Tuesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Tuesday, July 5, 2022
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129 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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Debate? What debate? There is no debate. We are hostage to an industry of death.
Fields medal: Kyiv-born professor and Oxford expert among winners
Oklahoma to execute death row prisoners nearly every month
Pro-Life my ass.
I know that this isn’t going to gain any traction (one hopes, at least) but what on earth are academics thinking when they make suggestions like this? This is crazy.
A Plan To Tax Women For Being ‘Childless’? Welcome To Gilead
@Jen: Does he want ketchup with that foot?
I hope, OzarkHillbilly, that Granville is better at math than at commentary. I suspect Maynard is neither a one hit wonder nor a one trick pony.
@Joe: to repeat:
And it gets worse.
On momentous news, at least for some, Mike Duncan just finished the last season of his Revolutions Podcast. He’ll do one or two extra eps summing the whole thing up, but Revolutions, like The History of Rome before it, is over.
I wonder what he’ll come up with next.
Groundbreaking photos from Webb telescope coming July 12
Must see TV:
@Jen: From that article,
. The guy is focused on maintaining a large youth cohort to support the aging cohort. What the hell is wrong with these people in the face of Global Warming as per @OzarkHillbilly:. The planet can’t support the 8 billion of us we have now and that Bozo wants more of us.m?
I unplugged from electronics for 4-5 hours yesterday, save for my depth-finder, and when I checked back in I found out that Republicans had offered 4 more American lives to the Gun Industry, in sacrifice, so that their pathetic political careers might continue.
@gVOR08:
It’s overcrowded on the other side of the lifeboat. On their side, there aren’t enough white people yet.
Because it’s a pet peeve of mine, I’ll pass on an aside from Dr. Krugman’s column today,
I’ll concede that most “populist” movements have been faux, the elites pandering to the mob’s worst prejudices to keep themselves in power. But doesn’t Political Science make any distinction between genuine and faux populism?
@gVOR08:
@Jen:
In any case, if you want to increase birth rates, the policies you need are obvious:
– increased minimum wage, and other income support measures
– reducing costs of child care; tax policies a part of this
– availability and cost of small family type housing for young couples
But seeing as the US actually has current natal population growth, it is hardly a subject that should cause anyone to lose much sleep.
@gVOR08:
Steve Bannon was a big proponent of something he called “economic populism.”
In case you needed further confirmation of Tfrump’s juvenile churlishness:
http://www.nymag.com/intelligencer/article/read-nastiest-lines-trump-picture-book.html
@CSK:
I think I’ll withdraw my objection to book burning.
But it’s not good for the environment. Shredding and recycling would be a more fitting option. recycling, after all, is one what one does with waste paper.
@Kathy:
Just reading that article made me cringe. I suffer from vicarious embarrassment.
Do you ever get the feeling many on the right regard the late XVIII century as kind of a golden age, one which they want to recreate now, ignoring all the changes, all the progress, and most of all the legislation passed since and the many amendments done to the Constitution?
Not just the prevalent racism, or the extreme originalism and such, but also reliance on common law practices long 1) out of favor and 2) superseded by legislation at the state and federal levels. Things like appointing slates of electors outside the legal means for doing so, or against such means.
To a lesser extent, also in foreign policy. Remember when pirates seized ships off the coast of Africa some years ago? I recall reading perfectly serious suggestions that the president and/or Congress should issue letters of marque to allow privateers to combat this menace. Really.
@JohnSF:
FWIW, tax policies have done very little to spur increases in child bearing, whereas childcare subsidies or government supplies childcare has had some impact.
While true, this is misleading in the ways that the nativists care most about. The birth rate is above replacement only because of the relatively high birth rate of immigrants. Past the second generation they go below replacement level.
@OzarkHillbilly: Look for Starbucks to reopen the store at some point. The parent company sells coffee under several different names as Howard Schultz bought several other roasters in the process of consolidating his business share. Some had espresso shops that were too popular to change the names of, I would assume.
@JohnSF: For once, it’s not a US academic, it was a professor in the UK–a demographer from Oxford. Still though…
Already we are hearing the “he was so quiet, so normal” BS about Robert Crimino. Maybe he bought his guns and kept them hidden, but I doubt it. If someone buys an assault rifle there is something wrong with them, full stop (and Mu, I don’t want to hear that nonsense about what qualifies as an “assault rifle” in your expert opinion). Such an individual at the very least is fantasizing about killing people. It should surprise no one that they acted on it.
Just spent my morning posting on several sites where the commentators keep insisting that ectopic pregnancies will still be treated in total ban states since they “are emergences” or “aren’t abortions” and don’t count. It’s really telling how many folks are in active denial about this and don’t want to accept that no exceptions for the health of the woman means a sh^tton of dead ladies is about to happen some states.
