overtone

Well, McCarthy is not a Senator - she is a Representative in the House. She is a Democrat, and so her power in Congress is limited to minortiy Party influence in the House. And methamphetamine is in fact available from my local drugstore, in the proper forms and by prescription - and the ingredients of black market meth are even more widely found, on store shelves all over the place. So that poster there is a bit - - confused? - - - She was a life long Republican, btw, before her husband and son were shot in one of these perennial mass public shootings we Americans have grown to accept. And I don't know if the quote on the poster is accurate and in context (not much credibility there, after the word "Senator"), but it is far from the stupidest thing said by a member of the House - about guns or anything else. So that is an odd choice for illustration of US governmental stupidity. Maybe it's the stupidest thing said by a Democrat?

Can't find that - you didn't quote, is the problem. Post number? So nothing on insurance, the motivating topic, and three tries is the charm. We turn to the less problematic "license" - and you posted a couple of plausible things carefully called "permits": your first adult contribution to the thread. They are state laws. New Jersey's is described by Wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_New_Jersey thusly: The permit for purchase in New Jersey is lifetime, it is "shall issue", it requires no test of competence or use or any other discriminatory imposition, it covers all ordinary rifles etc (and a somewhat more detailed and onerous one covers handguns) - so that might clear even a serious Constitutional challenge, as providing no significant barrier to gun ownership and being equally enforced under the law. It is not an example of an ownership license requirement, and even less is it in any way comparable to a driver's license (the thread, remember?) for gun ownership/possession. Hawaii is a more serious example. One must obtain a permit to posses any modern firearm (anything made after 1899). This is described as a "license" by Wiki (my general standard of standard vocabulary, unless obviously screwed up). However it appears to involve merely an unusually thorough background check, an owner supplied mental health affadavit, and registration any particular firearm. No competency test, no proof of need or training or other justification, and no serious expense is involved; it is apparently shall issue, and it is lifetime - attributes not generally possssed by "licenses", and in particular an important (almost defining) characteristic of a driver's license (the comparison, if we recall), although the semantics are debatable. Let's stipulate that Hawaii's law could, possibly, pass a serious Supreme Court challenge. - especially if it were shown that it was equitably enforced. So as noted above, in my posts, it may be possible to get some kind of actual gun ownership license past even a reasonable Supreme Court, at the State level, if it imposed no serious burden and applied equally to everybody. However: imposing serious burdens unequally appears to be the motive behind the gun license push - never mind the insurance bugwallow - and the push is Federal, so that kind of legislation looks like it would make nobody happy except the middle ground majority of reasonable people.

I said license and insurance, and my post was addressed to the difficulty of attaching expense or obstacle to a Constitutional right - one could possibly get around the license difficulties (say by making it free and "shall issue" upon background check) , but the problems with insurance appear insurmountable. But I'll bite - if you are addressing any part of my posting at all, you are claiming to have an example on hand of at least one political region or area in the US where one must obtain a license to possess any firearm. It would be a contribution to the thread to present this place, so that we can take a look its laws and see if they are likely to withstand Constitutional challenge.

So you pass, on that. I can't find any either. Uh, that article is - let's say - not quite authoritative? The task is not to find some blog entry making assertions you happen to agree with, but to actually handle the issue of Constitutionality that confronts the US when attempting to curb and regulate gun ownership. Here's a quote from that article: So we would face not only a 2nd Amendment problem, but a violation of the equal protection clause as well - something the linked article doesn't even seem to recognize.

