Every time there is a shooting we get the same response. The news media reports it, endlessly, for days and days. While appearing to be objective they are actually promoting the liberal gun control agenda. All the while, inciting fear among the unwashed masses. Then Obama steps up and essentially blames the American people for these Islamic nut jobs that are running around killing people.
First of all, gun ownership is a right of citizenship. It's in the constitution. This makes us unique from other countries. If the American people don't like it we can amend the constitution. But that is the only way it can change.
Secondly, suppose for a moment that the constitution did get amended and restrictions are put on gun ownership. Which ones get banned and which ones are not? How many can you own? Are the rules different for people that have children in the house? Should people that drink alcohol be allowed to own a gun? Who decides all of this? The same collection of Washington clowns that have fucked up everything else, that's who.
I just find it hilarious, and more than a little hypocritical, that the same set of liberal politicians that are calling for gun control are protected by Secret Service people carrying what...slingshots? No, they carry guns. And the same set of idiots lecturing us about SUV's are driving around in armored vehicles that probably get less than 10 MPG. And the same set of people railing about how we need to give money to the poor strangely never seem to give much of their own money to the cause. No, that's left up to people like Chaney and Trump and Romney. That's right - those people give millions of dollars of their own money to charitable causes every year. Their own money. Quite a bit different than the standard rich liberal prick who stands up there asking for YOUR money, while giving little or none of their own.
Probably about the same percentage of people that might pull out a knife or a baseball bat in the same situation. I'm not trying to be facetious but my point is that just about anything can be a weapon. I think what we need are tougher laws for weapons offences and better training.
How this woman can have any credibility at all is beyond me. She has shown herself over and over again as a pathological liar. Every single post she has held has ended in abject failure. And yet she is the leading Democratic nominee. Absolutely astounding. The only conclusion I can draw is that some people hate Republicans so much that they will vote for literally anyone as long as they run as a Democrat. Is this what our country has come to?
I didn't see the speech but, as I predicted, more calls for gun control. How this is going to help is beyond me. Chicago has the toughest gun control laws in the country and yet one of the highest homicide rates. Same goes for Baltimore.
Criminals don't go through legitimate channels to acquire guns. That is kind of what you would expect - they are criminals after all. So making it more difficult to acquire guns will in no way reduce the number of guns that criminals have. All it does is prevent honest citizens from protecting themselves.
You make a good point about the consolidation and in a broader sense you are correct. But in terms of terrorism - and remember, this is how it was sold to the American public - it has been a failure.
I'm not blaming Obama for this by the way. DHS was brought in by the Bush administration. Both parties have a hand in this and both have failed to make it work.
"So how many armed civilians do you need to drop the mass killing rate by 50%?" - It's not just mass killings it's all killings. Who you do you thing the bad guys target? The weak and the unarmed, that's who. If you want to let the DHS and police attempt to protect you then that's your business. When it comes to the safety of my family I take matters into my own hands.
"Meanwhile, now every office party where people are drinking now has at least someone armed in attendance." - Are you trying to draw a relationship between alcohol and guns? Nice try. Nobody is suggesting that anyone should be packing at the office Christmas party. In your scenario alcohol is the problem, not guns.
"Considering that in the US accidental shootings alone kill ~10 times more people than mass shootings, I think more people would die rather than fewer" - Would you care to cite any reliable sources on this? Meanwhile, I would suggest that many of the accidental shootings occur because of lack of training in the use of firearms and improper storage of firearms. The trigger doesn't pull itself.
After 9/11 the government created DHS to supposedly prevent terror attacks from happening again. As others have discussed, this is nothing more than political theater. Billions of dollars and thousands of bumbling bureaucrats later, we are no safer now than we were then. All it has done is create delays for millions of air passengers every year.
So Obama will predictably call for more of the same. More invasion of privacy, more bureaucrats, more wasted effort. This is what government always does - when an idea doesn't work throw more money at it.
Meanwhile he will double down on more gun control. The problem is that law enforcement is almost always in a reactive role. A crime gets committed and they show up, clean up the mess, and try to find out who is responsible. In the interim, lots of people die. What he doesn't want to admit to is that is citizens are armed then these types of terror attacks would have minimal or no damage. Instead of everyone standing around watching people get shot someone will pull out a piece and shoot the shooter.
