efforts of the WMC and the Wisconsin Club for Growth significantly swayed the results.

With the help of ads funded by the two groups, the GOP retook the state senate in 2012 and passed mining legislation similar to what the company had wanted.

Sen. Dale Schultz, R-Richland Center, the veteran legislator targeted by one of the groups, said Gogebic’s efforts to hide its influence went beyond anything he’d witnessed since his election to the state assembly. “I’ve never seen anything like this done by special interests in Wisconsin in 32 years,” he said.

quote:

The battle over the mining bill began in 2011, months after the Cline Group announced plans to apply for a permit to build an iron mine in the Penokee Hills of northern Wisconsin, not far from the Lake Superior shoreline. Gogebic began working with two Republican state legislators on a bill to speed up the process of securing a permit, the Wisconsin State Journal reported. Without the legislation, a Gogebic official told the paper, the company “would have to re-evaluate” whether it wanted to build the mine.

Changing the law was an easy sell for many Republican lawmakers. Gov. Scott Walker, a recently elected Republican, had pledged to create 250,000 jobs in his first term, and attracting a mining company to the state would be a step toward that goal.

The WMC, which lobbies for pro-business legislation, was a natural partner for Gogebic.

With a coordination that one lawmaker found suspect, the WMC had glossy brochures supporting a draft of the bill ready to distribute almost immediately after it became public in May 2011.
“I wonder how they did that so quickly when this is a bill that I just saw for the first time,” said Rep. Janet Bewley, D-Ashland, in an interview with Wisconsin Public Radio at the time. Bewley represents the area where the mine would be built and later voted against the legislation.

Weeks later, the WMC started running radio ads touting the bill, even though it still hadn’t been formally introduced.

Gogebic and the WMC, according to media reports and interviews, played a key role in shaping the language of the bill. Shortly after it was introduced in late 2011, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported it had been written by five Republicans in close consultation with Gogebic and the WMC. In an interview, Buchen said several groups, including Cline and the WMC, gave input on the bill. But one Republican lawmaker, who requested anonymity to speak candidly, acknowledged that “the initial bill that came out was for the most part written by” the mining company.

***

The bill sailed through the Republican-dominated state assembly in January 2012, but lobbyists for Cline and the WMC knew the senate would be a tougher sell. So, they turned their focus on the GOP senator who seemed most likely to vote against it: Dale Schultz.

A former University of Wisconsin rower, with thinning hair and a mustache, Schultz, 61, represents an independent-minded district west of Madison. He’d endorsed Walker early in his run for governor in 2010, and maintained a conservative voting record. The WMC had even given him one of its “Working for Wisconsin” awards, honoring him for his “pro-jobs voting record” in the 2011-2012 legislative session. But by the time Schultz won, one staffer said, the WMC was so displeased he wasn’t supporting the mining bill that it skipped the usual photo-op and dropped off the plaque in a plastic bag.

Schultz agreed that mining regulations should be streamlined. But he’d seen how lead mining had so polluted Brewery Creek in his district that it ran red for decades after the mines had shut down.

“I understood the consequences of mining done poorly,” Schultz said.

Gogebic officials had emphasized that they wanted a quicker permit process, but the bill they helped write also rolled back environmental protections, such as allowing the company to dump mining waste in wetlands and streams, as long as it created new wetlands elsewhere.

With Schultz’s vote in doubt, two lobbyists—Bob Seitz, who worked for Gogebic, and Scott Manley, who worked for the WMC—visited him on several occasions. But that wasn’t all. The Wisconsin Club for Growth launched a robocalling campaign, urging voters statewide to call his office and tell him to vote for the bill. And it used its blog to smear his record, with a post titled “Used by the media, respected by no one” and calling him a RINO, or Republican in name only.

After several constituents called Schultz’s office to complain, Schultz confronted the lobbyists about the calls. “You can tell your buddies, if they’re making those calls in my district, they can keep doing them, because they’re making me a folk hero!” Schultz told them, according to a staffer who witnessed the conversation.

On March 6, Schultz cast the deciding vote against the mining bill, the only Republican to oppose it. Hours after the vote, Gogebic’s president said in a statement that the company was scrapping plans to build the mine. “We get the message,” he said.