I guess it comes from the cognitive dissonance of insisting abortion is murder. Since murder can’t be justified (else the fetus’ life is conditional), they must claim in spite of the law and their own logic that it’s different somehow. They say no doctor will refuse to treat an emergency (blatant lies – it’s already happening) or that the law will consider it not an abortion because it’s not a true pregnancy (bullsh^t and not what the law says). I had someone argue that stats were false and it was like 1/500 instead of 1/50…. which would mean 200,000 preventable deaths instead of 2 million in the worst case scenario like that’s an improvement.
They really, really, REALY don’t want to admit how many woman will lose their lives in a year over this, likely because it’s going to be people they know. Women in red states dropping like flies is gonna be very obvious and unlike COVID, they won’t be able to lie easily about it. She was pregnant, had a crisis and now she’s dead – kinda obvious what happened. Still, the denial is strong because otherwise it means admitting their position is untenable and will result in visible death and suffering.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Of course they did. They were buying nice places to live away from whichever “those people” they disdained the most. Probably for less than comparable places closer in.
Of course it does. If it didn’t, the thought exercise wouldn’t be called “the Tragedy of the Commons.”
@gVOR08: Hey, it’s either that or allowing more immigration and removing the cap on FICA and SECA taxes. Whattya gonna do?
@Kathy: Again, they gotta increase their numbers so they don’t get pushed of the lifeboat by the unwashed brown hoards on the other side who want the lifeboat all to themselves. At least, white people are willing to share (well, sort of anyway 🙁 ).
@gVOR08: Can you tell which is which at first glance? It seems to be more of an “after the fact” thing to me. YMMV
@KM: I’m not sure where you are getting your statistics but ectopic pregnancies are not going to result in hundreds of thousands of deaths each year. Between 1980 and 2007 there were a total of 876 deaths due to ectopic pregnancy in the entire US, 2-3 a year. And yes, this number will rise dramatically but not to hundreds of thousands per year.
@MarkedMan:
I tried to reply to you about Crimo not looking remotely normal, but it seems to have offended the moderation gods.
@KM: I have long believed that at least part of the militant adherence to the “pro-life” line of thought includes a fair amount of cognitive dissonance on a number of issues. In the past couple of weeks I’ve seen:
1) ardent insistence that ectopic pregnancies will be treated
2) statements that very young girls cannot get pregnant
3) that miscarriages, and to a lesser extent ectopic pregnancies, “resolve on their own”
4) that severely ill fetuses will automatically be either miscarried or stillborn
These are lies that people are telling themselves to disassociate their positions from the deaths that will occur. It’s going to be like the “he didn’t REALLY die from covid” stupidity that we have spent the last few years suffering through.
@KM: At the very least, if abortion is murder, then actual mass murder is murder too – and they don’t seem too keen to do anything about that.
Highland Park shooting: Trump-backed Illinois gubernatorial candidate apologizes for ‘Let’s move on’ comment
@Mister Bluster: “The suspect in a shooting on an Independence Day parade in suburban Chicago had planned the attack for several weeks, acted ”
Well, clearly, the problem is not guns but men who like to dress as women, so we should criminalize all homosexual and trans behavior immediately to save lives.
If that hot take isn’t all over the right wing media in a matter of hours, I’ll be shocked.
@MarkedMan:
Not too sure about your math there…
@MarkedMan:
Yes, because the treatment for it was legal under Roe and thus less deaths happened for decades. The occurrence of them isn’t going to change, however; if you increase the number of pregnancies’ happening, then that number is going to skyrocket. Since an ectopic pregnancy can last up to 16 weeks in length, it means that women can run afoul of bans in multiple ways.
As for the numbers, I assumed 1 million new pregnancies a year that would have been aborted prior to 16 weeks in accordance with most of the laws pre-Dobbs (the 10 average on most sites) and then 2% of that gives you 200,000 woman statistically likely to experience an ectopic pregnancy. Most didn’t die because they were able to be treated legally and with no fuss. Now? That number’s gonna jump pretty damn high. 200K is the nightmare scenario of a total national ban – still a possibility if the GOP gets their way. In the current political climate it’s going to be about 6-10K, all in red states. Remember, medical systems are going to be taxed to the limits with tens of thousands of newly pregnant patients as well as existing COVID loads and normal problems. Women aren’t going to be able to get the care they need and in rural red states with only one hospital for miles and miles? Also remember the 2% is based on historical data of several factors such as age, genetics and health of the population so if more 30+ women or those in ill health are forced into pregnancies they didn’t plan on, the percentage is going to rise as will the death count.
WGN Investigates has obtained an image of the suspected parade shooter dressed as a woman as he fled the scene.
@wr:..Well, clearly, the problem is not guns but men who like to dress as women, so we should criminalize all homosexual and trans behavior immediately to save lives.
Start with this guy.
