LGP Political Discussion Thread - Latest news at top

[tifosi77]

I think he's extremely bitter over having lost in 2008 and since public opinion no longer matters to him, you're seeing it displayed.

I don't doubt that's true, but he had become a d1ck before the 2008 election. The primary process is what exposed him.

....and stop letting SNL parody "comments" that were never said.

You're right.... the actual ones are enough.

[columbia]

I watched the first 10 minutes of her film and it was pretty ok.
Maybe she has a future in acting?

[BigMcK]

I've had enough of "cult of personality" type {cough} leaders {cough}

Isn't is easier to learn to play the saxamaphone than try to understand all that hard country-running stuff? Leave all the heavy lifting for those that understand books and reading and economics and business and P&L's. The party needs a leader singer than knows how to party.

You're right.... the actual ones are enough.

He never said he wanted to off Big Bird though.

[Shyster]

The Sandy Hook shooter was carrying a vest covered with pockets for magazines, and he swapped mags repeatedly during the shooting. According to the Hartford Courant, many of the discarded magazines scattered throughout the school still contained ammunition, and in at least one case the shooter discarded a 30-round mag that still contained 15 unfired rounds.

http://www.courant.com/news/connecticut ... 0630.story

Police officers think the shooter may have been copying habits from playing video games, where frequent reloading is common. Either way, this is a signal that a limit on magazine capacity—which is one of the leading proposals from anti-gun politicians—wouldn’t have done squat to hinder the shooter. We already know he had to change magazines, and it certainly didn’t slow him down.

[GaryRissling]

gotta say that the most impressive thing about Hagel is that he has the right enemies: Dershowitz, Kristol, Graham, etc are the worst of the Republican Party when it comes to foreign policy; and his nomination hopefully marks a shift from neoconservatism.

[tifosi77]

I have to admit that the concept of doing this makes me chuckle.

Be Ready To Mint That Coin

Should President Obama be willing to print a $1 trillion platinum coin if Republicans try to force America into default? Yes, absolutely.

Spoiler:

I'm not making any commentary on the policy, just the comedy aspect of printing a $1 trillion coin with John Boehner's mug on it.

[MWB]

....and stop letting SNL parody "comments" that were never said.

You're right.... the actual ones are enough. :lol:

Also, I'm pretty sure parody doesn't mean you directly quote someone.

[Factorial]

GOP lawmaker proposes ban on trillion dollar coin:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-34222_162-5 ... llar-coin/

[mac5155]

GOP lawmaker proposes ban on trillion dollar coin:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-34222_162-5 ... llar-coin/

Thank goodness we have our priorities in line!

[PensFanInDC]

Simpsonstrilliondollarbill.jpg

[tifosi77]

....and stop letting SNL parody "comments" that were never said.

You're right.... the actual ones are enough.

Also, I'm pretty sure parody doesn't mean you directly quote someone.

Correct.

That's satire.

[pittsoccer33]

I'm getting a bit of a kick reading the transcript of Alex Jones on Piers Morgan last night.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/ ... earms.html

We did it as a way to bring attention to the fact that we have all of these foreigners, and the Russian government, the official Chinese government -- Mao said political power goes out of the barrel of a gun, he killed about 80 million people because he's the only guy who had the guns -- so we did it to point out that this is globalism, and the mega banks that control the planet and brag they have taken over -- in Bloomberg, AP, Reuters, you name it -- brag that they're going to get our guns as well. They've taken everybody's guns, but the Swiss and the American people and when they get our guns, they can have their world tyranny while the government buys 1.6 billion bullets, armored vehicles, tanks, helicopters, predator drones, armed now in U.S. skies, being used to arrest people in North Dakota.

The Second Amendment isn't there for duck hunting. It's there to protect us from tyrannical government and street thugs. Take the woman in india, your piece earlier on CNN earlier, I was watching during Anderson Cooper's show, didn't tell you the women of India have signed giant petitions to get firearms because the police can't and won't protect them.

