Getting Democrats in state-house majorities by 2020 seems like a majorly critical thing. Like, orange-post critical.
What is the significance of 2020?
Eh, they could still hold the Senate in November. All that would happen if the Republicans manage to take the chamber is no more appointments getting through for a couple of years. Other than that, nothing makes it out of Congress anymore already and Obama will just become a 6'1" veto machine.
2: Census and redrawing of congressional districts.
the base will be howling at the moon for impeachment
Which is kind of odd. What do they get out of a Biden presidency?
Can't tell if 8 is a joke. I'm pretty sure the base isn't motivated by careful consideration of the differences in policy outcomes which would arise from a Biden presidency and a continued Obama presidency.
8: Well for one thing Biden isn't black.
After Obama is impeached, Biden will take the hint and either resign to make Boehner president or sign everything the House passes. I think is the relevant logic.
First, impeach Obama. Then the cargo comes.
8: A turnout and enthusiasm advantage in 2016?
What did they get out of 1998? Bush in 2000.
Of course, Democrats gained Senate seats in 2000, and I can't deny that if everything everywhere remains the same as now, it looks good for Dems in the Senate.
Har har har.
Everything won't remain the same, probably, and we prudentially should assume a couple systemic Naomi Klein shocks in the next two years.
Say, another terrible recession (sparked by Europe, Russia, China) when the Fed has no arrows left in its quiver and the Republicans control the national pursestrings. Obama and Dems forced to concede to vicious brutal austerity and...
...see top of comment. Kids and minorities say fuck it, too hungry and tired to go vote for rich women who will make deals with the Fascists.
And, of course, war, unpredictable but inevitable. The Obama kids will just love Clinton if we are back in Iraq.
5 made me laugh.
Also is 8 serious? They just want to embarrass Obama and make his memory look as stupid as possible.
...rich women who will make deals with the Fascists.
Is there another Midford around?
and make his memory look as stupid as possible
Which is exactly how it worked out for Bill Clinton, right? I understand that the current impeachment fever is more or less just primal scream therapy for racists. But even if you take their assessment of Obama as a starting point, there's nothing to be gained from impeachment aside from guaranteeing massive Democratic turnout in 2016.
Contra Bob's impeccable logic, Republicans didn't get Bush in 2000 because of impeachment. They got 2000 because Gore ran a spectacularly poor campaign, and still had to get robbed by a partisan Supreme Court to lose.
Oh, I agree that it's stupid, strategically. I'm just agreeing that the base will be howling for impeachment for stupid reasons, and the base isn't thinking about 2016 turnout or Biden being president.
20 is exactly right. It's an old joke, but I'm sure their rationale runs thusly:
1) Impeach Obama
2) ???????
3) Profit!
7: what happens in the unlikely but not impossible scenario that the GOP wins control of the Senate while losing Mitch McConnell's seat? Who comes out on top of the ensuing brawl?
That's an interesting question -- I have no idea. One of the heads of the more powerful Senate committees?
I see that the current Senate minority whip, under McConnell, is John Cornyn (R, TX); prior to that, Jon Kyl (R, AZ). Both members of the committee on taxation and IRS oversight and long-term growth, which is not a good sign.
But which are the most powerful committees in the Senate? I really don't have a sense of who the players are here.
I'm just agreeing that the base will be howling for impeachment for stupid reasons, and the base isn't thinking about 2016 turnout or Biden being president.
It seems to be a commonplace among right-wingers that Obama is the most incompetent president in history, so probably they think that absolutely anything will be an improvement. How anyone can buy into that meme without becoming aware of their own transparent racism is beyond me.
I'll play devil's advocate here and suggest that it's not transparent racism; it's the fear of socialism. That that is an absurd fear goes without saying, but it's a real fear on the part of many: capitalism forever! Etc.