Go here to read if WMC wins (hint: this is America): http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/10/14/the-secret-money-buying-wisconsin-s-laws.html

And here's another signpost to the triumph of Republicans this fall. The dropping trust by Americans for political institutions:

quote:

In taking office during two overseas wars and the Great Recession, President Obama set out to restore society’s frayed faith in its public institutions, saying that the question was not whether government was too big or small, “but whether it works.” Six years later, Americans seem more dubious than ever that it really does.

With every passing week or month, it seems, some government agency or another has had a misstep or has been caught up in scandals that have deeply eroded public confidence. The Internal Revenue Service targets political groups, the Border Patrol is overwhelmed by children illegally crossing the Rio Grande, the Department of Veterans Affairs covers up poor service, and the Secret Service fails to guard the president and his White House.

Now public esteem for the long-respected Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has plummeted with the arrival of Ebola on American shores. A new CBS News poll found that only 37 percent of Americans thought the centers were doing a good job, down from 60 percent last year. In fact, of nine agencies tested, seven that were judged highly by a majority of Americans last year have now fallen below 50 percent. Only one, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, was rated well by a majority, and that by just 51 percent.

quote:

“As Bill Clinton used to say, most Americans start out thinking the federal government couldn’t run a two-car funeral,” said Bruce Reed, who was a top White House official under Mr. Clinton and Mr. Obama. “Now they worry that one of the two cars should have been recalled and the other can’t go anywhere because Congress is still fighting over whether to fix the road.”

To be sure, it remains debatable whether government really is more dysfunctional than in the past. During war and depression, during the civil rights movement or the Watergate scandal or Hurricane Katrina, institutions struggled to meet public needs. But today’s disillusionment has been turbocharged by the relentless pace of the modern news media, the unforgiving glare of social media and the calculating efforts of partisans.

And it has come to shape the national debate leading to the midterm congressional elections to be held in less than two weeks. Republicans are trying to capitalize on the sour mood to argue that Mr. Obama and his party have proved that they cannot be trusted to govern, a case bolstered by continuing foreign policy crises in places like Syria and Ukraine. Democrats accuse the opposition of mindless obstructionism, deliberately sabotaging government, or at least tearing down belief in it, out of ideological fervor and political ambition.

“There’s a sense that things simply don’t work in Washington, and Congress, in particular, seems to be completely gridlocked,” Mr. Obama told donors in Chicago on Monday night. “And so all of this adds together to a sense on the part of folks that the institutions they rely on to apply common-sense decisions and to look out for working families across the country, that those institutions aren’t working the way they’re supposed to.”

The broader trend precedes Mr. Obama and extends beyond politics, but has not improved as the president once hoped. Polling by Gallup shows that since June 2009, in the heyday of the new Obama presidency, public confidence in virtually every major institution of American life has fallen, including organized religion, the military, the Supreme Court, public schools, newspapers, Congress, television news, the police, the presidency, the medical system, the criminal justice system and small business.

The only institutions that Gallup tested that showed slight improvement from June 2009 to June 2014 were banks, organized labor, big business and health maintenance organizations. Even so, all four of them had the confidence of just roughly a quarter of the population or less.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/22/u...nav=top-news&hp

computer parts
Nov 18, 2010

PLEASE CLAP
Given that last year was the year that half of the government literally refused to do anything in protest, I'm going to guess that poll is flawed in some way.

DarkCrawler
Apr 6, 2009

by vyelkin
You know looking at the voter turnout in midterm elections, Americans can kinda blame themselves on having a lovely government :shrug:

Accretionist
Nov 7, 2012
I BELIEVE IN STUPID CONSPIRACY THEORIES

DarkCrawler posted:

You know looking at the voter turnout in midterm elections, Americans can kinda blame themselves on having a lovely government :shrug:

Most political spending comes down to propaganda, too. Imagine what would happen if the propaganda stopped working? Or at least the cheap easy stuff?

FlamingLiberal
Jan 18, 2009

Would you like to play a game?



I think ultimately the problem is that the GOP's goal of voter disillusionment is very easy to obtain via obstructionism. The public doesn't follow politics closely, so things like the Shutdown a year ago have already been forgotten in favor of ISIS or Ebola hysteria. Then the conservative news media hammers into missteps by the government to make them appear catastrophic, and they magnify every single one to that degree. Meanwhile the Dems are at a disadvantage when it comes to reversing the public's view that the 'government is evil' or whatever.

