The Gaming Den

Well, everyone knows that a gun-loving big government/small freedom party is better than a gun-hating big government/small freedom party. That's why I vote Republican!


-Disclaimer: that was sarcasm.

Koumei wrote: I want to see Obama respond by adding finger-punctuation to his next speech - full stops, commas, exclamation marks, the whole lot.

I'd prefer to see the moderator do it:
"Senator McCain, do you want to "respond" to that?"
"Senator Obama, this next question is for you to "answer"."

Crissa wrote:Do I need to get out the campaign paper that point out that Obama supported the Supreme Court decision recently, and has never voted to curtail gun rights?

And if you hadn't noticed, the Republicans tend to make government bigger... The last four Republicans have expanded the government payroll more per year each than the last several Democrats.

-Crissa

The really funny thing is that is easy to makes sense of why the republicans tend to promote bloat.

They like to help their buddies in big business. Sometimes by giving them government positions.

Unless I'm mistaked someone who worked for a large mercenary company (or corporation) was working out of the white house these last 8 years.

Yep, the republicans. Not promoting cronism at all, ever.

Crissa wrote:Do I need to get out the campaign paper that point out that Obama supported the Supreme Court decision recently, and has never voted to curtail gun rights?

Please do. It'd help a bunch if he wins.

And if you hadn't noticed, the Republicans tend to make government bigger... The last four Republicans have expanded the government payroll more per year each than the last several Democrats.

Yeah, they're fuckers who need to be dragged into the street and executed for betraying the party's ideals. But they were betraying them, expanding government isn't official Republican policy.

Well, here's his sportsmen position paper, but the one I had in Nevada had a few more details on it.

The list going around the internet is, of course, a fraud, and there's almost too many of them for the campaign to keep up with.

Personally, I think the big thing we need to do is start treating guns more like cars and land - they need documentation, licensing of brokers, and escrow for holding periods. We should also encourage keeping guns in locked safes, trigger locks, and gun clubs rather than at home.

And I really think that municipalities should be able to choose if they allow private guns on their streets. ...We allow the feds and state government to determine if guns are legal on their property.

But, what I believe is not what Obama believes, alas. He's far more liberal in his support for the second amendment, believing in a personal right to own and keep weapons.

-Crissa

Crissa wrote:We should also encourage keeping guns in locked safes, trigger locks, and gun clubs rather than at home.

Nah, we need to encourage more people to keep their guns in the Backup.[/url]

Catharz, that's so disgusting. First, that's a terribly unsecure place to put a weapon. Very small children could hit it accidently.

Second, $40 for two U-hooks attached to a stick? WTF, man, that's like $2 of steel. Or a $1 of aluminum.

-Crissa

If you're gonna keep a loaded weapon stored like that I think the stupidity of paying $40 for the privilege pales in comparison.

Sir Neil wrote:Yeah, they're fuckers who need to be dragged into the street and executed for betraying the party's ideals. But they were betraying them, expanding government isn't official Republican policy.

You know, "small government" has never really been a Republican platform. You go all the way back to Lincoln when I considered them to be the good guys, and they were very clearly in favor of bigger government.

Now the current Republican plan is to bankrupt the government by converting all of the services to for-profit contracts that therefore cost more; but that certainly isn't a "smaller" government - it's just adding more layers of bureaucracy, inefficiency, and red tape. Repblicans of the last 40 years have frequently campaigned for less social services, but that is in no way equivalent to smaller government. Let's look at the actual platforms of 2004:

• Winning the War on Terror
  Increase the government's reach at home and abroad with more powers, equipment, and personnel dedicated to "security." This is a government expanding proposal, and it is the number one item.
• Ushering in an Ownership Era
  Privatize fucking everything and subsidize the fuck out of the banking industry. This is often presented as a government reduction plan, but it's not. It reduces the amount of land, money, and stability that the government has, but it in no way reduces the amount of size that the government is. Destabilizing the economy by making more people own real estate and financial risk has had disastrous consequences in the last few years, and will continue to do so for years to come, but it actually increases the amount that the government is doing to the financial sector in terms of dollars and man-hours.
• Building an Innovative, Globally Competitive Economy
  The plan here is to reduce taxation and increase the power of the executive branch. While again this is often presented as some sort of government shrinking program (because the government will have less funding), there is no actual reduction in the government here. The executive branch simply has more power to executively decide where funding goes - which in turn reduces financial oversight and increases the government.
• Strengthening Our Communities
  Apparently giving people the ability to discriminate on the basis of skin color or religion is a way to strengthen communities. Possibly by allowing for strong racially and religiously segregated communities. I don't know. If you consider equal opportunity laws to be "big government" this represents the first part of the platform that is intended to actually reduce the size of government. Except that it's packaged with new agencies designed to "strengthen communities" by distributing undersea and national land mining rights to corporations. In short, it proposes whole new branches of government whose sole purpose is to turn over nationally trusted wealth over to corporations in the here and now. So on the whole, this setup probably can't be construed as a government reduction program either.
• Protecting Our Families
  This suggests the creation of an entire parallel department of education that is funded by the government but whose curriculum is determined by private corporations who are not accountable to anyone; the creation of similar public/private social service networks of explicitly religious nature; the creation of a vast network of dossiers to keep track of everyone's extended family (ostensibly to force them to pay partial costs of social services for people they are related to who use them); substantially increased intrusion of the government into individual bedrooms; a substantial investment into governmental data mining into your internet habits (ostensibly to determine whether your pornography tastes pass muster); and of course government funding of religious proselytization as to your personal sex habits. This entire section is a wall to wall government increase with no end in sight.

