I think that, increasingly, the "median voter" doesn't exist except as the average of various extremes.
I think there are probably 35-45% of voters who will always (or almost always) vote for the Republicans, and 40-50% of voters who will always (or almost always) vote for the Democrats. I think most of the "swing voters" are just low-information ignorami who will go with the guy whose name sounds better, or who has been on the news more, or who seems more like someone they want to have a drink with.
I think most of the meat and potatoes of an election is actually who can get more of their base to turn out, and drive more of the other base to stay home, and I think the Republicans tend to be better at this than the Democrats (especially at getting people to stay home).
You guys keep using "low information voter" incorrectly and it's driving me nuts. They're people who don't know who their current congressional representation is, not flighty idiots (allthough there's a lot of overlap in that Venn diagram.)
When usual Republican primary voters in the state of Mississippi were asked if they think interracial marriage should be legal or illegal, a whopping 46 percent said it should be illegal, compared to 40 percent who think it should be legal. The remaining 14 percent were unsure.
46% said it should be illegal and 14% weren't sure.
what. the. fuck.
Mississippi has a big black population, and both races are hived off into solid opposing partisan camps as I understand it. The constant political tension that is also a racial struggle makes it harder to relax social tension.
I know nothing about Mississippi though, so that's a thesis sketched on a sticky note in crayon.
This is approximately 100% accurate. Democratic voters in the state are overwhelmingly poor blacks in the Delta and on the coast; the remainder are yuppies on the coast and the last few hardcore civil liberties people that got stuff organized and turned around fifty years ago. White Democrats tend to GTFO of Mississippi, for fairly obvious reasons (higher educational attainment allows them to work for more money elsewhere, and there's not a hell of a lot keeping them in this pisshole of a state.)
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
I'm getting pretty sick of people bringing up gun rights as a reason why support Republican candidates, en masse.
It's a boogeyman, for the most part, and certainly in the current political climate it's a loser of an issue for anyone who would take on increased gun restriction. No one is willing to waste political clout on augmenting a fairly cut-and-dried constitutional amendment.
The only sadder thing to me is how so many right-wing voters will mention this at the top of their list of fears if Democrats win office. "They're gonna take our guns!"
The people without guns are going to take your guns?
I'm getting pretty sick of people bringing up gun rights as a reason why support Republican candidates, en masse.
It's a boogeyman, for the most part, and certainly in the current political climate it's a loser of an issue for anyone who would take on increased gun restriction. No one is willing to waste political clout on augmenting a fairly cut-and-dried constitutional amendment.
The only sadder thing to me is how so many right-wing voters will mention this at the top of their list of fears if Democrats win office. "They're gonna take our guns!"
The people without guns are going to take your guns?
Well, technically the fear is that the people without guns (hardcore anti-gun Dems) are going to send the people with guns (the po-lice) to take away your guns.
But as @McDermott said, even though he agrees with the Republicans on some things he still comes down on the side of the Democrats because he isn't going to vote based on a few issues. It's what's best for the country, not best for this one thing. Being secure in the knowledge that your 2nd Amendment rights are protected doesn't mean much if the US defaults on its debts.
So I'd argue that McDermott is a prime example of the best moderate we could hope for. Someone who agrees with specific issues on both sides of the aisle, but will vote in the best interests of America.
I'm getting pretty sick of people bringing up gun rights as a reason why support Republican candidates, en masse.
It's a boogeyman, for the most part, and certainly in the current political climate it's a loser of an issue for anyone who would take on increased gun restriction. No one is willing to waste political clout on augmenting a fairly cut-and-dried constitutional amendment.
The only sadder thing to me is how so many right-wing voters will mention this at the top of their list of fears if Democrats win office. "They're gonna take our guns!"
The people without guns are going to take your guns?
No, no, no. The people with black helicopters are going to take your guns.
Also, I 'm kind of disappointed that people still use that laughably libertarian "world's smallest political test" crap like the one in the OP.
No, no, no. The people with black helicopters are going to take your guns.
Also, I 'm kind of disappointed that people still use that laughably libertarian "world's smallest political test" crap like the one in the OP.
You may be more Libertarian than you think!
On a scale of 1-10, 1 being life in a utopia where you get free blowjobs every day, 10 being CRUSHED under the heel of authority and getting your dick chewed off by dogs every day, where would you place yourself?
1 = Libertarian
10 = Authoritarian
See! You're a Libertarian! Welcome to our ranks, Brother!
No, no, no. The people with black helicopters are going to take your guns.
Also, I 'm kind of disappointed that people still use that laughably libertarian "world's smallest political test" crap like the one in the OP.
You may be more Libertarian than you think!
On a scale of 1-10, 1 being life in a utopia where you get free blowjobs every day, 10 being CRUSHED under the heel of authority and getting your dick chewed off by dogs every day, where would you place yourself?