Oh, saying it bluntly like that, maybe - but it's accurate. When Paul Wellstone was running against Rudy Boschwitz for Senate, in Minnesota, Rudy dressed in flannel shirts and addressed Paul as "professor" at every opportunity. Why, do you think? How came it that John Kerry's ability to speak French worked as a liability, in the 2004 Pres race - that and related factors so influencing things that the douche actually rode a Harley unto the stage of a talk show, leather jacket and all, to try to make amends? That one study after another has established variations on the theme that people vote for someone they would enjoy having a beer with, regard as seeing the world as they do, are very sure doesn't condescend to their level of education whatever it may be, has an educational background similar to theirs, etc. As Gore was not the first to find out, a politician perceived as an overeducated snob will normally lose to anyone - anyone - they are running against. Regardless of their actual record and policies. Which was one reason the American reflex homophobia didn't kick in with the Jeff Gannon business - W never pondered, or acted thoughtful, or allowed a hint of intellectual aura to adhere to his strut. And it's not all to the bad, this American anti-intellectual streak. Say: The orneriness fostered has many virtues, can be appreciated for its contributions. Sharp elbows make elbow room for us all, in some circumstances. As Bill Maher put it, you can do anything in America as long as you aren't a pussy about it. Tangent tie: this partly accounts for the restistance, in the US, to the notion of a genetic influence or setup for sexual orientation - it strikes people as an attempt to weasel out of responsibility, to capitulate weakly to pussy behavior and then blame your parents or something. Like the genetic propensity for alcohol addiction. Otherwise the matter would be one of research and discovery, an intriguing question followed, an interesting science investigation shedding light on how we are set up to be human.

An example of an American "place" in which one must purchase a license and insurance to possess (not "purchase") a firearm of any kind would be of some contribution to the thread. It would have some distant relevance to my post, as well. Which your reply, as is becoming customary with you, did not. You appear to be confused about the argument posted. Maybe reread, with more care?

The OP does not distinguish between different partners, or even sexes, for the premarital sex. There are also arranged vs choice marriages, class and income distinctions, religion factors, etc. I don't think the question as it stands has an answer.

I've seen a loud and prevalent faction in the national debate that grants no such accomodation - that regards hunting as barbaric, home or person defense as illegitimate (- - - you are x times likelier to shoot your kids by accident than shoot a burglar etc etc - - ), gun owners in general as psychiatrically unstable and dangerous, and ownership bans on almost all guns as reasonable public policy goals. Two problems with the comparison: you are not required to obtain any kind of a license or insurance to simply own a car, any number of cars, or operate any or all of them on private property, regardless of the risk to yourself or others present; and car operation is not a Constitutional right. License and insurance requirements for owning basic "militia" level firearms would be comparable to similar requirements for assembling in the street, speaking and writing at will, or refusing unreasonable police search of one's bedroom. The precedent established, in other words, would be significant beyond the issue of guns.

. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Symms , http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Steve_Symms Example of Atwater's tools. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Chenoweth-Hage The black helicopters are coming - there's long been Palins in that Party. http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Dan_Quayle/ The only reason Bush didn't get a quote comedy book of his own, the way Reagan and W did, was this guy hogging the limelight. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan "Trees cause more pollution than automobiles" etc. " Three things have been difficult to tame: the oceans, fools and women. We may soon be able to tame the oceans; fools and women will take a little longer. " Spiro T. Agnew Resigned as VP after getting caught taking envelopes of cash bribes across his official VP desk during ordinary business hours. Cheney at least had a safe in his office to hide them in. And then there's the incomparable, inimitable W. The point is: the Republican Party did not suddenly turn crazy and stupid when the black man put his hand on the Bible and swore the oath of office of the Presidency. They've been batshit ("voodoo economics", YEC, obliviously misogynist, bizarre sex stuff and financial crimes, fantasy versions of history and geography and physics and biology, hypnotized by military force and fancy weaponry, etc etc etc) for thirty years and more, on average, as a Party, as found in their leadership and standard bearers and the preponderance of their voting ranks. And to this day (Buchanan is still a media figure): That's what they think of themselves - not corrupt and crazy and treasonous, but possessed of political courage. When they shit the bed, when they wake up momentarily in the middle of some horrible stinking mess they have once again made out of some formerly decent part of the American dream, it's an "American tragedy" - nobody's fault, really. "Both sides" contributed to the inexplicable and completely unexpected misfortune. Because in this view "both sides" are dominated, led, organized, represented by, as well as stuffed full of, this kind of guy: "He surfaced from time to time in a new life of worldwide business travels and an apparently rich social life with Frank Sinatra and other influential figures in his new California circles. Making influential contacts was his specialty, Mr. Agnew once said. In one business undertaking, Mr. Agnew served as the intermediary in a complex $181 million deal by former Nixon aides to sell uniforms to Saddam Hussein of Iraq. His intermediary role was recommended by Mr. Nixon himself to the supplier of the uniforms, the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, the historian Stephen E. Ambrose said." That was the guy who before h got caught was the third most admired political figure in America - behind Richard Nixon and Billy Graham.

