Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

A Senator Walker would also be an insult to reason, rationality, and decency.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

A Senator Walker would be an insult to the state and the nation.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Overnight Open Thread

Overnight Open Thread

by | 64 Comments

This post is in: 

SiubhanDuinne in a comment in the last thread wanted an open thread. So here it is. And in case she’s not checking the comments back in the previous thread, my answer to the question she posed in her FB post is:

Your idea will not happen. Not because its not a good idea, but because the gun manufacturers have been punished for previous baby steps. Bill Ruger, the eponymous head of Ruger firearms, made some overtures about banning high capacity magazines. Twelve years after his death and there are commenters all over the firearms websites that won’t buy a Ruger- one of the few companies where all of their guns are made in the US – because of this betrayal.

http://www.thegunzone.com/rkba/papabill.html

Smith and Wesson leadership was briefly aligned with the Clinton Administration on gun control and safety measures. The backlash almost put them out of business. They had badly misread what the response would be. Those in support of the Clinton Administration’s efforts and Smith and Wesson’s willingness to go along don’t buy guns. Those that do almost drove the company into bankruptcy by boycotting their products. To this day, the integral lock built into some Smith and Wesson revolvers is referred to as a “Hillary Hole”!
http://www.businessinsider.com…..ing-2013-1

No one is going to risk their business. They know they’ll be punished. You might be able to get the head of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, which is the actual trade group, to agree to a meeting, but even then I’m not sure NSSF would take the chance either.

Reader Interactions

64Comments

  1. 1.

    John Revolta

    Hey Sensei! Mrs.Revolta and I are going to be in Ft. Myers for two weeks later this month. She’s an akido person and would like to take some classes while we’re down there………………….any thoughts?

  4. 4.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    I’m finally getting around to watching Rachel, she’s right; tRump is George Wallace with a New York accent.

    ETA: I’m old enough to remember the 1968 election. [Where’s my walker?]

  5. 5.

    MomSense

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I started tai chi a little over a year ago. I have some injuries so I don’t do the push hands/sparring but I was pretty surprised to see how intense the push hands can be. It reminds me a bit of watching aikido.

  6. 6.

    Adam L Silverman

    @MomSense: I do, or should do but to often don’t, Yang style tai chi. Specifically the original family set as taught by Yang Min Xi to my teacher Andy Law. I did tai chi with him for almost three years when I lived in Scotland. The set I do is very short – basically 11 postures/forms down out and then back. And its done with a deep stance. My sifu described it as the original martial set.

    Regardless they are similar. The Taoist arts, and aikido, all work from the inside out. The Chan Buddhist forms, what we think of as Kung Fu, and the Japanese jitsus and the Japanese tes (the various karates) all work from the outside in. I frequently use a variant of push hands with my students to get them to work on a sticky connection feeling. If you ever get a chance to see tai chi done at combat speed in a demo (which will still not actually be real fight speed), a number of the applications look just like aikido.

  8. 8.

    Adam L Silverman

    @John Revolta: My pleasure to help. I know all of the instructors at the Sarasota dojo well. I’m good friends with Peewee Sensei – who was one of Saotome Shihan’s first three American students (Saotome Sensei’s wife and my sensei, Messores Sensei, were the other two). Another good friend of mine, Schrader Sensei teaches down there, as well as Melissa Bell Sensei – the sister I didn’t know I had (we have the same birthday and always go up for promotion at the same time, usually with one or two other of our peers), and one of the nidan’s that teaches there, Greg, is a friend. I’ve guest taught there a couple of times. If you decide to do a weekend class (that’s usually Saturday AM), let me know and if I’m still in the area and can clear my schedule, I’ll drive down and join you all.

  9. 9.

    Ruckus

    Reading in the LA times today, Rudi 9-11 was in San Bernardino when the county services facility was opened and gave a speech. What the fuck is that useless idiot doing there?

  10. 10.

