A commenter, some time ago, mentioned a book which examined the 19th century utopian groups who created alternate societies to figure out why some survived and others didn’t.
If you know what the book is please mention, I’d like to read it.
What if abortion never got legalized? I would guess that there would be one hundred million more people in this country , with the mess that we have now in this country adding that many people would have been the end of us.
What would of happened if the Christians ( I am one ) would of believed in the Sovereignty of God and that he allowed this to happen to save us from ourselves?
Then used there brains to find a way to help eliminate the need for abortions( universal free birth control, universal health control for starters) instead of bemoaning the fact that there are so many,for if you have a gun shot wound the first thing is to stop the bleeding, by stopping the need for abortions they would have kept a lot of them from happening in the first place.
The lust for power on all sides kept this from happening and I fear that it is to late now, but what would this country look like if people mattered more than ideologies.
The answer is one with Universal Healthcare, UBI, and other Progressive Programs because the Republicans have to support them or lose the Heartland who aren’t staying away from the Democrats.
Sadly it is not to be and Britain will be joining us down the drain as well because the political class so thoroughly discredited themselves to the point that Britain may even lose the NHS over the stupid Alfie Evans and Charlie Gard cases where they should have just let the parents take them to alternative hospitals to find out what was ailing them and save their lives.
But no, NHS decided to kill them and save money. That is nothing less than what Nazi Germany did to “useless eaters.”
It is the inability of the political classes to understand the electorate’s rage that is propelling Nigel Farage into power.
It didn’t have to be this way, but both the US and British systems are fundamentally broken and not fixable without radical upheaval. Civil War is inevitable in both countries, those who say otherwise are deluding themselves.
When the corporate media make gun-confiscation arguments they use very dissimilar data sources and purposely don’t inform the reader/viewer. The resulting charts/”statistics”/arguments derived from poorly sourced data are falsehoods. But, as we have learn lately, any lie, that serves the ruling class is the Gospel truth.
While this article is biased against gun confiscation laws, it points out the fallacies in the data that the pro confiscation media outlets use…
Pelosi’s House passed the Dreamers Act!!! It will now go nowhere in the Senate. Rather than start an impeachment inquiry, it is much more important to Pelosi to pursue her “policy” agenda. Curiously, you don’t hear much about the budget bills where House Democrats really could make a difference. Why is that, Nancy?
On a related topic. There are something like just under 400 million guns in the US. Only about a tenth of these can even be conceivably considered for hunting. If you confiscated a million a month of the others, it would still take 30 years to get rid of them all. Guns are a major indicator of how sick our society is. It is very, very sick.
AFAIK, there’s no effective drug therapy for Alzheimer’s. Consequently, not trying to develop this is still a mystery to me. There’s effectively no drug competition. (The Bredesen functional medicine approach is an alternative, but not one that magic bullet drug takers will accept.) Mega-profits should ensue a successful launch.
So, are the patents soon to expire? That would be a reasonable explanation, given the realities of the business process, but the rt program doesn’t answer this question.
IMNSHO, we need legislation to make illegal the suppression of knowledge leading to cures. If a company wants to pursue robust commercialization over a reasonable period of time, and not charge obscene profits, that is fine with me. But the current system lopsidedly supports crass financial interests, and is devoid of humanistic values.
To Hugh; who cites an article, [one hundreds] that assumes that the “Small Arms Survey” is gospel truth. Ironically, my preceding cite discusses just that subject, the multiple problems with the “Small Arms Survey”. That so many continue to cite the “Small Arms Survey” without any inspection, just as Hugh did, is troubling.
That’s not to say that many reporters haven’t tried to find the source of their numbers and so far, “Small Arms Survey” has refused to divulge how their data was acquired. Normally, in science, if you can’t reveal your data set, you are ignored but, in politics, as in economics, so long as your conclusions follows the prescribe narrative, your results you are to be heralded by the type of scribe who seeks to follow in the footsteps of the likes of Ezra Klein…who sold the Iraq Invasion to today’s “liberals”.
“Uncertainty about any firearms data requires systematic estimation that relies on a broad spectrum of sources and makes approximation unavoidable. The Small Arms Survey’s estimates of civilian firearms holdings use data gathered from multiple sources. However, with much of civilian ownership concealed or hard to identify, gun ownership numbers can only approximate reality.”
and
“Most of the world’s firearms are privately owned, which makes documenting their precise number particularly challenging. Official registration totals provide the most reliable data, although they do not capture the full spectrum of firearms in civilian hands. Estimates, even the most comprehensive, are often not reliable. Maximizing both comprehensiveness and reliability requires the consideration of a wide range of sources. ”
“Documented annual inflation growth rates [in gun ownership] vary greatly from country to country, with rates as high as 3.4 per cent for rifles in England and Wales and 4.16 per cent for all firearms in the United States in recent years (Home Office, 2015; ATF, 2017a; 2017b). The Small Arms Survey assumes that countries have a growth rate of one per cent annually, unless higher rates can be substantiated.”
BTW from the ATF (most recent data years), in 2015, there were 9,358,661 guns manufactured in the US. Of these, 343,456 were exported. That is 9,015,205 remained in the US. At the same time, 3,930,211 guns were imported. (2016: 5,137,771 guns were imported). So for 2015, there were 12,945,416 guns manufactured in the US and remained in the US or imported into the US.
If you look at the ATF data, 1986-2015 (a 30 year period), there were 198,408,518 guns manufactured and remained in the US or imported into the US.
I would agree that the SAS could be more detailed in their methodology, but as their people say above gun ownership is not a transparent subject because gun owners are not transparent about their gun ownership. So yes, it would be nice to know more about how they weighted their various approaches. But it is ridiculous to demand some absolute number. There were tens of millions of guns in the US before 1986, nearly 200 million in the 30 year ATF data period, and probably some 35-40 million since. So 300 million, 350 million, or the nearly 400 million of the SAS, is any of that going to contradict the fact that the US is awash, indeed drowning in guns? No. But there are always going to be some who will strain at a gnat but swallow a camel, –throwing in a few ad hominems along the way.
@DifferentClue — I confess, I saw that purple wig and the stupid grin on that guy’s face along w/the unknown but not-appealing word “weeaboo” and almost didn’t try your link, much as I’m all for some fun discussion! (and that is a great idea, we should do more of that here! Keep us from hating those who have evil/wrong/bad/stupid/ignorant/foolish opinions too much, so that we can more patiently explain to them the error of their factually and logically and morally incorrect ways!)
