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Danny Dravot

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Everything posted by Danny Dravot

  1. No. I saw a clip a few weeks ago of hundreds of protesters marching in Denver behind a banner that said "Death to fascism and the LIBERALS who enable it" and chanting something like, "no USA at all". That's a pretty open attack on American democracy by a bunch of psychopathic idiots who want us all to live in a horror show, but is it a coup? Nope. It's speech. Michael Flynn is a moron and an ex-con who turned against everything he supposedly once believed in ("uphold the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic"). He should not be calling for martial law. People like Tony Thomas should be excoriating him for doing so. But him ranting wildly about things that are never going to happen is not a coup. The first amendment doesn't just protect anodyne banter. It protects everything. I would personally prefer that nobody stand on the street corner doing public readings from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, but it must be allowed. If someone wants to shoot a Jewish person over that, that's a crime. If someone wants to show up on Inauguration Day and forcibly prevent Joe Biden from becoming POTUS, that's a crime. But mere words, no matter how egregious, are not ever.
  2. I hate to say this, because I hate self-centered politics, but part of the reason I've moderated so much this year (the other being that Trump has handled everything like an idiot and Republicans have joined him like lemmings rather than restraining his worst instincts) is that I'm much better off financially than I was three years ago. When that tax cut came in 2017, it was a total lifeline. I couldn't hate Trump because he gave me $100 extra bucks a month!! I don't need that money anymore. You're a belligerent jackass who generally responds to every single thing in the most idiotic way imaginable? Please take your $100 and go. Pathetic, but true. I'd like to think that even if I was still paycheck to paycheck, this year has been atrocious enough that I would have taken the same ideological path. Who knows, though.
  3. T-exit is always a fringe idea that floats around down here, usually in a joking way and not in the actual chambers of government. Don’t worry though- we’re not going anywhere.
  4. Honestly, I’m not trying to “both sides” this one. I’m just making the point that removing representatives without the say if their voters is not the right answer and that a lot of things could be qualified as “attacking our democracy” so we shouldn’t be too keen to open that can of worms. On the topic of “T-exit”, once again, I don’t agree with it but it’s only speech. Introducing a bill for the state to secede is an idiotic waste of time and his constituents should vote him out, but there’s a long way between that silliness and anything I’d consider an act of treason. At some point, I should probably ask myself why I constantly find myself in these trenches defending things I completely loathe.
  5. Also, my views are stated. I’m not going to move the goalposts. You can read what I want right here in this thread. Give me that and I’ll be satisfied. Since you, @Balta1701, have stated what your ideal goals are, and they are much farther than I’d be willing to go, I don’t have a ton of confidence that I’d make a deal with you and not immediately get stabbed in the back by a demand for more. This is about as paranoid as I get, but you’ve told me what you’re working for. Why would you truly accept compromise that is far short of your announced goal?
  6. The AWB doesn’t focus on things that actually affect lethality, like caliber. It’s therefore a dumb law written by people who clearly know nothing about guns. That’s it. That’s the point. There is no trick there. You are also extreme on this position. You think responsible gun ownership is a myth and think nobody should have guns. I said I’d compromise and I don’t personally agree with the NRA, but I’m not ever going to live under your stated status quo.
  7. Honestly, I’m not sure what your point is. You really don’t like .223. Ok. You’re still missing my point which I’ve made much more clearly than you’ve made yours.
  8. OK, so someone else has to pay for it. Probably not a huge cost, so whatever. Although, who’s offering these courses anyhow? I did my concealed carry permit at a local gun shop. Are you subsidizing them for accepting these waivers? Anyways, then the person has some weird shit in their past and decides they can’t be up front. Apartments are getting the doors kicked in all over the place so disarming isn’t an option either. Gonna have to keep a gun and do it on the down low. When he gets caught, are you cool with jail time? I’m not going to have to read a bunch of think pieces about America’s incarceration problem, right?
  9. No, it doesn’t. A .223 and .22 LR are entirely different. Zero similarity. A law that freaks out about .22 LR weapons with funny exterior features that have zilch to do with functionality but does nothing about plain Jane weapons chambered in .308 or .30-06 or 5.56/.223 is a dumb law, and that’s exactly what the 1994 law did and what all of its descendants have proposed. That’s the problem.