1 = Libertarian
10 = Authoritarian
See! You're a Libertarian! Welcome to our ranks, Brother!
Well, I won't want to seem extreme and thus unreasonable. I consider myself a moderate of course. Free blowjobs sounds nice, but I am a dog person...I guess I agree with policies on both sides.
Also, you know, Democrats lost the gun battle and have basically given up on the issue.
No they haven't! Obama has passed stricter gun legislation than any president, ever! The NRA told me so!
"They just didn't report on it!" is a good way of telling if something is godawful bullshit. I should know, I aided in the perpetuation of that OBAMA IS GOING TO BAN NASCAR FUEL, SNOPES WON'T REPORT ON IT! thing.
Well, that and Fake-Conservative Snopes.*
Also, moon-landing conspiracy theories are primarily spread by mormon missionaries.(Who also believe that there are people living on the moon and sun!)
EXTREME EDIT:I didn't help perpetuate that, it's just a good sign that something is bullshit.
"They just didn't report on it!" is a good way of telling if something is godawful bullshit.
But this actually is representative of a great many of conservative voters. They've become the party of conspiracy theories and fearmongering.
Yet they all know the "real truth." The one that nobody else can see, and only a select few people are in the know, like Glenn Beck. Have you seen the slogan for his new "TV" channel (that's exclusively on the internet)?
"The truth lives here."
See? Secret truths about how the Nazi Muslims are coming to take away your guns and bibles and force high school kids to have gay sex and then get gay abortions while the doctor gives them autism from fake vaccines.
The biggest problems their arguments have in the face of reality is that half of their talking points are imaginary and the other half are ordinary and allowable things being construed as bad, e.g., The Muslim President (not true, but not bad if true) mandating gay marriage (also not a bad idea) while taking your guns away (also not true).
Gun Control is one of the major idiot balls of the Democratic party. The sooner they drop it and never touch it again the better. That is one area the Democratic party as a whole needs to work on if they want to sway back fiscal conservatives disenfranchised with the social conservative bent of the Republican party.
It does not help when the President decides to say they are working on it under the radar, or the ongoing coverup of Operation Fast and Furious/Operation GunWalker.
Gun Control is one of the major idiot balls of the Democratic party. The sooner they drop it and never touch it again the better. That is one area the Democratic party as a whole needs to work on if they want to sway back fiscal conservatives disenfranchised with the social conservative bent of the Republican party.
It does not help when the President decides to say they are working on it under the radar, or the ongoing coverup of Operation Fast and Furious/Operation GunWalker.
Uh ... the Democrats have dropped it and haven't touched it in like a decade now.
The only people still talking about gun control are Conservatives.
Uh ... the Democrats have dropped it and haven't touched it in like a decade now.
The only people still talking about gun control are Conservatives.
I can only assume you have not been paying much attention. Considering in the last 4 years alone we have had DC vs Heller, and McDonald vs Chicago both of which had quite a bit of opposition from within the Democrat party. Moreover renewing the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban was one of Obama's stated Campaign goals. They have not stepped away from the idiot ball at all, they are just playing with it when they think people are not looking because right now it is politically not viable. A short term change in priorities is not a long term change in agendas. Especially in light of the information coming out in the Operation Gunwalker hearings.
As a loyal Democrat, who is on plenty of mailing lists, I can tell you that I have never received a single email (or hardcopy mail) concerning gun legislation. You're really overestimating this, partially because I think it's one of your huge issues.
Correct, as one of my issues I filter for it as I am sure you filter for things that primarily interest you. As stated just because the D party is currently not actively pursing gun control regulation does not mean they have given up on it or ceased making it part of their agenda. They just lack a crisis of sufficient magnitude to get it passed. Right now we have Homeland Security, the Internal Revenue Service, the Drug Enforcement Agency as well as ATF all jointly implicated in smuggling guns to known arms dealers resulting in multiple deaths of both US and Mexican citizens along with a massive coverup within the Department of Justice. One of the stated goals of this program was to pad the statistics on illegal firearms. That program was started in 2009.
Gun control is a dead issue until after the 2012 election. That is a far cry from the D party putting the idiot ball away forever which was the original point I made.
Each party has minor issues that it will eventually bring up now and again. Gun control is unlikely to get anywhere in the next decade or so, and isn't a very immediate concern.
Correct, as one of my issues I filter for it as I am sure you filter for things that primarily interest you. As stated just because the D party is currently not actively pursing gun control regulation does not mean they have given up on it or ceased making it part of their agenda. They just lack a crisis of sufficient magnitude to get it passed. Right now we have Homeland Security, the Internal Revenue Service, the Drug Enforcement Agency as well as ATF all jointly implicated in smuggling guns to known arms dealers resulting in multiple deaths of both US and Mexican citizens along with a massive coverup within the Department of Justice. One of the stated goals of this program was to pad the statistics on illegal firearms. That program was started in 2009.