But I perservered, and did indeed find it amusing. 🙂
Keeping it on the Japanese pop culture subject, but veering off slightly (I’m not the hugest anime fan, but I do recall enjoying Fist of the North Star and a few others back in the day, as well as some of the more ambitious & message-oriented stuff, and the anime version of Metropolitan was a truly wonderful if tear-inducing movie) . . .
WHAT IS UP WITH THE ROTTEN TOMATOES CRITIC RATING FOR “GODZILLA, KING OF THE MONSTERS?”
Yes, it has some plot holes and a few sequences where the timing appears logistically impossible, all of which would be really easy to fix without changing the story if the writers or the director cared at all about these thing. Which is annoying and it would have been a better movie had these things been fixed. But nearly all of these critics gave a positive review to Avengers: Endgame (and before it, Avengers: Infinity War) both of which had far more, and more serious, and harder to fix logic issues. And the visuals weren’t nearly as cool. And the motive of the antagonist was far dumber in Avengers (Thanos wishes to restore balance to the universe by randomly killing half of all living things in the universe, regardless of species or planetary situation; the “eco-terrorists” who wake up all the sleeping titans in G:KotM wish to restore balance to this one planet by wiping out most of the humans who screwed up the planet in the first place, and have hard evidence that the mere presence of the titans tends to spur plant growth, in addition to being a human population control system)(minor spoiler: the “wake up all the giant monsters” plan, even aside from the problematic nature of annihilating lots of humans to save the rest of the planet, has a few small problems that they failed to anticipate).
The visuals are WAY cooler in Godzilla, some of the monsters and humans are at least as sympathetic as the superheroes in Avengers, the dialogue is somewhat smarter and the nature of the conflict considerably so, the fight scenes are at least as good and make a lot more logical sense in relation to what we know of relative power dynamics and even other fight scenes in the same movie, and the music is way better. So what gives? Disney bribes people and Legendary doesn’t? Critics love superheroes and hate giant monsters?
(also, much as I love the first two John Wick movies–haven’t seen the newest yet–and much as these make LOTS more sense than the Avengers movies also, they also require a certain suspension of disbelief and also are clearly intended to be just fun, entertaining movies, not striving in the slightest for the sort of high art ambitions of Winter’s Bone or Beasts of the Southern Wild or the Peter Jackson King Kong or anything by David Lynch; they also got really great critic ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, some of which flatly state that it’s a beautiful ballet of violence and that’s why it’s good; but . . . Godzilla is empty spectacle?)
Further, many of these same people loved the 2014 American Godzilla movie, which, while possibly technically a better movie than G:KotM in terms of not having plot holes and such (I don’t remember it well enough to say for sure, I enjoyed it and was relieved they didn’t butcher it like the 1998 Godzilla movie which was an ok film but a TERRIBLE Godzilla movie), isn’t that much better or maybe any better in other regards and definitely isn’t nearly as much fun (I liked the first one, again, don’t mean to be trashing it; I just liked this one a lot better, and think the majority of Godzilla fans will as well; for non-Godzilla fans, actually, I still think most people drawn to watching movies about unstoppable forces of nature trashing humans will like this one better, even if they never ever saw a Japanese Godzilla film, plot holes be damned).
So, critical motivation is . . . ?
And as long as we’re on the combined subjects of Godzilla and Japanese pop culture as viewed by Americans, here’s my top 5 Toho Godzilla movies:
Godzilla vs Destroyah (this made me cry, more than once)
Godzilla: Final Wars (this is probably for hardcore fans only, it’s kinda dumb, and was probably made mostly in response to the American ’98 atrocity, but SO MUCH FUN)(and Mothra looks as cool here as in the US version, where she is flat out beautiful)
Godzilla (1954, the original, not a typical monster movie but more like a meditation on the horrors of nuclear weapons using Godzilla as a metaphor, people who aren’t into giant monster movies will almost certainly rate this one the best, even aside from historical value)
Godzilla vs The Smog Monster — first Godzilla movie I saw, at around age 7-ish or so, I think? Got me hooked.
Godzilla vs King Ghidorah (1992, to separate from the 5,000 other movies where these two are in conflict, this one is the most serious and least cheasy, at least from what I’ve seen; I haven’t seen everything)
Thank you for the kind words. All it was was for total mere pure amusement and a break from serious thinking. I found my way to that video by Reddit accident.
Sometimes the length of a long comment may get it put into moderation. Otherwise, it seems to be random.
I watched Akira ( the movie) when it came to the theaters. I enjoyed that. Then I watched Lensman, which was good. And Robot Carnival. But otherwise have not watched much anime.
“But it is ridiculous to demand some absolute number”…
…and yet Hugh, that is what you and Small Arms Survey claim, when I call your/their BS you “cleverly” reverse the requirement of proof…how very..very..very “clever”.
Both you and Small Arms Survey have an agenda, confiscate arms from honest citizens and make sure only the government & criminal gangs have weapons. The founding fathers knew damn well how such an arrangement works, they did not want a return to feudalism, they wrote the US Constitution in such a manner as to prevent the outcome you seek.
Gun confiscationist seek to rewrite the US Constitution, without going to the trouble of doing so legally, they follow in the footsteps of those who seek war without a declaration, spying without warrant, the imprisonment of journalist exercising their rights…all adherents to the rule of tyranny.
“There are something like just under 400 million guns in the US…very, very sick America….confiscate a million a month it would still take 30 years to get rid of them all.” – Hugh
Scratch a somebody who wants “reasonable restrictions on gun purchases” and you always find somebody who wants to confiscate all guns, well, not entirely, only to the point that the upper class, their minions in government are allowed to have guns. Of course gun control advocates know that under their regime, like Mexico*, criminal gangs can have all the guns they want…as long as they only terrorize “little people”.
So like Ezra…whatever our rulers desire is what our scribes are most passionate about.
As long as we’re on the subject of guns, a topic for debate:
Best weapon for home defense? (I know many opinions all over the place on this)
I’m throwing out a quick, completely non-expert vote for the Mossberg 500.
Fun fact, that is fun to me even if to no one else: I learned about this gun after a couple of weird things happened w/people showing up at the house and walking into the yard when I wasn’t here. Nothing came of any of these events (it probably helps that we have dogs, but don’t want the dogs to get into it w/people either), but said events made both she and I a bit nervous. Wanted my wife to have a weapon (and, it occurred to me, I’m getting older and not what I used to be, and also if someone else had a firearm it might not matter who was better hand to hand). Did much research, and while a slight majority of the most knowledgeable people seemed to favor carbines/rifles, I personally thought a shotgun made the most sense, all things considered. A number of people also thought that given my wife is fairly small framed, a 20 gauge might be appropriate, but she was having none of that.
