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Tuco

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Posts posted by Tuco

  1. So we're clear, you saw one guy, and don't believe that is the absolute definition of an outlier?  Seems reasonable. 

    Outliers are what drive laws. If you believe we shouldn’t make laws to address outliers, then you don’t understand laws. There should be laws that prevent assholes from carrying guns in the path of children going to school. I don’t give a fuck if most gun owners wouldn’t do so if a significant chunk of gun owners support the assholes exercising their “rights.”
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  2. 18 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

    Over the last 7 years, Dems have won some very tight races against crazy, Trump supporters. Like Kari Lake in AZ. Obviously, the WI justice race was not this result.  It's surprising that more in the GOP don't realize that they could dial back the crazy by only 10% and win some of these races. 

    You are assuming that dialing back the crazy will result in the same GOP turnout. The crazies fuel the GOP.  If the Wisconsin Republicans had pushed for a 13-week abortion ban, with exceptions for rape, incest, and medical, they would have won more swing voters and would not have fired up the Dem turnout.  But it would have split their party.  There is zero chance that the pro-life warriors would have just said, yeah, that seems like a middle ground we can live with.  That's not just about votes, it's about the ability to function as a party.  

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  3. 5 hours ago, GW Hayduke said:

    A prohibition on selling high-capacity, high-velocity, high rate-of-fire firearms with grandfathering isn’t expected to immediately solve the problem. It would need to work with other firearm control measures. It would however immediately be a sizable barrier for the acquisition by the young - those just turning of age - or those just experiencing a crisis and wanting to act out.  Over the course of time, that benefit would slowly increase as those type of firearms naturally decay. We can increase the speed of that benefit with either voluntary or mandatory buy-back programs.  The speed could be further increased over time with requiring a registration and permitting system (for those grandfathered) and prohibiting inheritance transfer absent a permit. We could also tack on required training to the grandfather permit.

    No single measure should be expected to fix our problem. We would need an array of measures. 

    Yep.  Ban the sales.  Offer buybacks. 

    For anyone saying x or y will not fix the problem, be sure to point out that the problem will absolutely continue to worsen without legislation.  Lethal firepower will continue to get more effective and cheaper as time goes on.  It is the inevitable conclusion to improving technology in design and production.  Every day we do nothing is a day we decide "it's not bad enough yet."  It will continue to get worse until we, as a society, decides it's gotten bad enough.  

    If you ban the sales and offer buy backs, two things happen: guns get more expensive and no one invests in improving their lethality, because the is no longer a market. 

  4. 1 hour ago, Chuckie Finster said:

     

    Cool cool very cool

     

    I suppose it's not worth trying to explain to EmptyG that if this individual was receiving medical treatment, it was almost certainly reducing testosterone levels.  

  5. Well, on that basis, I’d have to say the Russian Orthodox Church is up there as worse fucking version of Christianity. American Christianity isn’t a huge outlier.

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  6. I saw that when it was on Netlfix.  

    As a runner (mediocre even in my prime) I appreciate the designed cruelty of the rules. Not knowing the start time is just brutal.  You can't plan you fueling, hydration, sleep, or even shitting to prep for one of the most grueling events on the planet.  Every year, he routes the race through the tunnel with water, which means the runners are in wet socks for hours.  He makes the runners take opposing directions on the last loop, which means you can't have a run buddy.  And of course, if you don't finish in the extremely challenging time target, it just doesn't count.  One second over and you didn't finish.  It is pure sadism.  It only works because running requires a certain level masochism.    

  7. 3 hours ago, PenelopeWitherspoon said:

    A large number of NYC homeless (35-40%) work.  Unfortunately, the most recent data I have is from 2018.  https://nlihc.org/resource/employment-and-earnings-among-nyc-homeless-adults

    There is an extreme lack of affordable housing in NYC, especially Manhattan.  So, yeah.  You can have a job and be homeless.  You are such a complete piece of shit.

    Here is the thing many people miss: they assume homelessness is a sign of wide scale economic depression.  In some cases, that might be true.  But it is much more likely to be associated with economic change and economic disparity that comes with rapid growth.  

