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Comments
To be fair, the Portland shooting did get a ton of publicity before something worse happened, and most of the OMG BAN GUNS NOW stuff referenced both.
Political intrigue!
So the point of that gun story is that a) indeed, good man with a gun will stop bad man with a gun, or b) conversely, it disproves this idea? 'Cause I don't need to say it's kinda a polarising issue, so I want to know as much as you can tell me.
Not to mention that it depended on the circumstance of the shooter going into a bathroom and then coming back out.
These cases are far more complex than "yes, gun can stop gun" or "no, gun cannot stop gun".
I'm all in favor of prerequisite safety and emergency training courses for gun ownership. Just saying.
I only recently learned that you don't have to get trained to use a gun before being able to buy or legally possess or use one.
When a U.S. liberal or U.S. conservative presented with a fellow U.S. liberal or U.S. conservative some of whose viewpoints don't agree with that first person's views, a person from which ideological category (liberal or conservative) is more likely to view the second person as an ally (or alternatively, is less likely to emphasize disagreements with the second person on policy preferences)?
i see the words and they make sense but when i try to make them form a sentence my eyes just go swirly
Sorry, I have a tendency to occasionally write sentences that are grammatically correct and highly precise but as a result are extremely long-winded and may be hard to follow.
So, let's say you have a U.S. liberal here, and a U.S. conservative there.
Another U.S. liberal approaches the liberal here, and identifies as a liberal, agreeing on some issues while disagreeing on a few others.
Another U.S. conservative approaches the conservative there, and identifies as a conservative, agreeing on some issues while disagreeing on a few others.
Based only on this information, which pair of people is more likely to start arguing?
We have no way to tell unless we can look at the people in question.
In recent years I'd say the conservative, simply because they jumped to the whole "how DARE you dissent from ideological purity!" thing about one House cycle before the liberals.
The Obama administration has stated its position on whether the US should build the Death Star.
^^ I thought the liberals were doing it before it was cool for the conservatives.
^ ROFLMAO
Liberals tend to just bicker naturally, but it's a more healthy bickering and rarely had the same shades of "if you deviate from this ticket in the slightest we will uniformly castigate you as an antichrist" the Tea Party has been poisoning us with. At least not until they decided jumping on the bandwagon a cycle or so later and started trying to throw out anyone who dissented as a Blue Dog.
I thought it wasn't just bickering but rather bitterly complaining that other liberals, especially ones in elected office, weren't serving liberal policy goals. That said, the result was more often "I'm leaving the club!" rather than "You, get out of the club!", and I guess you're right that the "get out of the club" sentiment has been kinda big with Tea-Partiers.
I don't remember seeing a spike in primarying out Blue Dog Dems. I think they've always been kinda doing that, but there's also been a decent amount of pushback along the lines of "they're the best you can get out of a red district". The thing that's done far more damage to the Blue Dogs has actually been voting by ideological party line; the Blue Dogs tended to survive their primaries only to get slaughtered in the general elections.
At least, that's what I've seen.
In other news, some birther dude suggests impeaching the Chief Justice. They've gone way beyond pointless now, huh?
Picture 6 of 11, featuring Donald Trump with his opening his large and pointless mouth, really deserves a funny caption.
House GOP meet at a former plantation to learn how to talk to minorities and how not to alienate them.
Honestly, if you wrote a political party in fiction like who the GOP has been acting like 2008, they would say it was too much of a strawman.
Sounds about right coming from the party that alienates a fast-growing demographic that would have otherwise voted for them in order to appease a fast-shrinking demographic that would have voted for them anyway.
The disturbing part isn't that they act like this (there are many equally insane political parties), it's that they act like this and still get between 45 and 55 percent of votes.
Eh, we elected Stephen Harper despite his party's long laundry list of corruption and scandals. Of course, one of those scandals happens to involve robocalls, or at least impeding progress in investigating them, but a whole bunch of people still essentially rewarded him for being in contempt of Parliament.
http://www.timesdispatch.com/news/state-regional/government-politics/va-republicans-push-through-rewrite-of-senate-districts/article_1e6faf38-e5db-5b37-b3ae-63f544108f03.html
TL;DR version: While one Democratic member of the Virginia State Senate (currently split 20-20) was attending the Presidential Inauguration, the 20 Republicans rammed through a redistricting of the State Senate that would screw over the state senate Dems.
SURPRISE BUTTDISTRICTING!
So hey, more birther insanity.
She's got a fitting name.
Oh, what is she up to now...
1. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.jpg
2. What is it with these people and posting in all caps? Seriously. She ain't the only conspiracy theorist to do this.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/01/paul-ryan-breaks-down-under-wonkterrogation.html
I'm starting to seriously become convinced that their model of proper governance is the people at the top making all the decisions, and everyone else just conveniently doing whatever doesn't rock the boat, so that the people at the top have the policy certainty to play multi-dimensional chess/Risk/GoCrossCampus with the pieces of society and the economy.
To do this, you have to give the illusion of freedom to all those people who aren't decision-makers. The way to do this is to give people a little economic mobility through opportunity. But let it trickle down naturally; said opportunity will only be accessible to those already near the top anyway, ensuing that you don't have a mass rocking-of-the-boat. And then you reward these near-the-top people who make it into the top by, well, sharing a little power with them, allowing them to join you as decision-makers for the economy and society, and letting them serve as shining examples of what everyone else can attain with some hard work (how many generations of hard work it takes is conveniently not mentioned). Aside from this, you only need to convince those people that you know what you're doing, you know the ins and outs, and so forth.
Now, speaking of hard work,
playing this strategy gamemanaging these multi-dimensional moving pieces is indeed lots of hard work. One has to keep up one's image, and compete intensely with one's fellow elites for influence, while also not making people too unhappy with their lack of effective political power by occasionally throwing them enough bones so they think they have some influence too. Because this is hard work, decision-makers deserve a decent paycheck at the end of the day. And a bonus at the end of the year for not fucking up too badly.Unless they do, in which case they just hope you look the other way, while they run off somewhere where responsible journalists can't find them.
TL;DR: The Republican Party leadership's model of governance seems to be a distinction between decision-making elites and everyone else. Everyone else needs not learn how things work, because they just need to do their own thing and let the decision-makers do all the deciding.
(By decision-making elites, I am including non-elected leaders as well. That is, interest-group and business leaders.)
Considering how things are, I wouldn't be surprised if the non-elected leaders you mentioned hold more power than actual elected representatives.