US Politics Mega-thread - Page 2383

On October 10 2015 12:42 Introvert wrote:


I was just reading the NYT article, which didn't mention it. Regardless, that was hardly the point.

On October 10 2015 12:49 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:


I thought the point was that the gun purchasing rules/ background checks are clearly too lenient and need to be more serious, or else criminals like Roof pass through easily, undetected?

On October 10 2015 13:09 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:


He asked if any of the recent mass murders would have been prevented.
I said yes, and pointed out how one of the recent mass murders would have been prevented.
If you jump in with "yeah but he's an outlier", then that's just throwing in a No True Scotsman fallacy, dismissing any appropriate rebuttal to his claim >.<
Maybe the majority wouldn't be prevented, but that wasn't the statement being made and I'd much rather still have a few being prevented than none at all. Why would you rather choose to have 100 mass murders instead of 80 or 90 (or whatever the lower number ends up being)?

On October 10 2015 13:20 cLutZ wrote:


Because, first of all, I disagree with the post above you both that it is a minor inconvenience, and even accepting that opinion, that it would be worth it. Second, its not a true Scotsman fallacy because I am merely making a statistical argument that the proposed " reasonable " regulations are largely ineffective. Lastly, I am pointing out the real goal of gun control advocates ( unless they are simply misinformed) which is a ban on gun ownership even for people with no criminal records ( or some sort of superhuman minority report system for gun licensing).

On October 10 2015 08:37 m4ini wrote:


.. eh?

What? You must've learned something entirely different in school than i did then. Because in reality, it wasn't an armed population stopping Hitler in russia, but their winter.

Just as a sidenote though.

Or we could say that the Russians were armed with the cold. Not just guns.

it was also hitler being an idiot and constantly attacking stalingrad for no reason

While that might have been the case in 40, it very much wasn't later in the war. In 45, the soviet army was the most formidable land force in the world, with large amounts of the best tanks in the world, advanced tactics and logistics and experienced soldiers.

Indeed, a sad reality is settling into Washington these days: the propensity of the Republican establishment, when given a chance, to make the worst possible decisions. What other explanation is there for their current travails in the selection of a Speaker of the House? Or their bewilderment over the same?

After their consensus choice for speaker handed Hillary Clinton the priceless gift of seeming to confirm that the Benghazi investigation is a politically motivated witch hunt against her—PR damage that will never be repaired—a vast majority of the conference still insisted that this was the guy they needed on television during a critical election season. For no apparent reason other than he simply was next in line for the job. To a party demanding revolutionary change, they offered essentially “more of the same,” except a little bit worse. Not exactly a rallying cry.

In a twisted way, House Majority Leader (for now) Kevin McCarthy should be a joyful man today. He’s not going to have to play the part of Dan Quayle for the next two years in Washington, D.C. Nor is he going to have to take on the thankless task of being called a phony, liar, and sellout by his colleagues, the D.C. punditry and a fed-up grassroots.

For months on end the GOP establishment has continued to ignore all the signs of its impending doom. It’s been living in a delusion—thinking that they were in charge even as all the evidence made clear that their grasp of reality was not much better than Randy Quaid’s. Sure, their supporters are mad at them. But they’ve been mad before, like when they bailed out Wall Street in 2008, while the rest of the economy tanked. It will all blow over.

But it won’t. And largely this is a problem of the establishment’s own making. Time and again, the GOP and its consultant class has overpromised to win votes and then underperformed once the votes were won. In 2014, every elected official running on the GOP ticket vowed to do all in their power to repeal Obamacare—and yet Obamacare seems here to stay. They vowed to fight a raise of the debt ceiling without spending reforms—and the debt ceiling was raised anyway. They railed against gay marriage, an issue about which they secretly care little, even when they knew the Supreme Court would rule against them—making them look bigoted, hypocritical and ineffective to boot. Leaders savaged President Obama for an Iran deal that they’ve told voters will lead to World War III—and yet brushed aside real efforts to challenge the administration on it. The Republican majority has decried Planned Parenthood, and yet rejected efforts to block federal funding for the organization. On key occasions, the Republican leadership in the House has forged majorities with Democrats against the wishes of their own conference.

On October 10 2015 08:28 Gorsameth wrote:
Its not like its hard to kill someone painlessly.

anesthetic + heart stopping drug is the easiest thing in the world but there seems to be some problem with finding people to actually administer it.
Which is in itself weird. They can find people to insert weird (sometimes unreliable) cocktails but they cant find someone to apply the anesthetic? Its not like you can give them to much in this case.

On October 10 2015 17:49 m4ini wrote:


Or we could say, the russian winter defeated the german army. Because that's simply what happened.



Well, i think it's out of the question whether or not Hitler was a retard, that's pretty clear. But even then, it wasn't just stalingrad. Put it this way, on stretches of the campaign, more soldiers died to the winter (malnutrition, or simply froze to death) than to actual combat. German weaponry wasn't designed to work in those temperatures either (supply lines already being thin, german soldiers left tanks etc running because otherwise the liquids would just freeze - weapons like the MG42 simply refusing to work, whereas russian weaponry worked just fine thanks to being alot less sophisticated).

If someone is actually interested in what happened back then, i'd suggest reading "War on the eastern front" by James Lucas - it's an interesting read and answers alot of questions.

Again, just as a sidenote to counteract the argument "well the russians showed that an armed population works", which is simply wrong. It didn't work.



What tanks would that be, as someone who's thoroughly interested in WW2 machinery?

edit: maybe via PM though, bit far off topic.

On October 11 2015 06:26 Karis Vas Ryaar wrote:



pretty sure he means whatever the final design of the t-34 was. don't remember exactly though. the entire invasion was basically a disaster. and constant attempts to take stalingrad didn't exactly help. Ivan's war is also a good book/ but yeah we're getting a bit off topic.

more on topic, thoughts on paul ryan for speaker?

On October 11 2015 06:26 Karis Vas Ryaar wrote:



more on topic, thoughts on paul ryan for speaker?

On October 11 2015 07:44 TheTenthDoc wrote:
Paul Ryan is a manipulative schlub with zero accomplishments besides a nonsense budget and no leadership skills who fucked up repeatedly on the campaign trail in 2012 and was overall useless. Oh, and he loves Ayn Rand despite her despising everything he stands for. So he'd be a perfect Speaker of the House.