    MomSense

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I have to modify my form because I can’t do a very deep stance- years of being a ballerina will do bad things to your joints. I’ll have to look for some combat speed demos. The one thing I have going for me is good breathing.

  13. 13.

    Ruckus

    @Adam L Silverman:
    LOL. Probably a 90% chance of being correct.
    OK then but who the hell is stupid enough to pay him? I could see paying him to shut the fuck up, I might even donate to that fund, is 5 cents enough or am i overpaying?

  14. 14.

    Ruckus

    @Adam L Silverman:
    I perked right up at the remedial yoga thing as I have numerous joint issues, stemming from getting older and from a major accident. I was hit by a truck. I wasn’t in a vehicle at the time.

  15. 15.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Ruckus: All you need to know about him is that iconic picture of him outside and pointing on 9-11 was not him asking where the explosion was, rather he was pointing as he asked if it was safe to evacuate in that direction because they’d just told him that his supposed to be super secure , multimillion dollar command post was buried under rubble. He was trying to get out of dodge and someplace safe fast.

  18. 18.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @efgoldman: True, but Wallace’s followers said the same thing as tTump’s do now. He tells the truth, he’s not a politician… It was really quite eerie.

  20. 20.

    Ruckus

    @Adam L Silverman:
    That is of course OK, it was a rhetorical question at best.
    But he’s such an asshat that he doesn’t even have the sense to be the kind of person who watches a crowd running away and says I must find out where they are going so I can lead them.

  23. 23.

    Tommy

    @BillinGlendaleCA: I got some connection to Louisana. In Trump I see some Huey Long. I don’t see that as a strange thing. But it should scare the shit out of folks. Huey was a long time ago, but he was also Trump before well Trump.

  25. 25.

    mclaren

    No one is going to risk their business. They know they’ll be punished.

    Then the U.S. government needs to buy out all U.S. gun manufacturers at a fair market price and shut them down.

  27. 27.

    mclaren

    @BillinGlendaleCA:
    FWIW, San bernardino county is referred to by the DEA as the “methamphetamine capital of the United States.”

    The Riverside and San Bernardino County area is referred to as the “methamphetamine capital of the United States.” The Central District is classified as a major source because of the numerous methamphetamine laboratories located in the district. These laboratories range from superlabs capable of producing 10 pounds of finished product per cook to numerous small-scale laboratories yielding only nominal user quantities. Most of the superlabs in the area are operated by Mexican DTOs. In response to increased law enforcement pressure, some larger methamphetamine operations are being relocated to areas outside the district.

    Mexican DTOs also use the district as both a destination and transshipment point for methamphetamine produced in Mexico and smuggled into the United States. Mexican DTOs and criminal groups control methamphetamine wholesale and retail distribution, sometimes using street gangs and other street level dealers.

    Source: DOJ website document on drug trafficking.

    So this might actually be a not-very-cleverly disguised two-fer by the Republicans to try to give some weight to Trump’s illegal immigrant shtick + the usual drug menace scare story. It’s straight out of the Trump playbook — they’re Mexicans, they’re dealing drugs, they’re here illegally, yadda yadda yadda.

    Rudi might just be getting paid by Trump or some Trump intermediary to drum up this kind of racist/drugs panic.

  28. 28.

    Tommy

    @BillinGlendaleCA: I was born in Baton Rouge. Went back there for college. Only reason I know what I know about the place or Huey. The rise of Trump, well it is a case study of the rise. Messed up stuffed.

  29. 29.

    mclaren

    @BillinGlendaleCA:

    Cutely enough, the president has the statutory power to sequester funds from other programs and use them for discretionary purposes. Reagan did it, Dubya did it. A Democratic prez could do it.

  30. 30.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @mclaren: It was also one of the reasons Nixon got impeached, they didn’t include in the actual articles of impeachment, but came very close to doing so(they had enough as it was).

  32. 32.