A bit off-topic: interesting information about Congressional leaders' investments in companies engaging in corporate tax inversions, in this case Boehner and Dave Camp (Chair, House Ways and Means committee). Now, I know that our governmental leaders personally benefit from things that are not in the public interest ALL THE TIME* -- Democrats as well -- but if it weren't so goddamned hard to explain these kinds of things to the general public, I'd call that an item of electoral interest.
* Bill Moyers, I think, did a piece on this.
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The CNN and NPR news coverage of ISIS is really alarming to me. I don't trust its accuracy, but I'm worried that it will gin up Americans to start bombing.
Thoughts? I can't imagine that this would be justified.
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the Senate race I care most about is Colorado. Udall's a good dude.
The Senate race I care most about is probably too obvious to bear mentioning.
American jihadist killed fighting for ISIS in Syria trolls US military by being named Douglas McAuthur McCain.
Kind of like how John Wesley Hardin trolled Methodists.
1) Impeach Obama
2) ???????Sell ever more email addresses to Goldline, snake oil distributors, tax protest instructors, and the rest of the paranoia industry
3) Profit!
To the extent they think about it at all, I assume they just think they'll be able to impeach Biden too for complicity in whatever they impeach Obama for. Then, hello President Boehner!
(Actually I'm quite sure they don't think about it at all.)
Is it too soon to go slightly off topic and note that Hollande has appointed Julien Sorel minister of the economy?
31: Oh FUCK! I now have an earworm: "Jaaaaahn Wesley Hardin was ... a very bad methodist./He travelled with a gun in every hand"
. I can't imagine that we will make it through two years of unified GOP control of Congress without at least one government shutdown.
Which is exactly the same situation as we have now.
I am immensely irritated that it's "Douglas McAuthur McCain" instead of "Douglas MacArthur McCain" because that would be about the most right-wing name it is possible for an American to have. Clearly he was rebelling against his upbringing.
Do you suppose John Wesley Hardin was who Hedley Lamarr was thinking of when he demanded "rustlers, cut throats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, con men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswogglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass-kickers, shit-kickers... and Methodists"?
34. If he'd appointed Georges Sorel I'd be more impressed.
It seems to be a commonplace among right-wingers that Obama is the most incompetent president in history
Not just Obama! A cousin of mine linked an article on FB yesterday about how Eric Holder has been giving money to gang leaders in Ferguson to go out and start riots. Aside from the obvious stupidity of that story, the article and it seemed to think that Holder himself had gone to meet with gang members and given them cash. Apparently the game is up though, and Holder is going to be indicted for this any day now.
This is my cousin whose failing business mysteriously burned down one night, soon after he'd taken out a very large insurance policy on it. He has a payday loan place now. Classy!
He also posted another article about Ferguson yesterday with a single-word comment: "Loosers."
They did start things on fire for no money. He probably views them as scabs.
42, 43: I think it would be OK to bet him $100 that this isn't going to happen in a kind of put up or shut up way.
Around here, burning things for the insurance money is referred to by an antisemitic term.
Plus, one of my neighbors has a family member who went to prison because somebody died in a fire they started. Pro tip: If there's an apartment above the shop, don't start it on fire for insurance money until your tenants go on vacation.
It seems to be a commonplace among right-wingers that Obama is the most incompetent president in history.
Not mention he hates baseball and the Cubs.
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So initially when I heard about this story my reaction was "oh what a tragedy how sad for everyone but principally the girl involved." But with more information coming out it has turned into I'm really sad for that poor girl but the instructor deserved to catch a bullet somewhere (if not fatally) and probably the parents as well.
I mean, I assumed that the problem was, roughly, "nine year old children probably lack the impulse control and general maturity to handle firearms safely in non-ideal circumstances." But apparently it was "nine year old children probably lack the upper body strength to adequately control a submachine gun firing on full automatic".
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51 Not the first time that's happened:
Oh for fuck's sake. I hadn't heard that it was firing on automatic.
