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[Pérou Flaquettes]

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Thanks Ursus and Hot Pepsi, very interesting.

I suppose the 2nd amendment does have the word "militia" in it but the context was so different when first mooted ("being necessary to the security of a free State"), that is if I interpret the whole thing well. I guess, like in so many other areas, it's all in the interpretation (eg what constitutes a "well regulated militia" must be a much-debated topic in the US I imagine). Now that it's such a big business, the situation will only get worse, not better.

France also has a real and growing problem with firearms of all types, officially "only" 4 million firearms in circulation but it's probably closer to 15-18 million according to some studies (there are 1.3 million registered hunters for starters, and many who used to hunt but do not have a hunting licence anymore). In some cities/areas, like the Seine-St-Denis (north of Paris), Marseille, Grenoble, Lyon or the Guadeloupe, it's a very serious problem (100's of firearms incidents per year in each of those places, often with machine-guns smuggled into France from Serbia and elsewhere in the Balkans, it is cheap - only £500 an AK-47 - and pretty easy, it is routinely demonstrated by journalists on TV, they simply take a Eurolines-type bus from Belgrade and Bob's your uncle, no proper check at all in 95% of journeys according to the traffickers who do that all the time, the only danger point seems to be the Croatia-Slovenia border and getting into the Schengen area but the traffic is so dense and the borders so understaffed that there are few thorough checks).

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Trump's Card

Unlike most of us urban liberal types, I don't hate it because it's stupid - lots of people who participate in it aren't technically stupid or even uneducated - but because, at it's core, it's mean and so very violent and based on an incredibly backward and toxic ideal of "manhood." And, just to put the cherry on the shit-sundae, it calls itself "Christian," even though Jesus could not possibly be less like the kind of men it lionizes.

Well that's kind of the problem with every culture isn't it? Everyone, everywhere is basically the same, but if you filter their daily experience through something really weird, like a culture of anti-intellectualism, or aggressive homophobia, all sorts of weird things happen, and everything turns to shit.

[Hot Pepsi]

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evilC wrote: I don't think I saw this get mentioned previously, so I thought I'd mention it:

This demonstrates that the Trump administration are consciously, wilfully evil. I'll say that again, in case you think I mis-typed: they are evil. They are deliberately evil, they know they are evil and they revelling in their causing of suffering. You might feel it pales next to some of the other atrocities they are committing, but this one clearly demonstrates self-awareness of their evil intent - it can't be passed off as 'good for the economy' or 'good for society'. It serves no purpose other than to facilitate and spread suffering.

Here's what one animal charity I follow on Facebook had to say on the matter:

"Fans, this page is not political in nature. We don't get involved in the squabbling that goes on between people over elections because we are a dog rescue and there are many other places for that conversation to occur. On rare occasions, we publicize news that impact dogs. Today is one of those days.

Yesterday, the USDA site scrubbed all information about violators of the Animal Welfare Act from its website (among other things, including a list of people who sored Tennessee Walking Horses, etc). The USDA posted a statement which states this was the result of a lengthy review. I am unable to find any record of any regulatory proceeding which justifies this statement. What this means is that you no longer have a place to go to check to see if a breeder is a potential puppy mill. Enforcement actions will no longer be posted, the database that allowed you to look up breeders is gone and the inspection reports are no longer public. If you want that information, you must file a Freedom of Information request which can take years to receive.

The USDA statement “We remain equally committed to being transparent and responsive to our stakeholders’ informational needs, and maintaining the privacy rights of individuals with whom we come in contact" is clearly about protecting violators. That is not the job of the USDA. The job of the USDA is to ensure compliance with the law.

This is a shameful and disgraceful act which no one should tolerate. As a 501c3, we are subject to rules on lobbying. We can only express our opinions. Lobbying is up to you all and I sincerely hope you will all contact your federal elected officials, tweet and post on the USDA's page and spread the word. This is a sad day.