Gun control is a dead issue until after the 2012 election. That is a far cry from the D party putting the idiot ball away forever which was the original point I made.
Correct, as one of my issues I filter for it as I am sure you filter for things that primarily interest you. As stated just because the D party is currently not actively pursing gun control regulation does not mean they have given up on it or ceased making it part of their agenda. They just lack a crisis of sufficient magnitude to get it passed. Right now we have Homeland Security, the Internal Revenue Service, the Drug Enforcement Agency as well as ATF all jointly implicated in smuggling guns to known arms dealers resulting in multiple deaths of both US and Mexican citizens along with a massive coverup within the Department of Justice. One of the stated goals of this program was to pad the statistics on illegal firearms. That program was started in 2009.
Gun control is a dead issue until after the 2012 election. That is a far cry from the D party putting the idiot ball away forever which was the original point I made.
Right, Democrats are doing nothing now, nor in the foreseeable future, but they might do something in a few years. Woe is you, they are coming to take your guns!!!!! No really, they are!!!!!
I hope you realize how weak that argument really is.
As a loyal Democrat, who is on plenty of mailing lists, I can tell you that I have never received a single email (or hardcopy mail) concerning gun legislation. You're really overestimating this, partially because I think it's one of your huge issues.
The Democrats might not be willing to do something nationally on guns, but you’re straight up kidding yourself if you don’t think there is a very vocal group among the Democratic base that wouldn’t flat about ban guns if they had the chance. And you’re also glossing over Democratic strong holds, like say Washington DC, shitting all over gun rights when they get the chance because of that base.
Besides the gun issue is part of a larger issue people have with Democrats, which is nanny statism. Banning light bulbs, banning food ingredients, forcing vaccinations, the anti video game crusade, attacking food carts, creating taxis medallions that are now hundreds of thousands of dollars, forcing you to get a license to run the most trivial sort of business, fining people for not wearing bike helmets, attacking you for renovating your home in a way that doesn’t look proper for that part of the city, or forcing you to pay fees of hundreds of thousands of dollars for building land you bought and own because it’s close to a park or stream. I can go on.
But the fact is that if you’re an adult in your 30’s or 40’s, especially if you’ve ever tried to do any sort of home renovation, build something, start or run a business, odds are you’ve been fucked six ways from Sunday by some sort of nanny state regulation and maybe even been fucked financially into the ground by this as well.
And while support for whatever moronic rule, regulation, law, whatever, that totally fucked you over might not be universal in the Democratic party, that rule is in place because some Democratic politician put it into place after listening to some of the lunatics in the base.
The more this happens to you the more you realize that otherwise rational Democratic politician, might just listen to progressives or try and get their vote and that was the cause of the dumbass law that just ruined your day. You get screwed a couple times and “well they won’t actually try to control that” starts to ring as hollow, because they just might, and you’d be six shades of fucked all over again because of what some roach of a progressive just nanny stated the shit out of you.
Hence why “kill the EPA” is a winner. Sure, they do a lot of good. But after seeing the fuck muppetry that went on when a friend tried to build an extension on his property, yeah I’d be totally on board for walking around and punching the shit out of some hippies and the EPA is a fucking nightmare. When people cheer for “kill the EPA” they aren’t rooting for “dump sludge into the rivers, I love 3 headed fish” they’re remembering the last time the EPA or some other nanny state agency ass raped them and didn’t have the courtesy to say sorry after.
That’s why it’s easier to be liberal when you are younger. Just like the rich don’t understand what it’s like to be poor so they don’t’ care. You don’t know what it’s like to be screwed by rules or a system some damn hippy put into place. Once you have been, hippy punching and liberal hating starts to make a ton of sense.
Besides the gun issue is part of a larger issue people have with Democrats, which is nanny statism. Banning light bulbs, banning food ingredients, forcing vaccinations, the anti video game crusade, attacking food carts, creating taxis medallions that are now hundreds of thousands of dollars, forcing you to get a license to run the most trivial sort of business, fining people for not wearing bike helmets, attacking you for renovating your home in a way that doesn’t look proper for that part of the city, or forcing you to pay fees of hundreds of thousands of dollars for building land you bought and own because it’s close to a park or stream. I can go on.
But the fact is that if you’re an adult in your 30’s or 40’s, especially if you’ve ever tried to do any sort of home renovation, build something, start or run a business, odds are you’ve been fucked six ways from Sunday by some sort of nanny state regulation and maybe even been fucked financially into the ground by this as well.
And while support for whatever moronic rule, regulation, law, whatever, that totally fucked you over might not be universal in the Democratic party, that rule is in place because some Democratic politician put it into place after listening to some of the lunatics in the base.