Well, yes. Uzis have a significant kick and pretty tricky to control - they ride up like anything when you fire a burst. You can't get a proper grip on the forepart with your off hand, and they're very back-heavy anyway. Never understood why people were so keen on them. They feel really cheap and rattly too, like a badly made toy.
But that's not to say that you'd be safe giving a nine-year-old an MP5 either.
You want a machine gun on a tripod for the under tens.
The video (does not contain the shooting) is worth watching just for the sheer insanity of it. The gun is clearly riding up and to the left when she fires off one shot, and the instructor has decided to stand... right above her and to her left.
You want a machine gun on a tripod cap pistol for the under tens.
FTFY
Letting kids that age fire small rifles (e.g. a .22) is pretty common here.
58. Be that as it may, I stand by my position.
I'm pretty strongly in favor of very severe gun control laws, but I don't really see too much wrong with kids having varmint guns if they live far enough away from densely populated areas.
Of course, my grandfather's stories about what he and his brother got up to when they were kids has made me wonder about that judgment. One memorable story was when they started wondering about what would happen if you took a bunch of cartridges apart, put one in the gun, stuffed the gunpowder from the others down the barrel and capped the whole thing off with a bullet (turning most of the gun into one large cartridge). If they hadn't argued over who would fire it there's a good (50/50!) chance I wouldn't be here.
I got my first gun for my 13th birthday. I must have fired a gun before that, but I can't remember when.
A rifle is actually a lot safer because it's much more difficult for it to point in a direction you don't intend (especially if you're a wee kid without much arm strength, so you can't swing it round too easily). SMGs are worse, pistols are worst of all. And I suppose a machine-gun with a sustained fire role tripod would be very safe indeed because there's no way a kid is going to lose control of that. Just make sure there's no one downrange out to 2500m and you're fine.
I was learning to fire rifles aged 10, at school, but we'd never have been allowed anywhere near pistols.
Yes. Pistols are horrible for kids. Even for teens. I know two people who shot their own foot. None of them were trying to get out the army or anything.
Anyway, the gun I got at 13 was a shotgun. Not as easy to control as a rifle. And you don't really ever fire them prone or from a bench, so you've got to have some arm strength.
I was learning to fire rifles aged 10, at school, but we'd never have been allowed anywhere near pistols.
Yet they let you shoot the Oerlikon 20mm cannon.
I should maybe take it out and clean it. I think you're probably supposed to oil them every thirty years or so.
66: that was a few years later on. I was 13. And there's no way I could have done anything dangerous with a 20mm Oerlikon that was bolted firmly to Devon.
I was never with a gun without my dad until I was 16 or so. He was nervous, particularly after one of my friends shot the freezer (in his own house, not ours).
66: that was a few years later on. I was 13. And there's no way I could have done anything dangerous with a 20mm Oerlikon that was bolted firmly to Devon.
I don't know, you could have probably done some damage to Shane Warne.
My Palinite cousin accidentally shot himself in the leg.
My Dad grew up around guns, rifles at least, but never passed the knowledge on to me. I've fired various rifles and pistols, but never had a proper safety course or any instruction beyond "don't point it at anything you don't want dead."
Growing up, the only handguns I had access to were single-action revolvers and single-shot target pistols, in pretty small calibers at that, and I think I never squeezed off a round without holding it correctly with a wide stance and two-handed grip. Fear and respect had been properly inculcated.
69: Most of the men descended from him seems to have a series of childhood stories that start with something like "So I wondered what would happen if..."* or "But he didn't say how explosive...". And no one seems to have died, so I assume that a lot of things are less dangerous than they appear to be and/or not getting hurt even when you probably should is a heritable trait.
*(I have at least two of these. My brother has none, but oddly got hurt way, way more often than me when he was a kid.)
Without damage, we played around with a burning cup of gasoline. We were probably fortunate that it was an extremely cold day.
Item: http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/216026-senate-dems-frustrated-by-colleagues-push-for-isis-vote
I still don't forgive my childhood friend for the time we found an unexploded cherry bomb, and he disposed of it safely, instead of having us light it off.
