StrangeSox

Buzzfeed has a big article on the rise of the white supremacist alt-right via Breitbart. Here's How Breitbart And Milo Smuggled Nazi and White Nationalist Ideas Into The Mainstream A cache of documents obtained by BuzzFeed News reveals the truth about Steve Bannon’s alt-right “killing machine.” Lots of emails documenting their strategies, how they were fed information by various media and silicon valley sources, and how they embraced the racism and nationalism undergirding the movement. This is just the setup for the article as it goes into a much more detailed and documented timeline. Really helps to understand where this movement came from, how they gained influence and what impact they've had on American politics.

The shooter tried to buy tracer rounds (the ones that glow like you'd see in WW2 films) at a gun show and he was also trying to shoot aviation fuel tanks at McCarron. Shooting them with normal bullets wasn't going to do anything, but hitting them with tracer rounds might have.

They only had a filibuster proof majority in the Senate for something like 90 days between franken being seated late and Kennedy dying and being replaced by Scott Brown. Actually even less, July 7th through August 29th, so a big chunk of that time was the summer recess. Actual in session days with filibuster proof majority wouldn't have been very many.

What area is your family in? Glad to hear they're safe.

Kelly's phone has been compromised for months. http://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/05/j...promised-243514

Rep. Paul Gosar thinks George Soros may have paid fake Nazis to gin up violence in Charlottesville.

Part of it is that the hardcore gun people don't believe people calling for gun control are acting in good faith and that their end goal is 100% ban and confiscation. Give an inch, they'll take a mile, so they will screech and holler and scream against any and every regulation. Just go read any gun website/forum for a taste of the rhetoric. Even with this bump fire stock thing which many will freely admit are dumb and pointless and nobody really cares about them in particular, they're still adamantly opposed because then "the next step is banning all semi-automatic guns." Conversely, I don't see many people calling for outright bans or confiscations.

I don't even think we're deeming them not in compliance or claiming they violated it in any way. We're just unilaterally walking away from the agreement to renegotiate because Trump. Which is in many ways even worse because it says that there's no reason to trust US negotiations to be meaningful and lasting, so why bother. See also: TPP, Paris.

QUOTE (bmags @ Oct 5, 2017 -> 01:58 PM) I basically hope that he says we are withdrawing in name only. Politico has a piece that says this is, essentially, what will happen. http://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/03/t...ear-deal-243427 Basically, Trump decertifies and s*** talks Obama and vows a "strong foreign policy." Meanwhile, Mattis and Tillerson encourage the Senate to NOT reinstate sanctions, offering assurances that more pressure would be applied to Iran outside of the Deal. The thinking is to preserve the deal and, more importantly, our influence with Europe while giving Trump his chance to stick it to Obama. I'm not confident this strategy will succeed long term, but for now, the Iran Deal itself "probably" isn't going away quite yet. America's reputation, power and influence is shot beyond repair no matter how this farce plays out though.

Looking back at some of the early pages in the thread, and there was a lot of mention of DOE inspection teams. Good time to repost this article highlighting just how badly Rick Perry is crippling the DOE's operational capabilities. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/07/dep...s-michael-lewis

QUOTE (bmags @ Oct 5, 2017 -> 01:58 PM) I basically hope that he says we are withdrawing in name only. We're not immediately restarting sanctions, but it's being kicked back to congress to be "fixed." Congress will almost definitely do nothing, and Iran has made it very clear directly and through the other members to the agreement that they are not open to renegotiation. I dunno, hopefully Congress isn't short-sighted enough to actually reimpose sanctions and Iran remains in compliance with the rest of the countries. This isn't even certifying the deal because Iran broke their end of the bargain. There's zero reason for them to trust the US now and, after seeing NK's path, every incentive to get the big "I dare you to invade us at the cost of millions of your allies dead in an hour" weapon.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jul 14, 2015 -> 09:41 PM) President trump will be in office soon! haha oh man what a self-own this was

Yep, we're out. Looking forward to the agreement framework collapsing and Iran resuming nuclear development.

The NRA has released their statement wherein they blame Obama:

It really sucks to see how quickly the "false flag"/"second shooter"/"it raelly WAS ISIS" insane conspiracies are taking off

At least as of now, State hasn't come out and said they believe the Cuban government to be responsible.

QUOTE (ptatc @ Oct 5, 2017 -> 12:29 PM) Isn't there a ban on handguns in Chicago? Not since McDonnell v Chicago in 2010 came down. Chicago tried putting heavy restrictions on them, but those were struck down too. And just a couple of years ago Illinois's lack of a concealed carry was ruled unconstitutional. After Heller, it's really, really hard to regulate guns in a manner that would put a substantial dent in gun violence imo.

Russian Hackers Stole NSA Data on U.S. Cyber Defense The breach, considered the most serious in years, could enable Russia to evade NSA surveillance and more easily infiltrate U.S. networks

The NRA also does its level best to make non-governmental academic studies of gun violence politically and academically toxic. They really are just an awful, awful organization..

The ATF is the board currently. They evaluate products all the time. It's already illegal to modify your rifle into a fully automatic rifle. You can make your semi-auto into a "nearly" fully auto using either these bump fire stocks which are currently okay'd by the ATF or just by holding onto your belt loop as it fires (this exploits the same recoil physics that makes the bump stock work). And while modifying a semi into an actual fully automatic weapon is very, very illegal, it's trivially easy to do so. The only way to change that would be to ban semi-automatic weapons. I guess the problem is is that the ATF's scope is somewhat limited to only considering the actual firing mechanism rather than the gun as a whole. You could rewrite regulations to change that, but I'm not sure how or what you'd change to accomplish reductions in gun violence. Biggest dent would be severely restricting or banning handguns, but you'd have to overturn Heller and McDonald or rewrite the Constitution in order to do that.

QUOTE (ptatc @ Oct 5, 2017 -> 11:19 AM) Is there any place in the world where firearms are totally banned? Within at least a semi-free society. There are places where handguns aren't as ubiquitous so there isn't one always readily available.

QUOTE (bmags @ Oct 5, 2017 -> 11:02 AM) It also may say that increasing violence interventions or other social programs could be more effective. There is no case like the US, and we are not allowed to know. That's a key part of a lot of the "gang" violence. It's a couple of dudes getting mad, often escalating things on social media these days, and then shooting each other over it. It's not planned out turf wars like it would have been a couple of decades ago because there's so little structure an hierarchy. If you can stop that confrontation before it gets too heated, you can stop a shooting. If there's no gun available in the first place, you can stop a shooting.

a detailed timeline of what happened http://www.businessinsider.com/timeline-sh...ecurity-guard-8

How many Benghazi investigations were there? Trump loyalists lose patience with congressional Russia probes 'Three investigations is just way too many,' said one pro-Trump Republican lawmaker. the lack of self-awareness is amazing

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Oct 5, 2017 -> 08:44 AM) If the Republican representative is voting for a speaker who brings legislation removing permitting requirements to the floor of their legislative chamber...even if they vote against the legislation, the speaker and the party are choosing what to bring to the floor. You may have voted for your representative so that you can get your taxes cut. Your representative may even vote against the upcoming bill to allow concealed carry across state lines or whatever the next one is. But they're also supporting the people setting the agenda. You may have wanted lower taxes, but Paul Ryan wants more people who are having their mental illness treatments paid for through the Social Security administration to buy guns, and if you voted for someone who supported Paul Ryan - congratulations, you also supported that. Ryan would rather just stop treating those people for their mental illnesses, bing bing bong problem solved