The ban on food ingredients is we don't get sick. Forcing vaccinations is so there are no polio outbreaks. The anti video game crusade is the Right/old people being silly gooses. Forcing people to get licenses is usually a form of revenue raising on the part of local governments, not a part of the Democratic policies. Same thing with bike helmets. Renovating homes is either local govt or homeowners associations, usually neither of which are liberal strongholds. If I understand your point correctly, the fees are so businesses can't pollute freely into those streams and must clean up their waste.
The examples you describe are for the most part not due to Democratic politicians/policies. They are due to greedy cities/counties wanting a piece of the pie every time you build a shed in your backyard. Do try to provide better examples next time.
The second amendment is the worst amendment. Only real way to effect gun control is to repeal it, which won't happen until the gun culture changes. Which won't happen. So... yeah. Dems should just drop it for now, it's a losing issue.
That whole post was like an explosion of ignorance. Really, hippies? Still a scapegoat for people, apparently.
Once you have been, hippy punching and liberal hating starts to make a ton of sense.
This just means you're delusional, I'm sorry. What you've posted is basically an abdication of thinking about these issues in the complex terms they require.
Lucid on
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
Yeah damn those Democrats for expanding gun rights into National Parks!
There have been democrats on the stupid ass side of plenty "think of the children" censorship campaigns. Mostly hypersensitive housewives with nothing better to do with their time than get pissy about pet issues. Tipper Gore for instance.
I live in a red state, so I reflexively blame republicans for a lot of the retarded local legislation. It makes me wonder where DigitalD lives.
Correct, as one of my issues I filter for it as I am sure you filter for things that primarily interest you. As stated just because the D party is currently not actively pursing gun control regulation does not mean they have given up on it or ceased making it part of their agenda. They just lack a crisis of sufficient magnitude to get it passed. Right now we have Homeland Security, the Internal Revenue Service, the Drug Enforcement Agency as well as ATF all jointly implicated in smuggling guns to known arms dealers resulting in multiple deaths of both US and Mexican citizens along with a massive coverup within the Department of Justice. One of the stated goals of this program was to pad the statistics on illegal firearms. That program was started in 2009.
Gun control is a dead issue until after the 2012 election. That is a far cry from the D party putting the idiot ball away forever which was the original point I made.
Once Californians started to accept gays in the cities, a bunch of shitheads moved to all of the red states and are currently trying to gentrify them via the abuse of neighborhood covenants and local office, unaware that everyone hates them.
Of course, voter apathy is so strong that real people don't realize they could sign a bunch of their buddies up for the job and win by default, so only the most vile and worthless kind of human being enters into local politics.
The Democrats might not be willing to do something nationally on guns, but you’re straight up kidding yourself if you don’t think there is a very vocal group among the Democratic base that wouldn’t flat about ban guns if they had the chance. And you’re also glossing over Democratic strong holds, like say Washington DC, shitting all over gun rights when they get the chance because of that base.
You know there certainly is a segment of the part that believes that but I really wonder how powerful they are. I mean Kucinich is pretty fringe among Democrats and he's the only one I'm aware of that has any real power or noteriety. What makes you think that that this group still remains powerful? Are there efforts to remove the handgun ban in DC and are they being stalled by this same group? I'd really like to know where you keep getting the information that fuels these screeds of yours, do you have sources other than your gut that inform this statement? If so I'd REALLY like to know what they are.
Besides the gun issue is part of a larger issue people have with Democrats, which is nanny statism. Banning light bulbs, banning food ingredients, forcing vaccinations, the anti video game crusade, attacking food carts, creating taxis medallions that are now hundreds of thousands of dollars, forcing you to get a license to run the most trivial sort of business, fining people for not wearing bike helmets, attacking you for renovating your home in a way that doesn’t look proper for that part of the city, or forcing you to pay fees of hundreds of thousands of dollars for building land you bought and own because it’s close to a park or stream. I can go on.
Okay, lets parse some of this language a bit. Nanny statism, banning light bulbs, banning food ingredients, forcing vaccinations and the censorship crusades are not the same things at all. First of all, when you say Nanny state what do you mean?
Do you mean you simply do not EVER like to be told what to do, or do you mean that you don't like to have your choices limited unnecessarily? Because if it's the first you're a damn goose and need to look up what a collective action problem is, in fact hell, I'll even pose the question to you directly as I would hope for an ideal debate moderator to pose as a followup question to Michelle Bachmann regarding government regulations.
Classic prisoner's dilemma, you and a stranger are both put in separate cages in separate rooms and inside the cage is one big red button, you have 30 minutes to decide. If only you push the Red button, you die and the stranger goes free, if only the stranger pushes the button he dies and you go free, if both of you push the button though you both go free, but if neither of you pushes the button by the time limit you both die. In this situation is it right or wrong for government to compel both parties to press the red button if a successful outcome can be nearly guaranteed, why or why not? (I expect at least one paragraph)
If it's the latter however, and you just like don't being unnecessarily inconvenienced then why don't you give me specific regulations that have hurt you to start as an example and then explain how they hurt you and why you feel those specific regulations are unnecessary. If you can't then I call shenanigans on you ever having been seriously inconvenienced by government. If you have been though then the only way you're ever going to hope to get those regulations removed is to state your case for why they're bad and if they're as bad as you say it should be pretty easy for you to make that case.
