You said that already, it’s not an answer it’s the basis of the question, are you having a stroke? More likely trying to dodge because you have no answer.

Try answering the question asked for once….if you can (I have my doubts).

I asked you what Republicans plan to do to return to this imaginary time when border crossing was under demonstrably better control (which is different from when there were fewer people trying to cross), when we didn’t import oil (never happened ), when gas was a buck less (absolutely not true here, but admittedly it was cheaper…because crude oil was free due to zero demand and gas was cheap because no one was driving, compare it to 2019 and it’s not true anywhere) and yes, inflation was under 2%, but gdp was down 33% in one quarter and unemployment through the roof, with fed interest rates at zero (or less)….really shitty trade off.


Were or getting under control. ROTFLMFAHS!! He had 4 years, he added 1/3 of the debt and increased the deficit exponentially with nothing to show for it but division.

He spent tens of billions on a border fence/wall that UNQUESTIONABLY hasn’t slowed, much less stopped illegal border crossings but has caused ecological damage and/or just fallen down in many places.
Energy independence my ass. Such bullshit lies.
Gas, compared to pre pandemic rates the price rise is not excessive, you want to compare pandemic shutdown/recession price to now like a liar.
Inflation is 4.2%, a bit high not crazy (remember 14% in 1980? Stop whining and crying), so time to raise interest rates from zero. Easy fix, something we could agree on. Biden would say you’re welcome, getting the economy working creates inflation. It also creates demand for gasoline, raising the depressed Covid/Trump recession prices. You’re welcome. He also just secured funding for thousands of electric vehicle charging stations, making it easier to own a Tesla, raising your stock value. You’re welcome.

This energy independence bullshit is based on totally unrealistic pie in the sky predictions even if every project green lighted produces the top estimates without hiccups or failures….we do not and never have produced all the oil America uses, if we did, OPEC wouldn’t matter to us. (BTW, oil/energy independence was a Jimmy Carter plan but the right liked cheap foreign oil and hated conservation.). America has 3% of the world’s oil reserves but uses 24% of world wide oil production, we will never be energy independent while using oil…if we ever miraculously managed it, we would be out of oil in years.

These weren’t under control under Trump, and Republicans have zero plans to get them “under control”, either because they see no problems or because they have no solutions, you choose. Can you name a Republican plan? McConnel can’t.

I don't know, but there's a few things that concern me:

1. Underestimating your advisory. We did this with Japan in the lead up to WW2. Great powers always fight the last war they won. In our case, that's WW2. China learned from the war they lost as well: WW2, and they're not going to make the same mistakes twice.

2. Ambiguous defense posture. This is how England got dragged into WW1 due to an uncertain position if Germany invaded France. Germany gambled that England wouldn't get involved because it had no spoken mutual defense agreement with France. Had the defense pact been made readily clear, it's possible Germany wouldn't have invaded.

2. Use it or lose it weapons. In WW1, one of the main issues with the initial invasion was train schedules. Things had to go perfectly to get men and material to the front line and any hiccup could delay a military victory. Once the very first German troop train left the station, there was no way to stop the invasion. Now we've got a situation where a war over Taiwan would be won or lost in about an hour of the first shot. China knows that should the US get involved, China's military assets are going to be blown up and fast. This puts China in a situation where they might choose the launch everything in a maximum impact first strike. Faced with overwhelming damage, the US would be forced to make some hard choices about how to respond. Would it go nuclear? It's according to how much Taiwan means to us.

"It won't happen". Go to Europe and see how many tombstones bear that inscription.

I'd say 50/50.

