I'll bet $100 that the first political murder we see this cycle will be a Trump nut killing someone they decide is a dangerous lefty....and another $100 the right will shrink from it by saying he's a lone wolf crazy person and not a real Republican following the talking points to their logical conclusions.....oh wait, that already happened in Charlottesville, where's my $200?

I guess they learned nothing from pizza gate, and why would they, it didn't hurt them a bit when one of their own attacked a pizza parlor full of kids with his rifle looking for Clinton to kill because they told him she was there selling child sex slaves.
Jubus Fucking Christ. They're actually trying to start a civil war spouting this bullshit to impressionable morons with guns and hatred, and they know it. If you're politically left of Reagan, buy some guns, you just might need them soon.
*promote exposing the thinly veiled call for civil war if Republicans lose control.

On the chance your 'jokingly' isn't obvious, MLK, Ghandi and Mandela's causes ALL had support from those willing to use violence, aka better weapons would help.

Malcolm X would be the next most prominent figure beside MLK. Indian independence wasn't won with peaceful hunger strikes alone, and again lots of violence in South Africa.

Ghandi even bridged the gap to working alongside the effective army fighting for India's independence:
" I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honor than that she should in a cowardly manner become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonor.
But I believe that nonviolence is infinitely superior to violence, forgiveness is more manly than punishment, forgiveness adorns a soldier."

Speaking more to the point of America today, pretty much no civil war has been fought exclusively with civilians on one side, and the government, police, army and all other branches of the state united on the other. The reason being that if that kind of unity within the government against the civilian population exists, you ALREADY have tyranny.

In America, the example would be if a president or a particular political party decided to try for tyrannical over reach, would the American public be better equipped to resist that with or without guns? In civil war, guns give power to the majority of public opinion that would need to be there otherwise. In a nation with an unarmed public, whatever the majority of soldiers side with is likely gonna win. With an armed populace, the civilian opinion matters more.

I think it's an overall modest observation, and one that really doesn't in anyway make it obvious that the modest benefit is worth the costs. That is another matter, but you can't factually claim that there isn't a meaningful difference between an armed and unarmed population when facing civil war.

I'm completely with Maher on this one.

...But, perhaps to his dismay, this kinda also explains (notice the use of "explains" as opposed to "justifies") unacceptable further-back behavior, like having some degree of appreciation for Confederate soldiers and officers in the Civil War, slave ownership by founding fathers like Thomas Jefferson, etc. It is possible to respect positive contributions of people in the past without being required to turn a blind eye to their faults, even if those faults would be utterly disqualifying today.

Quoth Malcolm Reynolds of Firefly:

So wait....are you saying we should overlook numerous war crimes and international kidnapping because it was done in the name of fighting an enemy we created that never posed the threat we claimed he did, but was a dictatorial asshole that killed and tortured thousands (making it ok for us to emulate him), and ignore that our actions also killed hundreds of thousands and destabilized the middle east, creating Daesh, starting numerous civil wars, now disastrously effecting all Europe?


Yes, I think you're wrong. Only a hand full of soldiers who were caught by their own stupidity of posting photos of them abusing prisoners were discharged, I don't think any high ranking officers who created and fostered the abusive practices.
https://www.salon.com/2006/03/14/prosecutions_convictions/

It wasn't a few bad apples, it was the "standard desirable practice"....a practice Bush strongly defended and Trump has said he wants to return to, and at least the 1/4 of America that brainlessly loves him agrees.
Personally, I think we should have left any American that participated in this in Iraq, especially the officers in charge...soldiers have a duty to refuse illegal or immoral orders, and ordering torture is absolutely illegal and immoral.

I saw it, it was good. I thought Thor: Ragnarok was more fun, but that was also meant to be humorous. This is up there with Captain America: Civil War for me (among Marvel movies).

The dumbest thing in Black Panther were the armored rhinos. Totally unnecessary.

Invading Crimea might have started the shooting phase of the civil war, but supporting opposition groups to overthrow Yanukovich was necessary for that to even happen. Removing an elected government from office would signify the start to me, even if things quieted down for a while afterwards.

Well, in the Ukraine the 'revolutionaries' are backed by a major super power, indeed the civil war was started by Russians, so that example is an outlier unless the anti federalists decide to defect. Not impossible, but I hope unlikely, although Trump is certainly moving his people in exactly that direction. We should be vigilant against more Russian interference in our country, they aren't our friends, they're our enemies.

*quality nutjobs

We are talking about the same idiot that agreed with a conservative talk show host, all the way back in 2011, that doing away with all amendments after the 10th "would eliminate many problems."

The amendments repealed would contain:

13th - Abolishes slavery, and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime.

14th - Defines citizenship, contains the Privileges or Immunities Clause, the Due Process Clause, the Equal Protection Clause, and deals with post–Civil War issues.

15th - Prohibits the denial of the right to vote based on race, color or previous condition of servitude.

19th - Prohibits the denial of the right to vote based on sex.