But the fact is that if you’re an adult in your 30’s or 40’s, especially if you’ve ever tried to do any sort of home renovation, build something, start or run a business, odds are you’ve been fucked six ways from Sunday by some sort of nanny state regulation and maybe even been fucked financially into the ground by this as well.
You know call me crazy but even if it jacks up prices I really don't see what the advantage is to allowing people to introduce hazardous building materials or use unsafe tools that may actually damage their home in their home renovations. Are you saying that it's more important we let someone build a death-trap that could harm or kill others so that they can get cheaper prices and get more opportunities to build death traps? Is that not the case? Then START GIVING SPECIFIC GODDAMN EXAMPLES WHEN YOU OPEN YOUR MOUTH, YOU GOOSE!
And while support for whatever moronic rule, regulation, law, whatever, that totally fucked you over might not be universal in the Democratic party, that rule is in place because some Democratic politician put it into place after listening to some of the lunatics in the base.
And if it's a case of someone being a goose and listening to morons then it should be possible or hell even easy to reverse that trend by making rational, sane arguments as to why we need to do X or Y. If it's so moronic, if it's so insipid and it really is just stupid then a case can be made for it. Just like there's a definite case for allowing private gun ownership to be made and I do believe that's exactly why Democrats have as a whole backed away from gun control. Do you somehow feel that this is not the case? Again you've gone off about these "Fringe Democrats controlling the party" without one damn specific example. Saying Kucinich is a senator is not enough because obviously if we listened to him we wouldn't have gun ownership now. Show me someone in power, exercising that power to listen to this "Fringe left" of yours. You really need to start giving us some examples for what you're saying or I'm going to have to conclude you may just be a troll.
The more this happens to you the more you realize that otherwise rational Democratic politician, might just listen to progressives or try and get their vote and that was the cause of the dumbass law that just ruined your day. You get screwed a couple times and “well they won’t actually try to control that” starts to ring as hollow, because they just might, and you’d be six shades of fucked all over again because of what some roach of a progressive just nanny stated the shit out of you.
Where is there any evidence of this happening? Seriously, I want you to find me ten regulations that are being introduced and I want you to tell me why they are entirely unnecessary and why they are simply democrats being evil nanny statists who want to revoke your choice. All regulation is not bad, it's what keeps your chances of eating seriously contaminated meat to one in a billion versus one in ten. So you need to show me where this trend in UNNECESSARY regulations are.
Hence why “kill the EPA” is a winner. Sure, they do a lot of good. But after seeing the fuck muppetry that went on when a friend tried to build an extension on his property, yeah I’d be totally on board for walking around and punching the shit out of some hippies and the EPA is a fucking nightmare. When people cheer for “kill the EPA” they aren’t rooting for “dump sludge into the rivers, I love 3 headed fish” they’re remembering the last time the EPA or some other nanny state agency ass raped them and didn’t have the courtesy to say sorry after.
That’s why it’s easier to be liberal when you are younger. Just like the rich don’t understand what it’s like to be poor so they don’t’ care. You don’t know what it’s like to be screwed by rules or a system some damn hippy put into place. Once you have been, hippy punching and liberal hating starts to make a ton of sense.
Seriously, your argument seems to boil down to: "Stupid gubbmint' tellin' me what te do! I'll build mah shack of solid uranium if I wants to!" (And yes, you should read that to yourself in the voice of Groundskeeper Willie)
You simply say that regulation is bad, that it fucks people over. Without ever doing the real work in explaining why and how. You have a lot of anger and I think if it's legitimate it'd be better served at explaining to us HOW these things are bad instead of telling us THAT these things are bad.
It's like telling someone there's a needle in a haystack, gee that sure helps us at finding it!
If the best you can come up with against someone who's patently ignorant is to yell back at him, "Yeah? Well there's BOOKS, and they say you're WRONG!"
Then honestly you're not coming out of this looking great either.
Right, Democrats are doing nothing now, nor in the foreseeable future, but they might do something in a few years. Woe is you, they are coming to take your guns!!!!! No really, they are!!!!!
I hope you realize how weak that argument really is.
That "nothing now" has already veritably killed four people. Politics is a long term game, throwing your hands up and saying "well nothing is coming down the pipes in the next six months on my pet issue might as well turn on CNN/Fox/Daily Show" is the worst thing you can do. You might as well be arguing that why bother volunteering any time or effort until the night before the election because as long as it is still X time period off it does not matter.