Once again, political correctness and party politics get in the way of common sense.
What Gates and Zuckerberg and others are really saying is that traditional charities and government programs have not worked. They would rather decide themselves where the money goes. Personally I don't really have a problem with that.
Remember, Bill Gate's mother was a charity big wig so I'm sure that he got a good luck at how they operate. I have worked for a few of them and in my experience there was a lot of waste and inefficiency. If I were really rich I would be hesitant to hand over millions (or billions) of dollars knowing that 30-40% of it was going to get pissed away. The other thing is that after you hand over the money you have no real control over how it is spent. You can request that it gets spent on this or that but you can't control it.
Government is the same way. Some people think they should just pay up and give the money to the government for the greater good. That would be fine if every government expenditure wasn't mired in politics, corruption waste and abuse. Unfortunately many of them are.
So they decide to have control over how their money is spent.
Two things to keep in mind:
1) It is, after all, their money. We can argue over how they earned it but it is their money. 2) Is what they are doing a tax dodge? Maybe, maybe not. But what they are doing is legal. If the system is crooked then blame the government. They are the ones that crafted the laws.
I'm one of the grandfathered ones and it's the main reason I stick with AT&T. Sure it sucks that I have to pay another $5 a month but to have unlimited data (even if they throttle it after a while) is worth it to me.
Did you know that they are legally required to unlock your phone? I just upgraded a few months ago and they unlocked mine. It used to be that you could call them and they would give you the unlock code over the phone. Now you have to go to a website and request it. They will email you the code. The only criteria is that your account has to be paid up in full and that your contract is up.
"We tried that with the moon. What happened? Next to nothing for half a century. The Apollo program didn't advance space travel, it held it back, by focusing on the wrong technologies." - That is an interesting take on it. My point was that without the Apollo program we never would have gotten to the moon in the first place. Which wrong technologies are you referring to?
"Manned space exploration isn't economically viable for anybody at this point." - And that is precisely why government needs to take the lead on it. Otherwise it won't get done. Will they piss away a bunch of money in the process? Certainly. Your point about politically favored programs is well taken.
We seem to have gotten away from this in recent years but space exploration is a perfect example of what government SHOULD be doing. These kinds of exploration programs are not economically viable for commercial enterprises. Government needs to pave the way first. This is something at JFK understood all too well.
I just think that there are a lot of variables that contribute towards a given representation. For example, if a company gets 25 applications for a series of positions and 20 of them are men does that mean that they should hire equal number men and women to fill those positions? Maybe there were not enough women qualified, or even interested.
Sure, if there are valid and provable discrimination then a limited remedy might be appropriate. But throwing a big wet blanket over the whole thing just doesn't seem well thought out to me.
No - all it means is get the right person for the job. Gender and ethnicity are absolutely meaningless when evaluating skill. If the most qualified person happens to be an Indian female then, by all means, hire her. But the fact that she is female and Indian should in no way give her "bonus points" in the evaluation.
I hire technical people all the time. If you can write code and get along with people then you're in. I could not give a rats ass whether that person is male or female or white or black or asian or whatever. I hire based on skill and aptitude.
Quotas are, by definition, racist and sexist. Quotas, by definition, give preference to one group over another and do not take skill into account.
If top talent is a code word for anything it is fairness.
While they are at it why not just get rid of the Diversity and Inclusion bimbo? I cringe every time I hear that term. The position should be replaced with General Manager of Competence. That person would be in charge of making sure that the company hires and retains top talent...regardless of their fucking gender or ethnicity.
This whole thing was a setup from the beginning. The kid brings something to school that looks a lot like a bomb. So naturally he gets arrested. Just like if a kid brings a toy gun to school. They would also get arrested for that, and it has happened many times before. The fact that he is Muslim has absolutely nothing to do with it and everyone knows that.
Of course, the press sees this and immediately jumps on it as a discrimination story. Then, predictably, everyone is tripping over themselves to declare this kid as some sort of genius. Offering him scholarships and trips to the White House. Fox was the only network that actually fact checked it and exposed it as a fraud.
And the parents...what kind of idiot would think it's a good idea to send their kid to school with something that looks exactly like a bomb in a briefcase? This was clearly a setup and now they are trying to extort 15 million from the school district. I wouldn't give them 15 cents.