More information can be found here:

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/02/trump-administration-blacks-out-animal-welfare-information

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/animalia/wp/2017/02/03/the-usda-abruptly-removes-animal-welfare-information-from-its-website/?postshare=941486213602370&tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.cb8 6c09b34e2

Pic is from Science Mag and is of dogs at a Class B breeder facility awaiting transport to a lab."

I can't even...as the kids might say.

[Sam]

Trump's Card

caja-dglh wrote: I do like the style of the leaks we are getting. Trump in his bathrobe, Bannon and Co unable to work out how to turn the lights on etc. It is as though the admin cannot fire people they identify as leaking stories as there would be no one left.

I only saw a tweet about the light switch thing, and I assumed it was a metaphor for stupidity or something. Is it real? As in, the people now running the White House don't know how a light switch works? That can't be true, surely.

[San Bernardhinault]

Trump's Card

It's in the New York Times, which is a more convincing source. Although they don't seem to say where they got the info.

[Hot Pepsi]

Trump's Card

The Awesome Berbaslug!!! wrote: Unlike most of us urban liberal types, I don't hate it because it's stupid - lots of people who participate in it aren't technically stupid or even uneducated - but because, at it's core, it's mean and so very violent and based on an incredibly backward and toxic ideal of "manhood." And, just to put the cherry on the shit-sundae, it calls itself "Christian," even though Jesus could not possibly be less like the kind of men it lionizes.

Well that's kind of the problem with every culture isn't it? Everyone, everywhere is basically the same, but if you filter their daily experience through something really weird, like a culture of anti-intellectualism, or aggressive homophobia, all sorts of weird things happen, and everything turns to shit.

Yeah.

I don't think any other country is a post-racial utopia or free of all this macho bullshit. In some ways, Europe seems to be more racist and homophobic. Not so much in Scandinavia, but I'm pretty sure that if I ever moved there I wouldn't make any friends or ever talk to anyone. Their culture is kinda weird.

I'd think it would be pretty easy to smuggle guns into most of Europe from Eastern Europe or the Mediterranean. Not sure about smuggling into Britain. I've never taken the chunnel or a ferry so I don't know if it's easy to bring a gun from the continent.

Gun-nuts in America say that there's no point banning any kind of gun because people will just buy them on the black market. But what they don't realize is that the black-market price of a military weapon in, say, Australia is much much much higher than in the US where it's readily available legally. So yeah, some people will still have them, but probably just organized crime. Not the Dylan Bundy's of the world and that would be a step in the right direction.

Canada, among others, has a pretty sizeable animal-slaughtering culture going. Why that hasn't also led to a gun problem like ours is the topic of a lot of historical conversation. Sarah Vowell - the daughter of a Montana gunsmith who doesn't like guns - says that it was just too cold to have showdowns in the middle of the street and impossible to have a shoot-out with gloves on, so the mythology of the west didn't develop in the same way up North. (That's not her real argument.) Her real argument is that Canadians saw how violent and chaotic things were in the US and made a concentrated effort in the 19th century to make sure the frontier didn't become so lawless and chaotic in Canada. Hence, the legendary Mounties. That's partly right, I think.

I hate ascribing things to "culture" - I always find those arguments vague and often even circular - but there does seem to be something very different in the default attitudes of Americans toward violence that isn't the same anywhere else -- something something Scots-Irish Appalachian clans something.

[Hot Pepsi]

Trump's Card

Sam wrote:

I do like the style of the leaks we are getting. Trump in his bathrobe, Bannon and Co unable to work out how to turn the lights on etc. It is as though the admin cannot fire people they identify as leaking stories as there would be no one left.

I only saw a tweet about the light switch thing, and I assumed it was a metaphor for stupidity or something. Is it real? As in, the people now running the White House don't know how a light switch works? That can't be true, surely.

In fairness, in big old buildings, the wiring can sometimes be a bit ad hoc so it's not always easy to find the switch to the light you're looking for. I have that issue at our church sometimes.

But, they probably fired the one guy who knew which was which in order to put in a crony.