Te answer is -- wait a minute, I have FBI crime statistics that come out of a year late, 2011, 20-plus percent crime drop in the last nine years, real violent crime because more guns means less crime. Britain took the guns 15, 16 years ago. Tripling of your overall violent crime. True, we have a higher gun violence level, but overall, muggings, stabbing, deaths -- those men raped that woman to India to death with an iron rod 4 feet long. You can't ban the iron rods. The guns, the iron rods, Piers, didn't do it, the tyrants did it. Hitler took the guns Stalin took the guns, Mao took the guns, Fidel Castro took the guns, Hugo Chavez took the guns, and I'm here to tell you, 1776 will commence again if you try to take our firearms! It doesn't matter how many lemmings you get out there in the street begging for them to have their guns taken. We will not relinquish them. Do you understand?

I already said earlier that England had lower gun crime rate because you took all the guns. But you have hoards of people burning down cities and beating old women's brains out out everyday. They arrest people in England if they defend themselves, that's on record. My God, you have a total police state. Everybody is fleeing the country because -- you've had to flee, bud. Yeah, you fled here. Why don't you go back and face the charges for the hacking scandal?

Why did you get fired from the Daily Mirror for putting out fake stories? You're a hatchet man of the New World Order. You're a hatchet man! And I'm going to say this here, you think you're a tough guy? Have me back with a boxing ring and I'll wear red, white, and blue, and you'll wear your Jolly Roger.

[tifosi77]

You are six times more likely to be the victim of a mugging in London than you are in Manhattan.

[Sarcastic]

So people in the US own guns to protect themselves from the tyrannical government? lol. Let's see a citizen unleash a gun on a cop or a trooper. See what happens. Good luck.

[MRandall25]

You're completely missing the entire point there, Sarcastic.

[Tico Rick]

So the 2nd Amendment isn't anachronistic, then?

[Shyster]

Not a fan of Alex Jones (who frequently strays into the realm of the conspiratorial, if not he outright loony), but he does have a point about how Americans will refuse to relinquish their guns. Based on precedent from both inside and outside the United States, gun prohibitions and registration requirements have an absolutely lousy compliance rate. See the following article from Reason:

http://reason.com/archives/2012/12/22/g ... red-defian

Even in Europe, which many of the anti-gun folks here seem to view as a model of sensible laws, the numbers of illegally held guns dwarf the numbers of legally registered guns in just about every country. For Australia, where anti-gunners like to tout the 1996 ban on self-loading rifles and pump-action shotguns, even the rosiest of estimates place the surrender rate at around 20%, and it might be much less. Australians surrendered 643,000 weapons in response to the ban, but records indicate that over the years before the ban the Ruger company exported more than a million of its self-loading 10/22 rifles to Australia. There were than one million rifles of just one type in circulation, but only 643,000 guns of all types were surrendered by the Aussies. Closer to home, in 1991 New Jersey passed its own version of an assault-weapons ban. In response, “947 people registered their rifles as sporting guns for target shooting, 888 rendered them inoperable, and 4 surrendered them to the police.” How many of those guns were there in New Jersey at the time? The estimate was 100,000 to 300,000. Going with the lower end of that range, that equals a compliance rate around 2%. California’s similar law requiring “assault weapons” to be registered with the state produced less than 10,000 registrations out of an estimated 300,000 guns in private hands.

Senator Feinstein is pushing a bill that would require registration of so-called assault weapons, and the commission headed by VP Biden is reportedly considering a “national gun database.” The evidence indicates that if those proposals pass, American gun owners would defy them on a massive scale. What then to do with those gun owners? How would you catch them and their “illegal” guns? What penalties should be proposed for noncompliance? Fines? Jail time? Are we prepared as a nation to turn millions of otherwise law-abiding citizens into criminals?

Also, while I would say that Alex Jones does not represent a typical attitude of American gun owners, there are a lot of people out there who do subscribe to the “from my cold dead hands” viewpoint. How many? I don’t know, but it’s likely in the thousands, if not tens or hundreds of thousands. There are millions of gun owners in this country, after all, so even a small percentage is a large number of people. Are we prepared to deal with the consequences if those people decide to “pull a Richard Poplawski” and open fire on the people who try to register or seize their guns?

[Sarcastic]

You're completely missing the entire point there, Sarcastic.

What's the point? That crime persists without guns? Sure. Throw violent offenders in jail. Too much slapping guys on the wrist. But people walking around with guns isn't the answer and never will be. Crime on the street isn't prevented because thugs fear the person may have a gun, as that guy in the article says. Most people don't carry weapons and everyone knows it. Maybe the problem in England is that they have a liberal court system and people aren't afraid to cause crime - I don't know.