@Mister Bluster:
He appears to be suggesting that we move on from the shooting on the day of the shooting.
What a sensitive guy.
@CSK:..What a sensitive guy.
I’ll just call him Bumfuck Bailey
TIL: Apparently there is a conspiracy theory community that believes jet fuel doesn’t actually exist and that all passenger jets are really powered by compressed air.
UK politics just got extra interesting, for hand-grenade-in-a-fireworks-factory-surrounded-by-a-shark-infested-moat-in-an-alligator-ridden-swamp values of interesting:
Chancellor Rishi Sunak and Health Secretary Sajid Javid resign from the Cabinet.
I would not bet heavily on Johnson seeing out the week.
OTOH, my record as a political forecaster is rather patchy.
@wr: Well them and ladders. We need ladder control. Ladders need to be registered and one should have to get a license to own one. Plus there is the problem of concealed ladders…
@JohnSF:
I just saw that. I knew you’d appear to comment. 🙂
@MarkedMan:
It’s always dangerous for me to do math when I’m tired (thanks, fireworks for 4 nights + a frightened dog), but 1980-2007 is 27 years. 876 deaths/27 years = 32.1 deaths per year on average. I think.
I know two women who had terminations due to ectopic pregnancies, and both were in bad shape–not sure how close to death, but that’s the point: they both made it because this was an available option.
@Han: Whoops, dropped some zeroes: 20-30 per year
@CSK:
I’d be breaking out the popcorn.
If only I actually liked popcorn. 🙂
A gin and tonic and an evil grin will have to suffice.
Might even stretch to an occasional manic cackle of glee.
@Stormy Dragon:
That may be a misunderstanding.
There are two types of jet engines: turbojets and turbofans.
The first uses a compressor in front to compresses air that mixes with kerosene (aka jet fuel) in the combustion chamber. The exhaust is expelled backwards at high speed, propelling the plane forward. The exhaust also passes over turbine blades that turn the compressor in front. A small part of the compressed air bypasses the combustion chamber and is also ejected backwards.
A turbofan is similar, except most of the exhaust is used to turn the much bigger compressor, and most of the compressed air bypasses the combustion chamber. Instead this air is ejected backwards at high speed.
The latter design moves a bigger volume of gas (air) at a lower speed than the first, which is more efficient for sustained flight as in commercial aircraft. Turbojets can achieve higher speeds, but consume a lot more fuel either way.
So, yes, turbofan jets are propelled mostly by compressed air, but they are powered by jet fuel.
@Jen: I agree 100% that women are going to needlessly die because of this. I just think that talking about 200,000 woman dying per year (10 times the amount that die in car accidents!) or “women dropping like flies” will feed into the “hysterical pro-abortionists” trope.
I think that the original number stated was 2 million. There are 64M women in the US between the ages of 15-44. If 2M of them were dying per year, the odds of any woman lasting through her child bearing years is negligible.
@Kathy:
I know that.
But these people think that passenger jets have big tanks of compressed air in their wings instead of fuel and they fly by releasing that compressed air out the engines. Like blowing up a big balloon and then letting go of the neck so that it flies around as the air comes out.
As best I can tell it’s a weird offshoot of 9/11 trutherism arguing that the planes could not have caused the explosions because they have no fuel in them at all.
can someone let my comment out of moderation please?
@MarkedMan:
I think you’re making a calculation error here, thinking if 2 million women between 15-44 die each year, that a woman’s chances of surviving to 45 are 1 – (29 * 2m) / 64m = 9%. It’s (1 – 2m /64m) ^ 29 = 40%
@Stormy Dragon:
Ah, that explains a lot.
I imagine a lightly loaded 737 would need a tank several times its size to hold enough compressed air to take off and climb, never mind cruise for hours and land.
I wonder, too, what they think the fuel tank farms at airports actually hold.
@MarkedMan:
Part of the problem – my number’s higher because my age bracket was wider (10-50 specifically). Remember my number was for a worst case scenario which has a pretty good chance of happening if the nationwide ban kicks in. Of course 200K sounds high in that case but let’s be real here – pregnancy is more common then car accidents so that’s not a fair comparison.
Also, “hysterical pro-abortionists” trope? You mean the people who warned the Right was gonna dismantle Roe after chipping away at it for decades and make forced birth a thing in America? The people who turned out to correct and not the people telling them to calm down or they’d be perceived as hysterical? Maybe we shouldn’t be trying to downplay how bad things can be for fear of being seeing as “emotional” and point out that yes, it can be that bad if they have their way.
@MarkedMan:
Treatment for ectopic pregnancy involves terminating the pregnancy as soon as possible. Prognosis depends on when it gets diagnosed and how quickly it’s treated. If doctors are afraid to end such pregnancies because it’s either actually forbidden by law, or because they may be charged and arrested even if there is a legal exception, then women are going to die from such pregnancies in larger numbers.
