"There is plenty of scum to go around on both sides."

Ahh the classic false equivalency that Trump supporters often resort to.

First of all, every child should be taught at a young age that just because other children may act like little shits, that doesn't mean they can. The amount of functional adult Trump supporters who use "the Democrats are bad too!" as an excuse for Trump's behavior is just astounding. It's really just a pathetic diversionary tactic used to avoid discussing the issues at hand.

Second, your claim that Democrats are just as cruel is simply not true. Blaming Democrats for the very thing Trump is guilty of is a common smear tactic employed by extremist right wing propaganda.

Take Trump's zero tolerance policy which separated minors from their families for example. Right wing propaganda outlets like OAN love showing pictures of children housed alone in Obama era detention facilities and cry foul at the liberal media at the lack of coverage. The reality is that Obama faced a huge surge of thousand of unaccompanied minors from south america in 2014 who were detained. So yes, thousands of children were detained, but they were NOT separated from the families in the first place.

And while some families were separated during Obama's tenure, Obama's policies tried to limit this as much as possible. It is a far cry from what Trump's zero tolerance policy accomplished. The "liberal" media did not report this under Obama OR Bush simply because it was not an issue. If you believed that there was unfair media coverage for Trump on this issue, then you were lied to and manipulated. Its part of what we discussed earlier how Trump uses lies to discredit the media and further erode our democracy.

The point is that right wing propaganda and Trump himself routinely uses lies and deception to paint himself as the target of a "liberal media bias" that they themselves manufactured. And his gullible supporters like yourself love believing in his victim complex. If you don't believe me, then just refer to non partisan international sources like the BBC and you'll soon discover that Trump is just as shitty from an impartial view as the "biased liberal media" portrays him.

Both sides are not the same, no matter what lies Trump and Fox News et al. tries to tell you. And there are plenty of respectable media sources which are not CNN which also exposes Trump for the lying scum that he is.

The Zero's Chinese performance was ignored by the U.S. command prior to pearl harbor, dismissed as exaggeration. That's actually the crux of my point.

Exceptional moments do not change the rule.
Yes on occasion a wildcat would get swiss cheesed and not go down, but 99% of the time when swiss cheesed they went down.
Yes, there were wildcat aces that did fairly well (and Zero aces that did even better), but 99% of wildcat pilots were just trying to not get mauled.

Hellcat didn't enter combat till mid 1943, and it is the correction to the mistake. The F6F should have been the front line fighter at the start of the war... and could have been made sooner had Japanese tech not been ignored/dismissed as exaggeration.


Russian quantity as quality? At the start they were shot down at a higher ratio than the manufacturing counter ratio (by a lot). It was a white wash in favor of the Germans.
It took improvements in Russian tech to turn the tide in the air. Lend-lease only constituted about 10% of their air force at the peak. Russia had to improve their own forces, so they did. By the end, planes like the yak3 were par with the best.


The Mig31 is a slower Mig25 with a digital radar. Their version of the F14, not really ahead of the times, par maybe.

F15 is faster than either mig29 or Su27 (roughly Mig31 speed).
F16/F18, at altitude, are moderately slower, but a wash at sea level.

Why would they shoot and run?
We have awacs, we would know they are coming, so the only chance to shoot would be at max range. Max range shots are throw-away shots, they basically won't hit unless the target is unaware, which it won't be unaware because of the RWR. Just a slight turn and the missile can't follow after tens of miles of coasting and losing energy.


Chinese railgun is in sea trials, right now. Not some lab test. It wouldn't be on a ship without first having the gun proven, the mount proven, the fire control proven, stationary testing completed, etc.
2025 is the estimate for fleet wide usage.
Try finding a picture of a U.S. railgun aboard a U.S. ship.


Why would a laser rifle not work, when you can buy crap like this : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7baI2Nyi5rI
There's ones made in China, too : https://www.sanwulasers.com/customurl.aspx?type=Product&key=7wblue&shop=
That will light paper on fire ~instantly, and it's just a pitiful hand held laser pointer.
An actual weapon would be orders of magnitude stronger than a handheld toy.
It's an excellent covert operations weapon, silently blinding and starting fires form kilometers away.