The Americans I talk to take a certain amount of pride in not being the most cultivated and educated people on earth. It's a cultural trait, of Americans, to not only freely admit that other people are more cultivated and educated than they are, but to regard that as a sign of comparatively poor judgment, flawed character, and practical incapability in those other people.

Love, hate, and fear may not belong, but politics is the central arena here. This is one of the very few - maybe the only, in the US - political matters in which "extremists on both sides" actually have jammed the discussion. The position that anything anyone calls a gun is equivalent to any other, that differences in degree do not create, at some point, differences in kind - that (for example) increasing the fire rate and magazine size of a rifle-based weapon does not at some point change its nature and create special public risks that we all need to take into account, is one. The position that gun owners need to justify their ownership of weapons to strangers, on these strangers's scale of overall statistical public good from overall public presence of any firearms anywhere and with anyone, or give them up, is the other. There are plenty of people milling around in the general and varied middle grounds, which actually exist in this matter, and they appear to be surprised they do not have a voice - but we got here after thirty + years of organized and intentional degradation of the public discourse. If you drive out the thoughtful and informed and reasonable and generally wise from the public arena, they will be missing when these issues come up.

Nope. No claim of alliance was made, express or implied. You are imagining things. I quote to a purpose relevant to my argument, anyone. Follow my argument, and you will see that any claims made in that quote were quite otherwise. Your personal problems should be managed, not posted. You are the only one beating chest here, between the two of us anyway. And it's tiresome. Other people have motives for posting that have nothing to do with one-upmanship and chestbaeating and so forth, and your inability to recognize that is a handicap that has led you to a series of false, (and worse: irrelevant), public assertions about me. I have every right to remember things I have read, and to employ them in addressing the issue of wingnut framing as it has come to dominate US political discourse - in gun control, particularly. Your deflection of that into complaints about imaginary personality and character flaws is essentially a troll, relative to the thread. It's completely off topic, and since you don't know anything about me, you can't even do it right. Like this: Just give up trying to tell me what my ideology is, what I have and have not read, and so forth. You are always going to be wrong, because you have no relevant information and several relevant blind spots. Well, yeah, you were wrong. I got that right off. Truth told, I'm beginning to wonder how someone so deeply versed in classical left ideology of the 1800s could be unfamiliar with what Engels had to say on this topic - when even a casual stone skipper like myself has run into examples more than once over the years. For a second there I thought you might be able to help me find the damn quote (have you read his letters?) but I no longer think that's likely - doesn't appear to be your idea of a "leftist approach". Although if we're reduced to "analyzing" for content a back and forth on youtube CNN involving the stellar Newt Gingrich and Piers Morgan, you may have a point.

So you were actually satirizing somebody? Who - Brit Hume? David Brooks? Sean Hannity? Paranoia from here (doesn't work - too farfetched)? No, no backfilling - you weren't joking, and can't you take a joke doesn't cut it. Oh, I think you can...ever work in manufacturing? You can proof for fools somewhat, but it's dangerous to think you can foolproof. And there's a human as well as bureaucratic tendency to double down on the foolproofing, when early attempts fail. That slope to tyranny does exist, and has been slid before - the wariness of those disturbed by the invocation of child protectiuon and other such motives difficult to curb, those who look at the intrasystem agenda, sources of influence, and sheer size, of the bureaucracy about to be launched a little way down this slope by emotionally driven short-horizon enthusiasts, is easy to understand.

