ewsieg

1 hour ago, Motor City Sonics said:

Not if the kids keep getting shot with loose guns.  I think a lot of people in the minority population are actually clamoring for that. I think a lot of people are sick of idiots giving everyone else a bad rep.    Storing something up high where a kdi can't reach doesn't seem to be too much to ask.     Don't see too many minority mass/spree shooters.    A few here and there but it's mostly white people (who seem to believe that are entitled to have everything they want and when they don't get it - someone needs to suffer for it, usually some kind of targeted group - minorities, gays, women).     I don't think a lot of minorities have that kind of expectation to start with.    Candians have more guns per person than we do and they don't have this problem because I think they tend to be more pragmatic about life (and Canadians aren't nearly as greedy as Americans, but that's starting to change). 

 

Depends on how you define mass shooter.  Based on how the federal government is defining it, there are more mass shootings in Chicago on most weekends then there are "mass shootings" based on how it sounds like you describe it in a year.  

And I do agree that a lot of the minority population are looking for gun control.  Many are looking for more police as well, despite louder voices saying less cops or no cops at all. 

Can't believe i'm blanking on the name of the podcast, but I remember one where they looked at a minority community that was pushing to have traffic laws enforced more as pedestrian deaths were too high.  The police began to do it and deaths and injuries significantly dropped, but more tickets and arrests were made based on the more strict traffic enforcement and the police backed off, resulting in the pedestrian injuries and deaths returning to previous norms.  

I'm just saying I think it's a good tool for prosecutors, but I won't be surprised if there is some pushback someday from the same folks cheering it on today.

5 hours ago, Motor City Sonics said:

We're going after adults who don't secure their guns..........or actually supply them to their kids.  I think this is wonderful. 

 

Now,  lets start going after people who provide guns to people who are not allowed to legally own them.   Like the MSU killer.  Where did he get the gun?   He wasn't supposed to have it.  Where did he get it?    Did he steal it?  Buy it at a pawn shop?  Buy it on the street?   Don't know, but the person who sold or gave it to him needed to be prosecuted.  Just because that piece of **** is dead doesn't mean the investigation should end.    

 

Fairly confident he legally purchased it from a pawn shop after the local prosecutor skirted the law to allow themselves to charge him with a misdemeanor when he was first found illegally carrying a gun.  

While I don't disagree with you either, this gets back to my next concern.  When prosecutors start using this new tool to go after parents and we find it's being used in inner cities more regularly and there is a demand from the democratic party to move away from it because it affects minorities disproportionately.  

1 hour ago, 1984Echoes said:

North Korea and Iran.

Awesome.

Just wondering out loud here.  From a foreign policy standpoint of weakening our enemy, propping up Ukraine to continue fighting and making Russia look weak, how much of the decision making was on if we try and find a peaceful end to allow middle aged Ukrainian men to live and repopulate what's left of their country and allow some stability versus, we've already made Russia look weak, now we can pull weapons out of Iran and China and allow them to be used in Ukraine, further weakening them.  For all I know, production could have just been ramped up, allowing Iran/China to sell and make even more for themselves down the road.  Actually now that I say it, it probably was a specific reason we allow this war to continue and Iran/China have made money allowing them to increase for themselves to and it's a lose/lose.  

2 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

It sounded like more cheers than boos.  If you want to hear boos, listen to Rob Manfred at the MLB draft.  

I thought it was a mix of both until she did the obligatory "let's make some noise" that everyone does and everyone gets a reaction too.  

16 minutes ago, Mr.TaterSalad said:

I am frankly troubled by either side using it. 

This is the correct answer.

15 minutes ago, Mr.TaterSalad said:

This is dangerous and bull**** stupidity. Free speech and free press are the hallmark of this country and of any, good, free society. These kids look ignorant and frankly dangerous to free speech and press by not allowing any and all press into their encampment. I've been all for the Palestinian cause throughout this process, but seeing things like this, encircling and pushing up against police, bullying of anyone who isn't 100% likeminded, and chants that are clearly not anti-war but anti-Semitic like "from the river to the sea" and chants calling for the destruction of Israel as a state do this movement and people who participate in it no good.

I heard an interview from a democrat that is running against Wasserman-Schultz in her primary that "from the river to the sea" was first said by some right wing party in Israel, so therefore you 'need to learn your history' before you claim it's used by Palestinians/pro-palestine folks in a disparaging way.  

Can't believe I now have to root for Wasserman-Schultz....this world is so messed up.

47 minutes ago, chasfh said:

God, I love that woman.

I was just pointing out that depending on who you heard it from, she was booed mercilessly or the fans loved it.  Sounds like a mix of both to me.

Makes sense, It's much more important when you have a view you care about so passionately, that you only share with like minded individuals and avoid anyone else, especially those that could actually present that view to a larger audience.  

Probably not the best thing for an ambassador of a neighboring country to say, but I definitely got a laugh out of it.  I suspect he's not entirely wrong either.  

I guess like most things, you'll hear what you want to hear.  

I was just trying to respond with it and was surprised it was not allowing that either.   Listening to it now, No Code in its entirety, nice!

On 4/22/2024 at 9:39 AM, Motor City Sonics said:

As someone who got burned out on Pearl Jam years and years ago and as someone who hasn't really liked very much since the late 90s,  I gotta say this new album Dark Matter is actually really good.   

Sounds about the same for me, although I'll defend the No Code album until the day I die.  Since the 2000's, seems like I'd try every album and would find at least 1 song I liked, but often not much more than that.  I've only played this album once and enjoyed it straight through.  That said, I can't identify any one single song that I think i'll prefer over the rest.  Not sure if that just speaks to the entire album being better than I expected or if maybe I just liked the overall song but maybe in the end I won't enjoy this one as much as I think I will.   Guess time will tell.