But the relevant stat is not how many deaths occurred in the past, but how many ectopic pregnancies take place to begin with.
@MarkedMan: It was not an assault rifle. It’s a semi-automatic rifle. Definitions matter and you don’t get to redefine things that have had a definition used by US law, and domestic/foreign industries/militaries for +50 years.
@Matt: Too bad I can’t my post because it’s actually been 80+ not 50+ years.
@Kathy:
The CDC stat for ectopic pregnancies is 1 in 100.
@wr: Thank you for being so agile of mind (with an assist from a lab appointment I just came back from). I really didn’t want to be the person who said this today but am glad that someone did.
@Stormy Dragon: First of 91% death rate versus 60% death rate – both are wildly unlikely.
But I still think your math is off, but I am virtually certain no one but us gives a darn. If their a way to sidebar I would.
@wr: @Just nutha ignint cracker:
Well, so far the take in reaction to the women’s clothing is that Crimo is a socialist, a progressive a Democrat, an Antifa, an occultist, and programmed by a handler from the FBI/Deep State.
Nothing about him being trans or gay.
NY Times is reporting that a seventh victim has died in the Highland Park shooting.
@KM: I’m basing this on what I think happened with COVID. Part of the loony toon response was based on comparing what people such as us were saying versus what was happening, and judging our credibility negatively based on their personnel experience. To listen to many of we pro-vaccine people talk, COVID was virtually a death sentence and even if you survived long COVID would wreck your life. In reality, if you are younger than 45 your odds of dying or having serious complications are very, very low.
I don’t see any benefit to wildly exaggerating the numbers of deaths in the abortion debate either, as I think it does more harm than good.
@JohnSF: What effect do you think his ouster will that have on the Brexit/Northern Ireland protocol?
@MarkedMan: I went back to reread KM’s comment. It seems to suggest, at least to my reading, that across-the-board numbers from all pregnancy-causes will increase, perhaps by orders of magnitude (thus the “whole sh!t ton” reference).
When the other side is using references to a “new American holocaust” as descriptions in preaching to its choir, I’m not going to fault the other for hyperbole in preaching to its. There are few in the audience who are actually on the fence (I’ve been one in my past life, and I am open to the possibility that there are people who lie to pollsters about it), and my experience is that the few there are tend not to use pro-/anti-choice as the tipping point for their votes.
@Matt:
This is the stupidest argument from the pro-gun death crowd. What do you think you are accomplishing with this pedantic nonsense? The fact that there are better assault rifles and this one is little more than a regular rifle dressed up to look like a combat weapon matters not one bit. The people that buy them range from foolish man-boys to dangerous lunatics. The purpose of these weapons are to either play at killing people or to kill people, full stop.
@a country lawyer: My kingdom for an edit! Should have read: What effect do you think his ouster will have on the Brexit/Northern Ireland protocol?
@Stormy Dragon: Ah! Thanks! I was wondering why someone would think that. In service to another conspiracy explains it well.
@Jen:
Awful.
The number of wounded is now 46.
@KM:
Not meant to minimize at all, but 2% of 1 million is 20,000.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: I knew you had an appointment, so I thought I’d better fill in for you!
@Matt: “t was not an assault rifle. It’s a semi-automatic rifle. Definitions matter ”
To whom? To the dead people and their grieving families? To the doctors desperately trying to save the wounded? To a nation under siege by mass murderers who are free to kill as many as they want because the Republican party is completely in thrall to gun sellers? Or just to otherwise good people who love guns so much they’re willing to turn a blind eye to all the carnage, and need to change the subject to semantic issues in order not to have to deal with the horrible reality?
@Kathy: @Kathy: I agree 100% that this anti-abortion religious fanaticism is a) wrong and b) will result in hundreds or even thousands of dead women each year from multiple causes. But ectopic pregnancies will not be anywhere close to 200K/year.
First, there are only 3.6M pregnancies per year in the us. If one in a 100 are ectopic then that is 36K per year. So right off the bat, even if every pregnant woman who had an ectopic pregnancy died from it, is an order of magnitude lower than 200k.
So, next question, what is the death rate for ectopic pregnancies if abortion is not available as a treatment? While I couldn’t find much post-1974 information on the mortality rate for untreated ectopic pregnancies, I did find this review of ectopic pregnancies from 1950 to 1974 in Michigan. It’s fatality rate estimation was 2-4 per 1000 ectopic pregnancies. Here’s another paper from 2012 in Nigeria, a place with much, much lower standard of care, and the fatality rate there was 14 per 1000 ectopic pregnancies.
So, even if we assume the higher Michigan rate, and that all the women could have been saved if abortion was available as an option, about 150 additional women per year will die as a result.