Jerry Manderbilt
May 31, 2012

No matter how much paperwork I process, it never goes away. It only increases.
Is this Stormfront's worst nightmare or what? "An anti-government, anti-Western, anti-white, self-radicalized convert to Islam" attacking NYPD cops with an axe?

Chokes McGee
Aug 7, 2008

This is Urotsuki.

SubponticatePoster posted:

I thought Zeitgeist was the zeitgeist of the thread :confused:

Nah, Zeitgeist is the zeitgeist of the Michael Brown thread :getin:

Captain_Maclaine
Sep 30, 2001

Every moment that I'm alive, I pray for death!

Jerry Manderbilt posted:

Is this Stormfront's worst nightmare or what? "An anti-government, anti-Western, anti-white, self-radicalized convert to Islam" attacking NYPD cops with an axe?

Work in him being an Israeli expat or something similar and you'd have run the board.

Joementum
May 23, 2004

jesus christ
Quote of the day, "That's not really her name. She's using that name to ride her daddy's coattails." ~ Georgia Insurance Commissioner Ralph Hudgens on Michelle Nunn.

Jackson Taus
Oct 19, 2011

Shageletic posted:

I'm at least six pages behind, but this sentence is breath-taking.

quote:

Compassion, if nothing else, should urge us to avoid the consequences of making homosexuality seem a normal and acceptable choice for the young.

Jesus, how can a person think like that?!

Honestly, in the '80s it was pretty standard. The idea that gays were actually generally decent people regardless of what they did in their bedrooms is a fairly modern one. Seriously, even in 2004, the idea that a Presidential candidate could be pro-marriage was ludicrous, and the issue of the gays was used as a wedge against Democrats. Most of the momentum of the gay rights movement has come in the last decade or so - any public statements in the '90s or much of the 00's seems almost regressive by today's standards.

A Bag of Milk posted:

Tens of millions of Americans literally believe that.

Right - the guys who are anti-gay-marriage at this point are generally not just kinda uncomfortable with it, they literally think gays are bad people or out to destroy their way of life or whatever.

Joementum
May 23, 2004

jesus christ
Bonus quote of the day, "If you don't know what that is, it's Obamacare for banks." ~ Paul Ryan on Dodd-Frank.

Who What Now
Sep 10, 2006

by Azathoth

Joementum posted:

Bonus quote of the day, "If you don't know what that is, it's Obamacare for banks." ~ Paul Ryan on Dodd-Frank.

So something that started as meaningful reformed but was changed so much along the way it now resembles only a half step in the right direction?

I don't believe that's totally accurate.

90sLurker
Oct 25, 2013

Jerry Manderbilt posted:

Is this Stormfront's worst nightmare or what? "An anti-government, anti-Western, anti-white, self-radicalized convert to Islam" attacking NYPD cops with an axe?

More like their wet dream, due to him not using a gun yet using something that justifies him being gunned down. Now if that :black101: was the love child of Mjolnir and Captain America's shield...

SSJ_naruto_2003
Oct 12, 2012



http://whnt.com/2014/10/23/what-you-need-to-know-about-getting-alabamas-new-star-i-d/

More things to gently caress over poor people in Alabama, I love my state.

I'm mostly thinking that a poorer person couldn't afford to go get extra copies of SS card or birth certificate if lost. Also, I think current drivers license are cheaper than the amount for this STAR Id.

FlamingLiberal
Jan 18, 2009

Would you like to play a game?



GreyPowerVan posted:

http://whnt.com/2014/10/23/what-you-need-to-know-about-getting-alabamas-new-star-i-d/

More things to gently caress over poor people in Alabama, I love my state.

I'm mostly thinking that a poorer person couldn't afford to go get extra copies of SS card or birth certificate if lost. Also, I think current drivers license are cheaper than the amount for this STAR Id.
Even better, it has to be renewed every four years. How convenient.

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Edmund Lava
Sep 8, 2004

Hey, I'm from Brooklyn. I'm going to call myself Mr. Friendly.

UrbanLabyrinth posted:

So how's Season 2 of Alpha House? (TV IV doesn't have a thread, so I assume this is the closest currently)

Just finished the first episode (whole seasons up), so far it's great. The show really feels like it hit its stride.

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