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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM

SeptimusHeap from Switzerland (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Mu
#54876: May 20th 2013 at 3:25:50 PM

See if that works better.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Pykrete NOT THE BEES from Viridian Forest Since: Sep, 2009
NOT THE BEES
#54877: May 20th 2013 at 3:34:07 PM

Mostly in defining an "Assault Weapon" — what exactly is it?

In most of the proposed and locally passed bans, it's formally defined as a semi-automatic that resembles a military-style automatic weapon (already banned or very tightly regulated and have been for decades) and has X number of cosmetic features (bayonet mount, pistol grip, etc).

Which, y'know, means jack shit as far as things that actually keep people safe.

Yeah, I'm thinking of moving to Oregon when I get older.

We're mostly a cool state, but we have a lot of towns on the verge of collapse because everyone moves in to retire and nobody can afford to move out of Portland unless they have family back in the 'burbs.

edited 20th May '13 3:36:12 PM by Pykrete

RadicalTaoist scratching at .8, just hopin' from the #GUniverse Since: Jan, 2001
scratching at .8, just hopin'
#54879: May 20th 2013 at 4:41:20 PM

Putting army to peacetime public works is a waste. They should be doing peacekeeping, which includes shooting down bastards that make trouble, for example militias which open fire on civilians they don't like.
No, sending the military to shoot people in unstable countries where we're not popular is a waste. The U.S. military has a long tradition of doing development work, Smedley Darlington Butler was doing such work in China in the 30s and keeping his corner of the country a stable, bandit-free place. It's very easy to make things worse by going in and killing people; you blow up the wrong wedding and that's 30 insurgent recruits. Hard to piss people off building bridges and roads.

And frankly, we need some high-speed rail infrastructure and overdue highway repairs in the Continental U.S.

@Barkey: I've always been a "municipal governments should have final say on gun control & regulation" fellow myself, as rural and urban gun ownership are completely different kettles of tea. What would you have to say to that?

Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.
Midgetsnowman Since: Jan, 2010
#54880: May 20th 2013 at 5:24:08 PM

[up][up]

because he's likely rich enough he never needed govt healthcare.

DeviantBraeburn Wandering Jew from Dysfunctional California Since: Aug, 2012
Ramidel Since: Jan, 2001
#54882: May 20th 2013 at 5:47:21 PM

@Radical: You really think high-speed rail is even possible outside of the Northeast?

Remember, this is the country where the automobile companies literally bought up the streetcar companies just to destroy them and create demand for their cars.

imadinosaur Since: Oct, 2011
#54883: May 20th 2013 at 6:18:08 PM

Do the car companies have that much money to throw around now? That would certainly run afoul of modern competition laws.

The USA is one of the places in the world that would most benefit from high speed rail, since there are such large distances to cover (so the time savings would add up to something meaningful).

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
Kostya (Unlucky Thirteen)
#54884: May 20th 2013 at 6:22:00 PM

Here's a map of the proposed system.

Honestly I think it's a good idea. It would be a way to quickly travel between the major cities and coasts without relying on airplanes or long car trips. In the long run I feel like that would save money because airplanes are really expensive.

NativeJovian Jupiterian Local from Orlando, FL Since: Mar, 2014 Relationship Status: Maxing my social links
Jupiterian Local
#54885: May 20th 2013 at 6:31:24 PM

Yeah, high speed rail could do a lot of good here. I know I'd appreciate being able to hop down to Miami in an hour instead of the three or four it'd take now, by car. It'd make doing something like, say, a day trip to catch a Marlin's game feasible, whereas by car it's decidedly not. Not to mention the side benefits — people taking the train means fewer people on the roads, less congestion means less pollution, less wear and tear on the roadways, less dangerous driving conditions, less pollution, etc etc.

What it would do well is serve that sweet spot between "too far for cars" and "not far enough for planes". There are bus routes for that, but they're not really widely used outside of the northeast (which has lots of large cities in a relatively small area), and high-speed trains would be faster anyway.

edited 20th May '13 6:33:44 PM by NativeJovian

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.
Kostya (Unlucky Thirteen)
#54886: May 20th 2013 at 6:42:51 PM

One thing I can't find is how expensive the tickets would be. I'd imagine they'd be pricey but they'd almost certainly be cheaper than planes and they'd probably be cheaper than taking a car given how expensive gas is.

