"Don't Retreat, Instead RELOAD!"

[justabubba]

The Citizens United case is already law. All by itself it allows big corporations to effectively buy and sell our political system according to their whim. The powers of the President can be altered, expanded and even changed with a cooperative Congress and Supreme Court.

that ruling assures that we have the best government money can buy!

 

[Barbbtx]

nor did the recent republican nominee for governor of california. that one does not vote does not mean that one is not influenced by public voices.

as for m. Obama, you are right. his comment was less egregious than those of m. Palin... nonetheless, the same princples apply. But, of course, if you recall the comment, you will recall how the Mc Cain campaign and the RNC reacted... accusing m. Obama of just the same sorta thing people are accusing m. Palin of. justifiably. he took the criticisms to heart, at least, and recognized the stupidity of saying something like that, at least in public, having made no more such fatuous comments.

it is bad politics, period.

geo.

I disagree. I think most of it is healthy political discourse.

 

[Gill]

I suspect Palin fascism would be a uniquely American style of ultra-patriotism dividing the "real Americans" from the rest of the crowd and applying the power of government to restrict those "others" and their freedoms from messing up life for the "real Americans". This would involve decreasing the size of government until it became a eunuch in a cat house and was powerless to stop large corporations from running over the rights and lives of poorer and average Americans returning us to a sort of Gilded Age existence. It would be the Road to Serfdom in which unions were abolished or neutered so that they had no power and workers had only one choice - to take it or to leave it.

There would be an alliance between government and corporate powers to allow the rich and powerful to accumulate wealth while looking the other way while government picked on the rights and liberties of its enemies on the left.

All this fits in with what Palin has well demonstrated a belief in and a propensity for.

You were probably one the wackos on Daily Kos and DU claiming that Bush was building internment camps to put all the Dems in after he declared marshall law and named himself the permanent president.

 

[Renae]

You were probably one the wackos on Daily Kos and DU claiming that Bush was building internment camps to put all the Dems in after he declared marshall law and named himself the permanent president.

Wait, he DIDN'T do that???

 

[Manc Skipper]

His plan to marshal Dems under martial law misfired. All he could come up with were free speech zones, miles from the action.

 

[ReverendHellh0und]

His plan to marshal Dems under martial law misfired. All he could come up with were free speech zones, miles from the action.

Cause Obama didn't have zones during his campaign. :roll:

 

[StillBallin75]

I don't have much of a problem with what Sarah Palin said. Militant language is used in every facet of American life. It's not just politics. In sports, athletes talk about going to war with their teammates. I'm a huge basketball fan. Accurate shooters in basketball are referred to the media as "snipers." Potent scorers are referred to as "gunners." Militant language is always used to rile up ones supporters, and Sarah Palin is no different. It has to be mentioned that back in the day, political rhetoric was much more venomous than it is now. As a Taiwanese-American, I regularly hear stories about how fights break out in the Legislative Yuan (Taiwan's legislature). Militant and warlike rhetoric has always been a part of political speech.

However, what I do have a problem with is people (mostly on the right, but admittedly also on the left during Bush's tenure) trying to demonize and delegitimize politicians and policies on the other side of the aisle with accusations and characterizations that are simply untrue. Referring to Obama as a socialist (completely untrue, his policies have barely been liberal), a Muslim (another complete piece of crap), anti-American, foreigner, etc., referring to "death panels" when the real death panels reside within the insurance companies. I definitely have a problem with accusations and characterizations and labels that are completely untrue and bear no resemblance to reality, and only serve to ruin our democracy when people are persuaded to believe things that are simply untrue.

 

[Gill]

His plan to marshal Dems under martial law misfired. All he could come up with were free speech zones, miles from the action.

Ahh, so Bush made the Dems do that at their convention ???

 

[Renae]

Ahh, so Bush made the Dems do that at their convention ???

No, what Bush did would make make Hitler proud, what the Dem's did was EMPOWER people. See

 

[cpwill]

What was Sarah Palin referring to when she said “Don’t Retreat, Instead RELOAD!”? Reload the printer that ran out of paper? Reload the camera battery? Reload the car for that special vacation?

What? Reload the gun? Surely not. That would be a volatile, violent thing to say. Horrendously irresponsible, too.

God, that poor woman is so misunderstood… as she struggles to reload the paper in the pesky printer…


Twitter / Sarah Palin: Commonsense Conservatives ...