@wr: Again, thanks! 😉
@a country lawyer:
On Brexit?
Nothing.
That ship has sailed. (Also, been hijacked by pirates, and then sank in a freak hurricane while attempting to chase down Moby Dork the sea unicorn.)
EU wouldn’t have us back if we asked, unless the country had a solid consensus (70% favour?) on joining minus our former opt-outs: special budget rebate, outside Schengen travel zone, outside Euro, etc (IMO EU actually benefitted from a separate pound as an internal hedging mechanism, but that view goes down like cold sick in Paris and Berlin).
We won’t have such a consensus for at least a decade.
Labour have just repeated they are against even re-joining the Single Market or a equivalent to Customs Union.
Because they calculate the electoral maths and constituency maps mean they need a fair wedge of pensioner/working class Leaver votes to get a plurality or better of seats.
Single Market means EU “Freedom of Movement” which makes the Leavers detonate.
CU means no “independent trade deals”, which means explaining to the silly sods that independent trade deals aren’t worth a damn, which means in effect telling them they were stupid to vote Leave, which also causes toddler tantrum.
On Northern Ireland protocol:
Another government, Labour, or even “reality based Conservatives” (unlikely for internal party reasons), could at least drop the addiction to picking fights with Brussels, tell the DUP to stop playing silly buggers, sign up to a sanitary/phytosanitary alignment, set up shared customs data systems etc.
Cultivate good will.
Could make the NIP work reasonably well, and set a basis for possible longer term mitigation agreements.
Re-stabilise the politics of Northern Ireland, hopefully.
Similarly on developing a security and defence industries arrangement with EU, joint energy security agreements, science co-operation.
But it will mean accepting that the EU states have their own interests, which they will prioritise vs a third party.
UK will need to make attractive offers, make concessions, and in some matters accept the need for convergence on EU terms.
Accepting (as even Labour and LibDems sometimes have trouble recognising) that we aren’t at the internal negotiating table any more; the EU doesn’t owe us any favours.
Then a EFTA/EEA agreement might come in the Parliament after next, possibly.
And re-join maybe after 10 or 15 years.
Maybe.
All this assuming he does get ousted; it’ll be like trying to finish off Count Dracula.
@JohnSF: should we be reading anything into the fact that both of the men who resigned appear to be of Asian descent?
@MarkedMan:
We do need to get the right numbers.
That said, there are other complications to pregnancy than this one. Some can result in the mother’s death if left untreated, some don’t require termination but may induce it in some cases, etc. All that might be at risk now.
BTW, there’s some speculation in historical circles that alcohol prohibition would have worked better had beer and wine been exempted. It’s impossible to say for sure, but I do see something along these lines with abortion prohibition. There will be less opposition if exceptions are made for rape, incest, and the health of the mother. And even less if there’s no aggressive prosecution of every miscarriage, or accident resulting in a premature end to a pregnancy. But the zealots on the right don’t seem inclined to go in that direction.
@Kathy: Religious zealots aren’t into half measures. Take the gun lobby for instance…
@Matt:
This definition is a distinction that does not make that much of a difference in reality.
The weapon may not be capable of fully automatic fire.
But certainly the British Army trains soldiers to use rifles primarily in semi-automatic or “burst” mode, not “full rock’n”roll”, except in exceptional close quarters situations.
Even “rapid” fire is deprecated when not essential, due to ammunition use rate.
Even machine gunners are taught to usually use short bursts, not sustained auto.
So a semi-automatic rifle is capable of being used in the same manner as the military usually use an assault rifle.
And certainly in the same manner as a second world war semi-auto battle rifle like the M-1, which was a pretty effective means of killing people; and with a larger magazine than the Garand as well.
@MarkedMan: It’s not an argument it’s a statement of fact. You can’t expect to be treated seriously when talking about aircraft safety if you keep referring to them as cars…
@JohnSF: There’s a massive difference hence the definition that has existed for over 80 years.
Burst is generally the go to unless you’re engaged in suppression fire or in an up close fire fight. Even then when suppressing the machines are supposed to “talk to each other” via short bursts which keeps up a stream of rounds down range.
A blunderbuss is capable of being used in the same manner as the military. You’re not making a point here.
@wr: You’re the only one changing subject matters. I just merely corrected someone who was using a term in an incorrect manner. The rest is all you.
@Matt: Your arguments are those an 11 year old boy would make, which is the general level of argument from the man-boy fun fetishist crowd.
I mean really look at all the posts in the abortion thread by some of the same people saying it’s not a baby but a zygote or fetus or a “clump of cells”. Suddenly you don’t care about applying the proper term when it’s inconvenient for your propaganda.
Abortion on the right is the equivalent of talking to lefties about guns. They don’t care about using proper terms or the science. They have their feelings and by god everyone should have to accept them as the authority as a result.