[Sam]

Trump's Card

A friend of mine, who I knew from another forum and met a couple of times when she visited the UK back when she was just an ordinary human being, was recently employed as the Social Secretary to that nice couple who lived there before the current occupants. I'm tempted to send her a Facebook message and ask whether the wiring in the White House is indeed outdated.

[Hot Pepsi]

Trump's Card

Not outdated. Just a lot of switches and a lot of lights.

[Vulgarian Visigoth]

Trump's Card

Hot Pepsi wrote: I don't think any other country is a post-racial utopia or free of all this macho bullshit. In some ways, Europe seems to be more racist and homophobic. Not so much in Scandinavia, but I'm pretty sure that if I ever moved there I wouldn't make any friends or ever talk to anyone. Their culture is kinda weird.

Two words: Anders Breivik. Nordic countries are a bit of a sleeper. The culture is much more introverted than, say, Southern American culture, so you're not going to get people driving a pick-up truck with a rifle in their hand shouting 'yeeee-haaa!!!', but Scandinavian far-right racists are very present on social networks.

[Lang Spoon]

Trump's Card

Hot Pepsi wrote:

Unlike most of us urban liberal types, I don't hate it because it's stupid - lots of people who participate in it aren't technically stupid or even uneducated - but because, at it's core, it's mean and so very violent and based on an incredibly backward and toxic ideal of "manhood." And, just to put the cherry on the shit-sundae, it calls itself "Christian," even though Jesus could not possibly be less like the kind of men it lionizes.

Well that's kind of the problem with every culture isn't it? Everyone, everywhere is basically the same, but if you filter their daily experience through something really weird, like a culture of anti-intellectualism, or aggressive homophobia, all sorts of weird things happen, and everything turns to shit.

Yeah.

I don't think any other country is a post-racial utopia or free of all this macho bullshit. In some ways, Europe seems to be more racist and homophobic. Not so much in Scandinavia, but I'm pretty sure that if I ever moved there I wouldn't make any friends or ever talk to anyone. Their culture is kinda weird.

I'd think it would be pretty easy to smuggle guns into most of Europe from Eastern Europe or the Mediterranean. Not sure about smuggling into Britain. I've never taken the chunnel or a ferry so I don't know if it's easy to bring a gun from the continent.

Gun-nuts in America say that there's no point banning any kind of gun because people will just buy them on the black market. But what they don't realize is that the black-market price of a military weapon in, say, Australia is much much much higher than in the US where it's readily available legally. So yeah, some people will still have them, but probably just organized crime. Not the Dylan Bundy's of the world and that would be a step in the right direction.

Canada, among others, has a pretty sizeable animal-slaughtering culture going. Why that hasn't also led to a gun problem like ours is the topic of a lot of historical conversation. Sarah Vowell - the daughter of a Montana gunsmith who doesn't like guns - says that it was just too cold to have showdowns in the middle of the street and impossible to have a shoot-out with gloves on, so the mythology of the west didn't develop in the same way up North. (That's not her real argument.) Her real argument is that Canadians saw how violent and chaotic things were in the US and made a concentrated effort in the 19th century to make sure the frontier didn't become so lawless and chaotic in Canada. Hence, the legendary Mounties. That's partly right, I think.

I hate ascribing things to "culture" - I always find those arguments vague and often even circular - but there does seem to be something very different in the default attitudes of Americans toward violence that isn't the same anywhere else -- something something Scots-Irish Appalachian clans something.

Wholesale Highland Proper Clan Clans ended up clinging to the familiar stony soul of Novia Scotia following economic "improvements" and clearances in the auld country and have done no more harm than fiddle music that sounds nicely old school and unprettified, and the denizens of Sunnyvale Trailer Park. And Toronto was first filled with a mass of Scots/Loyal Nordie types to balancing out the soon arrived heaving Papist Irish (Scots Irish as a term pretty much dates from when the "native" Irishstrated outnumbering the Prods who previously identified as Irish to officials, however much they had a glint for the old country of two generations gone). But apart from that horrible Ford fucker, the days of belligerent madness seem gone.