24th - Prohibits the revocation of voting rights due to the non-payment of a poll tax or any other tax.

26th - Prohibits the denial of the right of US citizens, eighteen years of age or older, to vote on account of age.

Yeah, I could see how making slavery legal again, making it impossible for the people you don't like to be citizens, and preventing undesirables (Blacks,Women,Poor,Young) people from voting would help a certain section of voters.

[editing down to not make wall of text / rant]

Russia is not a hostile power. We are not at war with them, and we are not in any standoff. While that sort of rhetoric generates plenty of sensation for the news, it isn't factually true. We certainly do plenty to antagonize them (placing missiles launchers on Russia's border, stoking the 2014 Ukrainian coup that led to a civil war on Russia's border), and in light of that I consider it understandable that they would attempt to aide a candidate that is likely to be less confrontational.

(Keep in mind that both sides have been hacking each other on the daily for decades. Nothing special there.)

The DNC hack was a good thing for democracy. People should not be in the dark about any candidate's election cheating.

The news argues about things that are not salient.
Collusion is not a crime. That term only comes up for argument's sake, and has no bearing on the legality/illegality of anything in question.

The crime that the campaign is accused of is 'accepting foreign money for elections', which is a campaign funding violation. The argument is that : while Russia appears to not have provided money, the *information Russians provided directly to campaign staff had a monetary value, which makes it equivalent to receiving money.
(*content of said information as of yet not revealed)

Since then, campaign staff has gotten into individual trouble when their individual financial actions have been dug into (namely, laundering), which has led to individual financial conspiracy charges (IIRC).

-scheherazade

Your video, Trump, Corker, Flake and the GOP Civil War: A Closer Look, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

I don't disagree that weapons don't necessarily make anyone more free. I also can't say people are wrong to observe in a civil war level of unrest, a dissenting party armed with fully automatic weapons has more leverage than one armed with knives.

Freedom to practice religion is not 'fairly safe' without guns, unless you want to ignore attacks with cars, trucks, IEDs, and, historically, civilian airliners.

I am mostly pointing out that restricting laws on gun ownership to protect people is not so terribly different from limiting freedom to practice/express idealogies. It is readily demonstrable that BOTH those freedoms have directly contributed to civilian casualties.

The difference between say, banning automatic weapons, and the banning of affiliation with extremist groups like the KKK or ISIL is mostly divided along partisan lines, logically they are pretty much two sides of the same coin, with democrats and republicans each decrying one as necessary and the other as evil.

I'm part way there. In government buildings, city parks, etc., sure -- take 'em down. State flags incorporating the confederate flag? Yeah. Probably time to change.

Civil war battlefields / memorials? Leave 'em up. Stone Mountain? Leave it. Placards noting that these people fought for the wrong side, for wrong reasons (90% of which boils down to slavery) can / should be included. Make it clear that the efforts of these people to try to keep slavery around were evil and wrong.

I've seen it noted that there are no monuments to Hitler in Germany. True, but reminders of the terrible Nazi legacy remain, in Germany and elsewhere. Concentration camps remain, still standing as a reminder of the human capacity for evil. Nazi flags, logos, and equipment remain in museums.

In China, images and monuments to Mao are everywhere. In spite of the fact that even the Communist Party there admits that his policies and actions were terrible -- the devastating Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution, etc. Some Chinese can remember and celebrate the good that Mao did (perhaps a small list) while simultaneously acknowledging his extremely tarnished legacy.


I think that being very quick to say that ALL people on the Confederate side of the Civil War were evil and wrong while their counterparts in the Union were clearly the "real Americans" is entirely too easy. The CSA was founded almost entirely in support of a very evil primary goal -- to keep slavery around. But the people in it, even the people running it, were different from the people on the other side mainly due to accidents of birth location. They fought for what they thought was necessary / right. They were wrong. But, they were real Americans -- and acknowledging that they could have been wrong in that way reminds us that the potential to end up on the wrong side of history also exists for us.

6/10 polled said they believe they should remain, a tiny bit different from wanting them standing, but surprising none the less.
So was this quote from Robert E Lee denouncing civil war monuments....

“I think it wiser,” the retired military leader wrote about a proposed Gettysburg memorial in 1869, “…not to keep open the sores of war but to follow the examples of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, to commit to oblivion the feelings engendered.”
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/robert-e-lee-opposed-confederate-monuments/

620,000 people died in the civil war over the fate of black lives in america. Then and now the 1% rallied their armies, blood was shed and in the end the victorious pocketed the profits. The DOW is still above 22K and it's dividend time again.

Facts and Truth is all I Have.

The window panes are political quadrants. The lower right corner is punched out, indicating the man is anarcho-capitalist. The lamp is tilted toward the newspaper to bring light upon the Sri Lankan Civil War, which was set off by an ambush the day after this comic was published. (That's why the newspaper is blank. Nothing newsworthy compared to the following days/week.) The meat on the table symbolizes the impending carnage, as thousands would die, and 150,000 made homeless.