    Tommy

    My LSU Tigers beat Kentucky in basketball! I often laugh there isn’t a chance in hell this will happen. But it did.

  33. 33.

    ? Martin

    No one is going to risk their business. They know they’ll be punished.

    They are being punished. Fewer gun owners every year which is lethal. We’re seeing the extinction burst of the industry.

  36. 36.

    NotMax

    The incipient puff of the long wind.

    Too lengthy to be called a tweet – mayhaps a blubber?

    Twitter is building a new feature that will allow users to tweet things longer than the traditional 140-character limit, and the company is targeting a launch date toward the end of Q1, according to multiple sources familiar with the company’s plans. Twitter is currently considering a 10,000 character limit, according to these sources. That’s the same character limit the company uses for its Direct Messages product, so it isn’t a complete surprise. Source

  37. 37.

    NotMax

    @Tommy

    IIRC you have Netflix. Fairly sure the movie All the King’s Men (the one from 1949 starring Broderick Crawford, not the more recent remake) is still available there.

    Extremely thinly veiled sketch of Huey Long; screenplay adapted from Robert Penn Warren’s celebrated book.

  38. 38.

    Anne Laurie

    @efgoldman:

    But Trump and the opossum on his head really isn’t Wallace. That is, they espouse a lot of the same resentments, but Ol’ George was actually a politician who’d had major elective office. The Donald is trying to snag a major party nomination without having run for or held any political office.

    It’s pretty clear Trump — or at least the professionals “handling” Trump — looked at George Wallace and thought, There’s a role model we can imitate; his angry rubes could be our angry rubes.

    Because Wallace didn’t come to his most famous stance as a result of heartfelt principle, either:

    Previous Alabama governors had run successfully on moderate platforms similar to the one Wallace adopted in 1958. However the growing civil rights movement, especially the Montgomery Bus Boycott three years earlier, had left white Alabamans feeling “under siege,” and Patterson won the race for governor by a large margin. After his defeat, Wallace determined that in order to be elected governor he would have to change his position on racial issues, telling one of his campaign officials “I was out-n****red by John Patterson. And I’ll tell you here and now, I will never be out-n****red again.”

  40. 40.

    David Koch

    @mclaren: can you cite any example?

    Congress took Nixon to court for this and he lost in a 8 to 1 decision, with all 4 of his appointees voting against him.

    The Supreme Court in Train v. City of New York (1975) ruled that the impoundment power cannot be used to frustrate the will of Congress.

  41. 41.

    David Koch

    Trump called Ruth Marcus “3rd rate” and “a total dummy”.

    So funny, cuz she was defending him due to her CDS and this is what she got.

  44. 44.

    Chris

    No one is going to risk their business. They know they’ll be punished. You might be able to get the head of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, which is the actual trade group, to agree to a meeting, but even then I’m not sure NSSF would take the chance either.

    I did not know any of this. It seems to confirm yet again that the popular notion of capitalists bamboozling the rubes into voting for corporate profits and against their own interests, if it was ever true, no longer is. The rubes are the ones running the show now, and the Gun Lobby isn’t arms dealers protecting their profits but ideologues protecting their loony visions.

    Which seems to be the defining story of American conservatism in our day and age.

  46. 46.

    MomSense

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I do some yoga and also pilates. I also do some dance based (Luigi, Graham, Ballet) stretching and strengthening exercises. I prefer tai chi right now because it is mentally stimulating to try and perfect the postures. I get really bored doing swimming, weights, bike, etc so learning something in depth is helpful for me.

  48. 48.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Adam/OP

    Many thanks for this. I was long asleep by the time you put up the thread, so am only now seeing your comments. That’s interesting and useful, if hella depressing, information. Still can’t quite square “the gun manufacturers have been punished for previous baby steps” with the reported ~90% of the public that supports such mild reforms.

    @? Martin:

    They are being punished. Fewer gun owners every year which is lethal. We’re seeing the extinction burst of the industry.