    That fucking KOMO (Sinclair Broadcasting) documentary titled "Seattle is Dying" is just so fucking stupid.  Amazon employs something like 40,000 people in Seattle.  Those are high paying jobs that didn't exist 20 years ago.  They attract people from around the world.  Microsoft is headquartered across the lake in Redmond.  The result is a crazy increase in rents and house prices.  That's not "dying."  Rent is the free market's version of keeping score.  And on that score, Seattle is doing extremely well.  Its lower income residents, not so much.  They are getting pushed out, which is just the free market distribution of resources.  In other, cheaper cities, folks on the margin could survive in shitty housing.  There is very little shitty housing out here.  

    I'm not saying there aren't other policies which affect the situation.  But financial success is a huge part of it.  And that should inform folks on what it will take to solve it.  It sure as shit ain't trickle down economics.  Unemployment rates are meaningless when they includes jobs that can't pay the rent.  

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  8. Fatty
    come on up to Seattle, live homeless, say, up on first hill, for a couple of weeks, then give us your oral report.  

    Be sure to hit Chuminh on Sundays when they feed the community down the hill on Jackson. It’s so fucking Christian of them that I assume they’re Buddhists.
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  9. I don't know who else follows GeographyNow, but he's a youtuber who has been doing videos on all of the UN recognized countries in alphabetical order.  He made it up to Ukraine.  Good primer on the country including current events. 

     

     

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  10. So, the staffer accusing Schlapp of sexual assault went public today after the courts said he needed to in order to move forward with the lawsuit. 

    CNN

    The most shocking part: 

    Quote

    Senior Walker campaign officials confirmed to CNN that they spoke with Huffman and immediately notified campaign lawyers. One source told CNN that Huffman was offered options, including legal counsel, contacting law enforcement, a therapist, or if he wanted, to speak to reporters. The source added that he thought Huffman was angry and mortified by the situation.

    What kind of bleeding heart liberal nonsense is that?  That's gotta be bullshit, right?  

  11. There’s about to be a bunch of downtown Walgreens closing throughout big cities. Forget the red state / blue state thing. The real divide is urban rural. In those locations, it’s never much of a walk to a competitor. And it’s hard to get staff. Downtown retail is already struggling since Covid and remote workers. Those stores are fucked.

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  12. On 2/25/2023 at 7:17 AM, lemonlime said:


    It won’t. Desantis would send them to a godless immoral hellish blue state where they’d get their abortions.

    Yep.  Wealth, even enough wealth for a plane ticket and a hotel stay, is sufficient to insulate them from the worst repercussions of these laws. They can afford to support poorly written, one-sided, virtue signal laws, because they can always buy their way out of it.  This isn't about crafting a workable system.  

    Nebraska's heartbeat bill is likely hitting the floor this week.  Republicans have a fillibuster-proof majority.  Senator Cavanaugh is looking to pull out every delay tactic, on every bill, as she vows to "burn this session to the ground." Activists are talking about civil disobedience to gum up the session and delay it.  I really wish it all had a chance of working.  

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  13. 9 hours ago, aggie08 said:

    Of course I know how money laundering works!

    ...but, uh, let's watch Breaking Bad to make sure you know how it works.

    This seems like a really bad way to launder money.  

    Generally, you want to funnel illegal cash into legitimate business in a way that doesn't leave a paper trail.  Cash businesses are great for that.  But there is all sorts of documentation required for transferring money into a campaign and all sorts of documentation to go from the campaign to the car wash.  I know these people are stupid, but that seems overly complicated and stupid. 

    My best bet is that the owner used the same tax-id for the car wash as he did for his aviation company.  It could still be a grift, but one that is harder to prove.  The other reasonable possibility is that it is just straight-up embezzlement: the owner and a campaign worker cut real checks to a fake company for fake services.  

  14. For now Biden has credentials (and obviously experience) that Buttigieg doesn’t have.  I don’t think Buttigieg will be a viable presidential candidate until he has been either a senator or a governor.  He is a traditional politician (aside from the whole being outwardly gay thing); he doesn’t have any business or celebrity or military bonafides to run on, and despite being a genius talker, he’s not charismatic enough to rally enough people just based on his personality.  And until I see evidence to the contrary I do not think black democrats will turn out for him.  Buttigieg would certainly lose to Trump.  He would very very likely lose to DeSantis.  If he becomes a governor then I think depending on the cycle he could be a very good candidate for president.