I remembered from long-ago writing research something called “The Streetsweeper.” I admit, I wanted to buy the Streetsweeper simply because the name sounded cool. But reviews tended to be unflattering. Wound up thinking Mossberg was the way to go.
Primary advantages of this weapon:
(1) If you point and click and don’t miss, it should disable any assailant.
(2) While not the most intimidating looking weapon out there, it looks intimidating enough and any reasonably sane person who isn’t VERY determined is unlikely to bug you further should they see this, so ideally you won’t have to use it all.
This is probably completely the wrong place for this discussion, but since there’s already a gun argument going on and I agree w/DC that lightening things up sometimes is good for the soul . . .
(note: one doesn’t have to choose gun for your preferred self-defense weapon; I don’t care if you want to make an argument for marbles and banana peels, or more seriously, for a knife or a stick or a sword cane. Okay, I’ve never seen anyone make a serious argument for sword cane before but why not? People think you have a limp and you’re a crippled person about to bop them w/your cane and suddenly get impaled on an entirely different sort of problem. Illegal most places, which I find stupid, but I can see it working. Important to note that I have zero experience w/sword canes, or any swords other than some non-paid fencing lessons from someone who was much better than me when I was much younger, and of which I remember next to nothing, so please my sword cane rec w/a grain of salt)
My 1st choice is based on my life experience…not relevant to you.
My 2nd choice would be a 20 gauge rifled pump action shot gun, I prefer magazine fed because you can easily change your ammo out and there is less weight away from the center of gravity. A slug shot from a rifled barrel can also put food on the table. Even crimminals wearing armor can be disabled by a well placed slug.
Bare in mind, that as you get older, anything that is not a semi-automatic will be harder to deal with as muscles whither so, you will need to practice more often.
Also, as many wealthy gentlemen have shotguns, you shouldn’t have to worry about the gun confiscation crowd, at least until after all the blue-collar/enlisted-men’s weapons have been rounded-up by the minions of the .01%. And yes, I really would love to see guys like StewartM and Hugh out in rural American demanding that honest men give up their weapons…writing the last sentence made me laugh out loud.
Tragically, guys like StewartM & Hugh won’t be the ones forced to do gun confiscation, enforcing such edicts will fall to “volunteers” from the low socioeconomic groups. Sheriffs in rural WA & CA have already told their respective state governments that violating the US Constitution isn’t part of their job description…and so far, both state governments haven’t been able to get ATF or FBI agents to do their bidding…so..maybe StewartM and Hugh could handle the door to door stuff…huh?
Hey, don’t leave me out of the “Let’s have some gun regulation” crowd. I can’t see that requiring licensing of lethal machines equals “confiscation”. Maybe like our founders, we should require participation in well-regulated militias and scrap the standing professional army that hasn’t won a war in 70 years.
nihil obstet; you clearly haven’t purchased a gun in the last twenty years.
Had you done so, you’d realize that you are finger-printed, then all the national 3-letter agencies go through your record, then, any and all of the state, county & municipalities where you lived, traveled, or, stayed over night, can place a 6 month hold without so much as an arrest or even a ticket. And if there is somebody with a similar name who got arrested, guess what, you are going to have to show proof that isn’t you… That happened to me, can’t prove it wasn’t you that has outstanding parking tickets, even though you haven’t been to that city in 35 years, too bad. New York, Chicago & California are noted for placing such holds.
The elitist thinking is that lower income people will not fight the hold and upper income people have the resources to do so. Problem solved, only the upper classes deserve constitutional rights & protections. They byproduct of this elitist “thinking” is…a black market for guns that supports criminals…but what the hell, as long as it makes the elites feel warm & fuzzy.
I’d go on, but, like most people who talk on the subject, you haven’t a clue about all the national, state, county & municipal regs already out there…just one thing, they don’t work. You might ask yourself why don’t gun laws work against criminals…and it may dawn on some, that criminals don’t follow the law because, they are…wait for it…criminals!
==================================
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
“well regulated” is added to clarify that Definition 2] [see below] is NOT what the framers meant.
1] a military force that is raised from the civil population to supplement a regular army in an emergency. “creating a militia was no answer to the army’s manpower problem”
2] a military force that engages in rebel or terrorist activities in opposition to a regular army.
3] all able-bodied civilians eligible by law for military service.
No, I don’t have a clue. I also don’t understand the ins and outs of wage theft, but I know it’s rampant and do not therefore conclude that we ought to just make it legal. I know that in the U.S. guns are involved in the deaths of thousands every year, and do not therefore conclude that we ought to just shrug and accept that in the U.S. we are 10 times more likely to die in a gun-related incident than the residents of any other developed country. You keep carrying on about confiscation; how many of your guns have been confiscated? With hundreds of millions of legal guns in the country and none of them confiscated, I don’t see confiscation as an issue. I’d like to see us put as much thought into gun safety as we put into childproof medicine-bottle safety. It’s true that culture has a lot to do with it, but I haven’t seen NRA types address the glorification of power, bullying, and guns in our society.
This isn’t much of an issue for me. I’m more likely to be shot by a police officer than by a criminal, but of course, the police officer is always justified in shooting because there are so many armed criminals out there.
It’s just the whole complex of anti-social making stuff up about how if society sets up standards for you to be responsible, it’s taking away all your rights — confiscation, confiscation! — that stands in the way of developing a really decent society. So I want to be included among those who object.
The gun-culture community regards gun confiscation as a looming FUTURE issue because the Liberal Fascist community seeks total gun confiscation. Lying Liberal-Fascist liars will say otherwise, but the gun-culture community knows very well that they are lying.
They want a War On Guns to go with the War On Drugs.
Let the Liberal Fascist Pigs try rounding up the guns their own personal selves. Pray the police and the sheriffs and the Armed Forces refuse to help them do it.
“I’m more likely to be shot by a police officer than by a criminal” – nihil obstet
“No, I don’t have a clue…[but that doesn’t stop me]” – nihil obstet
Fair enough, here’s a clue:
“In 2018 police shot and killed 978 people, [BTW, 87% of those shootings occur in Democratically controlled cities].” In the same year their were 14,623 gun deaths that were not suicide. 978/14632 = .06684 which implies that if you are killed by a gun, not of your own hand, your odds that it’s a cop pulling the trigger is 6.684%.
