There has to be a human limit to this. My gut is thicker than 8.5 inches.

My gut instinct is to say "how dare you? you're getting free food!"

However, just because someone is living in poverty or is disabled doesn't mean they should have to live on what appears to be among the lowest quality microwave meals.

My daughter is likely going to be wheelchair bound for the rest of her life; and while I have high hopes of her becoming the next Steven Hawking, it's probable that she'll need some gov assistance at some point. I cringe at the thought of her being unable to raise complaints loud enough as this angry black lady. That said, this woman is obviously actually living in poverty, look at the wall socket at around the 2min mark.

It's not the most articulate way to put it, but poor communities will understand "Trump ain't playin shitttttttt --fuck this shit... look at this shit yall... I wanna say Trump fuck you and I am not eatin' yo food!......AND!--- LOOK A'DIS BISCUIT!!! Mm! Done fucked up now. Fuck!" And hopefully not fall for the same 'Man of the people' rhetoric in the future.

Like I said, it's a visceral feeling deep in my gut. Doesn't happen often in my life but has proven to be exceedingly noteworthy when it occurs ... and I'm probably old enough to be your uh ... um, aunt

Normally I'd agree but something about the boldness of these kids this weekend sparked a visceral ray of hope deep within me [like the gut feeling I had that Trump WOULD win the moment he was declared the nominee]. They made me sit up and take notice ... I'm choosing to root for and support them. They are the future and I'm so weary of the current state of disarray.

*QUALITY

*lmfahs

I was busting a gut watching this. My favorite commercial of the night.

A Mitt Romney fan, eh? You should probably read this article, which absolutely guts the myth that only half of income earners pay taxes.

As far as the top 1% paying 40% of the taxes, I agree that is atrocious--they are supposed to be paying almost ALL of it! See, when the income tax was introduced with the 16th Amendment, it was primarily meant to be a tax on the rich. The federal tax rate for middle-class people was meant to be around 1-2% whereas the tax rate on the rich was around 7%. You can see the original 1913 tax form here.

Of course, since literally the income tax's inception, the federal government has continuously been shafting the middle classes while reducing the tax burden of the wealthy. It's about as American as apple pie by this point!

The big problem is that the government relies more and more on income tax to fund federal projects. Take a look at the graph in the article I linked to at the start of this comment and note how corporate taxes keep going down while income and payroll taxes keep going up.

It doesn't help at all that most of America's biggest businesses have offshore tax havens where they can avoid paying taxes (think Ireland for Apple, Inc., though that hasn't worked out so well for them thanks to the EU being less corporate cock-sucking than the U.S. government).

So, to solve America's tax deficit problem, the solution is pretty clear--tax rich people more (as was intended), tax corporations more and cut off their tax havens, and maybe give a tax break to the people who actually need and deserve it--the middle and lower classes.

But of course all of that sounds suspiciously like socialism, which as we all know is the devil incarnate and about as un-American as naming your kid Stalin.

The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy... with guts.

For about 10 years now i've had severe stomach problems, to the point of sometimes being all but housebound. At some point in my attempts to try and find some resolution, i came across the idea of a gut flora transplant.

I never did it because you've got to find someone healthy with a great diet and i suppose bowel regularity, which is difficult in itself because those people are rare and the subject is embarrassing.

But if you're crippled with stomach aches, woken up 7 times a night going to the toilet (and then not even doing anything), then putting someone else's shit into your own bum is nothing. As Terry Pratchett once said about Alzheimer's - it's a desperate situation, and he'd eat the rotting arsehole out of a dead mole if it meant a fighting chance.

For anyone interested, i stopped eating gluten for a while and had minor improvement. When i ate gluten, i'd get feverish and flu-like, joint pain, headaches, sweats and excruciating stomach pain. I figured it was coeliac disease and hoped i would fully recover before long. I didn't, but 2 weeks ago i also cut potato (nightshade vegetable) from my diet and i have been stomach ache free since (that is, 75%+ of the time my stomach feels painless). Apparently lectins are problematic.

If anyone has ever had severe pain for a very long time, they'll know the utter relief and joy of being pain free. It's hard to describe, but for a few days to a week, it's a euphoric feeling.

Freedom of religion is independent of civilian armament.
History shows that religious persecution is normal for humanity, and in most cases it's perpetrated by the government. Sometimes to consolidate power (with government tie-ins to the main religion), and sometimes to pander to the grimace of a majority.

Ironically, in this country, freedom of religion only exists due to armed conflict, albeit merely as a side effect of independence from a religiously homogeneous ruling power.