As Obama sits on his high horse, claiming such deals are "unpatriotic", I am reminded that the current tax code - the set of rules that makes all of this perfectly legal - was crafted by Congress. The very same congress that is screaming bloody murder when corporations utilize these laws to their advantage. I am also reminded of the legalized bribery...oops...I mean lobby groups...that leaned on congress to pass such laws.
Congress creates a problem...then steps in and attempts to fix it...thereby making it even worse than it was in the first place. Lather, rinse, repeat.
This is the same congress that handed out billions of dollars of taxpayer money - our money - to failing banks with no strings attached. Then they complained because the banks turned around and gave their executives fat bonuses - again, our money - because congress was too stupid to forbid them from doing that.
There are many,many, many examples of this kind of fraud, abuse and incompetence in the US government. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why Obama Care is going to fail. And every other big government program for that matter.
Smaller government is the only answer to this. The more money we throw at these big problems the worse it gets.
You want to stop these corporate inversions? Get rid of the IRS as we know it and replace it with a flat tax. No more deductions, loopholes, etc. No more gaming the system. No more bribery. If a corporation tries to pull what Phizer is doing then fine, you are now a foreign corporation and subject to import duties. And that incorporation in Delaware? You can forget about that too because it only applies to US based companies. Just watch how quickly they all fall in line.
For the billions currently stashed in other countries you offer a one time 10% tax on repatriated funds. Then you take that money and shore up the social security trust fund. Anything left gets rebated to American taxpayers. Above all else, you keep congress and their sticky fingers away from the money.
The issue at hand is not whether Snowden broke the law. If that were the only criteria then half of congress would be in jail, including Hillary Clinton. No, the real issue is that Snowden embarrassed the government. Not only did he catch the federal government lying to its own people, he released evidence to prove it. And for that he must pay.
Witch hunts are nothing new for the government. They have been doing it for generations.
Yeah and again, nobody is calling for an end to immigration. America was founded by immigrants, all the way back to the Mayflower. But we can't just have people slithering in under the fence or overstaying visas. There is a process in place for who gets in and who doesn't. I sympathize with the plight of our friends on the southern boarder but we can't accommodate everyone. I happen to think it is a reasonable approach.
I notice that you have not tried to refute a single one of my arguments so I will take that as a complete and total smack down. Typical knee jerk liberal. All emotion and no logic.
Sometimes I wonder why I even bother responding to these AC trolls. Slow day I suppose. But thanks for advancing the conservative viewpoint. You can collect your participation trophy at the door.
"The moment you have a child you become a burden for the company." - Yes but that is because society insists on maternity (and now paternity) leave. I'm not saying that is necessarily a bad thing, although it does seem a bit unfair to childless couples and singles. Anyhow, that ship has already sailed. But somebody has to pay for the time off, etc.
"Trump wants to make getting babies impossible." - Nonsense. Trump has never said anything of the sort.
"He wants to stop immigration." - No, he wants to stop ILLEGAL immigration. You have conveniently left that critical piece out. Trump has said repeatedly that he welcomes LEGAL immigrants to the US and values their contributions. How this is an extreme position is beyond me. People sneaking into the country and overstaying visas are not "Undocumented" or whatever other cutesy phrase you want to come up with. They are ILLEGAL immigrants and have broken our immigration laws.
"He wants that american population gets older, without any young people, and dies out, slowly." - Are you suggesting that Americans don't have any children?
"With an unpopulated america he has more space for his golf resorts." - And if we follow your logic, nobody to play on those courses. Unless we include all the illegal immigrants that you are pushing for. Maybe they'll take up golf.
and I'm not their biggest fan, but I would submit that most of the modern exploits are due to vulnerabilities in browsers and the internet itself. In the past MS has done a piss poor job of security but it's much better now.
OSX, Linux, UNIX, Android, iOS - they all have vulnerabilities. It's just that Windows has a much bigger install base than the others and that makes it a logical target. If you want a 100% secure system then don't connect it to the internet and don't let anyone have physical access to the keyboard. As soon as you connect it to the internet you open a port, and therefore an attack vector.