Besides the gun issue is part of a larger issue people have with Democrats, which is nanny statism. Banning light bulbs, banning food ingredients, forcing vaccinations, the anti video game crusade, attacking food carts, creating taxis medallions that are now hundreds of thousands of dollars, forcing you to get a license to run the most trivial sort of business, fining people for not wearing bike helmets, attacking you for renovating your home in a way that doesn’t look proper for that part of the city, or forcing you to pay fees of hundreds of thousands of dollars for building land you bought and own because it’s close to a park or stream. I can go on.
For some reason you seem to be assuming that all local or municipal governments are in the pocket of the Democratic party.
Also what the fuck is wrong with banning ingredients and requiring inspections for places that serve food? I like knowing my food is free of lead and rats, thank you very much.
Right, Democrats are doing nothing now, nor in the foreseeable future, but they might do something in a few years. Woe is you, they are coming to take your guns!!!!! No really, they are!!!!!
I hope you realize how weak that argument really is.
That "nothing now" has already veritably killed four people.
Yes, I'm sure there are many Democratic voters who would like to restrict gun rights more.
The Democratic party though has given up on the issue. They don't talk about, they don't campaign on it and they don't try to do shit about it.
Maybe. But as long as little things like bringing back the AWB are still explicitly stated in the party platform, you're not convincing people who care about guns of this. If the Democrats truly believe in dropping the issue, they probably should consider removing this from their published platform. I guess we'll see in 2012?
Also, let's not pretend that the usual suspects (McCarthy, Lautenberg, Feinstein, etc.) don't still rattle the sabers.
It's a fantastically silly argument, and completely denies reality.
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You guys keep using "low information voter" incorrectly and it's driving me nuts. They're people who don't know who their current congressional representation is, not flighty idiots (allthough there's a lot of overlap in that Venn diagram.)
~80% of voters are low information voters.
This is approximately 100% accurate. Democratic voters in the state are overwhelmingly poor blacks in the Delta and on the coast; the remainder are yuppies on the coast and the last few hardcore civil liberties people that got stuff organized and turned around fifty years ago. White Democrats tend to GTFO of Mississippi, for fairly obvious reasons (higher educational attainment allows them to work for more money elsewhere, and there's not a hell of a lot keeping them in this pisshole of a state.)
It's a boogeyman, for the most part, and certainly in the current political climate it's a loser of an issue for anyone who would take on increased gun restriction. No one is willing to waste political clout on augmenting a fairly cut-and-dried constitutional amendment.
The only sadder thing to me is how so many right-wing voters will mention this at the top of their list of fears if Democrats win office. "They're gonna take our guns!"
The people without guns are going to take your guns?
Well, technically the fear is that the people without guns (hardcore anti-gun Dems) are going to send the people with guns (the po-lice) to take away your guns.
But as @McDermott said, even though he agrees with the Republicans on some things he still comes down on the side of the Democrats because he isn't going to vote based on a few issues. It's what's best for the country, not best for this one thing. Being secure in the knowledge that your 2nd Amendment rights are protected doesn't mean much if the US defaults on its debts.
So I'd argue that McDermott is a prime example of the best moderate we could hope for. Someone who agrees with specific issues on both sides of the aisle, but will vote in the best interests of America.
No, no, no. The people with black helicopters are going to take your guns.
Also, I 'm kind of disappointed that people still use that laughably libertarian "world's smallest political test" crap like the one in the OP.
You may be more Libertarian than you think!
On a scale of 1-10, 1 being life in a utopia where you get free blowjobs every day, 10 being CRUSHED under the heel of authority and getting your dick chewed off by dogs every day, where would you place yourself?
10 = Authoritarian
See! You're a Libertarian! Welcome to our ranks, Brother!
Well, I won't want to seem extreme and thus unreasonable. I consider myself a moderate of course. Free blowjobs sounds nice, but I am a dog person...I guess I agree with policies on both sides.
"They just didn't report on it!" is a good way of telling if something is godawful bullshit. I should know, I aided in the perpetuation of that OBAMA IS GOING TO BAN NASCAR FUEL, SNOPES WON'T REPORT ON IT! thing.
Well, that and Fake-Conservative Snopes.*
Also, moon-landing conspiracy theories are primarily spread by mormon missionaries.(Who also believe that there are people living on the moon and sun!)
EXTREME EDIT:I didn't help perpetuate that, it's just a good sign that something is bullshit.
So you can't trust them.
But this actually is representative of a great many of conservative voters. They've become the party of conspiracy theories and fearmongering.
Yet they all know the "real truth." The one that nobody else can see, and only a select few people are in the know, like Glenn Beck. Have you seen the slogan for his new "TV" channel (that's exclusively on the internet)?
"The truth lives here."
See? Secret truths about how the Nazi Muslims are coming to take away your guns and bibles and force high school kids to have gay sex and then get gay abortions while the doctor gives them autism from fake vaccines.