It's true that Catalonians would likely have been shot at if they were armed.
However, likewise, the Spanish government will never grant the Catalans democracy so long as the Catalans are not armed - simply because it doesn't have to.
(*Barring self suicidal/sacrificial behavior on part of the Catalans that eventually [after much suffering] embarrasses the government into compliance - often under risk that 3rd parties will intervene if things continue)

When the government manufactures consent, it will be first in line to claim that people have democratic freedom. When the government fails to manufacture consent, it will crack down with force.

At the end of the day, in government, might makes right. Laws are only words on paper, the government's arms are what make the laws matter.

Likewise, democracy is no more than an idea. The people's force of arms (or threat thereof) is what assert's the people's dominance over the government.



You can say the police/military are stronger and it would never matter, however, the size of an [armed] population is orders of magnitude larger than the size of an army. Factor in the fact that the people need to cooperate with the government in order to support and supply the government's military. No government can withstand armed resistance of the population at large. This is one of the main lessons from The Prince.

Civilian armament is a bulwark against potentially colossal ills (albeit ills that come once every few generations).

Look at NK. The people get TV, radio, cell, from SK. They can look across the river and see massive cities on the Chinese side. They know they have to play along with the charade that their government demands. At the end of the day, without guns, things won't change.

Look at what happened during the Arab Spring. All these unarmed nations turned to external armed groups to fight for them to change their governments. All it accomplished was them becoming serfs to the invited 3rd parties. This is another lesson from The Prince : always take power by your own means, never rely on auxiliaries, because your auxiliaries will become your new rulers.






Below is general pontification. No longer a reply.
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Civilian armament does come with periodic tragedies. Those tragedies suck. But they're also much less significant than the risks of disarmament.
(Eg. School shootings, 7-11 robberies, etc -versus- Tamils vs Sri Lankan government, Rohingya vs Burmese government. etc.)

Regarding rifles specifically (all varieties combined), there is no point in arguing magnitudes (Around 400 lives per year - albeit taken in newsworthy large chunks). 'Falling out of bed' kills more people, same is true for 'Slip and fall'. No one fears their bed or a wet floor.

Pistols could go away and not matter much.
They have minimal militia utility, and they represent almost the entirety of firearms used in violent crime. (Albeit used to take lives in a non newsworthy 1 at a time manner)

(In the U.S.) If tragedy was the only way to die (otherwise infinite lifespan), you would live on average 9000 years. Guns, car crashes, drownings, etc. ~All tragedies included. (http://service.prerender.io/http://polstats.com/?_escaped_fragment_=/life#!/life)






A computer learning example I was taught:

Boy walking with his mom&dad down a path.
Lion #1 jumps out, eats his dad.
(Data : Specifically lion #1 eats his father.)
The boy and mom keep walking
Lion #2 jumps out, eats his mother.
(Data : Specifically lion #2 eats his mother)
The boy keeps walking
He comes across Lion #3.

Question : Should he be worried?

If you are going to generalize [the first two] lions and people, then yes, he should be worried.

In reality, lions may be very unlikely to eat people (versus say, a gazelle). But if you generalized from the prior two events, you will think they are dangerous.

(The relevance to computer learning is that : Computers learn racism, too. If you include racial data along with other data in a learning algorithm, that algorithm can and will be able to make decisions based on race. Not because the software cares - but because it can analyze and correlate.)

(Note : This is also why arguing religion is likely futile. If a child is raised being told that everything is as it is because God did it, then that becomes their basis for reality. Telling them that their belief in god is wrong, is like telling the boy in the example that lions are statistically quite safe to people. It challenges what they've learned.)



I mentioned this example, because it illustrates learning and perception. And it segways into my following analogy.



Here's a weird analogy, but it goes like this :

(I'm sure SJW minded people will shit themselves over it, but whatever)

"Gun ownership in today's urban society" is like "Black people in 80's white bred society".

2/3 of the population today has no contact with firearms (mostly urban folk)
They only see them on movies used to shoot people, and on the news used to shoot people.
If you are part of that 2/3, you see guns as murder tools.
If you are part of the remaining 1/3, you see guns like shoes or telephones - absolutely mundane daily items that harm nobody.

In the 80's, if you were in a white bred community, your only understanding of black people would be from movies where they are gangsters and shoot people, and from the nightly news where you heard about some black person who shot people.
If you were part of an 80's white bred community, you saw black people as dangerous likely killers.
If you were part of an 80's black/mixed community, you saw black people as regular people living the same mundane lives as anyone else.