I haven't made a single ad hominem argument on this forum, ever. Well, your conclusions were nevertheless false - even silly. So how did your "best estimates" lead you to such goofy conclusions? Because your method of arriving at "best estimates" doesn't work unless you make a couple of assumptions that are invalid here (relative to the "group you are in, in particular). And your comparison of the two invalid "best estimates" was likewise based on invalid assumptions. You need different methods of arriving at "best estimates", and comparing them to draw conclusions, when you can't make the necessary assumptions for those methods. That's not an error, that's an informed observation. That error is the beginning of your difficulties, but not the end of them. Your presumptions there are my nomination for what's preventing you from catching your own mistakes. Your goal of correcting people you don't know much about who are mistaken about themselves has led you astray. That kind of goal is notorious for doing that. Another example of that: And you are simply assuming that all Americans uniformly lack the capability of making such an assessment with reasonable accuracy. Well, if you assume that an American doesn't know what kind of gun they own or what they use it for or how often, has no idea whether, when, or where they are at greater than average risk of assault, doesn't know how old they are, what sex they are, what race they are, or whether they were ever in the military, does not know whether they are currently being treated for depression or bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, doesn't know whether they are in a gang or addicted to drugs, etc etc etc, and you propose to ignore your own access to that kind of information for the sake of making an invalid argument, then I suppose you can address individual members of the American public as if they don't know what groups they are in and can't distinguish themselves or each other. (Much closer to an ad hominem argument than anything of mine). But even then you still can't compare two such assessments and draw conclusions as you did - suicide and accident odds vs self defense odds, say - without establishing in your knowledge their independence. You simply assumed it - and that, on top of the uniform probability (uniform ignorance) assumption, is just too goofy. Or you think that while being driven home from the hospital on side streets by your forty year old accident-free son, your odds of getting in a car accident are much lower than your odds of a seat belt damaging your colostomy bag. Lousy definition, but it fits anyway. Why do you claim otherwise?

That supports the magazine size curb, not the assault weapons ban. An assault weapon runs out of ammo faster, and after wasting more of it - if a perp has limited ammo he'll likely do less harm with an assault rifle, not more. The magazine size curb has fairly broad support - and would have more, if it were carefully introduced so as to avoid its employment as a camel's nose on the way to confiscating people's guns in general. That cat's well out of the bag, though - that's probably a long term proposition, getting it back in.

Your society can and almost certainly will change, however - as the people in the former Yugoslavia found out, fairly recently. Your assumption of stability is not safe. Whether that means you, your neighbors, or your society would be better off by you obtaining a gun now or then or ever, I leave to your judgment - but a wariness from the lessons of European history is one of the more important factors underlying the desire of many Americans to keep a gun reasonably handy, on principle. btw: Lots of Americans have no personal experience with guns either - only a minority of us ever shoot or carry or even own one. That's too bad. If you make a mistake like that on your job, it will cost you in reputation as well as time and hassle. You need it to draw the conclusion you drew - that the average is the probability of a distinguishable individual in a group of distinguishable individuals. Then to compare those invalidly derived probabilities as you did, you need to assume independence, lack of correlation. You are making those assumptions when you derive those conclusions. And those assumptions are not only invalid given a state of ignorance, in this context, but known to be false in reality - the probability distributions of suicide, assault, type of gun owned among gun owners, etc, are not uniform, neither are they independent and uncorrelated, and that is information you do in fact possess. Describing that as basic error, screwup at the Stats 101 level, is giving it the benefit of the doubt. If basic error is dismissed from the explanations, the remaining ones are worse. And not made by many other people of all kinds. So? That does not mean that everyone is equally likely to commit suicide, or have an accident. It doesn't even mean that everyone who assumes they won't is equally likely to, or that people who assume they won't and people who think they might are equally likely to, even on average. And you are assuming that it does, when you assign probabilities to distinguishable individuals and compare them in that manner. That doesn't mean an assumption that everyone is equally likely to get in an accident, or that everyone is equally benefitted by not wearing a seatbelt , or that those two groups are independent and uncorrelated, is justified. All those assumptions are invalid, and conclusions derived from them (such as "you are X number of times more likely to get in a car accident than to have your colostomy bag damaged by your seat belt") are errors of statistical reasoning. That is error. There is also blunder, here. Blunder is telling people about themselves and what they are assuming about themselves, without finding out first - such as telling people they are assuming no chance of accident or suicide for themselves, when you have no information on that subject.

