champu

The language in the articles about this are infuriating... "limits on IRAs for the rich", "taking aim at those who stash many millions of dollars in tax-advantaged retirement accounts", "more than enough to retire comfortably", "less than 0.1 percent of IRA and 401(k) savers would be impacted." I'm 30, and even if I never get another raise and they never raise the contribution limit from the 2013 level, I still fully expect to exceed $3M in my retirement account. I also fully expect to be means-tested out of receiving any social security payments. I am also not rich. Can the government apply tax benefits as they wish as kallend suggests? Of course. Will fools believe the politicians who implement these total middle-class screw jobs and doll them up as going after the rich? Apparently.

Locking your doors is a good idea. But somewhere between locking doors and making everyone wear oven mits at all times so that they can't pick the locks there is a line of misguided idocy that's been crossed.

Fifty million Elvis fans...

Really, because you should remove the magazine first then clear the chamber.... if you "clear" the chamber first you will reload another bullet if the magazine is not removed..... so maybe you shouldn't own a weapon. I was actually just thinking about this and how, in California, the prevelance of magazine-locks or "bullet buttons" on certain rifles make the clearing process somewhat less standard even if you think you know the weapon because you can't just pull the magazine off... you have to pull the charging handle back and make sure you look down into the magazine if there's one inserted. As rehmwa said though, if you don't know, ask.

It should be "shoot him or her" you chauvinist. ...in the leg, of course.

I hate attempts at creating mnemonics of this form because they never actually help you remember the steps, and they usually just invent steps so that you end up with a clever word. If you know what the steps are and just need to rememeber an order to them, then mnemonics are great, but when you have "Observe [something]", "Verify [something]", and "Examine [something]" which all mean the same thing, then it's kinda pointless. That said, I have a better one... Keep your finger off the trigger. Keep it pointed away from people. Keep th- Er, actually that's probably not a good one.

Some people are messed up because they shot someone while playing with a gun they picked up at a party when they were four... ...oh, you meant the Deputy, yeah he sounds like an idiot. I wonder if alcohol was involved...

How much of the run on semi-automatic rifles and rifle magazines would you estimate is attributable to NRA claptrap, and how much would you say is attributable to people hearing about the proposal of federal legislation and passage of various state legislation to ban future sales of certain rifles and rifle magazines? (the latter could be via the NRA or any other news source) While I agree the NRA is keen on the firearm industry selling more product, your posts are making it sound like there's no other primary catalyst which I think we can both agree is false. Hell the NRA had nothing to do with me discovering that the state assembly in California is considering doing something really stupid that could impact availability of ammo and magazines.

I think the ammo purchases are a bit ridiculous as pretty much all of the legislation being proposed relates to magazine size and cosmetic features of certain semi-automatic rifles. So while I can understand people buying up rifles and magazines larger than 10 rounds, ammo doesn't make sense. I was googling around for pending legislation, however, and I found this gem in the California Assembly... http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/13-14/bill/asm/ab_0001-0050/ab_48_bill_20130404_amended_asm_v97.pdf As I read, here are some fun features... - Extends ban on magazines that hold more than 10 rounds to include, "an oversize magazine body that appears to hold in excess of 10 rounds" - "Anyone in this state, prior to selling, transferring, or otherwise furnishing ammunition to an individual or business entity in this state or any other state, shall ... Possess a license to sell ammunition ... and ... Submit a report to the Department of Justice for all of the transactions, in a manner to be determined by the department." - The bill would require the department to alert local law enforcement entities in the community in which the purchaser resides if an individual purchaser who is not a peace officer obtains more than 3,000 rounds within a 5-day period. Here's a news article about it that has a couple strange bits in there... So Holmes buys 6,000 rounds, goes to a theatre, fires off a couple hundred rounds, hits 70 people, and kills 12... and they want to create a new licensing and reporting system for ammo sales that makes it reportable (but notably, not illegal) to purchase more than 3000 rounds per week? And, also notably, their proposed system does not attempt to address online orders from out of state, which is how Holmes purchased the ammo. Also, I don't know what, "kits that help convert conventional firearms into semi-automatic weapons" as mentioned in the news article are but, thankfully, there's no silly language like that in the bill.

He's saying, "Yosemite?" as in, "What the fuck are you talking about, Yosemite?" (...as though the geography is the only thing that survived the downturn of greatness.)

No. But if they did, somehow he'd still have to pay for parachutist magazine.

I think a lot of the comments on this are very polarized, and I think that sucks. Not speaking to you directly airtwardo.

Or a magic marker? Good call. He could write "incidentally" above it and be all set. /edit: whoops, broke the reply tags

As alluded to by Meso... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levonorgestrel#Side_effects

He said... She said... Somewhat minor nit here, and obviously I appreciate the he-said-she-said nature of this, but she apparently went from "can you cover it with clothing?" to "can you wrap your leg in duct tape?" I still think the whole thing is silly but c'mon, the guy isn't a dryer vent. Maybe suggest a sweatband or an ace bandage?