Slashdot Mirror
Every time there is a shooting we get the same response. The news media reports it, endlessly, for days and days. While appearing to be objective they are actually promoting the liberal gun control agenda. All the while, inciting fear among the unwashed masses. Then Obama steps up and essentially blames the American people for these Islamic nut jobs that are running around killing people. First of all, gun ownership is a right of citizenship. It's in the constitution. This makes us unique from other countries. If the American people don't like it we can amend the constitution. But that is the only way it can change. Secondly, suppose for a moment that the constitution did get amended and restrictions are put on gun ownership. Which ones get banned and which ones are not? How many can you own? Are the rules different for people that have children in the house? Should people that drink alcohol be allowed to own a gun? Who decides all of this? The same collection of Washington clowns that have fucked up everything else, that's who. I just find it hilarious, and more than a little hypocritical, that the same set of liberal politicians that are calling for gun control are protected by Secret Service people carrying what...slingshots? No, they carry guns. And the same set of idiots lecturing us about SUV's are driving around in armored vehicles that probably get less than 10 MPG. And the same set of people railing about how we need to give money to the poor strangely never seem to give much of their own money to the cause. No, that's left up to people like Chaney and Trump and Romney. That's right - those people give millions of dollars of their own money to charitable causes every year. Their own money. Quite a bit different than the standard rich liberal prick who stands up there asking for YOUR money, while giving little or none of their own.
Probably about the same percentage of people that might pull out a knife or a baseball bat in the same situation. I'm not trying to be facetious but my point is that just about anything can be a weapon. I think what we need are tougher laws for weapons offences and better training.
How this woman can have any credibility at all is beyond me. She has shown herself over and over again as a pathological liar. Every single post she has held has ended in abject failure. And yet she is the leading Democratic nominee. Absolutely astounding. The only conclusion I can draw is that some people hate Republicans so much that they will vote for literally anyone as long as they run as a Democrat. Is this what our country has come to?
I didn't see the speech but, as I predicted, more calls for gun control. How this is going to help is beyond me. Chicago has the toughest gun control laws in the country and yet one of the highest homicide rates. Same goes for Baltimore. Criminals don't go through legitimate channels to acquire guns. That is kind of what you would expect - they are criminals after all. So making it more difficult to acquire guns will in no way reduce the number of guns that criminals have. All it does is prevent honest citizens from protecting themselves.
You make a good point about the consolidation and in a broader sense you are correct. But in terms of terrorism - and remember, this is how it was sold to the American public - it has been a failure.
I'm not blaming Obama for this by the way. DHS was brought in by the Bush administration. Both parties have a hand in this and both have failed to make it work.
"So how many armed civilians do you need to drop the mass killing rate by 50%?" - It's not just mass killings it's all killings. Who you do you thing the bad guys target? The weak and the unarmed, that's who. If you want to let the DHS and police attempt to protect you then that's your business. When it comes to the safety of my family I take matters into my own hands.
"Meanwhile, now every office party where people are drinking now has at least someone armed in attendance." - Are you trying to draw a relationship between alcohol and guns? Nice try. Nobody is suggesting that anyone should be packing at the office Christmas party. In your scenario alcohol is the problem, not guns.
"Considering that in the US accidental shootings alone kill ~10 times more people than mass shootings, I think more people would die rather than fewer" - Would you care to cite any reliable sources on this? Meanwhile, I would suggest that many of the accidental shootings occur because of lack of training in the use of firearms and improper storage of firearms. The trigger doesn't pull itself.
After 9/11 the government created DHS to supposedly prevent terror attacks from happening again. As others have discussed, this is nothing more than political theater. Billions of dollars and thousands of bumbling bureaucrats later, we are no safer now than we were then. All it has done is create delays for millions of air passengers every year.
So Obama will predictably call for more of the same. More invasion of privacy, more bureaucrats, more wasted effort. This is what government always does - when an idea doesn't work throw more money at it.
Meanwhile he will double down on more gun control. The problem is that law enforcement is almost always in a reactive role. A crime gets committed and they show up, clean up the mess, and try to find out who is responsible. In the interim, lots of people die. What he doesn't want to admit to is that is citizens are armed then these types of terror attacks would have minimal or no damage. Instead of everyone standing around watching people get shot someone will pull out a piece and shoot the shooter.