In either case, you can analytically know better. But your gut feelings come from your experience.



Basically, I know guns look bad to 2/3 of the population. That won't change. People's beliefs are what they are.
I also know that the likelihood of being in a shooting is essentially zero.
I also know that history repeats itself, and -just in case- I'd rather live in an armed society than an unarmed society. Even if I don't carry a gun.

-scheherazade

Let's face it, who has the guts to tell this guy he can't get married? http://prodavinci.com/sistema/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Escena-de-Road-Warrior.jpg

We all get the duality of this. I had a bad feeling, but then an even worse feeling kicked in... I should do a cost-benefit analysis. I already hate myself for sinking into management-speak. But...

Guy on phone: only obvious benefit is lording this over his bully. It feels really good, especially when broadcast. Maybe some residual guilt. Got to take into account that, whatever his original intention, his reaction was from the gut.

Bully: unknown. Depends on what kind of person he is now, years after. Probably angry. Possibly feels bad about what just happened to his mother.

Mother: no benefit. Probably feels raped. Possibly was raped, depending on your definition. Possible shame over what her son did. Comment of "you probably deserved it" could be genuine, or could be severe defensiveness.

Radio station:
OK, I can't be objective here. It's possibly mostly live, they maybe feel an obligation to entertain, they have little control, but fuck those guys. I just hope they apologised afterwards.

Personal analysis: doing the deed isn't cool, given the innocent victim. Laughing about it on the air is understandable, but fucked up. Broadcasting it, laughing, and celebrating the outcome - whoever you are - is disgusting.

Same guy.

Guy also mentions the Keene Police force... The Free Keene Squad was him... yeah.

https://youtu.be/-vQ5h8iWa0Q

But everybody finding this funny, or revelling in the karma isn't watching the same video I am. If you've watched him in the Vice segment, this video is one of the most disturbing things you can watch. These aren't the tears of a defeated man. This looks to me like the a guy overcome with emotion, not just sadness or fear. I can easily imagine this same gut wrenched display as an apology to the guy(s) he just shot at a future protest and distraught at how he was forced to do it and doesn't like it but will do it again if he has to.

I don't care who is producing the video - It needs to bee seen and understood by soooooo many people - I think it's a step forwards in social consciousness. I promote this message because I agree with it, and because this stuff needs to be pounded into some people's heads in as many forms as they can come up with.

That talk must rip the guts out of every parent that has to make it. Children should not have to suffer the impact of ignorant people.

I thought Trump was the world's best deal maker, didn't he have a book ghost written for him (because he can't read and write well past the 4th grade level) called the "Art of the Deal"? During the campaign he said again and again how "Only I can... [insert whatever]". None of those things are done that only he could do. It's like he lied... "lies, all lies!" to quote Frau.

They blame Democrats for not joining in, but they weren't even invited to participate in Trumpcare on the Senate side at all... hell, most of the Republicans themselves weren't allowed to participate in the creation. Compare that to the ACA, which had over a year of public debate and had plenty of Republican input and amendments. The Republicans have the number of people to pass anything they could want to pass, but the world's best deal maker, can't make a deal with his own party?

I think this shows more and more how the Republican party needs to split. The divides in the party itself are becoming too great. The problem of course is then they loose control as you split the vote, Fox News and the right wing media would follow the more right wing split, while the Reagan era style Republicans would be sidelined, though maintain a big voting block among less brain washed Republicans.

The party can't even get a simple repeal passed, which they've passed before, of course it was just symbolic then, actually passing a repeal seems harder. They campaigned for years on how they had a better plan, of course they didn't show it, which should have been the first warning they didn't have one, and now they spend all this time trying to come up with something better and still can't pull it off, despite having a clear majority. Of course another warning sign should have been the fact that last break, only 2 of them had enough guts to actually hold town halls, the rest avoided their constitutions...

Unrelated side note: I still say all the Senators and Representatives should stay home, in their home districts. Technology is such that they don't need to all be in Washington at all. Of course I'd also cut their pay then, say to what an entry level soldier (sans hazard pay) would make since it is a service position, not a career, term limit them (12 years House, 12 or 16 years Senate, 8 years President, or 20 years combined total max). And then you make the number of Representatives actually be based on population, we've had 435 Reps since 1911, and the population has grown a lot since then... say one Representative for every 500,000 people, which would give us 646 Representatives, which stay in their home districts. But of course that would rob them of their money, their political careers, and make them more liable to the people they represent, so congress would never make those changes.