It’s one thing to not “have a clue”, it’s quite another not to be able to do basic arithmetic. Clearly, if you are involved in violent altercations with the police on a regular basis…your mileage may vary but, if you are not an asshole when dealing with cops, you are ~15 times more likely to be shot by a criminal.
I have yet to talk to a gun-control* advocate who has even a passing knowledge of guns. Liberals refuse to serve in our nation’s armed forces, [although they’re always happy to send the lower-classes off die in foreign wars], as a consequence, they only know what the corporate media tells them.
Well, peace, brother. Another area that I don’t have a clue about is how to get the U.S. out of foreign wars and to stop it from starting another one. So while we’re plotting about confiscating hundreds of millions of guns, give us the clues to ending the wars. Good to see a huge area of agreement.
@nihil — how to get the U.S. out of foreign wars and to stop it from starting another one. . . Good to see a huge area of agreement.
Electorally — Tulsi, Bernie or Gravel. Please. Do everything you can to get one of these three elected, since they are basically the only people I trust to try and keep us from pointlessly invading people. Effectively, vote Bernie or Tulsi, since Gravel has already said he wants one of them (preferably Tulsi) to win and isn’t really trying to do more than get out good messages. Thus, he is ignored, and Tulsi/Bernie smeared non-stop (except when ignored). Not a coincidence, I think.
And try to make sure your vote gets counted correctly (tho how? I dunno). The rest of the D’s (and R’s) will almost certainly be as bad as previous D’s and R’s, which is to say far worse than Trump has been thus far, tho Donald keeps *almost* getting us into things while spouting bellicose rhetoric; at this point I think that’s his way of of keeping us out of things, tho it could be blind luck.
Overall — (1) work to break up the media concentration (how? I dunno)
(2) build up alternate sources and keep those we have safe
@SBrennan — thanks for the rec. I’m not going to buy another gun anytime soon, if for no other reason than finances, but you make a good case for the 20 gauge. “Older” shall soon be upon me, at least in relative terms, if I live that long.
iirc, I briefly considered the value of things that might be armor piercing and decided that the chances of random idiots wearing that out here was minimal, and if I ever wind up shooting it out w/cops or someone’s private army I’m in deep trouble and my survival depends upon the miraculous anyway, so went w/what I thought would best deter/work against normal robbers/home invaders.
Of course, it could be I am wrong as to what a “normal” robber/home invader would be, I do recall from my LA days a multi-hour televised running battle between body-armor robbers and the local cops, who were seriously outgunned with regards to firepower even whilst having an insurmountable numbers advantage, so obviously some criminals *do* take the trouble to go the body armor route.
Even in Cali, not worried about confiscation anytime soon; the Mossberg has the limit but no more as far as allowable rounds, unless they lowered it again while I wasn’t paying attention.
And yes good god the Cali background checks the purchaser gets to pay for (and for ammo too! complete w/a felony penalty if you buy the ammo out of state and bring it in to avoid this, though how the hell are they ever going to know?) are very annoying and stupid (voted on by the public; not a Congress to blame on this one, sigh)(I know they cheat tabulating votes here but this probably passed legit; the people on the coast mostly do not know anything about guns and don’t think about them much and just vote knee-jerk based on media manipulation, and they outnumber the rest of us)
As you already know, I will vote for Tulsi in the primary, although I already know that Kamela H. is the anointed one by Hillary corp to finish the task of bringing the world to WW III.
What many of today’s “liberals” don’t understand is, FDR had priorities, he didn’t get distracted [except in ’36] when shiny pennies were tossed on the freeway. Late term abortion & gun control* are today’s shiny pennies…liberals love to wander the interstates high-speed lanes chasing them down.
BTW, I am headed down to the Mojave, EAFB next week, I checked Cali laws, my AR has a pistol grip, not legal, confiscation and time in prison.
@SBrennan — Enjoy the desert! And if you carry your gun, remember the Borribles motto, “Don’t Get Caught!” I’m near a different base (MCAGCC) in a different part of the desert, but welcome anyway!
I feel too physically awful to say much coherent right now, but while agreeing w/”don’t get distracted”, we probably feel differently on the late-term abortion debate. Women usually have really compelling reasons for those. It’s not like women are walking around pregnant for 8 months and then going “oh, I changed my mind, babies are icky!” (and if someone is that . . . whatever that would be, not sure I really want to encourage them to bring another one of themselves into the world) Plus, bodily autonomy is bodily autonomy. Etc.
And last but not least, and hoping this doesn’t get my comment thrown in moderation, if you haven’t already seen it:
Go Tulsi! I can’t believe she actually said that, but AWESOME. This is why she’s my top choice, right here.
#Tulsi2020 #FuckThatShit2020
Also, on the same subject (well, her subject, not her)
Aside from the . . . (I can’t think of a polite adjective to say what I really think) people who believe the Russiagate narrative and think they are saving us all from some nebulous web of treason . . .
What do all the people pushing impeachment think they are going to get if they succeed? Pence is far, far worse in EVERY SINGLE POSSIBLE WAY (at least if you’re a progressive, and are concerned about policy as opposed to decorum), and actually sounded more war-mongery than HRC. Ted Cruz w/fewer principles. Dude scares the crap out of me. This is who the MacResistance people want to put in the white house?
Ian Welsh
A commenter, some time ago, mentioned a book which examined the 19th century utopian groups who created alternate societies to figure out why some survived and others didn’t.
If you know what the book is please mention, I’d like to read it.
Boris
Paradise Now: The Story of American Utopianism?
ICARIS
What if abortion never got legalized? I would guess that there would be one hundred million more people in this country , with the mess that we have now in this country adding that many people would have been the end of us.
What would of happened if the Christians ( I am one ) would of believed in the Sovereignty of God and that he allowed this to happen to save us from ourselves?
Then used there brains to find a way to help eliminate the need for abortions( universal free birth control, universal health control for starters) instead of bemoaning the fact that there are so many,for if you have a gun shot wound the first thing is to stop the bleeding, by stopping the need for abortions they would have kept a lot of them from happening in the first place.
The lust for power on all sides kept this from happening and I fear that it is to late now, but what would this country look like if people mattered more than ideologies.