  10. I’m fine with those ideas. Although we already don’t allow anyone to buy rocket launchers, so that and the nuke talk is a bit hyperbolic. I’m also fine with jail time for violators, but is your nerve going to hold up when that burden falls heavily on poor and minority people in troubled neighborhoods? You pass this law and I’ll pay whatever it takes to be certified and good to go the next day. My life will go on uninterrupted. But a guy who has no job, no money, and lives in a nasty apartment in a high crime neighborhood, he honestly NEEDS his gun more than I do. But there’s probably a few reasons he’ll skip on your requirement. You gonna send him to the hoosegow? Personally, I don’t care what his race or SES is; apply the law as written and apply it fairly to all. But I suspect it would hit certain demographics harder than others, and I have to wonder if you’d be OK with the end result of what you asked for.
  11. I never mentioned .223. I mentioned .22 LR. So this kind of proves my point. I do understand ballistics, but I’d rather eat my own foot than ever see a kid with a wound from a .30-06. Lots of Germans who were down range from my grandpa and his friends seventy years ago who desperately wished they never knew what a .30-06 was too. .223 isn’t used in military rifles (5.56 is and it’s a slightly different round). Either way, an AWB should focus on semiautomatics of certain calibers rather than stupid cosmetic features like bayonet mounts.
  12. No problem. In seriousness, sorry if you took offense, but a big problem with the 1994 AWB (and every attempt I see at a new one) is that it attacks meaningless aesthetics. A .22 LR with a detachable mag, a telescoping stock, and a pistol grip is good for shooting squirrels and for being easily handed off to my much shorter wife. But it’s all black and looks scary, so BANNED. On the other hand, an M1 Garand chambered for .30-06 and having no more features than my grandpa had at the Bulge could do way more damage but it looks like an antique so it’s allowed. I’d support a ban on neither, but if you look at pictures and nix the former but tolerate the latter, you really don’t know what you’re doing. Maybe that doesn’t apply to you, but it certainly does to the people who wrote those laws.
  13. I scanned the list for my very boring GOP congresswoman whom I very much support, and she wasn’t on there. I’ll vote for her again if she runs.
  14. I’m somewhat in your corner on this one. I’m pro-2A and don’t think the goofy comma placement in that amendment really changes the founders’ intent, which is that people get to have guns. On this and most other issues, I think federalism is great. The federal government doesn’t have to address every topic, California and Kentucky can handle things in different ways and that’s fine. No gun should be sold without a background check, and registration makes me a little queasy but thinking the gub’mint will ship me off to a concentration camp as soon as they know what’s in my personal vault is a goofy conspiracy theory. So I could roll with it (FWIW, all military personnel at my first duty location had to register personally owned firearms with the base provost marshal so it’s not new ground for me). “Assault weapon” is a dumb, meaningless term and I’d be willing to bet if I showed @Balta1701 a picture of two different rifles, he’d prefer banning the less dangerous one. I’d be OK with requiring greater requirements to acquire assault weapons (with a definition written by people who actually understand guns), which is what we already have with suppressors. I have a military style rifle (SIG 556) because my job (infantry officer) sort of requires that I’m handy with one, and I don’t at all think that right should be taken from most people and especially those with my job description and overall qualifications. I think all of this is reasonable and represents a fair amount of compromise. That said, if the choices are between what we have now and Balta’s “no guns” position, I’ll 100% sit on my hands. Feel free to meet me in the middle.
  15. Disagree with you on guns. Also disagree with Wayne LaPierre on guns, FWIW. Disagree with you on the Iraq War. I agree with Tony Blinken on Iraq (good idea, mostly bad strategic execution). Referencing the bolded, that is also what Bill Pascrell’s idea is. You don’t like Crenshaw, I don’t like Tlaib, but the congressmen from our respective districts don’t get to team up and kick them out of the house. Pascrell doesn’t get to decide that the people of TX-2 don’t get representation this year or the next. Referencing the italics, something I would be OK with would be to deny these reps any committee assignments. Like the GOP did with Steve King. The people of TX-2 get a representative, but nothing says it must be a powerful representative. Turn them into the ultimate backbenchers and let their constituents decide if they like their officials neutered. Gerrymandering is a bipartisan sin, BTW. Given the nature of this board, I’ll assume you live somewhat close to IL-4. Republicans have a lot to be sorry for these days, but gerrymandering is not something they bear sole responsibility for. Either way, nobody will fix it because both sides benefit from it.