:struggles:


:can't fight it any longer:


:was a normal happy American:



:now forced against my will by Gwendolines' posting of this thread title to go mass-murder my local Media Matters representatives....:



:roll:

 

[Gwendoline]

I’m not going to respond to so many of these posts because it would take too long. Plus a large number of the responses are particularly banal and predictable. And plus I’m Australian and not enough concerned / invested with the vilification and hate mongering some of you do over there. What some of you deem free speech is merely repugnant hate speech from the mouths of those in need of psychological help. But instead become talk show hosts and celebrity moose hunters blathering divisiveness and breathtaking stupidity / ignorance. We don’t use gun-metaphors in our politics over here. Plus we have strict gun laws and thank Christ for that.

America’s “love” of guns is killing it. You revere at the wrong altar. And the gun-metaphors only serve to highlight the idiocy of those unable / unwilling to find / reach for “adequate”, “responsible” words to use when speaking. These are NOT sensible, responsible adults spouting gun-metaphors – but irresponsible people inflaming and polluting the valuable atmosphere. They are also inflaming and polluting the youth of society – fools infusing impressionable youth with gun-metaphors and grubby lazy hate speech. Should be ashamed of themselves but are too busy mindlessly blathering and too busy being unconscious to what “responsible adulthood” is.

 

[Gill]

I’m not going to respond to so many of these posts because it would take too long. Plus a large number of the responses are particularly banal and predictable. And plus I’m Australian and not enough concerned / invested with the vilification and hate mongering some of you do over there. What some of you deem free speech is merely repugnant hate speech from the mouths of those in need of psychological help. But instead become talk show hosts and celebrity moose hunters blathering divisiveness and breathtaking stupidity / ignorance. We don’t use gun-metaphors in our politics over here. Plus we have strict gun laws and thank Christ for that.

America’s “love” of guns is killing it. You revere at the wrong altar. And the gun-metaphors only serve to highlight the idiocy of those unable / unwilling to find / reach for “adequate”, “responsible” words to use when speaking. These are NOT sensible, responsible adults spouting gun-metaphors – but irresponsible people inflaming and polluting the valuable atmosphere. They are also inflaming and polluting the youth of society – fools infusing impressionable youth with gun-metaphors and grubby lazy hate speech. Should be ashamed of themselves but are too busy mindlessly blathering and too busy being unconscious to what “responsible adulthood” is.

Really ??

But these changes have done nothing to reduce gun-related deaths, according to Samara McPhedran, a University of Sydney academic and coauthor of a soon-to-be-published paper that reviews a selection of previous studies on the effects of the 1996 legislation. The conclusions of these studies were "all over the place," says McPhedran. But by pulling back and looking purely at the statistics, the answer "is there in black and white," she says. "The hypothesis that the removal of a large number of firearms owned by civilians [would lead to fewer gun-related deaths] is not borne out by the evidence."

Firearm homicides in Australia were declining before 1996 and the decline has simply continued at the same rate since, McPhedran says. (In 2002-3, Australia's rate of 0.27 gun-related homicides per 100,000 people was one-fifteenth that of the U.S. rate.) Of course, it's possible there might have been a spike in firearm homicides — and one or more Port Arthur-style events — if not for the gun law reforms. "It's very easy to raise what-ifs," McPhedran counters. "The what-ifs are interesting as discussion points. But, ultimately, for policy making, we have to deal with what is."

Read more: Australia's Gun Laws: Little Effect - TIME

 

[Ikari]

What some of you deem free speech is merely repugnant hate speech from the mouths of those in need of psychological help.

Meh, you get that from time to time. Price of freedom.

America’s “love” of guns is killing it.

Is it? We're at replacement. One of the few first world nations that is.

 

[ReverendHellh0und]

I’m not going to respond to so many of these posts because it would take too long. Plus a large number of the responses are particularly banal and predictable. And plus I’m Australian and not enough concerned / invested with the vilification and hate mongering some of you do over there. What some of you deem free speech is merely repugnant hate speech from the mouths of those in need of psychological help. But instead become talk show hosts and celebrity moose hunters blathering divisiveness and breathtaking stupidity / ignorance. We don’t use gun-metaphors in our politics over here. Plus we have strict gun laws and thank Christ for that.

America’s “love” of guns is killing it. You revere at the wrong altar. And the gun-metaphors only serve to highlight the idiocy of those unable / unwilling to find / reach for “adequate”, “responsible” words to use when speaking. These are NOT sensible, responsible adults spouting gun-metaphors – but irresponsible people inflaming and polluting the valuable atmosphere. They are also inflaming and polluting the youth of society – fools infusing impressionable youth with gun-metaphors and grubby lazy hate speech. Should be ashamed of themselves but are too busy mindlessly blathering and too busy being unconscious to what “responsible adulthood” is.

where do you get this from? perhaps crocodile dundee has a talk show these days?