Ian Welsh
Might be Boris, thanks for the suggestion.
edwin
Rare Earth did a segment on the utopian community Awra Amba in Ethiopia. – “One Good Cult”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=346&v=feYv2wZFbb0
It was founded in 1972 under very hostile conditions. It may be of interest.
Tom
@ICARIS
The answer is one with Universal Healthcare, UBI, and other Progressive Programs because the Republicans have to support them or lose the Heartland who aren’t staying away from the Democrats.
Sadly it is not to be and Britain will be joining us down the drain as well because the political class so thoroughly discredited themselves to the point that Britain may even lose the NHS over the stupid Alfie Evans and Charlie Gard cases where they should have just let the parents take them to alternative hospitals to find out what was ailing them and save their lives.
But no, NHS decided to kill them and save money. That is nothing less than what Nazi Germany did to “useless eaters.”
It is the inability of the political classes to understand the electorate’s rage that is propelling Nigel Farage into power.
It didn’t have to be this way, but both the US and British systems are fundamentally broken and not fixable without radical upheaval. Civil War is inevitable in both countries, those who say otherwise are deluding themselves.
S Brennan
When the corporate media make gun-confiscation arguments they use very dissimilar data sources and purposely don’t inform the reader/viewer. The resulting charts/”statistics”/arguments derived from poorly sourced data are falsehoods. But, as we have learn lately, any lie, that serves the ruling class is the Gospel truth.
While this article is biased against gun confiscation laws, it points out the fallacies in the data that the pro confiscation media outlets use…
https://crimeresearch.org/2014/03/comparing-murder-rates-across-countries/
Hugh
Pelosi’s House passed the Dreamers Act!!! It will now go nowhere in the Senate. Rather than start an impeachment inquiry, it is much more important to Pelosi to pursue her “policy” agenda. Curiously, you don’t hear much about the budget bills where House Democrats really could make a difference. Why is that, Nancy?
On a related topic. There are something like just under 400 million guns in the US. Only about a tenth of these can even be conceivably considered for hunting. If you confiscated a million a month of the others, it would still take 30 years to get rid of them all. Guns are a major indicator of how sick our society is. It is very, very sick.
metamars
“Pfizer chose to ‘hide’ cure for Alzheimer”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4STx6yqCqQk
AFAIK, there’s no effective drug therapy for Alzheimer’s. Consequently, not trying to develop this is still a mystery to me. There’s effectively no drug competition. (The Bredesen functional medicine approach is an alternative, but not one that magic bullet drug takers will accept.) Mega-profits should ensue a successful launch.
So, are the patents soon to expire? That would be a reasonable explanation, given the realities of the business process, but the rt program doesn’t answer this question.
IMNSHO, we need legislation to make illegal the suppression of knowledge leading to cures. If a company wants to pursue robust commercialization over a reasonable period of time, and not charge obscene profits, that is fine with me. But the current system lopsidedly supports crass financial interests, and is devoid of humanistic values.
S Brennan
To Hugh; who cites an article, [one hundreds] that assumes that the “Small Arms Survey” is gospel truth. Ironically, my preceding cite discusses just that subject, the multiple problems with the “Small Arms Survey”. That so many continue to cite the “Small Arms Survey” without any inspection, just as Hugh did, is troubling.
That’s not to say that many reporters haven’t tried to find the source of their numbers and so far, “Small Arms Survey” has refused to divulge how their data was acquired. Normally, in science, if you can’t reveal your data set, you are ignored but, in politics, as in economics, so long as your conclusions follows the prescribe narrative, your results you are to be heralded by the type of scribe who seeks to follow in the footsteps of the likes of Ezra Klein…who sold the Iraq Invasion to today’s “liberals”.
https://crimeresearch.org/2014/03/comparing-murder-rates-across-countries/
different clue
Sometimes we need to get a relief from serious stuff so then we can come back to it refreshed.
In that spirit, here is a video about aspects of Japanese and “Gaijinese” Japanophile anime culture.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFQQALduhzA
Hugh
“Uncertainty about any firearms data requires systematic estimation that relies on a broad spectrum of sources and makes approximation unavoidable. The Small Arms Survey’s estimates of civilian firearms holdings use data gathered from multiple sources. However, with much of civilian ownership concealed or hard to identify, gun ownership numbers can only approximate reality.”
and
“Most of the world’s firearms are privately owned, which makes documenting their precise number particularly challenging. Official registration totals provide the most reliable data, although they do not capture the full spectrum of firearms in civilian hands. Estimates, even the most comprehensive, are often not reliable. Maximizing both comprehensiveness and reliability requires the consideration of a wide range of sources. ”
“Documented annual inflation growth rates [in gun ownership] vary greatly from country to country, with rates as high as 3.4 per cent for rifles in England and Wales and 4.16 per cent for all firearms in the United States in recent years (Home Office, 2015; ATF, 2017a; 2017b). The Small Arms Survey assumes that countries have a growth rate of one per cent annually, unless higher rates can be substantiated.”
Note the American figure is from the ATF.
From the Small Arms Survey
http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/fileadmin/docs/T-Briefing-Papers/SAS-BP-Civilian-Firearms-Numbers.pdf
BTW from the ATF (most recent data years), in 2015, there were 9,358,661 guns manufactured in the US. Of these, 343,456 were exported. That is 9,015,205 remained in the US. At the same time, 3,930,211 guns were imported. (2016: 5,137,771 guns were imported). So for 2015, there were 12,945,416 guns manufactured in the US and remained in the US or imported into the US.
If you look at the ATF data, 1986-2015 (a 30 year period), there were 198,408,518 guns manufactured and remained in the US or imported into the US.
https://www.atf.gov/resource-center/docs/undefined/firearms-commerce-united-states-annual-statistical-update-2017/download
I would agree that the SAS could be more detailed in their methodology, but as their people say above gun ownership is not a transparent subject because gun owners are not transparent about their gun ownership. So yes, it would be nice to know more about how they weighted their various approaches. But it is ridiculous to demand some absolute number. There were tens of millions of guns in the US before 1986, nearly 200 million in the 30 year ATF data period, and probably some 35-40 million since. So 300 million, 350 million, or the nearly 400 million of the SAS, is any of that going to contradict the fact that the US is awash, indeed drowning in guns? No. But there are always going to be some who will strain at a gnat but swallow a camel, –throwing in a few ad hominems along the way.