Maybe the earlier settlers' job in Appalachia as Border buffer (and many Scots and English background Nordie plantation settlers were from the long Disputed Lands between Scotland an England) from French and Injuns gave a special malignant cancer to their fundamentalist contraryness that would become the new conservatism. That and fuckin Walter Scott supplying prettifying pageantry for race hate Klan backed cross burning and horrible plantation la di da. Twain was off beam but I'd say he's right. You couldn't have the chivalrous bullshit of The South Ante Bellum without the influence of Ivanhoe and other nonsense. The early Georgian era didn't fuck around with that shit, they were playing dress up slavery Aristos by the industrial cotton age.

[Hot Pepsi]

Trump's Card

Vulgarian Visigoth wrote:

I don't think any other country is a post-racial utopia or free of all this macho bullshit. In some ways, Europe seems to be more racist and homophobic. Not so much in Scandinavia, but I'm pretty sure that if I ever moved there I wouldn't make any friends or ever talk to anyone. Their culture is kinda weird.

Two words: Anders Breivik. Nordic countries are a bit of a sleeper. The culture is much more introverted than, say, Southern American culture, so you're not going to get people driving a pick-up truck with a rifle in their hand shouting 'yeeee-haaa!!!', but Scandinavian far-right racists are very present on social networks.

Yeah. Lots of racism. But, I recall reading that they didn't have the abominable anti-homosexual laws that the rest of Europe did.

[anton pulisov]

Trump's Card

Not so much in Scandinavia, but I'm pretty sure that if I ever moved there I wouldn't make any friends or ever talk to anyone. Their culture is kinda weird.

The Swedish word for 'small talk' is 'kallprat', which literally means cold talk. It sums up their attitude to social interaction pretty well.

There's plenty of racism in Scandinavia, though, just like the rest of Europe. Jimmy Åkesson's Sweden Democrats, who can trace their roots directly to Neo-Nazi's, got about 13% of the vote, and will get even more in the next election after Sweden accepted 100,000 Syrians. I believe they were at 21.5% in the last poll.

I had a number of racist encounters in Sweden. The one that comes to mind most foremost was rednecks car chasing me on a country road at night when I had the tenacity to drive into their village with foreign number plates. That was a bit touch and go, but I was driving a 1.9 litre turbodiesel and they were in a Swedish redneckmobile (which is either a souped up Volvo 700 series or an American classic car).

Another time I accidentally walked straight into a 'pop-up' Neo-Nazi demo in Stockholm before the Police had arrived. They handed me, a fellow white man, a flyer. As I walked past I took the flyer, because I was in a world of my own and it hadn't dawned on me that they were Nazis. I thought they were selling mobile phone plans with lighting bolts as logos or something. After walking beyond them and reading their flyer, I turned around walked straight back to the Nazi who gave it to me, looked him straight in the eye and said, in Swedish with a heavy foreign accent, "You can have this back, I want nothing to do with you people. Thanks." (Yes, thanks as well). In retrospect, it was probably the stupidest thing I ever did in my life, especially considering that the Police hadn't arrived yet. But the Nazis were completely taken aback. They had never experienced such a polite put down before.

And then there was the time I went to an Ireland game in Stockholm dressed in green, and could understand all the shite being spouted about Irish people in by the Swedes around me, who had no idea that I understood every word. But those were hooligan types, which you'd get in any country, to be fair. What was more annoying was being lost on the way back from the match, and having to ask about twenty people for directions before somebody would answer. A foreign fan in Dublin would have people running to their assistance, and probably get a number of free pints out of it as well. Best away fan experience I had is still Switzerland, by a mile.

But otherwise they're a great bunch of lads, the Swedes. A bit insular but generally harmless and very good friends one you get to know them (which takes about three years).

Ireland is an interesting case. People in Ireland have a racist motive to try their best to not be racist. You see, racism is a Little England thing, and Irish people don't want to come across like those racist fucking English.

