I don't doubt that if President Obama got his way that there would be a lot more restrictions on guns, making them nearly impossible to get. Thankfully with the mass proliferation of guns in America, that's next to impossible at this point. Even after Sandy Hook and his push to pass that legislation, it failed. Taking away guns is something the American people don't want.

There certainly are people that want to take guns.

How did confiscation happen in the UK and Australia?

Quote from: bflynn on January 06, 2016, 10:24:33 AM

You think the motivation of the expansion of the United States was religious expansion?  Just out of curiosity, is this entirely your idea or are there writings that back you up?

Nope, I didn't say that. What happened was we used religion to justify what we wanted, not necessarily expand the religion, although we did that too. It's not my idea and it is widely known as Manifest Destiny. The New World was established on this idea.

The concept being that the Europeans had better technology and knowledge, could defeat the natives in battle, so clearly to them, God was on their side. The Native Americans did not worship God and were primitive, so they reasoned that God does not favor them. In this way we could justify our actions by the logic that if God did not want us to have these lands, we would not have found them and we would not have been able to take them.

Quote

  My knowledge of the expansion was "hey, it's crowded, there's new opportunities out there.  Go West young man!"  The United States expanded because people were looking for a better life.

That's exactly it. However, there was this inconvenient problem of Native Americans living on those lands we coveted for our own opportunities. The solution was to push them off, or destroy them with force. The strong took the weak. We (by "we" here I mean all Europeans and non natives, not just Americans, or British) made the moral justification for our acts by claiming God wanted us to do it, or allowed us to do it.

No point of regretting what was done, or agonizing over it. It doesn't matter what justification we had, it is what it is. It is the way of the world and always has been since the beginning of life on this planet. The strong take the weak.

Quote

  I say don't let them try.  Stop them now and reject their game because it is a game where you wind up dead or a slave.

We can't stop them now. The concepts held by radical Islam is everywhere. It's an idea and it can't simply be bombed out of existence. The ideas have to die on their own and they will do so when they are tested and proven to be false.

Even if we could afford it and we can't, if we decided to do a unilateral "pre emptive" strike and started a 24/7 bombing campaign of the Middle East (you know, because we are the good guys) all that would do is spawn more and more terrorists and "caliphates" around the world. It would be a never ending road to financial ruin and accomplish nothing other than to prove to the world that the USA isn't any good at playing the game of world politics.

A better idea is to let the folks in the Middle East stew in their new Caliphate and see how they like it. We should instruct our "defense" department to go back to actually defending ground that actually belongs to us and stop fucking around in places that aren't even ours. We have tried "shock and awe" over and over again. We tried "to win the hearts and minds" over and over again. How about we mind our own damn business and take care of our own. I guarantee that no one really wants to live under ISIS rule and their fall will come naturally with minimal help from us.

The ISIL ideas will be tested, their true strength will be tested and they will fail IMO.

seems someone is ignoring how the Native Americans came to possess the land in the first place.

And I hope you aren't trying to justify the crap being done today because of stuff that happened centuries ago.

Quote from: LevelWing on January 05, 2016, 07:38:24 PM

Quote from: President Obama

"A violent felon can buy the exact same weapon over the Internet with no background check, no questions asked."

That's not true. Firearms must be transferred to an FFL. Failure to do so will result in the seller losing their FFL and possible criminal consequences.

Politifact parsed his words and rated them "mostly true":

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jan/05/barack-obama/obama-violent-felons-can-buy-guns-online-without-b/

good grief.  "mostly true" is bulls**t.  By the same moronic thinking, people can buy underage slaves over the internet no questions asked.

In the Boston-area news today is a story about the sweet sweet SWEET deal the union has with the MBTA.

A maintenance worker, whose salary is about $85,000,  made $315,000 last year by working 2648 hours of overtime, (not 2000 straight hours and 648 OT, but 2648 hours of OT!)

It goes like this, a union worker calls in sick one day and later in the week works "overtime" at the OT rate even though he doesn't even work 40 hours for the week.  In other words, the union worker doesn't have to work 40 hours in the week before he can get OT pay.

The MBTA is a part of the Taxachusetts state government and thus funded by taxpayers. 

In the meantime, 1" of snow last week caused a few of the MBTA buses to get stuck - real prepared for winter .... but make sure the union is pampered.

dontcha know the problem in paradise cities like Chicago is that surrounding areas don't have the same 2A restrictions...

It's not Chicago's fault.

the slightest politics gets the thread deleted...

but don't worry, narcissists can talk about their "package" with impunity.

Quote from: FastEddieB on January 03, 2016, 06:08:59 AM

Every morning I check in on about a half dozen sites, like I'm doing right now.

There was almost always something on POA worth responding to, even if it was only the "Religion is evil" thread.

Just went there and scrolled down and virtually none of the threads merits a response from me this morning - which virtually never happened before.

I suspect "boring" is a good description, along with "repetitive".

I found the same when view the list of threads this morning.... the dumbest was "The next word that comes to mind..." thread.  How freaking bored would someone need to be to participate in that mind-numbing exercise???

Not much else to do on POA.

who gives a rat's ass where the monkey is or the best recipe for garbage (what some people call coleslaw)