Once again, political correctness and party politics get in the way of common sense.
What Gates and Zuckerberg and others are really saying is that traditional charities and government programs have not worked. They would rather decide themselves where the money goes. Personally I don't really have a problem with that.
Remember, Bill Gate's mother was a charity big wig so I'm sure that he got a good luck at how they operate. I have worked for a few of them and in my experience there was a lot of waste and inefficiency. If I were really rich I would be hesitant to hand over millions (or billions) of dollars knowing that 30-40% of it was going to get pissed away. The other thing is that after you hand over the money you have no real control over how it is spent. You can request that it gets spent on this or that but you can't control it.
Government is the same way. Some people think they should just pay up and give the money to the government for the greater good. That would be fine if every government expenditure wasn't mired in politics, corruption waste and abuse. Unfortunately many of them are.
So they decide to have control over how their money is spent.
Two things to keep in mind:
1) It is, after all, their money. We can argue over how they earned it but it is their money.
2) Is what they are doing a tax dodge? Maybe, maybe not. But what they are doing is legal. If the system is crooked then blame the government. They are the ones that crafted the laws.
I'm one of the grandfathered ones and it's the main reason I stick with AT&T. Sure it sucks that I have to pay another $5 a month but to have unlimited data (even if they throttle it after a while) is worth it to me.
Did you know that they are legally required to unlock your phone? I just upgraded a few months ago and they unlocked mine. It used to be that you could call them and they would give you the unlock code over the phone. Now you have to go to a website and request it. They will email you the code. The only criteria is that your account has to be paid up in full and that your contract is up.
"We tried that with the moon. What happened? Next to nothing for half a century. The Apollo program didn't advance space travel, it held it back, by focusing on the wrong technologies." - That is an interesting take on it. My point was that without the Apollo program we never would have gotten to the moon in the first place. Which wrong technologies are you referring to?
"Manned space exploration isn't economically viable for anybody at this point." - And that is precisely why government needs to take the lead on it. Otherwise it won't get done. Will they piss away a bunch of money in the process? Certainly. Your point about politically favored programs is well taken.
We seem to have gotten away from this in recent years but space exploration is a perfect example of what government SHOULD be doing. These kinds of exploration programs are not economically viable for commercial enterprises. Government needs to pave the way first. This is something at JFK understood all too well.
I just think that there are a lot of variables that contribute towards a given representation. For example, if a company gets 25 applications for a series of positions and 20 of them are men does that mean that they should hire equal number men and women to fill those positions? Maybe there were not enough women qualified, or even interested.
Sure, if there are valid and provable discrimination then a limited remedy might be appropriate. But throwing a big wet blanket over the whole thing just doesn't seem well thought out to me.
No - all it means is get the right person for the job. Gender and ethnicity are absolutely meaningless when evaluating skill. If the most qualified person happens to be an Indian female then, by all means, hire her. But the fact that she is female and Indian should in no way give her "bonus points" in the evaluation.
I hire technical people all the time. If you can write code and get along with people then you're in. I could not give a rats ass whether that person is male or female or white or black or asian or whatever. I hire based on skill and aptitude.
Quotas are, by definition, racist and sexist. Quotas, by definition, give preference to one group over another and do not take skill into account.
If top talent is a code word for anything it is fairness.
Wouldn't be the first time my ideas have been rejected. But it won't stop me from trying :-)
While they are at it why not just get rid of the Diversity and Inclusion bimbo? I cringe every time I hear that term. The position should be replaced with General Manager of Competence. That person would be in charge of making sure that the company hires and retains top talent...regardless of their fucking gender or ethnicity.
This whole thing was a setup from the beginning. The kid brings something to school that looks a lot like a bomb. So naturally he gets arrested. Just like if a kid brings a toy gun to school. They would also get arrested for that, and it has happened many times before. The fact that he is Muslim has absolutely nothing to do with it and everyone knows that.
Of course, the press sees this and immediately jumps on it as a discrimination story. Then, predictably, everyone is tripping over themselves to declare this kid as some sort of genius. Offering him scholarships and trips to the White House. Fox was the only network that actually fact checked it and exposed it as a fraud.
And the parents...what kind of idiot would think it's a good idea to send their kid to school with something that looks exactly like a bomb in a briefcase? This was clearly a setup and now they are trying to extort 15 million from the school district. I wouldn't give them 15 cents.