    I would say his military bonafides exceed any President since the first Bush. Which is also an indication that no one really cares that much about military service.

    I agree with the good talker / lack of charisma thing.

    He probably has a better shot of winning the Presidency than becoming a Senator from or Governor of fucking Indiana. I think changing states would mean ditching the Mayor Pete from the conservative Midwest state thing and make him look like an opportunist. So, it’s more likely he would take high profile appointments to build the resume.
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  15. I don't think Christians are as monolithic in their belief structure as some of you seem to characterize them as. 


    Well, sure. But I think there is a large percentage of Pro-Putin Americans who justify that support in their version of Christianity. I’d be curious in what the correlation is between having a favorable opinion of Russia and identifying yourself as Christian or Evangelical Christian. I would guess over 90% for Christian.
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  16. In addition to just pure dee demagoguery, and the MAGATs going with whatever Fox tells them, the "Kremlin-curious" thing has a couple of threads to it that really work for them, and maybe for some non-MAGATs as well.
    First, there's the isolationism, which is always a thing.  Sometimes it competes heavily with America, fuck yeah, but it's a pretty consistent thread.
    Then there's the whole sOcIAliSm thing.  Russia was communist, now it's not, so they see Putin as some kind of anti-socialist.
    I have come to believe that Russia is the problem, period.  Monarchist, Communist, Kleptocracy (it's always been a kleptocracy), fucking Russia is the common thread and the problem.  The only thing communism added to Russia was a) a political system that had at least some appeal to some people outside Russia and b) a core tenet of world revolution, so that made them a little extra obstreperous for a while there.  And there's some remnants of it remaining.
    Russia just fucking sucks as a country. Ingobernable and with a nasty habit of causing problems for the rest of the world.

    I would say a huge part of it is because Russia is about 50 years behind the US on social issues. They are proudly homophobic. The two conservative organizations the Butina courted were the the NRA and the National Prayer Breakfast. Putin frequently uses “anti-woke” rhetoric that is directly quoted by US Christian outlets. The Wagner Group uses Crusader iconography and rhetoric.

    There are many right wingers who believe that the US has lost its Christian culture and look to Russia as the last bastion Christian power.

    Fucking Christians.
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  17. fewer...  
    Shit, titty Dad beat me to it by four hours.  That's what I get for not reading the rest of the damn thread.

    If it makes you feel any better, you’re both wrong. Calories are a unit of measurement. It’s fine to use less. You get your oil changed in “15 minutes or less.” My fuel tank holds “less than 20 gallons.”

    It’s all pretty much bullshit anyway.
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  18. 4 hours ago, YGIFS said:

    "Incumbency and partisan identification are going to carry the day"?  In West Virginia and Montana?  Well then, which one is it?  they're Democrats in deeply red states?  they can't run on both incumbency and party identity, can they?  How does that work then? 

    West Virginia isn't as red as it seems.  

    Up until 2020, there were more registered Dems than Republicans.  (In 2020 it was 36.8% R to 36.5% D; link

    The mental disconnect there is that West Virginia Democrats aren't really national Democrats.  They are their own category, born out of the coal miner unions.  The good news for Manchin is that he isn't really a national Democrat either.  So, yeah, there are a lot of WVDems (and former WVDems) who are still politically aligned with a candidate like Manchin but wouldn't consider voting for a "liberal" like Biden.  

    The shift from state party affiliation to national party affiliation has probably been the most dramatic political shift in my lifetime.  West Virginia is just behind the curve a little.  Who know how long a candidate like Manchin can hold out, but he might have another cycle in him.  

     

     

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  19. On 2/18/2023 at 6:15 PM, naija said:

    morally and intellectually repugnant.

    To recap, the Civil War was merely a disagreement of tradition versus change.  And, "tradition" is also the reason she gave for defending the flag and agreeing with Confederate Memorial Month.  

    And, for what it's worth, I think the interviewer asked the question in a way that would illicit an answer offensive to his group.  He didn't ask a question obscured by academia like, "what were the primary causes of the civil war?"  Something like that would give her leeway to lean into the states' rights nonsense that still passes for legitimate in some circles.  He asked "Why was the Civil War wrong?"  Straight-up, down the middle of the plate.  And she fucking dodged the obvious answer.  Because she is a fucking cowardly slimeball.  

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