So seriously, where's the part where Republicans ever claimed to have even a single proposal for reducing government in any kind of real way? Sure, they talk big about reducing taxes (for rich people), but aside from wanting to shift government funding to expensive private contractors with no public oversight or shifting government money from social programs to gendarmes, there hasn't been a proposal out of the Republican party that was even Government Size Neutral in probably 40 years.

-Username17

Sir_Neil wrote: Yeah, they're fuckers who need to be dragged into the street and executed for betraying the party's ideals.

No true scotsman fallacy.

Arguing that the Republicans are for small government is idiotic. You might be for small government. The republicans are NOT.

You are at best an idiot and at worst a liar for saying so.

Oh, and one more thing:

The president can't fucking ban guns even if he wanted to! He's the EXECUTIVE branch, not the LEGISLATIVE! Think back to fucking MIDDLE SCHOOL CIVICS CLASS!

I can't believe I liked and respected you at one point, Neil. God, you've turned into a fucking brainless conservative.

Crissa wrote:Catharz, that's so disgusting. First, that's a terribly unsecure place to put a weapon. Very small children could hit it accidently.

Second, $40 for two U-hooks attached to a stick? WTF, man, that's like $2 of steel. Or a $1 of aluminum.

-Crissa

Heh. Pretty amazing, no? I also love their use of 'patriotic' imagery and 'respectable' white people.

FrankTrollman wrote: So seriously, where's the part where Republicans ever claimed to have even a single proposal for reducing government in any kind of real way?

There was the idiotic Contract with America in 1994, if I recall.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_With_America

In there they at least wanted to cut down some government positions and services.

Republicans want to reduce all sorts of big government, they just happen to want to replace it with different big government. Get rid of welfare and give money to corporations. Get rid of arts and science spending and start legislating religion and a pro life agenda.

Thank you, Crissa.

Count_Arioch_the_28th wrote:Arguing that the Republicans are for small government is idiotic. You might be for small government. The republicans are NOT.

The Republican National Committee disagrees with you.

"Government Reform: Empowering the States, Improving Public Services

The long term solution for many of Washington’s problems is structural. Congress must respect the limits imposed upon it by the Tenth Amendment: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

We look to the model of Republican welfare reform, which, since its enactment in 1996, has accomplished a major transfer of resources and responsibility from the federal government back to the states – with an accompanying improvement in the program itself. Applying that approach to other programs will steer Congress back into line with the Constitution, reversing both its intrusion into state matters and its neglect of its central duties.

To aid in the fulfillment of those duties, we propose a National Sunset Commission to review all federal programs and recommend which of them should be terminated due to redundancy, waste, or intrusion into the American family. The Congress would then be required by law to schedule one yea or nay vote on the entire sunset list with no amendments.

Additionally, as important as returning power to the states is returning power to the people...."

The president can't fucking ban guns even if he wanted to! He's the EXECUTIVE branch, not the LEGISLATIVE!

Calm down; re-read my post. I never said that he could. What he can do is focus attention on the issue, encourage Congress to act, and sign it when it shows up on his desk.

You could be right about the brainless part, but I have it on good authority (two homosexual Liberals from South Carolina) that I am not a conservative. They laughed at me when I suggested I was.

Yeah, but Neil, read the National Security Section While they may claim that the plan involves government being shrunk, mostly it just involves government being shifter around. They are still demanding the creation of multi layered missile defense shields to go with enhanced intelligence agencies keeping track of more data on more people both in and out of the US.

It's not a smaller government that they are promising. It's a government that is less beholden to the whims of the electorate. Not the same thing.

-Username17

Draco_Argentum wrote:If you're gonna keep a loaded weapon stored like that I think the stupidity of paying $40 for the privilege pales in comparison.

What the fuck ever happened to just keeping the damned thing under your pillow?

Prak_Anima wrote:

Draco_Argentum wrote:If you're gonna keep a loaded weapon stored like that I think the stupidity of paying $40 for the privilege pales in comparison.

What the fuck ever happened to just keeping the damned thing under your pillow?

Something to do with accidental suicide, I guess.

Wow, we've found a worse way to store a gun than the backup.

ok, what about the Annita Blake behind the headboard approach? (Assuming you have a head board you can easily reach behind, as I actually do, and anyone with the same headboard as me does as well... to say nothing of similarly designed headboards)

Worst place would be down the front of your pants, loaded, cocked.

Prak_Anima wrote:ok, what about the Annita Blake behind the headboard approach? (Assuming you have a head board you can easily reach behind, as I actually do, and anyone with the same headboard as me does as well... to say nothing of similarly designed headboards)

The disadvantages of keeping a loaded firearm anywhere near your head for any period of the day should be extremely obvious to everyone.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:Yeah, but Neil, read the National Security Section While they may claim that the plan involves government being shrunk, mostly it just involves government being shifter around.

I can see your point, Frank, but I consider national security a legitimate federal expense. Social Security and Medicare aren't.

wrote:ok, what about the Annita Blake behind the headboard approach?

That works best if you have a holster rigged up to keep the muzzle pointed away from important things.

Wait, what?

Old people dying on your lawn isn't a proper issue?

States can't face it on their own. They aren't allowed to limit services to only people born in their own state. You know, that's one of our freedoms in the constitution. So if a state tries to face it on their own, they get swamped.

So, that's totally an issue the feds should help with.

-Crissa