The biggest problems their arguments have in the face of reality is that half of their talking points are imaginary and the other half are ordinary and allowable things being construed as bad, e.g., The Muslim President (not true, but not bad if true) mandating gay marriage (also not a bad idea) while taking your guns away (also not true).
It does not help when the President decides to say they are working on it under the radar, or the ongoing coverup of Operation Fast and Furious/Operation GunWalker.
Uh ... the Democrats have dropped it and haven't touched it in like a decade now.
The only people still talking about gun control are Conservatives.
I can only assume you have not been paying much attention. Considering in the last 4 years alone we have had DC vs Heller, and McDonald vs Chicago both of which had quite a bit of opposition from within the Democrat party. Moreover renewing the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban was one of Obama's stated Campaign goals. They have not stepped away from the idiot ball at all, they are just playing with it when they think people are not looking because right now it is politically not viable. A short term change in priorities is not a long term change in agendas. Especially in light of the information coming out in the Operation Gunwalker hearings.
Gun control is a dead issue until after the 2012 election. That is a far cry from the D party putting the idiot ball away forever which was the original point I made.
Just gonna like, slip that in there?
People still do this?
Right, Democrats are doing nothing now, nor in the foreseeable future, but they might do something in a few years. Woe is you, they are coming to take your guns!!!!! No really, they are!!!!!
I hope you realize how weak that argument really is.
For posterity.
Besides the gun issue is part of a larger issue people have with Democrats, which is nanny statism. Banning light bulbs, banning food ingredients, forcing vaccinations, the anti video game crusade, attacking food carts, creating taxis medallions that are now hundreds of thousands of dollars, forcing you to get a license to run the most trivial sort of business, fining people for not wearing bike helmets, attacking you for renovating your home in a way that doesn’t look proper for that part of the city, or forcing you to pay fees of hundreds of thousands of dollars for building land you bought and own because it’s close to a park or stream. I can go on.
But the fact is that if you’re an adult in your 30’s or 40’s, especially if you’ve ever tried to do any sort of home renovation, build something, start or run a business, odds are you’ve been fucked six ways from Sunday by some sort of nanny state regulation and maybe even been fucked financially into the ground by this as well.
And while support for whatever moronic rule, regulation, law, whatever, that totally fucked you over might not be universal in the Democratic party, that rule is in place because some Democratic politician put it into place after listening to some of the lunatics in the base.
The more this happens to you the more you realize that otherwise rational Democratic politician, might just listen to progressives or try and get their vote and that was the cause of the dumbass law that just ruined your day. You get screwed a couple times and “well they won’t actually try to control that” starts to ring as hollow, because they just might, and you’d be six shades of fucked all over again because of what some roach of a progressive just nanny stated the shit out of you.
Hence why “kill the EPA” is a winner. Sure, they do a lot of good. But after seeing the fuck muppetry that went on when a friend tried to build an extension on his property, yeah I’d be totally on board for walking around and punching the shit out of some hippies and the EPA is a fucking nightmare. When people cheer for “kill the EPA” they aren’t rooting for “dump sludge into the rivers, I love 3 headed fish” they’re remembering the last time the EPA or some other nanny state agency ass raped them and didn’t have the courtesy to say sorry after.
That’s why it’s easier to be liberal when you are younger. Just like the rich don’t understand what it’s like to be poor so they don’t’ care. You don’t know what it’s like to be screwed by rules or a system some damn hippy put into place. Once you have been, hippy punching and liberal hating starts to make a ton of sense.
The ban on food ingredients is we don't get sick. Forcing vaccinations is so there are no polio outbreaks. The anti video game crusade is the Right/old people being silly gooses. Forcing people to get licenses is usually a form of revenue raising on the part of local governments, not a part of the Democratic policies. Same thing with bike helmets. Renovating homes is either local govt or homeowners associations, usually neither of which are liberal strongholds. If I understand your point correctly, the fees are so businesses can't pollute freely into those streams and must clean up their waste.
The examples you describe are for the most part not due to Democratic politicians/policies. They are due to greedy cities/counties wanting a piece of the pie every time you build a shed in your backyard. Do try to provide better examples next time.
This just means you're delusional, I'm sorry. What you've posted is basically an abdication of thinking about these issues in the complex terms they require.
I live in a red state, so I reflexively blame republicans for a lot of the retarded local legislation. It makes me wonder where DigitalD lives.
I thought guns didn't kill people.
Of course, voter apathy is so strong that real people don't realize they could sign a bunch of their buddies up for the job and win by default, so only the most vile and worthless kind of human being enters into local politics.
The Democratic party though has given up on the issue. They don't talk about, they don't campaign on it and they don't try to do shit about it.