From 76: "I think it's dumb," said a second Democratic aide. "The less the president is in the news with anything right now, the better."
So is that the Democratic plan for holding onto the Senate in the midterms? Have Obama just sit quietly in a corner? Because that seems like a really shitty plan.
The Dems really only have one campaign strategy that they always rely on. I refer to it as Part 2 of the Roadrunner Strategy. Part 1 is to run really fast, and they can't do that. Part 2 is to count on your enemy coming up with an elaborate method of blowing himself up. It works suprisingly often.
Sometimes they also try the Ostrich Strategy.
I feel so sorry for that little girl. that instructor just won the darwin award, really and for true. per 56 on single shot mode she was headed up to the left and he what, sets it on full auto and then.... jesus. I hurt myself as a kid firing a shotgun the first time because I was so little and skinny and the recoil gave me a huge bruise on the shoulder, but it's not like it was going to fountain upward and start spraying bullets everywhere. she was ok to fire a .22 rifle, but that was just dumb dumb dumb. like ajay was saying, it does kind of want to jitter out of your grasp; I kind of freaked out when I fired one the first time and I was a big ol' 15-year-old being overseen by shitfaced wasted adults, as is the custom of my country. handing an uzi to a 70-lb 9-year-old girl is just beyond fucked up. hey and they also sell burgers! AMERICA FUCK YEAH.
The obvious way to introduce someone to full auto is to only have two or three rounds in and after they get the hang of it start working up on bigger bursts. FFS don't use a full mag for their first time.
INORITE? gswift, you and ajay and knecht and I should open up a "u can far all the full auto guns u want" operation on my brother's proppity in WVa. we'll let ajay just eyeball'em. "son, take this bren. it's old, mind, don't be dropping it! ha ha ha I'm only joking, there was a tripod beneath it all along!" "all right, little lady, we have something really special for you! do you have a kitty at home? is she....a calico? because this gun is a calico. no, I know she's the same color all. no, but look at the magazine shell!"
83 is a great concept and would confirm all my parents' worst fears about the direction my life has been heading since I left the morally pure air of Heroinopolis and started hanging around with the scruffy dressers and the singers of the disreputable music and the morally hazy explosives experts. My name is ajay and I will be your Firearms Sommelier tonight.
Would I have to talk, per 83, in a West Verginny accent? I am not sure I could pull that off without some sort of Pygmalion-style training beforehand.
naw, you could class up our operation. knecht could revert to the mountain timbre of his youthful accent, so as to reassure the locals, although I think our business model is obviously designed to breed confidence.
naw, you could class up our operation.
Jeeves and the Gun Nut.
...He tensed, and a sort of shudder seemed to pass through this frame.
"May I inquire, sir, what you are carrying?"
I turned a steely eye on the man.
"This, Jeeves," I said, "is a Garand M-1. Quite the latest thing. I picked it up when I was over seeing Cousin Corky in Lynchburg, and the fellows there were loud in their praises."
"Very possibly it is highly regarded in Lynchburg and the" - he paused - "rural areas nearby, sir. However, I fear that if you are seen carrying an underpowered infantry carbine in this country, it may excite adverse comment. If I may, sir, I will put it away for you and lay out the Short Model Lee Enfield."
The M1 Garand is not a carbine, son. It's a rifle firing a full powered .30-06 Springfield cartridge and the greatest battle implement ever devised. You're thinking of the M1 carbine.
On July 15, Election Lab, The Post's election model, gave Republicans an 86 percent chance of winning the six seats they needed to take over the Senate majority. Today -- 50 days later -- it gives Republicans only a 52 percent chance of winning the majority. So, how did the model go from predicting a sure-thing Republican majority to now calling the fight for the majority a statistical toss up.
You will perhaps be unsurprised to learn that they do not suggest our model was broken over the summer, but that's my takeaway.