Pykrete NOT THE BEES from Viridian Forest Since: Sep, 2009
NOT THE BEES
#54887: May 20th 2013 at 6:51:19 PM

I would definitely be up for an I-5 bullet train. It's a really nice drive, but damn it's a long one.

rmctagg09 The Wanderer from Brooklyn, NY (Before Recorded History) Relationship Status: I won't say I'm in love
The Wanderer
#54888: May 20th 2013 at 6:56:17 PM

Would be nice to be capable of reaching Albany in an hour as opposed to the six or so hours.

Hugging a Vanillite will give you frostbite.
Belian In honor of my 50lb pup from 42 Since: Jan, 2001
In honor of my 50lb pup
#54889: May 20th 2013 at 7:17:11 PM

Just imagine how much more business major tourist locations could do (Disney World especially) if people could get to the vicinity in an hour or two verses being a half day trip just to get there. The problem is getting it built in the first place—look at how hard its been to get a "small" track put up in California.

... and we are completely off topic. There are political aspects to the discussion, but they are not very relevant to the current topics people are talking about.

Yu hav nat sein bod speeling unntil know. (cacke four undersandig tis)the cake is a lie!
terlwyth Since: Oct, 2010
#54890: May 20th 2013 at 7:17:21 PM

Well California's got one in the works that goes from San Francisco to LA and Sacramento via the 5. It'll be a while though.

Also glad to see that GOP Rep isn't a complete hypocrite on it,even if he's wrong. Good luck finding another GOP Rep that isn't so much of lunatic that they'd find someone way to justify them being subsidized.

RadicalTaoist scratching at .8, just hopin' from the #GUniverse Since: Jan, 2001
scratching at .8, just hopin'
#54891: May 20th 2013 at 7:19:46 PM

@Ramidel: There's a reason I suggested we'd have to order the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to build the thing.

Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.
GlennMagusHarvey Since: Jan, 2001
#54892: May 20th 2013 at 7:24:29 PM

Boston to DC in three hours? HOLY SHIT.

Ramidel Since: Jan, 2001
#54893: May 20th 2013 at 7:45:02 PM

@Belian: No we're not. High speed rail has been brought up in the political sphere, even if it's only backed by radicals right now. Hell, Obama was talking about a (much less ambitious) proposal at one point.

DeviantBraeburn Wandering Jew from Dysfunctional California Since: Aug, 2012
Medinoc from France (Before Recorded History)
#54895: May 20th 2013 at 9:26:11 PM

According to Wikipedia, Mark Amodei was born in a family rich enough to afford law school, and became a lawyer after the army. This is the kind of guy who was born rich and was rich all his life, so his talk about "Gov't healthcare" is either hypocrisy or Dramatically Missing the Point.

"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."
Barkey Since: Feb, 2010 Relationship Status: [TOP SECRET]
#54896: May 20th 2013 at 9:34:27 PM

I don't mean to pick on you, Barkey, but given that you're the only serious pro gun rights person posting in the thread at the moment, let me ask you a question. You've said that you're completely against any sort of "assault weapons" ban (which I agree with, at least until someone can come up with a reasonable definition of assault weapon), but where do you draw the line for what's acceptable in civilian hands? I know you have experience in both the military and law enforcement, so you're more knowledgeable about what people can do with what hardware than most. There's obviously an upper limit somewhere (the classic reductio ad absurdum being "why not just let people but their own nukes?), so I'm curious — where would you put it? What are you comfortable letting civilians have, and what do you think should be solely the purview of the military? Is there a middle ground of things that are okay for, say, law enforcement to have, but not random citizens?

My personal take on it, just so you know where I'm coming from, is that civilians don't need anything where you can't pick out a single target — which essentially boils down to "no explosives and nothing fully automatic". I realize that neither of those things are used especially often in the commission of crimes, but I'm not suggesting that banning them will fix the problems with gun violence, I'm just saying that's my baseline "I don't think any private citizen ever has a legitimate reason to own hand grenades or machine guns", and other gun control measures (like the aforementioned background checks and licensing) would take effect from there.

I pretty much entirely agree with you when it comes to limits. When the subjects come up I usually say "Fully automatic weapons and explosives."

But banning based on cosmetic features is idiotic. The reason they keep saying "Assault Weapon" is because technically an "Assault Rifle" is fully automatic.

