And yet at least half of them would have stood down just the same.

A good distinction to know. Thanks for the info. I does likes learnin' new things.

In my opinion, RFlush is a troll about 50% of the time and a serious and reasonable poster the other 50%.

I'm a troll only about 10% of the time, and a reasonable poster about 60% of the time, and an unreasonable-nontroll the remaining 30% of the time.

I suspect somewhere between 1.4M and 1.6M is accurate.

Yep and so too do Texans. Wouldn't surprise me to see some or at least one get charged with negligent (should have known better) homicide.

Charges, prosecutions and prison are the only thing that will send the definitive message.

Its been done before, needs to be done 100% of the time.
https://apnews.com/article/shootings...bd325b53b2e597

If you're a cop entrusted to protect kids, you'd better make damn sure your career choice alings with your actual level of bravery.
This isn't the 1990s, its not hard to find combat veterans in police forces anymore.

I wasn't even trolling that guy. lol

You're still an arrogant know it all. I have to stick to that.
But yes, I have to admit, I got you mixed up with Holiday in the sun.
Hey, land o lake, holiday in the sun. Tomaetow , tomato.
But I do make a public apology for the slander and I guess I'll have to put my tail between my legs and for punishment not post on this thread anymore.

______________


there were at least 12 mass shootings over the Memorial Day weekend

at least 15 mass shootings since the Ulvade tragedy

for this article a mass shooting is considered an incident in which 4 or more people were shot and/or killed


.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...anooga-uvalde/


.

Amazingly enough, that's largely true.

Well we have decided that guns are an absolute right and food/shelter/clothing/basic medical care are luxuries.

I know old white men aren't inherently worse than any other demographic since we're all cut from the same cloth. But maybe at least import some old white men from a place that didn't stop developing 50 years ago ?

It's been a big half century after all.

Back to Troll Mode I see.

We have a 'right' to own guns.
We have no 'right' to food, shelter, clothing, health care etc.

Other industrial democracies grant themselves rights that are more useful.

Old white men get the blame but I'm willing to bet that it's not old white men but American dummies. Maybe we can learn from our betters.

TLDR
System is crashing. Too much malware has been installed over they years.
Spend 500 bucks and get an up to date machine that works.

Trash comment, but does speak to a deeper truth; our society is a lot less stable today than it was 50 years ago and access to basic **** has gone down for far, far too many people.
Gun ownership/easy access requires a stable society with similar, high quality values. It absolutely cannot exist in a chaotic society with degrading values without the kinds of results we have.

Schools used to have marksmanship teams and no school shootings.
50 years ago is a pretty appropriate point on the timeline that we agree on. Its about when our values-shift as a culture started to hit their state of terminal decline and we went from an optimistic to a pessemistic culture.

The weird thing is, the political right could probably cement power for at least a few generations by pivoting hard/fast on a few socioeconomic issues, Nixon was the first to seriously propose national health care, but they just won't do it. They make enough political hay by spooking people over the fear of the political far left, but that oil won't burn forever and they're starting to lose people on issues that are closer to their daily lives. Housing costs relative to wages is a nuke blast that just went off- we saw the flash- but the blast wave hasn't hit yet. You're about to see a generation priced out of not just owning a house, but being able to rent one without 3 roommates. Unless those $65K 3d Printed houses start scaling up awfully fast, that issue is going to cause a political shift towards the left from a lot of those currently in the center. Now, the left just has to figure out how to actually deliver something meaningful, which historically has been their shortcoming.

The 2021 US military budget was $705.39 Billion. We spend the most on killing people and breaking things. USA! USA!

Some of this is revisionist history nonsense, the next generation's version of GOP nostalgia for the 1950s. But the bolded is a good point.

There is almost certainly an inverse relationship between the amount of rot in a society and the number of guns that same society can comfortably absorb.

In other words, there might be some hypothetical society that could handle U.S. levels of gun ownership, but the U.S. cannot comfortably absord the number of guns currently on the street.

We keep talking about how dumb either party is. Why are we not actually calling out the average American as being stupid. You have two parties that keep delivering on nothing and will not support policies or vote that the majority supports.

You guys are ripe for a third party but nope never gonna happen. All we hear about is the potential of a Donald J Trump residency in 2024 that will ultimately destroy the country according to many yet no steps up to save the country .

If your Russia or China just sit back and watch the country destroy from within Oh well it was a good almost 300 years

When you hear Americans say that there is unlikely to be a third party in the United States, only rarely are they commenting on whether a third party would be a good idea. Much more often, they are commenting on the structural impediments in the U.S. political system to the emergence of a third party.

The only real path to being halfway viable as a third party presidential candidate is to be a multi-billionaire. That isn't a reliable way to start a third party for several reasons. First, although U.S. society fetishizes wealth, we don't have much love for our multi-billionaires. Second, a party that is fronted by a multi-billionaire is almost guaranteed to be a cult of personality, which means that the party is bound to wither after the multi-billionaire dies or loses interest in starting a political party.

When you have an abundance even your trash is valuable to the less fortunate.

That's a straw man, everyone knows the average American is stupid.

We like to blame the corrupt system but it's like the gun problem.
It's not 'easy' but it's perfectly doable if people weren't so stupid, selfish and easily distracted.

Reagan was great when he took the job as the most powerful government leader in the world and told his idiot cult followers that government was the problem. As soon as the dummies believed him he got to loot all their tax dollars.

I mean, the elected an actor. lol
What's next ? A reality star ?

I don't necessarily agree.

I think a Populist Third party that spanned the Trump, Bernie Sanders populist agenda while avoiding the extremes on each end and lead by the right charismatic person could rise as a real force on the US political spectrum.

A message of 'gutting the deep state', AKA, reforming gov't, along with things like Raising Minimum wage, improving Medicare, Gun Reform, Investments in Infrastructure, (insert Biden BBB here ______) with the right charismatic leader could do a ton of damage with the right leader and small donor donations.

The Progressives on one end and Trump on the other provided how well such messages resonate and act as a call to action, if the voters truly believe you are prepared to tear sh*t up to deliver.

Well in the US we do have a 'right' to food, shelter, clothing, health care etc. in the same way we have a 'right' to own guns, because those are negative rights—meaning the government cannot deprive us of those things, not that they have to provide us with guns and food.

I can't see how that case succeeds and i think it is entirely performative, to make angry citizens have a target for their anger and to feel like the authorities are doing something.

The Supreme Court has already ruled that Police have no duty or obligation to step up and defend your life for any reason. They can totally stand down or just walk away.


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POLICE HAVE NO DUTY TO PROTECT YOU, FEDERAL COURT AFFIRMS YET AGAIN

...“Neither the Constitution, nor state law, impose a general duty upon police officers or other governmental officials to protect individual persons from harm — even when they know the harm will occur,” said Darren L. Hutchinson, a professor and associate dean at the University of Florida School of Law. “Police can watch someone attack you, refuse to intervene and not violate the Constitution.”...

I'd like to see a huge reduction (>40%) in the erroneously-titled "Defense budget". Of course, it'll never happen.

Well said.

Having a right to have or do something does not mean that a third-party has an obligation to provide it.

A have a right to free speech, but nobody has an obligation to provide a platform for me to exercise that right.

Addendum: I have a right to healthcare in that sense that nobody can rightfully prevent me from seeking it, but it doesn't follow from that that a third-party has an obligation to provide it and/or pay for it for me.