Fuck you, clock boy.
As Obama sits on his high horse, claiming such deals are "unpatriotic", I am reminded that the current tax code - the set of rules that makes all of this perfectly legal - was crafted by Congress. The very same congress that is screaming bloody murder when corporations utilize these laws to their advantage. I am also reminded of the legalized bribery...oops...I mean lobby groups...that leaned on congress to pass such laws.
Congress creates a problem...then steps in and attempts to fix it...thereby making it even worse than it was in the first place. Lather, rinse, repeat.
This is the same congress that handed out billions of dollars of taxpayer money - our money - to failing banks with no strings attached. Then they complained because the banks turned around and gave their executives fat bonuses - again, our money - because congress was too stupid to forbid them from doing that.
There are many,many, many examples of this kind of fraud, abuse and incompetence in the US government. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why Obama Care is going to fail. And every other big government program for that matter.
Smaller government is the only answer to this. The more money we throw at these big problems the worse it gets.
You want to stop these corporate inversions? Get rid of the IRS as we know it and replace it with a flat tax. No more deductions, loopholes, etc. No more gaming the system. No more bribery. If a corporation tries to pull what Phizer is doing then fine, you are now a foreign corporation and subject to import duties. And that incorporation in Delaware? You can forget about that too because it only applies to US based companies. Just watch how quickly they all fall in line.
For the billions currently stashed in other countries you offer a one time 10% tax on repatriated funds. Then you take that money and shore up the social security trust fund. Anything left gets rebated to American taxpayers. Above all else, you keep congress and their sticky fingers away from the money.
The issue at hand is not whether Snowden broke the law. If that were the only criteria then half of congress would be in jail, including Hillary Clinton. No, the real issue is that Snowden embarrassed the government. Not only did he catch the federal government lying to its own people, he released evidence to prove it. And for that he must pay.
Witch hunts are nothing new for the government. They have been doing it for generations.
Yeah and again, nobody is calling for an end to immigration. America was founded by immigrants, all the way back to the Mayflower. But we can't just have people slithering in under the fence or overstaying visas. There is a process in place for who gets in and who doesn't. I sympathize with the plight of our friends on the southern boarder but we can't accommodate everyone. I happen to think it is a reasonable approach.
I notice that you have not tried to refute a single one of my arguments so I will take that as a complete and total smack down. Typical knee jerk liberal. All emotion and no logic.
Sometimes I wonder why I even bother responding to these AC trolls. Slow day I suppose. But thanks for advancing the conservative viewpoint. You can collect your participation trophy at the door.
Harry Reid?
"The moment you have a child you become a burden for the company." - Yes but that is because society insists on maternity (and now paternity) leave. I'm not saying that is necessarily a bad thing, although it does seem a bit unfair to childless couples and singles. Anyhow, that ship has already sailed. But somebody has to pay for the time off, etc.
"Trump wants to make getting babies impossible." - Nonsense. Trump has never said anything of the sort.
"He wants to stop immigration." - No, he wants to stop ILLEGAL immigration. You have conveniently left that critical piece out. Trump has said repeatedly that he welcomes LEGAL immigrants to the US and values their contributions. How this is an extreme position is beyond me. People sneaking into the country and overstaying visas are not "Undocumented" or whatever other cutesy phrase you want to come up with. They are ILLEGAL immigrants and have broken our immigration laws.
"He wants that american population gets older, without any young people, and dies out, slowly." - Are you suggesting that Americans don't have any children?
"With an unpopulated america he has more space for his golf resorts." - And if we follow your logic, nobody to play on those courses. Unless we include all the illegal immigrants that you are pushing for. Maybe they'll take up golf.
the need for Swede!
and I'm not their biggest fan, but I would submit that most of the modern exploits are due to vulnerabilities in browsers and the internet itself. In the past MS has done a piss poor job of security but it's much better now.
OSX, Linux, UNIX, Android, iOS - they all have vulnerabilities. It's just that Windows has a much bigger install base than the others and that makes it a logical target. If you want a 100% secure system then don't connect it to the internet and don't let anyone have physical access to the keyboard. As soon as you connect it to the internet you open a port, and therefore an attack vector.