It may be that Canada is indeed the promised land after all. Healthcare like Europe, still proud of being multicultural, strict gun control, and a bit of that New World Americana mixed in. But poutine is absolute shit. Perhaps an independent Scotland... but they've got the whole protestant catholic thing going on there. New Zealand maybe? Hmmm too small and isolated, in the worst time zone for all sports competitions, and your house is on a massive volcano that could erupt at any moment... and even worse than that, rugger types everywhere.

[Vulgarian Visigoth]

Trump's Card

Hot Pepsi wrote:

I don't think any other country is a post-racial utopia or free of all this macho bullshit. In some ways, Europe seems to be more racist and homophobic. Not so much in Scandinavia, but I'm pretty sure that if I ever moved there I wouldn't make any friends or ever talk to anyone. Their culture is kinda weird.

Two words: Anders Breivik. Nordic countries are a bit of a sleeper. The culture is much more introverted than, say, Southern American culture, so you're not going to get people driving a pick-up truck with a rifle in their hand shouting 'yeeee-haaa!!!', but Scandinavian far-right racists are very present on social networks.

Yeah. Lots of racism. But, I recall reading that they didn't have the abominable anti-homosexual laws that the rest of Europe did.

Well, actually the Netherlands, Spain and Belgium legalised same-sex marriage before any Nordic country, and actually it will not be legal in Finland until March 2017, but yeah, according to the table in the Wikipedia article (under Opinion Polling) Nordic countries rate rather high in public support for same-sex marriage:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage

[anton pulisov]

Trump's Card

Depends where you put the marker. Denmark was the first country in the world to officially recognise gay relationships by offering civil partnership.

[Hot Pepsi]

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This is really illuminating.

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/1710573

[Wouter D]

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antoine polus wrote: Depends where you put the marker. Denmark was the first country in the world to officially recognise gay relationships by offering civil partnership.

Well, sure, one can squabble about exactly where to draw the line, but still, I too was going to ask HP what the hell he was on about. "they didn't have the abominable anti-homosexual laws that the rest of Europe did" casts the net quite wide there, though "I recall reading that" at least hedges the statement a bit.

[Hot Pepsi]

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I thought Scandinavia didn't have much racism mainly because they didn't have many people who weren't white, so wasn't usually a major political or social issue. That's changing in more recent years of course. I didn't mean to suggest they were inherently better people.

[Wouter D]

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Yeah, so, a Dutchman asks: exactly which abominable anti-homosexual laws did we have then, that the Scandinavians didn't?

[Wouter D]

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(I don't really want to get hung up too much on one phrase, but in the age of Wilders, there is already enough to hate about the formerly relatively progressive country that I happen to live in without people piling on. So please don't take it too personally, HP.)

[Hot Pepsi]

Trump's Card

Correct. I believe I somehow got the Low Countries and Scandinavia mixed up on this one.

The Netherlands stopped outlawing same gender sex in 1811, but Britain didn't do that until the 60s, according to Wiki. Ireland did so in 1993!

But all of this sent me down a lovely Wikipedia rabbit hole, reading up on the Sami people of northern Scandinavia.

[ursus arctos]

Trump's Card

what constitutes a "well regulated militia" must be a much-debated topic in the US I imagine

I really wish that was the case, but the examination of the meaning of the clause hasn't been part of Supreme Court majority opinions on gun cases for decades and has essentially been read out of public discourse by the NRA.

This is a decent primer on how that happened.

[anton pulisov]

Trump's Card

The SNL Sean Spicer skit. Very good, but too long, like most of their stuff.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Trump's Card

I hate ascribing things to "culture" - I always find those arguments vague and often even circular - but there does seem to be something very different in the default attitudes of Americans toward violence that isn't the same anywhere else -- something something Scots-Irish Appalachian clans something.

If you thought that the Scots-irish were fucked up, it's worth pointing out that Presbyterians also invented Irish Republicanism.

[Hot Pepsi]

Trump's Card

Good for us!

(Though "Presbyterian" covers a very broad group of protestants. It really just describes a type of church governance, rather than a particular theological outlook).