What is going on in this forum?  I try and take a step back (away from news/politics) a bit over the last few months and most of you are complaining about what's going on with young people on college campuses?  Just like that and Pfife is the only non-Trump loyalist.  The rest of you are just fine talking GOP talking points?  I thought we weren't allowed to criticize anything that could potentially make the left look bad to ensure Trump doesn't win?

🙂

Sounds like the US knew about a "limited" response.  I don't know.  I wanted Israel to 'take the win' and see if we could find a way to deal with Iran in less public ways.  That said, almost wish it wasn't 'limited'.  If you're going to do it, do it.  I keep hearing that US intelligence says Iran is close to a nuclear bomb again.  If true and they just did a 'limited' response, it only hurt the situation. 

For several years, I worked on a team where my customers would email their request to us and that would create a ticket for us.  We were the last team in my company (large telecommunications company) that a customer could reach us via email, versus having to call into one of our call centers or open a request/ticket online.  

As such, the email would eventually get shared on reddit or some other forum and we'd get someone that found the email address and would reach out to us for stuff not related at all to our role.  For instance some kid on reddit didn't understand how to read a traceroute and found our email address.  We'd get complaints that we were the cause of their World of Warcraft being slow.  Some of them would share information which either didn't show any issue at all, or showed trouble before they even left their home network.  

Management decided to have all of our tickets send out surveys and it went bad.  Nearly 100% of our bad survey responses were these non customer complaints that shouldn't have had our info anyway.  Mgmt was furious and of course never took the time to understand this, just harped on us to 'fix the numbers'.  

We eventually found out if we closed a ticket a certain way, a survey wouldn't get sent out.  Add in the fact we had so many repeat customers we asked a few of them to fill out a survey monthly and soon enough we were consistently the best rated team.  Absolutely nothing changed in terms of the service we were providing, yet mgmt touted it as a huge improvement that they drove.  Gotta love corporate America.

On 4/16/2024 at 2:39 PM, gehringer_2 said:

Israel has always said that if you kill our people, there is nothing we care about you hiding behind that will stop us from coming after you. This is a basic premise of the position they take in a hostile neighborhood. It's a piece of their deterrence posture, just like a Trident submarine is for us. We can express our own scruples about it but we shouldn't be surprised by it or think it represents any change in long standing Israeli policy.

I have no problem with an aggressive defense strategy, but if you want my support, I hope you follow international laws even if your enemies don't.  

But if the defense of "that's just what they do" is valid, them what are we doing in Ukraine with Russia?  That's just what they do.

Lastly, if Israeli truly will kill anyone that kills there own, why didn't they kill OJ?  I would have been perfectly fine with Israeli dropping a jdam on a foursome with OJ on a golf course in there last 30 years. 

31 minutes ago, 1984Echoes said:

You're not thinking this through.

Just sayin'

You're just looking at this as black and white....just sayin'

I am not upset about who was killed by Israel in that attack, simply felt it crossed a line.  I have no qualms with anyone saying they think it was worth it, but if the way it was carried out doesn't at least give you pause, I won't put much value in your opinion.  

13 minutes ago, 1984Echoes said:

More details, if anyone cares:

I'm going to go out on a limb and say Iran probably sanctioned both of those.  But if Iran tortures prisoners of war, does that mean we should do the same to their troops? 

I'd argue Israel taking a small crew into Iran and killing this general in his home would be less of a line crossed then killing him in an embassy in a different country altogether.  

5 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

I think this is what they were thinking - some of the ballistics would get through and maybe Iran even thought the Israel would try to minimize that as it would be seen as Iron Dome failure.

But I disagree that the embassy actually crossed any practical line in the light of Oct 7. It was basically a similar scenario to that we went to all out war in Afghanistan over. Oct 7 couldn't have happened without Iran. So from Israel's standpoint, they are already as much at war with Iran as they they could get. And the fact is that in terms of proportionality in this series, Israel remains the more restrained party. The embassy attack killed two civilians, the rest were military officers in an armed service actively engaged against Israel. Oct 7 casualties were mass and civilian, and the missile attack casualties would have been mass. Again, no moral or diplomatic credit to Iran for failing.

I certainly don't want to get into moral high ground statements when we're talking Iran, but Israel bombed an embassy in an entirely different sovereign nation.  That just doesn't sit right with me, even if I'm not sad about the loss of life of the Iranian military members and acknowledge their sins.  

We could go for ever if we want to trade 'who started it' stories, but Israel hitting an embassy was grounds for war from Iran.  Israel crossed a line.  Iran, as stated, would prefer to let their proxies do the dirty work, but by launching everything at the same time, giving Israel and it's partners time to address each wave separately, that indicates to me Iran didn't want to create great damage.  Would they have preferred a few get through?  Probably, but I think they expected most to get knocked down.  On paper, they can still tout they fired so many to make it look impressive, but they wanted to no part in this, but felt they had to respond to a unprecedented attack on their embassy.

I agree with Biden's response to Israel, with multiple Muslim countries stepping up to defend Israel, Israel needs to accept it as a great win and see if it can't build from it with it's local partners.   

Another entry for 2024, solid name recognition as well.

3 minutes ago, oblong said:

Marijuana is also on the ballot in FL.

**** yeah!

2 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

The 8 years since have certainly proven he is not and has never been interested in middle class economic development. So should that represent a slice of his 2020 electorate that he would have lost, or did that segment overlap too much with the MAGA culturalists for his failures on that score to matter?

I suspect the overlap was too much.