MojaveWolf
@DifferentClue — I confess, I saw that purple wig and the stupid grin on that guy’s face along w/the unknown but not-appealing word “weeaboo” and almost didn’t try your link, much as I’m all for some fun discussion! (and that is a great idea, we should do more of that here! Keep us from hating those who have evil/wrong/bad/stupid/ignorant/foolish opinions too much, so that we can more patiently explain to them the error of their factually and logically and morally incorrect ways!)
But I perservered, and did indeed find it amusing. 🙂
Keeping it on the Japanese pop culture subject, but veering off slightly (I’m not the hugest anime fan, but I do recall enjoying Fist of the North Star and a few others back in the day, as well as some of the more ambitious & message-oriented stuff, and the anime version of Metropolitan was a truly wonderful if tear-inducing movie) . . .
WHAT IS UP WITH THE ROTTEN TOMATOES CRITIC RATING FOR “GODZILLA, KING OF THE MONSTERS?”
Yes, it has some plot holes and a few sequences where the timing appears logistically impossible, all of which would be really easy to fix without changing the story if the writers or the director cared at all about these thing. Which is annoying and it would have been a better movie had these things been fixed. But nearly all of these critics gave a positive review to Avengers: Endgame (and before it, Avengers: Infinity War) both of which had far more, and more serious, and harder to fix logic issues. And the visuals weren’t nearly as cool. And the motive of the antagonist was far dumber in Avengers (Thanos wishes to restore balance to the universe by randomly killing half of all living things in the universe, regardless of species or planetary situation; the “eco-terrorists” who wake up all the sleeping titans in G:KotM wish to restore balance to this one planet by wiping out most of the humans who screwed up the planet in the first place, and have hard evidence that the mere presence of the titans tends to spur plant growth, in addition to being a human population control system)(minor spoiler: the “wake up all the giant monsters” plan, even aside from the problematic nature of annihilating lots of humans to save the rest of the planet, has a few small problems that they failed to anticipate).
The visuals are WAY cooler in Godzilla, some of the monsters and humans are at least as sympathetic as the superheroes in Avengers, the dialogue is somewhat smarter and the nature of the conflict considerably so, the fight scenes are at least as good and make a lot more logical sense in relation to what we know of relative power dynamics and even other fight scenes in the same movie, and the music is way better. So what gives? Disney bribes people and Legendary doesn’t? Critics love superheroes and hate giant monsters?
(also, much as I love the first two John Wick movies–haven’t seen the newest yet–and much as these make LOTS more sense than the Avengers movies also, they also require a certain suspension of disbelief and also are clearly intended to be just fun, entertaining movies, not striving in the slightest for the sort of high art ambitions of Winter’s Bone or Beasts of the Southern Wild or the Peter Jackson King Kong or anything by David Lynch; they also got really great critic ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, some of which flatly state that it’s a beautiful ballet of violence and that’s why it’s good; but . . . Godzilla is empty spectacle?)
Further, many of these same people loved the 2014 American Godzilla movie, which, while possibly technically a better movie than G:KotM in terms of not having plot holes and such (I don’t remember it well enough to say for sure, I enjoyed it and was relieved they didn’t butcher it like the 1998 Godzilla movie which was an ok film but a TERRIBLE Godzilla movie), isn’t that much better or maybe any better in other regards and definitely isn’t nearly as much fun (I liked the first one, again, don’t mean to be trashing it; I just liked this one a lot better, and think the majority of Godzilla fans will as well; for non-Godzilla fans, actually, I still think most people drawn to watching movies about unstoppable forces of nature trashing humans will like this one better, even if they never ever saw a Japanese Godzilla film, plot holes be damned).
So, critical motivation is . . . ?
And as long as we’re on the combined subjects of Godzilla and Japanese pop culture as viewed by Americans, here’s my top 5 Toho Godzilla movies:
Godzilla vs Destroyah (this made me cry, more than once)
Godzilla: Final Wars (this is probably for hardcore fans only, it’s kinda dumb, and was probably made mostly in response to the American ’98 atrocity, but SO MUCH FUN)(and Mothra looks as cool here as in the US version, where she is flat out beautiful)
Godzilla (1954, the original, not a typical monster movie but more like a meditation on the horrors of nuclear weapons using Godzilla as a metaphor, people who aren’t into giant monster movies will almost certainly rate this one the best, even aside from historical value)
Godzilla vs The Smog Monster — first Godzilla movie I saw, at around age 7-ish or so, I think? Got me hooked.
Godzilla vs King Ghidorah (1992, to separate from the 5,000 other movies where these two are in conflict, this one is the most serious and least cheasy, at least from what I’ve seen; I haven’t seen everything)
MojaveWolf
Okay, how did a link-free reply to DC discussing the most recent Godzilla movie wind up in moderation?
I thought I eliminated all my reflexive cursing but perhaps I missed something . . .
different clue
@MojaveWolf,
Thank you for the kind words. All it was was for total mere pure amusement and a break from serious thinking. I found my way to that video by Reddit accident.
Sometimes the length of a long comment may get it put into moderation. Otherwise, it seems to be random.
different clue
@MojaveWolf,
I watched Akira ( the movie) when it came to the theaters. I enjoyed that. Then I watched Lensman, which was good. And Robot Carnival. But otherwise have not watched much anime.
S Brennan
“But it is ridiculous to demand some absolute number”…
…and yet Hugh, that is what you and Small Arms Survey claim, when I call your/their BS you “cleverly” reverse the requirement of proof…how very..very..very “clever”.
Both you and Small Arms Survey have an agenda, confiscate arms from honest citizens and make sure only the government & criminal gangs have weapons. The founding fathers knew damn well how such an arrangement works, they did not want a return to feudalism, they wrote the US Constitution in such a manner as to prevent the outcome you seek.
Gun confiscationist seek to rewrite the US Constitution, without going to the trouble of doing so legally, they follow in the footsteps of those who seek war without a declaration, spying without warrant, the imprisonment of journalist exercising their rights…all adherents to the rule of tyranny.
S Brennan
“There are something like just under 400 million guns in the US…very, very sick America….confiscate a million a month it would still take 30 years to get rid of them all.” – Hugh
Scratch a somebody who wants “reasonable restrictions on gun purchases” and you always find somebody who wants to confiscate all guns, well, not entirely, only to the point that the upper class, their minions in government are allowed to have guns. Of course gun control advocates know that under their regime, like Mexico*, criminal gangs can have all the guns they want…as long as they only terrorize “little people”.
So like Ezra…whatever our rulers desire is what our scribes are most passionate about.