On second thought, I'm going to gnaw on that a bit. The people who got basic facts wrong, inexcusably wrong in fact, were you, and Paranoia above. I didn't. The only thing I got wrong was mixing up two different sources of classic lefty stuff, both of which I had read and either one of which supported my point in the thread perfectly. (Not the "good fun" point from you - the relevant argument in the thread). Paranoia is wrong about the entire frame of the US political discourse, the overall setup of the world as relevant to this thread. That's a basic fact. You were wrong about Engels gun views and expression, which might make sense if you haven't run across them and share aspects of Paranoia's take on "lefties" (since it doesn't necessarily imply you are wrong about "lefties" in the US currently), but were also wrong in presuming I was referring to the Communist Manifesto (for no good reason) and in error about what I had and had not read in my life - and here we part company from the excusable and enter the realm of "basic" as well as wrong. Because there was no way for you to know what you claimed to know, about me, and no good reason for the topic to arise. You were probably and presumably wrong, in other words, and could easily have recognized that with a moment's thought. And no, that's not in good fun. It's too damn common in this situation. Because this is also wrong, and basic: Uh, no, they didn't. You didn't. Not a bit. Because you didn't show how little I knew - you presumed, an unforced and illegitmately motivated error, and made false assertions based on that invalid presumption, and then dealt in irrelevant (to the motivating thread discussion) personal insult . That is parallel to - the "same thing" as - Paranoia's display of arrogant ignorance supporting falsehood based insult regarding "lefties", and does not resemble my posting in any respect except possibly the "condescension". I presumed nothing about anyone, dealt in no irrelevancies, and made no such errors of basic fact. You did.

The epi-markers are normally kept, insted of being swept away, a certain fairly large percentage of the time. The frequency of homosexual orientation is apparently not only fairly high, but fairly high across cultures and continents and geographic varieties and evolutionary lineages of the entire species. The species appears to be designed to produce a certain percentage of homosexuals, for some reason. The safest presumption is that this is a feature, not a bug. A property, not a flaw. The idea that this arrangement is "faulty" needs a very strong argument.

And so? The problem is not that the argument is not supported. The problem is that it's the wrong argument.

It's not the one I best remember (from a letter Engels wrote to somebody extolling the protection from tyranny and other benefits that the working class could obtain by arming themselves, without the canned vocabulary of "proletariat" etc), but it's the first one I could find - and you did mention the Manifesto. Yes, I do bump into facts as I find them. Facts are often helpful, don't you think? Marx and Engels were firm advocates of arming the citizenry of the industrial State. Many lefties are - for different reasons, often. I did not make that claim. You have changed your earlier wording significantly. My claim - posted above' date=' if you need to review it - was in response to your original wording and is adequately supported by the TV ad exploiting children and appealing to emotion thereby, the existence of which has been pointed out to you four or five times now by at least two different posters. Furthermore, it's a trivial matter, and you should not use it to deflect the discussion. The actual point was simply that your framing of the matter (as "two sides" only one of them using such tactics) is a useless and misleading delusion. The world is not divided so, and in particular your bizarre notion of "lefties" and "democrats" is straight from the book of wingnut. The use of emotional appeal for propaganda, contravening reason or logic, (using children sometimes, as recently) , has been a tactic of the NRA for your entire life. But that's the opposite direction of argument. The gun control advocates would want to discover, not assume, that guns boosted violence overall. That this case is hard to make is my explanation for the almost universal retreat into considering gun violence only - which I think is an invalid basis for their usual implications.

What you posted was an accusation that "one side" of the issue was doing that, and not the other. And further, that that circumstance was some kind of argument against the actual legislation proposed. You are only offended by "one side" of your imaginary division. If you were equally offended by whatever side was using irrational and emotional appeals, you would be lambasting the NRA for their scummy TV ads involving children (two different posters have brought them to your attention) and cooperating with us lefties in getting some decent politics done. Instead, you make yourself an emotional and irrational obstacle to reasonable and effective government altogether. And as repeatedly observed, with examples ranging from 9/11 to the recent NRA ads exploiting children (Obama's and others), this is a delusion of yours taht you have allowed to dominate your thinking and political response. You haven't, for example, mentioned a single example of any lefty doing anything like that. You haven't recognized the NRA's behaviors. Your silly claim that "democrats" (capitalization intended?) are "particularly prone" to that universal and reliably rightwing Republican employed tactic has no "logic and reason" behind it - or any evidence either. it's some propaganda bs you picked up from wingnut talk radio, would be my guess. Or Fox? They broadcast stuff like that a lot. That frame wrongfoots the question: the issue would not be gun violence compared with gun prevalence, but violence in general compared with gun prevalence. Violence is not bad [because it employs a gun, implying it would be better otherwise.

Atmospheric pressure does not depend on "density" alone.