US politics

Can’t limit the right of flabby middle aged men to play Rambo

Civil liberties, US politics
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Sadly, No is frustrated about the ongoing failure to curb gun violence:

And on that note, what the fuck is up with that goddamn impulse. Every fucking time there’s one of these shootings, we inevitably circle around to only talking about how to make life more miserable, regulated, and abusive for the victims. How there need to be armed security guards, locked and barred doors, mandatory metal detectors, armed teachers, 12-year-olds hiding in sniper nests… All the things that don’t actually make the kids safer, but do disproportionately get used to punish non-conformity.

All because it is simply inconceivable that we could in any slight, minor, infinitesimal way inconvenience the people who ACTUALLY COMMIT THESE MURDERS.

You can’t negotiate with mad men

US politics, Wingnuts
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David Atkins articulates Obama’s core dilemma:

But no one should delude themselves into believing that if he were, the Republicans would be intimidated and stand down. Quite the contrary. We are in uncharted waters, an era unprecedented since the Civil War in which one side is willing to let the country burn down in order to achieve its goals. Californians already know this well, having been forced into perpetual fiscal crises by a bare 1/3 Republican remnant in each chamber. Even as Republicans continued to slowly lose ground and seats, the vast majority of the caucus remained entrenched, fearing only opposition from the right. They were more than happy to let the Democratic-controlled state slip into chaos in order to get their way. California Democrats were left in the ugly position of making a series of Sophie’s Choices, determining only which children to shoot to appease the tiny Republican minority. In an era of perpetual and consequence-free hostage taking, the only calculation that matters is which hostages to save and which ones to shoot.