Russia does not need to sink a U.S. carrier for no reason.
And the U.S. has no interest in giving Russia proper a need to defend from a U.S. carrier. For the very reasons you mentioned.


What Russia can do is proliferate such a missile, and effectively deprecate the U.S. carrier group as a military unit.

We need carriers to get our air force to wherever we need it to be.
If everyone had these missiles, we would have no way to deliver our air force by naval means.

Russia has land access to Europe, Asia, Africa. They can send planes to anywhere they need to go, from land bases. Russia doesn't /need/ a navy.

Most of the planet does not have a navy worth sinking. It's just us. This is the kind of weapon that disproportionately affects us.

-scheherazade

As long as industries are allowed to leave their crap for others to clean up, nothing is going to change. Ideally, every manufacturer should be required to clean up every bit of pollutant they produce. At a bare minimum, they -have- to be held accountable for that which they have obviously caused.

In Western Countries, it's the Pop manufacturers like Coke and Pepsi that keep beer out of our fast food restaurants.

Did you know Pizza Hut, KFC and Tacco Bell are all owned by Pepsi, and whose sole purpose is to be vehicles to sell their beverages?

Likewise Coca cola has contracts with most of their users, such as McDonalds to keep out any competitors, and only sell their their products exclusively.

They lobby against selling beer in "Family-oriented" establishments so they can monopolize the drink industry.

Filing false charges like that should carry the same sentence the crime she lied about carries....times 2 in this case because she accused two people....not one year but at least one decade imo.

Clearly she should also be liable for 100% of their defense costs and at least triple damages for any other losses like scholarships and lost education. She should be broke for the rest of her life, just like they would have been had the truth not come out.

"Manufactured story line"....wow, pretty f#*¡ing clueless statement from her lawyer considering what she's charged with.

Tattoo a scarlet L on her forehead for Liar (and loser)....better yet, brand it there. Branding can't be lasered off.

And Europe, the gun was made by Belgium manufacturers.

Good point, but not exactly right.
Plastic guns, yeah, not so scary here in the U.S. where anyone can get an unregistered gun in hours, but in other countries where guns are rare, this gives criminals access to better weapons than the general public, or in many cases better than average police carry.
Also-
There are both 3d printers that can print metal and the guy putting the plans out has a business making small cnc milling machines that can mill guns from his plans in steel. That means these guns can be exactly the same quality as licenced manufacturers make. I would bet there are or will be plans for fully automatic weapons as well.

Wow. Little to no evidence of smoked marijuana having any connection to lung or other cancers.

I must admit I'm surprised. To me it seems like burning something and inhaling the smoke is "obviously" a bad idea with regards to health.

Since the link between tobacco cigarettes and cancer is well established and agreed on by doctors, it makes one wonder what the difference is. Is it entirely the additives that cigarette manufacturers put into cigarettes? If so, why the hell wouldn't there be massive pressure to mass produce additive-free cigarettes at least as an option for smokers?

Also, I guess one (potential) downside of legalization is that the same sort of corporations that knowingly put cancer-causing shit into cigarettes might expand into marijuana territory, potentially trying to put crap into your pot that dispensaries and dealers never have.

Still, overall this is clearly good news for pot fans out there, and will put further pressure on the double standard between legal-but-far-more-dangerous alcohol and tobacco as compared to illegal-but-relatively-innocuous pot. Congratulations! Light one up in celebration (as if you needed a reason).

very interesting video. triggers thoughts of whether this place would survive an OSHA inspection - and whether the benefits of OSHA are worth the loss of manufacturing in US...

Her sponsor is MikiHouse, a Japanese manufacturer of children's clothing.

eh, I really don't care what they call themselves... it's all manufactured nonsense that holds zero appeal to me.