You know there certainly is a segment of the part that believes that but I really wonder how powerful they are. I mean Kucinich is pretty fringe among Democrats and he's the only one I'm aware of that has any real power or noteriety. What makes you think that that this group still remains powerful? Are there efforts to remove the handgun ban in DC and are they being stalled by this same group? I'd really like to know where you keep getting the information that fuels these screeds of yours, do you have sources other than your gut that inform this statement? If so I'd REALLY like to know what they are.
Okay, lets parse some of this language a bit. Nanny statism, banning light bulbs, banning food ingredients, forcing vaccinations and the censorship crusades are not the same things at all. First of all, when you say Nanny state what do you mean?
Do you mean you simply do not EVER like to be told what to do, or do you mean that you don't like to have your choices limited unnecessarily? Because if it's the first you're a damn goose and need to look up what a collective action problem is, in fact hell, I'll even pose the question to you directly as I would hope for an ideal debate moderator to pose as a followup question to Michelle Bachmann regarding government regulations.
Classic prisoner's dilemma, you and a stranger are both put in separate cages in separate rooms and inside the cage is one big red button, you have 30 minutes to decide. If only you push the Red button, you die and the stranger goes free, if only the stranger pushes the button he dies and you go free, if both of you push the button though you both go free, but if neither of you pushes the button by the time limit you both die. In this situation is it right or wrong for government to compel both parties to press the red button if a successful outcome can be nearly guaranteed, why or why not? (I expect at least one paragraph)
If it's the latter however, and you just like don't being unnecessarily inconvenienced then why don't you give me specific regulations that have hurt you to start as an example and then explain how they hurt you and why you feel those specific regulations are unnecessary. If you can't then I call shenanigans on you ever having been seriously inconvenienced by government. If you have been though then the only way you're ever going to hope to get those regulations removed is to state your case for why they're bad and if they're as bad as you say it should be pretty easy for you to make that case.
You know call me crazy but even if it jacks up prices I really don't see what the advantage is to allowing people to introduce hazardous building materials or use unsafe tools that may actually damage their home in their home renovations. Are you saying that it's more important we let someone build a death-trap that could harm or kill others so that they can get cheaper prices and get more opportunities to build death traps? Is that not the case? Then START GIVING SPECIFIC GODDAMN EXAMPLES WHEN YOU OPEN YOUR MOUTH, YOU GOOSE!
And if it's a case of someone being a goose and listening to morons then it should be possible or hell even easy to reverse that trend by making rational, sane arguments as to why we need to do X or Y. If it's so moronic, if it's so insipid and it really is just stupid then a case can be made for it. Just like there's a definite case for allowing private gun ownership to be made and I do believe that's exactly why Democrats have as a whole backed away from gun control. Do you somehow feel that this is not the case? Again you've gone off about these "Fringe Democrats controlling the party" without one damn specific example. Saying Kucinich is a senator is not enough because obviously if we listened to him we wouldn't have gun ownership now. Show me someone in power, exercising that power to listen to this "Fringe left" of yours. You really need to start giving us some examples for what you're saying or I'm going to have to conclude you may just be a troll.
Where is there any evidence of this happening? Seriously, I want you to find me ten regulations that are being introduced and I want you to tell me why they are entirely unnecessary and why they are simply democrats being evil nanny statists who want to revoke your choice. All regulation is not bad, it's what keeps your chances of eating seriously contaminated meat to one in a billion versus one in ten. So you need to show me where this trend in UNNECESSARY regulations are.
Seriously, your argument seems to boil down to: "Stupid gubbmint' tellin' me what te do! I'll build mah shack of solid uranium if I wants to!" (And yes, you should read that to yourself in the voice of Groundskeeper Willie)
You simply say that regulation is bad, that it fucks people over. Without ever doing the real work in explaining why and how. You have a lot of anger and I think if it's legitimate it'd be better served at explaining to us HOW these things are bad instead of telling us THAT these things are bad.
It's like telling someone there's a needle in a haystack, gee that sure helps us at finding it!
That "nothing now" has already veritably killed four people. Politics is a long term game, throwing your hands up and saying "well nothing is coming down the pipes in the next six months on my pet issue might as well turn on CNN/Fox/Daily Show" is the worst thing you can do. You might as well be arguing that why bother volunteering any time or effort until the night before the election because as long as it is still X time period off it does not matter.
For some reason you seem to be assuming that all local or municipal governments are in the pocket of the Democratic party.
Also what the fuck is wrong with banning ingredients and requiring inspections for places that serve food? I like knowing my food is free of lead and rats, thank you very much.
Also, please cite this:
Maybe. But as long as little things like bringing back the AWB are still explicitly stated in the party platform, you're not convincing people who care about guns of this. If the Democrats truly believe in dropping the issue, they probably should consider removing this from their published platform. I guess we'll see in 2012?
Also, let's not pretend that the usual suspects (McCarthy, Lautenberg, Feinstein, etc.) don't still rattle the sabers.
It's a fantastically silly argument, and completely denies reality.