I'd just like to say that I find the "cake analogy" wildly misleading because it suggests that gun control advocates are somehow taking something that belongs to gun rights advocates for themselves. Gun control advocates aren't "stealing your cake" because they want more cake for themselves, they're — to stretch the analogy — saying that cake is dangerous and should be more strictly regulated. It's not "I should have that instead of you", it's "I don't think anyone should have that".

For the record, I'm pretty much middle of the road when it comes to gun control vs gun rights. I think people who are against basic regulation like background checks just as unreasonable as people who want to ban all handguns, period. The problem is that my view of things is essentially the opposite of Barkey's — where he sees gun control advocates slowly and steadily eroding gun rights, I see gun rights advocates consistently and determinedly stonewalling any and all attempts at any sort of gun control measure. This is probably due to geography — I live in Florida, a very gun-friendly state — but I'm mostly talking about the federal level.

See, the issue is that we don't know when the eroding of said "dangerous cake" stops. Think of it like a semi-truck that is careening towards you. You think if the driver really slams the brakes, they might stop juuuust in time, or they might just bump you, but you aren't sure. For all you know, it's going to smash into your car, pushing you off the shoulder like a piece of trash, and just keep on going.

That's how we look at the anti-gun movement, we don't know when they'll feel that they have "enough", so we aren't very encouraged to give them anything.

I don't give a fuck if the cake is dangerous, those people want all of it, and that is absolutely unacceptable. They don't get to choose how much cake to leave us with. We want 3 slices, they would prefer we maybe had one pitiful ass slice of black powder muskets and wooden stock shotguns and bolt action rifles. We want a few decent slices that consist of CCW's and AR 15's with all the features that "scare" the average ignorant gun-grabber, despite them being extremely inconsequential.

And there's greedy fat kids on both sides of the fence in that argument. There's some diehard NRA types who want to keep the entire cake and want to take back the pieces that have already been taken in the last century and have no limits, something I said in the above that I disagree with. Then there are greedy ass anti-gun folks who just want to take the entire cake away from us.

I just want those "few decent slices" that I mentioned. Namely background checks, competency tests, but on the same note standard capacity magazines and AR 15's with all the "scary" cosmetic features, without being neutered by a bullet-button or a fixed magazine, and the ability to keep my CCW so long as I stay out of trouble.

My demand is to have those things so long as I can furnish proof that I am a sane, normal, law abiding, and competent citizen in good standing. I'm not a threat, shit, I work for "the man". But military don't get any of the same benefits that civilian police officers do, if we did, I'd be way less of a crabby asshole about this subject. Hell, if I lived in any state other than California, Illinois, or New York, I would be WAY less crabby about the whole thing, because I would have all of the things that I want. The reason I'm so bitchy is because my state sucks fucking ass if you are a pro-gun individual.

edited 20th May '13 9:49:03 PM by Barkey

SgtRicko Since: Jul, 2009
#54897: May 20th 2013 at 9:53:11 PM

Some of you may have noticed on the news that there's been a few destructive tornadoes touching down recently, but Oklahoma just got hit by an absolutely nasty F5. 51 dead, including an elementary school a whole suburb destroyed, due to the fact that this sucker touched down in Oklahoma city's suburbs.

At least 51 killed, including 20 children, as tornado tears through Oklahoma, leaving miles of debris

BTW, if there's any Tropers who live in the "Tornado Alley" area, I've gotta ask: why do people continue to build their houses out of wood or other fragile materials there, especially if they know that region's risks???

Pykrete NOT THE BEES from Viridian Forest Since: Sep, 2009
NOT THE BEES
#54898: May 20th 2013 at 10:02:47 PM

Often, a properly reinforced brick house with storm cellar is prohibitively expensive.

My relatives are pretty well-off, and even they can't afford the restructuring that would make it tornado-proof.

edited 20th May '13 10:03:30 PM by Pykrete

Barkey Since: Feb, 2010 Relationship Status: [TOP SECRET]
#54899: May 20th 2013 at 10:31:19 PM

^^

51 seems like a pretty low death toll from what the damage looked like on the news, looked like some pretty nasty shit.

Is it done with?

RadicalTaoist scratching at .8, just hopin' from the #GUniverse Since: Jan, 2001

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