MojaveWolf
As long as we’re on the subject of guns, a topic for debate:
Best weapon for home defense? (I know many opinions all over the place on this)
I’m throwing out a quick, completely non-expert vote for the Mossberg 500.
Fun fact, that is fun to me even if to no one else: I learned about this gun after a couple of weird things happened w/people showing up at the house and walking into the yard when I wasn’t here. Nothing came of any of these events (it probably helps that we have dogs, but don’t want the dogs to get into it w/people either), but said events made both she and I a bit nervous. Wanted my wife to have a weapon (and, it occurred to me, I’m getting older and not what I used to be, and also if someone else had a firearm it might not matter who was better hand to hand). Did much research, and while a slight majority of the most knowledgeable people seemed to favor carbines/rifles, I personally thought a shotgun made the most sense, all things considered. A number of people also thought that given my wife is fairly small framed, a 20 gauge might be appropriate, but she was having none of that.
I remembered from long-ago writing research something called “The Streetsweeper.” I admit, I wanted to buy the Streetsweeper simply because the name sounded cool. But reviews tended to be unflattering. Wound up thinking Mossberg was the way to go.
Primary advantages of this weapon:
(1) If you point and click and don’t miss, it should disable any assailant.
(2) While not the most intimidating looking weapon out there, it looks intimidating enough and any reasonably sane person who isn’t VERY determined is unlikely to bug you further should they see this, so ideally you won’t have to use it all.
This is probably completely the wrong place for this discussion, but since there’s already a gun argument going on and I agree w/DC that lightening things up sometimes is good for the soul . . .
(note: one doesn’t have to choose gun for your preferred self-defense weapon; I don’t care if you want to make an argument for marbles and banana peels, or more seriously, for a knife or a stick or a sword cane. Okay, I’ve never seen anyone make a serious argument for sword cane before but why not? People think you have a limp and you’re a crippled person about to bop them w/your cane and suddenly get impaled on an entirely different sort of problem. Illegal most places, which I find stupid, but I can see it working. Important to note that I have zero experience w/sword canes, or any swords other than some non-paid fencing lessons from someone who was much better than me when I was much younger, and of which I remember next to nothing, so please my sword cane rec w/a grain of salt)
S Brennan
MW,
My 1st choice is based on my life experience…not relevant to you.
My 2nd choice would be a 20 gauge rifled pump action shot gun, I prefer magazine fed because you can easily change your ammo out and there is less weight away from the center of gravity. A slug shot from a rifled barrel can also put food on the table. Even crimminals wearing armor can be disabled by a well placed slug.
Bare in mind, that as you get older, anything that is not a semi-automatic will be harder to deal with as muscles whither so, you will need to practice more often.
Also, as many wealthy gentlemen have shotguns, you shouldn’t have to worry about the gun confiscation crowd, at least until after all the blue-collar/enlisted-men’s weapons have been rounded-up by the minions of the .01%. And yes, I really would love to see guys like StewartM and Hugh out in rural American demanding that honest men give up their weapons…writing the last sentence made me laugh out loud.
Tragically, guys like StewartM & Hugh won’t be the ones forced to do gun confiscation, enforcing such edicts will fall to “volunteers” from the low socioeconomic groups. Sheriffs in rural WA & CA have already told their respective state governments that violating the US Constitution isn’t part of their job description…and so far, both state governments haven’t been able to get ATF or FBI agents to do their bidding…so..maybe StewartM and Hugh could handle the door to door stuff…huh?
nihil obstet
Hey, don’t leave me out of the “Let’s have some gun regulation” crowd. I can’t see that requiring licensing of lethal machines equals “confiscation”. Maybe like our founders, we should require participation in well-regulated militias and scrap the standing professional army that hasn’t won a war in 70 years.
S Brennan
nihil obstet; you clearly haven’t purchased a gun in the last twenty years.
Had you done so, you’d realize that you are finger-printed, then all the national 3-letter agencies go through your record, then, any and all of the state, county & municipalities where you lived, traveled, or, stayed over night, can place a 6 month hold without so much as an arrest or even a ticket. And if there is somebody with a similar name who got arrested, guess what, you are going to have to show proof that isn’t you… That happened to me, can’t prove it wasn’t you that has outstanding parking tickets, even though you haven’t been to that city in 35 years, too bad. New York, Chicago & California are noted for placing such holds.
The elitist thinking is that lower income people will not fight the hold and upper income people have the resources to do so. Problem solved, only the upper classes deserve constitutional rights & protections. They byproduct of this elitist “thinking” is…a black market for guns that supports criminals…but what the hell, as long as it makes the elites feel warm & fuzzy.
I’d go on, but, like most people who talk on the subject, you haven’t a clue about all the national, state, county & municipal regs already out there…just one thing, they don’t work. You might ask yourself why don’t gun laws work against criminals…and it may dawn on some, that criminals don’t follow the law because, they are…wait for it…criminals!
==================================
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
“well regulated” is added to clarify that Definition 2] [see below] is NOT what the framers meant.
mi·li·tia
noun
noun: militia; plural noun: militias
1] a military force that is raised from the civil population to supplement a regular army in an emergency. “creating a militia was no answer to the army’s manpower problem”
2] a military force that engages in rebel or terrorist activities in opposition to a regular army.
3] all able-bodied civilians eligible by law for military service.
nihil obstet
No, I don’t have a clue. I also don’t understand the ins and outs of wage theft, but I know it’s rampant and do not therefore conclude that we ought to just make it legal. I know that in the U.S. guns are involved in the deaths of thousands every year, and do not therefore conclude that we ought to just shrug and accept that in the U.S. we are 10 times more likely to die in a gun-related incident than the residents of any other developed country. You keep carrying on about confiscation; how many of your guns have been confiscated? With hundreds of millions of legal guns in the country and none of them confiscated, I don’t see confiscation as an issue. I’d like to see us put as much thought into gun safety as we put into childproof medicine-bottle safety. It’s true that culture has a lot to do with it, but I haven’t seen NRA types address the glorification of power, bullying, and guns in our society.
This isn’t much of an issue for me. I’m more likely to be shot by a police officer than by a criminal, but of course, the police officer is always justified in shooting because there are so many armed criminals out there.
It’s just the whole complex of anti-social making stuff up about how if society sets up standards for you to be responsible, it’s taking away all your rights — confiscation, confiscation! — that stands in the way of developing a really decent society. So I want to be included among those who object.
different clue
@nihil obstet,
The gun-culture community regards gun confiscation as a looming FUTURE issue because the Liberal Fascist community seeks total gun confiscation. Lying Liberal-Fascist liars will say otherwise, but the gun-culture community knows very well that they are lying.