@MarkedMan: What argument have I made? Other then we should use the proper terms/definitions?
Look in an ideal world I have no problem with required classes, licensing, and insurance for gun ownership. That’s not going to happen because some democratic party members will use that to play games to screw over gun owners. The slow walking of ATF FFLs and such under a democratic president already leads credence to that possibility. We’re so polarized now I’m not sure how to get it done.
Then there’s 3d printed guns which are very much a real thing. There are even competitions involving printed guns like the maker’s match. So banning normal capacity magazines is pretty much irrelevant already as you can print magazines easily with cheap 3d printers.
This opinion piece in The Guardian might make for decent science fiction. Otherwise, the idea of founding a state on the net reads more like a Free State Project for Tech Bros.
@Matt:
There are few varieties of zygotes, and they don’t have differing calibers, rates of fire, muzzle velocities, magazine size, etc.
@MarkedMan:
Doubt it, in my judgement.
There are quite a few ministers of British Asian descent still in the Cabinet (at least so far, LOL)
Priti Patel, Home Secretary
Suella Braverman, Attorney General
Nadhim Zahawi, Education Minister
Alok Sharma, Minister of State, Cabinet Office, Climate Action Implementation Committee
Plus quite a few junior (non-Cabinet) ministers and PPS’s (lost track, to be honest).
Also four or five PPS have walked; Jonathan Gullis, Saqib Bhatti, Nicola Richards, Virginia Crosbie; plus Party Vice-Chair Bim Afolami.
@Matt:
Well, perhaps burst is the “go to” in the US armed forces; all I can say is that single-shot is the default in British Army use.
The SA80/L85 doesn’t even have a burst mode.
To be honest, as a means of hitting a sizable number of targets in a fairly short time, I happen to think the distinction between “semi-automatic rifle” and “assault rifle” is pretty much just semantic potato/potahto in any case, whether made by gun control advocates OR by “right to bear” types.
IMO best kept out the hands of the general public.
But then again, I’m a Brit, so what do I know about the ways of liberty?
This bit about the proper naming/categorization of a gun strikes me as a bit peevish. It’s being deployed as a sorting tactic: “you aren’t using the correct terminology, therefore your opinion isn’t worthwhile.”
I mean, on the one hand, sure–and the “Assault Weapons Ban” was incorrectly labeled as a result–it wasn’t a full ban (people could still purchase AR-15-style guns) and they technically weren’t assault weapons.
The confusion is understandable, however, when this is the case: “Under the Assault Weapons Ban of 1994, the definition of “assault weapon” included specific semi-automatic firearm models by name, and other semi-automatic firearms that possessed two or more from a set certain features.”
Getting prissy about terminology when it doesn’t serve to advance the discussion is nit-picking, particularly when it’s clear what people mean.
@Kathy:
But have you never hear d of the the Terminator’s ultimate weapon?
The Hasta La Vista Baby.
🙂
@JohnSF: Exactly right. If it’s primary design is to kill humans, whether or not it’s cable of full automatic fire, then it’s an assault rifle. The AR-15 and its variants are based on the Stoner system m-16 introduced to the U.S. military during the Viet Nam war. When I joined the Marine Corps in 1965 I trained on the m-14 a semi-automatic rifle. (There were some m-14s which had a switch which would convert it to full automatic). You could hunt game with the m-14 but that was not the design purpose.
I’m an old guy and I no longer hunt but I did for many years starting as a teenager. I still have my first deer rifle, a winchester 30-30 carbine. If someone claims to need a ar-15 or its variant to hunt game, he’s not a hunter.
One of the silliest arguments I’ve heard from the gun nuts is you can’t define and assault weapon. Here’s my definition. An assault rifle (rifle is defined in the U.S. Code) is any rifle, greater than 22 caliber rim fire, which is capable of automatic or semi-automatic fire and which has either an internal magazine capable of holding more than 7 rounds or is capable of accepting a removable magizine.
Wretched and slyly evasive edit function!
Meant to add to comment @JohnSF that when I referred to using SA80 in “burst” in the earlier post @JohnSF: as this weapon does not actually have a distinct “burst” selection, the actual British Army term is “rapid fire”. Which can be either very fast semi-automatic shooting, and/or very short pulls on full auto.
The usual distinctions made are:
“deliberate fire” = around 10 rounds per minute
“rapid fire” = around 30 rounds per minute
“automatic fire” = does what it says on the tin
And just to tease, the edit function now shows up again. 🙁
On a separate note, thanks to Axios:
Vietnam heroes get their due
https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios-pm-a37cfc61-93cd-44c6-b5cd-81f0bcb25a25.html?chunk=1&utm_term=emshare#story1
And in furtherance of this belated thank you from a grateful nation, thanks to @a country lawyer and all those who served, whatever and whenever the conflict. Speaking only for myself, while I may not have appreciated the time, place, or manner you were asked to serve in, I am profoundly grateful for everyone’s service.