  16. One receipt. Yeah, they weren’t elected officials or seemingly people of influence, but several electors did go rogue (although more from Clinton than from Trump). Either way, the point I’m trying to focus on is that we should really tamp down the sedition talk. A lot of people say and do stupid things. Both sides of the aisle scream treason and sedition a lot. It’s dumb. I think Cindy Sheehan was wrong on the Iraq War. She wasn’t seditious, however. I think Beto is wrong when he blabs about taking people’s guns. Still not seditious. I think Rashida Tlaib is a raging anti-Semite who should be voted out of Congress. But she’s not a traitor and her only home is this country. I think Dan Crenshaw is wrong to sign his name on an idiotic lawsuit filed by a crook of an AG, but I’m not going to accuse a one-eyed war hero of betraying his country for an act of speech. If someone sells secrets to the Russians (or Wikileaks), that’s clearly treason. If someone wants to kidnap a governor, that could be treason. If someone wants to shoot adversarial congressmen, that’s possible treason (among other crimes). If you commit treason, it’s one of the worst crimes you can commit and the punishment should match (IMHO, death). So I’m not going to play fast and loose with these words myself and the answer to bad speech is more speech.
  17. I read a lot of history but ACW and its after effects isn’t where I focus. Still, I know enough to say that after a deadly civil war and facing down the issue of slavery and basic civil rights, extreme measures were necessary and justified. Trump sucks, but the situations are not equivalent (as an aside, if anyone thinks comparing COVID deaths with civil war deaths is going to convince me that they are equivalent, don’t bother). For your closing question, in general, yes, I would agree that’s the line. Right now, we have court cases and press conferences. It’s stupid but it’s not a coup attempt and it’s not sedition. No, I’m not disenfranchising anyone over it.
  18. What do you think of faithless electors? There were people in 2016 who were encouraging faithless electors to throw the election to someone else. And some of those ceremonial bureaucrats did go rogue, although obviously the end goal failed. Was that seditious? For what it’s worth, even though such electors decided on their own to disregard their voters and ignore their duty, I’d say no. It’s idiotic and it should be scorned, but it’s not sedition. Neither are ridiculous court filings. The amount of people who want to punish speech is a bit creepy if I’m being honest.
  19. I really don’t like having to stand up for stupid arguments, but no. Edit: ok, sorry, this was overly curt. Argue against them on the floor of the House. Angrily retweet them on Twitter. Take out full page ads in their hometown newspapers explaining the idiocy of their actions. Raise funds for their opponent. Vote against them. Do NOT make the very valid votes in their favor not count simply because you disapprove of their actions.
  20. I probably disagree with you on almost everything, but this is a solid, principled take. Thank you.
  21. You can’t say “every vote matters” and then try to erase votes in your own favored way and still expect people to take you seriously.
  22. My point is what qualifies as an “attack on American democracy”. Bill Pascrell is demanding that hundreds of thousands of Americans lose their representation, so he ought to define his terms. The 126 reps’ argument is stupid, but I refuse to see people disenfranchised because of what is essentially speech. Not a coup, not violence, not a crime, but speech. I think it’s egregious that Rashida Tlaib retweeted some “from the river to the sea” bullshit the other day, but I would NEVER advocate that she be removed from Congress by any means other than the voters in her district (or if she commits an actual crime, of course). Protecting speech means even idiotic speech. This is a hill I’ll die on.
  23. Also, I know @pcq isn’t up to the task, but I’d be interested in hearing how this all has to do with white supremacy. It’s easy to blame that as some sort of boogeyman, but I’d say the Texas lawsuit has more to do with Ken Paxton seeking a last minute pardon for his indictments than anything else. And other hangers-on not having the guts to challenge the Trump base and tell them to fuck off.
  24. I haven’t suggested punching women or told anybody who disagrees with me simply to “get lost” without attempting an argument.
  25. Oh. You’ve said that? A truly impeccable source. This must be true!
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