    If it truly is an “extinction burst,” I guess I’ll just take what solace I can from that fact. Too bad it has to burst quite so horribly and bloodily.

  49. 49.

    SFAW

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    If it truly is an “extinction burst,”

    And THAT is a key question. If I had the proverbial nickel for every time I’ve heard that phrase applied to the Rethugs, I could retire quite comfortably. And yet, somehow, the Rethugs seem to hold the reins of power in something like two-thirds of the country, with few (if any) signs of losing it/them.

    One hopes that the NRA’s extinction burst is more real. I ain’t holding my breath, however.

  52. 52.

    The Golux

    One reason that any attempt by Obama to call together some kind of gun violence summit would be fruitless is that one side refuses to admit what the source of the problem is. Yesterday on NPR they interviewed some Republican from Alabama about Obama’s proposals, and all he could talk about was mental health issues. As if more than a tiny fraction of gun violence can be attributed to mentally unstable people (though I will grant that gun fetishists may be unstable by definition).

  53. 53.

    PaulW

    @? Martin:

    there may be fewer gun owners but there’s still enough of them to buy buy and buy. and a lot of them are repeat business, they buy more and stockpile and buy ever more. The gun buyers are addicts that can’t stop themselves out of fear, can’t admit they’re addicted, so the gun manufacturers have enough demand to stay profitable. and there’s enough competition between gun manufacturers to ensure all of them keep up the supply.

  56. 56.

    The Other Chuck

    That’s right, remember, these people lost their shit over mere trigger locks, and still do today. And every other common-sense measure that even responsible gun owners endorse.

    Fuck compromising with these psychopaths. And let them know why.

  59. 59.

    Ella in New Mexico

    Your idea will not happen. Not because its not a good idea, but because the gun manufacturers have been punished for previous baby steps. Bill Ruger, the eponymous head of Ruger firearms, made some overtures about banning high capacity magazines. Twelve years after his death and there are commenters all over the firearms websites that won’t buy a Ruger- one of the few companies where all of their guns are made in the US – because of this betrayal.

    December 20, 1993: it is fully illegal for gays to serve in the military.

    December 21, 1993:”Don’t Ask/Dont Tell” policy takes effect military wide. Not perfect by any means, but a start.

    September 20, 2011: Gays are given full legal status and allowed to serve openly in the US military, with their legal partners able to receive all spousal benefits.

    In between these two dates, incremental changes came about in a relatively quick order, thanks to increased pressure from allies and increased acceptance of the ridiculousness of the anti-gay rhetoric.

    Times change. The world changes. We keep trying.

  60. 60.

    Luthe

    @Ella in New Mexico: Ah, but the military is an entirely different beast than gun sales. It is a whole owned subsidiary of Uncle Sam, so all that’s needed to make a change is the blessing of the brass.

    Gun sales, OTOH, are dependent on the Invisible Hand and so are very, very sensitive to the will of The Market. If The Market (the customer base) turns on you, you’re screwed. And all your competitors will see you’re screwed and work very, very hard not to repeat the mistake that got you there. So until the guns nuts out there decide they can live with smaller magazines and a trigger locks (which is to say, never), the gun manufacturers have no incentive to make incremental changes.

    P.S. In the ultimate irony, the NSSF is based in Newtown. Jesus fucking wept, you guys.

  62. 62.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Duane: Maybe that’s their plan! If we all start buying new guns and destroying them on a regular basis, the industry can stay afloat.

  63. 63.

    The Moar You Know

    Just want to add a data point: the cops went along with, in some cases leading, these boycotts as well. Virtually no police departments use Rugers, in spite of them being the best (IMO) gun maker out there. And quite a few dumped their contracts with S&W, which is why most of ’em tote Glocks these days.

    This was all back in the 90s, pretty sure the cops look at things a bit differently now, but the damage was done and the lesson taught; do ANYTHING to lessen gun violence and get put out of business.

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