Since this past Christmas Eve we've had more gun related deaths than I remember. We had the guy who burned down his house and called the fire dept. to come so he could shoot them. Same day, another multiple shooting around the area. Few more during next few days. Two days ago 2 gun related deaths is one day around nyc. It doesn't stop. People keep shooting each other dead. You're not going to change people, so the only other option that remains is to take the guns away. Sorry, Shyster. As far as hunters, they can join clubs where they can do all the shooting they want, just keep their weapons in the club's locker guarded by cops and cameras.

These past few weeks fully convinced me that unless you turn to drastic actions, it won't get any better. I'd rather see a fist fight reported on my news than another gun-related murder. I would take guns away, and then make a law that says if you carry a gun on the street, you get 5 years in jail. That's it. Then do some raids on areas where gangs hang out and arrest them all if there are guns around. It would be very easy to eliminate most guns, IMO. But there are too many toothless rednecks down south who like to shoot squirrels. That's actually where most gun-related violence occurs. Gee, I wonder why.

So there you go. When people say guns don't kill people, people do. That's actually wrong. It's people with guns. Can't lock up everyone, but you sure can take away their stupid weapons.

[DelPen]

News is simply reporting more incidents. Gun crime has fallen every year since the AWB sunset. Crime has also gone down in general with the increase of carry permits. We had a national conversation on gun control in 1775, any further restrictions are highly unconsitutional.

[shafnutz05]

Sarcastic, no offense, but you take a way-too-simplistic view of this whole thing. It's not as simple as "take away their stupid weapons, no more shooting deaths yay!"

[Shyster]

I would take guns away, and then make a law that says if you carry a gun on the street, you get 5 years in jail. That's it.

Under Pennsylvania law, possession of a firearm by someone who is ineligible to possess one (convicted felons, the mentally ill, etc.) is a second-degree felony, which is punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Carrying a concealed firearm without a license (and a license cannot be obtained by someone with a criminal record) is a third-degree felony punishable by up to 7 years in prison. A convicted criminal carrying a concealed firearm would violate both laws. So we already have laws in pace that make it illegal to carry a gun on the street (for those without permits), with penalties that are more stringent than what you are proposing. Hasn’t stopped gun violence, has it?

So there you go. When people say guns don't kill people, people do. That's actually wrong. It's people with guns. Can't lock up everyone, but you sure can take away their stupid weapons.

How do you propose to do that? We don’t have registration lists in this state, so the government does not know who owns guns and who doesn’t. How do you propose the government will find that out? How would you enforce a prohibition? And say I refuse to comply with any mandate to register or surrender my guns. What penalty do you think I should face? How long do you think I should spend in jail, for example?

[mac5155]

i am a person with a gun and i have never killed anyone.

[Shyster]

Let’s run some numbers. Presently, the US prison population is one of the highest in the world, with approximately 1.6 million inmates in the United States. That’s a huge number of prisoners. But there are somewhere in the ballpark of 50 million gun owners in the United States. Let’s say Congress passes a law creating a national gun database, and a failure to register one’s guns is a federal crime. If even four percent of gun owners defied that law, we would create more “criminals” than the entire present prison population of the United States. Gonna need to build some more jails, I figure.

[BigMcK]

TX Bank Encourages Concealed Carriers to Come On In.

http://www.gunreports.com/news/news/Chappell-Hill-Bank-concealed-carry_2448-1.html

From what I have heard about this bank, if you send them an email asking for a 2013 calendar this 'infamous' sign on their window is January's picture.

[BigMcK]

Let’s run some numbers. Presently, the US prison population is one of the highest in the world, with approximately 1.6 million inmates in the United States. That’s a huge number of prisoners. But there are somewhere in the ballpark of 50 million gun owners in the United States. Let’s say Congress passes a law creating a national gun database, and a failure to register one’s guns is a federal crime. If even four percent of gun owners defied that law, we would create more “criminals” than the entire present prison population of the United States. Gonna need to build some more jails, I figure.

Think about all of the guns that the jailers are gonna need to purchase to protect all those new jails full of gun law scofflaws.