I'm pretty sure the dude's just having a good time because he's at a concert and he's all young and shit. He's probably high, too. Look at that glorious blue sky! Who wouldn't be joyous on such a perfect day when they're all young and high and shit? Dude, I'm old, it's dark and I'm not even at a concert (full disclosure: I am listening to Lord Huron's new album and it's fucking amazing. There's some stuff that's not up to their other work, and a weird 14-minute filler piece at the end, but Drops In The Lake might become the most beloved Lord Huron song ever) and I'm totally joyous right now. I'm also stoned out of my mind, so take that as a plus, a minus or a none-of-the-above. Look, all I'm saying is there's a cute video video of a sheep standing down a Border Collie. Props to the sheep for having the kinda balls it doesn't have anymore, but fucking with a Border Collie is asking for that dog to fuck up your tax return later. So yeah, y'know, cute dog and cute sheep and some Welshman who knows he's getting some pussy tonight and if that dog screws this up, it ain't gonna be the sheep getting fucked. That's life in Wales, man. Those dudes will fuck anything. I mean, if I was stuck in Wales with nothing else to do, I'd be looked at our four-legged friends in a far more than friendly way, too. Also, they don't have vowel mines there so they're stuck spelling words with all contestants and chunks of coal for punctuation. NO idea how that little linguistic hiccup got passed the Proto-Germanic language tree, but people in Quebec speak a language that's completely similar to French, only without the word order, the grammar and any words that are actually in French. The French hate that shit because they're French and no one in Europe is being all shirty these day. Except that dude in Belarus who apparently doens't know what an utter fucking legend the guy who runs Ryanair is. Fucking hell this shit's good. Anyway, the whole point of this was that a dog, a sheep and a Welshman walk into a bar and the bartender asks the man what he wants. And the Welshman tells, in exceedingly graphic detail, what he wants while the sheep and the collie listen in horror, straining against their leads and praying Pop-Up Darwin will suddenly appear and gift them opposable thumbs, a cellphone, and a SIM card that actually works in fucking Wales, because those vowel-less cocksuckers have a totally different cell system than the rest of the UK. Shit, you try to make a call to anywhere in Gwfjhsrmflsslll, the first thing you notice is that numbers have apparently joined the vowels in being MIA, and you're trying to explain that you just want to make a call to London and the operator is speaking some language that'd scare the shit outta C'htulu and finally you just give up and hop back on the Ryanair flight to JFK while scanning constantly for Mig-29s.

Anyway, be happy.

I get angry when I get the hiccups too.

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After this movie, they started blowing up all the damn Enterprises. All over the place. All shows, all movies. Sometimes it was left esplodeded, other times time hiccups saved it.

Looks like a stylesheet wasn't loading properly for you.

Must've been some kind of a temporary hiccup somewhere in the chain.

Hmm. I disagree with your description text, @ChaosEngine.

I've never shot something fully-automatic. I have shot an AR-15 semi-automatic, and I know where you're coming from when you say that hitting a target on full auto would be difficult, especially for a relatively untrained person (recoil control).

However, I think Vox and others are basically correct when they say that this modification (bump stock) contributed to the Las Vegas shooting being so deadly. Specifically in that sort of scenario.

The dude wasn't picking targets and sniping, going for accuracy. He picked an ideal shooting location (elevation with clear LOS) and sprayed into a crowd. He'd have been more accurate by keeping the weapon on semi-auto and actually aiming carefully, and certainly would have gotten more hits per bullet fired, but on the other hand the rate of fire difference would have so different that people would have had more time between shots to scramble for cover, etc.

He had position, an abundance of bullets, and lots and lots of time. Given those givens, having a rate of fire approximately equal to fully-automatic means a much higher body count than if he'd have been limited to traditional semi-auto.


The NRA is being more cunning than I figured they would, and has come out in favor of banning bump stocks. I agree with you that they see that mostly as a pointless concession, and a distraction from additional / better stuff that needs to happen.

But it isn't a pointless concession. If banning fully-automatic firearms in 1986 (minus the ones grandfathered in) was the right thing to do, extending that to include bump stocks is also the right thing to do. For the same reasons.

@newtboy is correct to note that technically, a rifle with a bump stock isn't a fully-automatic "machine gun". The user's finger still pulls the trigger once for every bullet that comes out -- semi-automatic.