@Kathy:
Questions to which the answer is “no”; example number 3,241.
@Matt: “Look in an ideal world I have no problem with required classes, licensing, and insurance for gun ownership. That’s not going to happen because some democratic party members will use that to play games to screw over gun owners.”
In other words, we can’t possibly take a chance on any sensible gun regulations just in case some wicked Democrats try to take us down that slippery slope and of course once they try all opposition will magically vanish and all guns will disappear from America, so it’s much better that our reign of mass murderers continue and that countless innocent people die than anyone take the terrible risk that someone, somewhere, sometime might attempt to interfere with your unfettered right to all the toys you want.
You can sound reasonable when you choose, but when you come down to it, you want your precious and you don’t care how many people have to die for that.
@Jen: “Getting prissy about terminology when it doesn’t serve to advance the discussion is nit-picking, particularly when it’s clear what people mean.”
Yes, but if people are squabbling over nomenclature they’re not looking at the childrens’ bodies.
DeSantis signs bill requiring Florida students, professors to register political views with state
Right thinking will be rewarded, left thinking will be punished!. I suppose Gov DeSantis is aware the profs will simply answer the questions as they feel a Trumptard would. He’s looking at a head to head duel with Trump for the nom so he’s gotta do what he’s gotta do…
(insert Ozzie’s Crazy Train vid here)
@JohnSF: Hush up now! You’re going to ruin a perfectly good counterargument (iow, reasonable/logical sounding bs) if you start chiming in with a bunch of extraneous facts. Sheesh!
You lost that argument 28 years ago. Not that it matters to anyone but you. Your attempts at obfuscation have been successful to the extent that now people here aren’t discussing the only thing that really matters: 6 dead, 46 injured. All so a certain minority of the populace can have their military cosplay weapons of mass shootings.
So, job well done. Now, fuck off with your pedantic bullshit.
@OzarkHillbilly: My bad, 7 dead and 46 injured.
Eta: It’s hard to keep up with the latest death/wounded tolls. They change several times a day.
@dazedandconfused:
Sounds like a loyalty oath, doesn’t it?
The issue with ectopics is the management. You can look up frequency of ectopics and estimate how many more we will have but how many more deaths will depend somewhat on treatment. We treat by expectant watching (serial HCGs), chemo (methotrexate mostly) or surgery. Some ectopics dont stay implanted and go away on their own. If they do not you can go to chemo or surgery.
The issue I see is that some states are wanting to define life as starting at conception. If that is the case giving chemo or doing surgery is killing the baby. So we practitioners are concerned that in states that allow exceptions for the life of the mother we may need to wait until the mother’s life is actually in danger ie when it ruptures. Once you have rupture it can be a real surgical emergency with mass transfusion. If it happens at the wrong hospital you die. Much better to treat before it is a crisis. If we have states that do not allow for exceptions for life of the mother no idea what happens.
Steve
@steve: Thanks, I was hoping you would chime in. Specifically for the lurkers hanging around who might be on any kind of fence about how difficult the definition of “from conception” might be for medical providers who have to make life-saving decisions, and possibly risk losing their medical licenses or be criminally charged.
@gVOR08:
In simplistic terms, “populism” is a style of doing politics that does not, in any way, guarantee that it will help those to whom it appeals.
In the aftermath of the Highland Park mass shooting a little boy, 2 years old, was found wandering around. Not surprising, it was utter chaos and he probably got separated from his parents, the police just need to find them and he’ll be home in no time.
Well, they found his parents. They’re both dead.
Atheism is a belief system, every bit as much as Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, etc etc etc. It is just that where they believe there is a deity/s guiding the universe, we believe the laws of nature guide the universe, No deity needed.
@Mikey: Fuck. Fuckity fuck fuck.
But Matt want’s everybody to know they weren’t killed with a firearm that meets his very narrow and very dated definition of an “assault weapon”.
@Stormy Dragon: That bit about jets being powered by compressed air sort of fits. In fact it seems necessary. If jets are powered by jet fuel, then the contrails are easily explained as condensing water vapor in the exhausts. (Doesn’t have to be jets, you sometimes see photos of WWII bombers trailing contrails. In the right conditions you can also see contrails off wingtips, where the tip vortex lowers air pressure and moisture condenses. Even, on very humid days, off the tips of racecar rear wings.) But if jets don’t burn fuel, then there’s obviously no explanation except that they’re “chemtrails” of brainwashing drugs. Or something.
@steve: Of course, the financial burden on uninsured/underinsured and ultimately, society is a biproduct. I know people with decent insurance, who burned through a $1M lifetime cap in the first months of a catastrophic illness. Of course, as previously discussed, these measures are designed to punish the poor / minority / other members of society, not the good, gosh fearing people who put these bans in place.