They want a War On Guns to go with the War On Drugs.
Let the Liberal Fascist Pigs try rounding up the guns their own personal selves. Pray the police and the sheriffs and the Armed Forces refuse to help them do it.
nihil obstet
@dc
OMG, you outed us!!!
S Brennan
“I’m more likely to be shot by a police officer than by a criminal” – nihil obstet
“No, I don’t have a clue…[but that doesn’t stop me]” – nihil obstet
Fair enough, here’s a clue:
“In 2018 police shot and killed 978 people, [BTW, 87% of those shootings occur in Democratically controlled cities].” In the same year their were 14,623 gun deaths that were not suicide. 978/14632 = .06684 which implies that if you are killed by a gun, not of your own hand, your odds that it’s a cop pulling the trigger is 6.684%.
It’s one thing to not “have a clue”, it’s quite another not to be able to do basic arithmetic. Clearly, if you are involved in violent altercations with the police on a regular basis…your mileage may vary but, if you are not an asshole when dealing with cops, you are ~15 times more likely to be shot by a criminal.
I have yet to talk to a gun-control* advocate who has even a passing knowledge of guns. Liberals refuse to serve in our nation’s armed forces, [although they’re always happy to send the lower-classes off die in foreign wars], as a consequence, they only know what the corporate media tells them.
*code word for confiscation
nihil obstet
@S Brennan
Well, peace, brother. Another area that I don’t have a clue about is how to get the U.S. out of foreign wars and to stop it from starting another one. So while we’re plotting about confiscating hundreds of millions of guns, give us the clues to ending the wars. Good to see a huge area of agreement.
MojaveWolf
@nihil — how to get the U.S. out of foreign wars and to stop it from starting another one. . . Good to see a huge area of agreement.
Electorally — Tulsi, Bernie or Gravel. Please. Do everything you can to get one of these three elected, since they are basically the only people I trust to try and keep us from pointlessly invading people. Effectively, vote Bernie or Tulsi, since Gravel has already said he wants one of them (preferably Tulsi) to win and isn’t really trying to do more than get out good messages. Thus, he is ignored, and Tulsi/Bernie smeared non-stop (except when ignored). Not a coincidence, I think.
And try to make sure your vote gets counted correctly (tho how? I dunno). The rest of the D’s (and R’s) will almost certainly be as bad as previous D’s and R’s, which is to say far worse than Trump has been thus far, tho Donald keeps *almost* getting us into things while spouting bellicose rhetoric; at this point I think that’s his way of of keeping us out of things, tho it could be blind luck.
Overall — (1) work to break up the media concentration (how? I dunno)
(2) build up alternate sources and keep those we have safe
@SBrennan — thanks for the rec. I’m not going to buy another gun anytime soon, if for no other reason than finances, but you make a good case for the 20 gauge. “Older” shall soon be upon me, at least in relative terms, if I live that long.
iirc, I briefly considered the value of things that might be armor piercing and decided that the chances of random idiots wearing that out here was minimal, and if I ever wind up shooting it out w/cops or someone’s private army I’m in deep trouble and my survival depends upon the miraculous anyway, so went w/what I thought would best deter/work against normal robbers/home invaders.
Of course, it could be I am wrong as to what a “normal” robber/home invader would be, I do recall from my LA days a multi-hour televised running battle between body-armor robbers and the local cops, who were seriously outgunned with regards to firepower even whilst having an insurmountable numbers advantage, so obviously some criminals *do* take the trouble to go the body armor route.
Even in Cali, not worried about confiscation anytime soon; the Mossberg has the limit but no more as far as allowable rounds, unless they lowered it again while I wasn’t paying attention.
And yes good god the Cali background checks the purchaser gets to pay for (and for ammo too! complete w/a felony penalty if you buy the ammo out of state and bring it in to avoid this, though how the hell are they ever going to know?) are very annoying and stupid (voted on by the public; not a Congress to blame on this one, sigh)(I know they cheat tabulating votes here but this probably passed legit; the people on the coast mostly do not know anything about guns and don’t think about them much and just vote knee-jerk based on media manipulation, and they outnumber the rest of us)
S Brennan
MojaveWolf;
As you already know, I will vote for Tulsi in the primary, although I already know that Kamela H. is the anointed one by Hillary corp to finish the task of bringing the world to WW III.
What many of today’s “liberals” don’t understand is, FDR had priorities, he didn’t get distracted [except in ’36] when shiny pennies were tossed on the freeway. Late term abortion & gun control* are today’s shiny pennies…liberals love to wander the interstates high-speed lanes chasing them down.
BTW, I am headed down to the Mojave, EAFB next week, I checked Cali laws, my AR has a pistol grip, not legal, confiscation and time in prison.
*Gun-confiscation
MojaveWolf
@SBrennan — Enjoy the desert! And if you carry your gun, remember the Borribles motto, “Don’t Get Caught!” I’m near a different base (MCAGCC) in a different part of the desert, but welcome anyway!
I feel too physically awful to say much coherent right now, but while agreeing w/”don’t get distracted”, we probably feel differently on the late-term abortion debate. Women usually have really compelling reasons for those. It’s not like women are walking around pregnant for 8 months and then going “oh, I changed my mind, babies are icky!” (and if someone is that . . . whatever that would be, not sure I really want to encourage them to bring another one of themselves into the world) Plus, bodily autonomy is bodily autonomy. Etc.
And last but not least, and hoping this doesn’t get my comment thrown in moderation, if you haven’t already seen it:
https://twitter.com/nikoCSFB/status/1137851476775247872
Go Tulsi! I can’t believe she actually said that, but AWESOME. This is why she’s my top choice, right here.
#Tulsi2020 #FuckThatShit2020
Also, on the same subject (well, her subject, not her)
Aside from the . . . (I can’t think of a polite adjective to say what I really think) people who believe the Russiagate narrative and think they are saving us all from some nebulous web of treason . . .
What do all the people pushing impeachment think they are going to get if they succeed? Pence is far, far worse in EVERY SINGLE POSSIBLE WAY (at least if you’re a progressive, and are concerned about policy as opposed to decorum), and actually sounded more war-mongery than HRC. Ted Cruz w/fewer principles. Dude scares the crap out of me. This is who the MacResistance people want to put in the white house?