However, I think that the "spirit" of the distinction is that with semi-automatic firing you have to think and consciously decide to pull the trigger each time you want to shoot a bullet, whereas with fully-automatic you consciously decide when you want to start and stop shooting. By the letter of the law, weapons with bump stocks are semi-automatic. But by that definition of the "spirit" of the law, they are fully-automatic. Pull the grip/barrel forward to start shooting, pull it back to stop.

It's a pretty frequent occurrence for technology to outpace the law. The definitions of semi vs fully automatic include the word "trigger" because they didn't anticipate this kind of conversion that makes the trigger sort of one step removed from the conscious decision to fire. The law would have similar hiccups if a weapon was developed that used a button or switch to fire, rather than a traditional trigger.

When those hiccups happen, the solution is to clarify the intent of the law and expand or clarify definitions as necessary. I'm pleasantly surprised that many legislators seem willing to do that with bump stocks, and that the NRA seems like it won't stand in the way. Mission accomplished, situation resolved? No. But a step in the right direction.

Thailand, where I live now is called the "Land of Smiles". But I ran into some hiccups trying to fit in that conform to some of what the video said:

Basically, the "Land of Smiles" thing is pretty accurate -- generally Thais want to keep a (somewhat subdued) smile on their face. Even/particularly in frustrating/aggravating situations; Thais are extremely confrontation-averse and I think the smiling is a cultural adaptation to try to defuse those situations before they escalate.

BUT, when I first came here, I caught on to the "try to smile through all situations" culture but kind of went overboard on the enthusiasm in what I gather might be a typically American way. One time some Thais that I knew were introducing me to somebody that I hadn't met before. The new person didn't speak any English, and I couldn't speak much of any Thai at the time, so I was just trying to smile through the awkward second-hand introduction. Since I was just passively sitting back and smiling, the new person asked my friends if I was a "special person" -- a direct translation from Thai which means exactly the same thing that it does in English.

So I guess even in the "Land of Smiles", going overboard can make people think you're a bit dim...

When I was yea high 'til I was three
I suffered from petit mal epilepsy
Any excitement gave me a fit
But there were drugs to cure me of it

Weird diseases
I get weird diseases
Whenever Krishna sneezes
I get weird diseases

So at the least sign of emotion
I got a tranquilizing potion
Thus from the time I was a young boy
I could feel neither anger nor joy

Weird diseases
Random weird diseases
Once from eating recalled cheeses
I got weird diseases

Nearly fatal renal cysts
Maybe Asperger's if that exists
Pityriasis rosea
Two separate times giardia

Weird diseases
I get weird diseases
Wafting on the toxic breezes
I get weird diseases

Debilitating spider bites
Hiccups for three days and nights
A thousand earaches, one deformed eardrum
Hyperacusis, what's that from?

It's from weird diseases
I get weird diseases
Whenever baby Jesus pleases
He gives me weird diseases

Chronic fatigue
COPD
Petit mal epilepsy
Two big holes inside my brain
Migraine aura sans migraine

Weird diseases
I get weird diseases
Weird diseases
I get weird diseases

I'll just leave this here:



Canada backed out of their F35 purchases last year. McCain is the head of the Senate Armed Services committee and he has told the pentagon that they will need to reduce the buy. For the first time, they are reconsidering doing so.

Also, the latest 'little' hiccup? Concerns over ejection safety have forced the Pentagon to ground any F-35 pilots under 138 pounds from flying the jet.

I hate to break it to you, but this plane is rapidly going the route of the F22. We need to completely reconsider what we need a proper 5th gen fighter to accomplish and we need to do it with a minimum of cost. It also needs to not be a swiss army plane.

Oh don't be silly. He's not attempting to take their souls.


He's got the hiccups because he's eaten too many already.

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Hiccups AND ginger. Oh the humanity.