@Mikey: Good lord. I wonder if that’s the same toddler a woman pulled out from under his dead father, or another one.
@CSK:
Not to me. It’s not DeSantis’s bill, his Trumpian legislature set it in front of him, and they have discerned their true enemy: Education.
@Matt: @MarkedMan: Matt, your comment that AR-15 clones are not assault rifles is both technically correct and completely irrelevant. The phrase is used by the press to describe them and is understood by the public to mean rifles that mimic military arms, mostly M-16s and AK-47s. The better phrase is “military style rifle”, which the press occasionally use. I prefer “pretend assault rifle” which is technically correct, and I think captures the psychology of the typical owner. However it does downplay their considerable lethality.
@wr: You know, there are certainly difficulties in categorizing weapons, but there’s one thing that takes no effort: it’s straight certain that the type of fantasist that buys assault weapons and various other “tactical” gear and obsesses about kill rates, centers of mass, and of course, whether some GI Macho toy counts as an assault weapon shouldn’t be allowed so much as a pea shooter.
@wr: Kurt Vonnegut had been in Dresden as a POW during the fire bombing of the city in 1945. It became the basis for his novel Slaughterhouse Five. IIRC he returned after the war and told of mentioning to a taxi driver the missing window of the cathedral. The driver went on at some length about it being shot out by the 20mm auto cannon of an RAF Mosquito etc. etc. Vonnegut said he’d seen this in other Germans. Obsessing about the technical details was a way to avoid talking, or thinking too much, about anything else.
@CSK: Sounds more like a reason to go to university in not-Florida to me. But back in the day, I would have asserted that I didn’t have any political viewpoints being a follower of Arminian theology, if asked to register. (Then again, I played a lot of Calvinball with the expectations of my teachers in high school, too.)
@Mikey: Thanks! Just the thing to brighten my day. :-X
@dazedandconfused: Well, DeSantis could save all of that money for the state and lower taxes if only UF and FSU weren’t football factories where the program pays its own way and the ways of some other programs. Makes it harder to close the others down. And if kids don’t go to college (because there aren’t any), then high school can to back to being storage until the kids are old enough to pick citrus. More savings! More tax reductions.
How to get rid of major college football and that pesky SEC/ACC contender status problem.
Ideas?
@OzarkHillbilly:
“Belief” is a funny word. It covers everything from an ancient Greek believing a god carried the sun across the sky in a chariot to my belief the sun will rise tomorrow. And not believing is not the same as believing not.
And Kathy, I assume you’ve heard Ernest Rutherford’s line that “All science is either physics or stamp collecting.”
@OzarkHillbilly: I think that @Matt was just trying to be helpful and point out that we should not limit restrictions to assault rifles, but instead restrict all automatic/semi-automatic weapons. They ARE clearly defined.
@gVOR08: Wasn’t it Rabi who, upon hearing about the discovery of the neutrino, asked “who ordered that?!”
(People have asked me whether I’m a monotheist or a polytheist and my response has been: “what is someone who at present only believes in the existence of one of the Greek gods and not all?”
10:37 PM Mountain Time, the main water line to my house just blew a leak under where the hot water heater is. Trying to laugh, because tomorrow is a big day, all hands on deck….and I can’t even take a shower because whoever put this house in didn’t install a shutoff valve for the main water that’s in the house, I have to shut it off at the well.
Trying to laugh. 😐
@OzarkHillbilly: Once again I made no argument. I just pointed out that he was using the wrong term. Your “assault weapon” term is an attempt at obfuscation that started in the early 90s. It was an intentional choice by anti-gun groups to make up the term so they could confuse people. Looks like a rousing success as you and many others have fully embraced it. Being one of those zygote people you really should care more.
@wr: I was attempting to point out the perspective of a good chunk of gun owners out there. The democratic party has a history of taking an inch and running a mile with it. You choose to not take it as a learning opportunity and instead as a chance to shit all over me and others who have done nothing wrong. Looking at your response are you really surprised gun owners don’t want to work with you? Your tendency to run full forth into your own fevered dreams more then matches those of the gun owners I’ve tried to talk sense into on the right. You have a lot in common in that aspect. Unfortunately that kind of common ground cannot be exploited to produce a compromise.
@gVOR08: It’s completely relevant as you should use proper terms when referring to things. You don’t call a zygote a baby if you want to be taken seriously. You don’t call an airplane a sky bus if you want to be taken seriously. Hyperbolic rhetoric isn’t going to result in any progress. All rifles mimic military arms as almost every single one of them is based around a concept or round that was initially developed for war. It turns out that humans are just animals and what kills us well also kills dear/bears/etc well..
Pretend assault rifle is kind of funny as it emasculates a certain section of obnoxious gun owners/larpers.