 

[cpwill]

I’m not going to respond to so many of these posts because it would take too long. Plus a large number of the responses are particularly banal and predictable. And plus I’m Australian and not enough concerned / invested with the vilification and hate mongering some of you do over there. What some of you deem free speech is merely repugnant hate speech from the mouths of those in need of psychological help. But instead become talk show hosts and celebrity moose hunters blathering divisiveness and breathtaking stupidity / ignorance. We don’t use gun-metaphors in our politics over here. Plus we have strict gun laws and thank Christ for that.

America’s “love” of guns is killing it.

really? as i understand it, since Australia decided to ban guns, countrywide, homicides are up 3.2 percent; Assaults are up 8.6 percent; Amazingly, armed robberies have climbed nearly 45 percent. In the Australian state of Victoria, gun homicides have climbed 300 percent; In the 25 years before the gun bans, crime in Australia had been dropping steadily, now there has been a reported "dramatic increase" in home burglaries and assaults on the elderly....

The statistics speak for themselves, and gun control works. The problem is "who" it works for. Everyone interested in the subject is by now familiar with John Lott's work "More Guns, Less Crime". Dr. Lott admits he had no interest in firearms until he began to research the affects of gun control on society. His conclusions led him to write a very exhaustive piece of research that proved that an armed populace is the greatest deterrent to crime.

States which passed concealed carry laws reduced their murder rate by 8.5%, rapes by 5%, aggravated assaults by 7% and robbery by 3%; and, If those states not having concealed carry laws had adopted such laws in 1992, then approximately 1,570 murders, 4,177 rapes, 60,000 aggravated assaults and 12,000 robberies would have been avoided yearly....




it would seem that "who it is killing" is Australia. here in the US the last decade or two has been marked generally by a solid decline in violent crime.

 

[Gwendoline]

^^ O, wow. A Time magazine quoting Samara McPhedran who is associated with the Sporting Shooters Association & another link to an American gun-nut site. Gee, thanks for the valuable contribution towards understanding gun laws in Australia!!

The risk of dying by gunshot has halved since Australia destroyed 700,000 privately owned firearms, according to a new study published today in the international research journal, Injury Prevention.

"Not only were Australia's post-Port Arthur gun laws followed by a decade in which the crime they were designed to reduce hasn't happened again, but we also saw a life-saving bonus: the decline in overall gun deaths accelerated to twice the rate seen before the new gun laws," says study lead author and Acting Head of the School of Public Health, Professor Simon Chapman.

"From 1996 to 2003, the total number of gun deaths each year fell from 521 to 289, suggesting that the removal of more than 700,000 guns was associated with a faster declining rate of gun suicide and gun homicide," said adjunct associate professor Philip Alpers, also from the School of Public Health at the University of Sydney. "This was a milestone public health and safety issue, driven by an overwhelming swing in public opinion, and promptly delivered by governments."


As study co-author Philip Alpers points out: "The new legislation's first declared aim was to reduce the risk of similar gun massacres. In the 10½ years since the gun buy-back announcement, no mass shootings have occurred in Australia."

Australian gun laws led to fewer deaths - News & events - Sydney Medical School - The University of Sydney

In 2007, the 255 murder and 28 manslaughter victims recorded were the lowest annual number of offences recorded in any year since 1993.

Australian Institute of Criminology - 2: Selected crime profiles

• On average, 20 percent of homicide victims from 1989–90 to 2007–08 were killed by a firearm. The use of firearms in homicide has decreased over this period, however, from 26 percent in 1989–90 to 11 percent in 2007–08.

TEN years of suicide data in the wake of John Howard's decision to ban and buy back half a million semi-automatic rifles and shotguns has produced a stunning conclusion.

A paper forthcoming in the American Law and Economics Review finds the buyback cut firearm suicides 74 per cent, saving 200 lives a year.

Guns buyback saved lives

Firearms Regulation in Australia

In Australia, access to firearms is limited to persons with a genuine need. This includes government and police, sporting shooters with valid membership of an approved club, recreational shooters or hunters that produce proof of permission from a landowner, primary producers, pest controllers and bona fide collectors. All governments have agreed that self-protection is not a genuine need.
The key elements of Australia’s regulatory controls on firearms are:
• prohibitions on fully and semi automatic long arms, with their use restricted primarily to military, police or government purposes;
• prohibitions on sporting shooters possessing, owning, using, purchasing or importing high powered, concealable handguns;
• mandatory registration of all firearms on State and Territory firearms registry systems;
• mandatory licensing of all firearm owners; and
• strict licensing requirements, including age limitations, undertaking firearms safety training, and compliance with firearm storage standards.
The Commonwealth government regulates the import and export of firearms. State and Territory governments regulate ownership, possession and sale of firearms.

Firearms Regulation