You might have a point....if industry didn't know the damage their product causes. Since they clearly do know their product is disastrous for the planet and have known for decades, and continue make and pollute more all the time instead of mitigating the damage they cause, it's MOSTLY industry to blame today.

Junkies really want heroin, we still assign most of the blame to the cookers and pushers.

Tossing your plastics is the problem. The solution is to not take any more...for instance, you don't need a separate bag for each vegetable you buy....and to religiously recycle any you cannot avoid.

Why the animosity? Do you work for a plastics manufacturer? Would you react the same if we were talking asbestos instead of plastic?

@eric3579 -- I agree that that is a sticking point. I have trouble buying it because there are already limitations on the "right to bear arms".

The 2nd amendment:
A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.


Certainly, one could argue that licensing / registration of firearms would count as infringing on the right to keep and bear arms. However, "arms" is rather unspecific. Merriam Webster defines it as "a means (such as a weapon) of offense or defense; especially : firearm".

The government has already decided that limiting the access to some "arms" is fine, and doesn't infringe on the constitutionally guaranteed right to bear arms. For example, in many states it is "legal" to own a fully automatic, military use machine gun. BUT:
1) It had to be manufactured before 1986
2) Said machine gun has to be registered in a national database
3) The buyer has to pass a background check

So there's 3 things already infringing on your constitutional right to bear a specific kind of "arm". A firearm -- not a missile, grenade, or bomb or something "obviously" ridiculous. And actually, even "destructive devices" like grenades are technically not illegal to own, but they require registration, licenses, etc. that the ATF can grant or refuse at their discretion. And their discretion generally leads them to NOT allow civilians to exercise their right to bear that particular sort of "arm".

If those limitations / exceptions aren't an unconstitutional infringement on the right to bear arms, certainly reasonable expansion of the same sort of limitations might also be OK.

I empathize with pro-gun people's fear of "slippery slope" escalating restrictions; the potential to swing too far in the other direction. But at some point you gotta see the writing on the wall. To me, it seems like it would be better for NRA-types to be reasonable and proactive so that they can be part of the conversation about where and how the lines are drawn. In other words, accepting some reasonable "common sense" limitations (like firearm licensing inspired by driver's licensing) seems like a good way to keep any adjustments / de-facto exceptions to the 2nd amendment reasonable (like the laws about machine guns). Otherwise, you're going all-in. With a not particularly good hand. And that's when you can lose everything (ie., 2nd amendment removal rather than limited in sane ways that let responsible people still keep firearms).

Their mandate is to protect the manufacturer's rights to sell guns to anyone, not to champion citizen's rights. As such, it behooves them to quickly and effectively address mental health and access to guns or be legislated harshly by others.

I was pretty sure you were talking out your ass about Australia, now I'm certain. Downvote for lying. Thanks for actual data @StukaFox

Ha! Even sifty knows to not listen to you, Bob. ;-)

The kid was a nut...he supports Trump, that's proof positive.

What's funny is lies could be appropriate, since the NRA spokeswoman was lying through her teeth, claiming they support a strong useful national registry and screening system. They do nothing but lobby to obstruct it at every turn. She's a bold faced liar. I used to be a member decades ago.

Nothing he did, even if it had been investigated fully, would have bared him from buying his guns. Blame police and the FBI, but they're powerless to stop known dangers from buying weapons because the NRA ensured they would be, because they exist only to lobby for manufacturers right to sell guns.

The leftist solution is to 1) ban guns from people diagnosed or
being investigated for criminal instability 2) regulate certain guns, modifications, and magazines much more stringently and 3) make private gun sales go through background checks. Without the latter, the rest is moot.

Really? funny, I recall Trump saying the buck stops with him, and blaming Obama when it happened under his watch, don't you? (He also likely claimed mass school shootings were fake news leftist propaganda, his buddy Jones told him so) Now, he blames the investigation of his campaign for the FBI not investigating his internet postings, knowing they aren't connected at all.

How is the cop responsible, specifically?