In your example you're talking about black people and white supremacists. The Muslims in this story are not analogs to white supremacists, more simply ordinary white people. In fact, I doubt radical Islamists (the better supremacist analog) would take offense to the tattoo. I am not an Arabic linguist, however I think the connotation is more akin to a black person going around saying all white people are white supremacists. I'm not sure how well that analogy works though because as a white person I'm impervious to being offended. Ok, I think I understand what you are saying. So in other words, as I now understand it, the word Kafir originally was a mocking word for all non islam believers, but nowadays the majority of muslims have seceded from such thinking and therefore if a non muslim calls him self as a kafir, the majority of muslims think that he still percieves all muslims seeing him as a kafir? (which they find offensive, since they dont see him as a kafir?) Roughly, yeah. But, while I think this analogy is close, the word "nigger" and "kafir" as used by black people and non-muslims respectively, still don't quite have the same connotation. If the black guy was going around unprovoked getting right in white people's faces saying, "oh, what, I guess I'm just a nigger to you, is that it?" that would be pretty offensive behavior. If that was framed in the context of ongoing black on white violence, then I think you have your analogy. I think the trap here is feeling like the muslims who are offended simply don't wish to be reminded that there are Islamists who see non-Muslims as infidels who should be killed. That would be a more selfish response, but I don't think that's what's happening. Why is this trap easy to fall into? Because if a white person says that a black person behaving as above makes them uncomfortable, they're told that they should have thought of that before they had white grandparents. And Bill, Wendy, Andy... Ville and I can read Abuaeden's posts, and I think we both appreciate them... but we're trying to talk about the evolution of the word, we got the "look, it's bad now okay" message.

In your example you're talking about black people and white supremacists. The Muslims in this story are not analogs to white supremacists, more simply ordinary white people. In fact, I doubt radical Islamists (the better supremacist analog) would take offense to the tattoo. I am not an Arabic linguist, however I think the connotation is more akin to a black person going around saying all white people are white supremacists. I'm not sure how well that analogy works though because as a white person I'm impervious to being offended.

Do you really think this is all the Military is concerned about and the only skills required? He's specifically and deliberately talking about the lowest common denominator though. He's asking, "Since getting into the military in the most basic of capacities is fairly trivial, why is being in the military regardless of capacity to be revered?" That's why people are coming up with counter examples of people who happened to have been in the military and, because of other actions, should not be revered. The fact of the matter is, if all you know is that someone was in the military you don't know if that means they spent multiple tours in EOD removing IEDs from schoolyards, if they spent their whole career flying a desk in Ramstein, or if they were "that guy" on deployments. Many civilians stereotype current and former military personnel somewhere along that spectrum and it usually has to do with their opinion of whatever military actions, if any, the country is currently involved in. Some vets expect to be stereotyped one way or the other and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

*shrugs* Let him keep saying it. His audience frankly doesn't care one way or the other. If we're lucky, though, and enough politicians repeat things like, "we need to crack down on automatic weapons like the one used in Newtown," then all they'll end up banning is M-16s... ...fat chance, I know...

Or if you have any outstanding loans you could pay them down/off and effectively earn whatever interest rate you would have been paying. My mortgage interest rate is less than 4%, but that would still be a better place to put my money long term than the 0.05% savings account you refer to. Or you could invest it in a market. Or, if you're self employeed you could put it towards equipment for your business and make money with it that way.

Really? Hm. We all know how massive the expenditure's been. How much of a lag time would you think applies, and why? Well, part of the answer lies in your original statement, "...without the revenues..." so the lag time is a function of whenever we get around to paying for it, either with higher revenues or cutting spending elsewhere. There is also a contribution in that adding to the debt has the potential to make borrowing more expensive for the government, as evidenced by the debt ceiling crises and the government credit rating changes. These repercussions we've seen thus far, though, I'm more inclined to pin on idiots in congress who don't seem to understand how the government budget process works than on the debt itself or contributors thereto. Something I occasionally feel compelled to point out, also, is that money spent on defense is not all summarily loaded into cannons and fired at the enemy. There have been many examples of both waste (incompetence) and fraud (malice) over the years, but this doesn't account for the bulk of the spending. The amount of money that goes towards training soldiers and civilian employees, paying them, giving them equipment, supplies, and technologies that are procured on contracts that are performing just fine, etc. is immense. Easily the primary factor in the size of the defense budget. And while a lot of the resulting material goods and man hours end up overseas, more of the money stays here in our economy. I think we'll both agree that this should not be the point of defense spending, but I don't think it can be ignored in judging how defense spending affects the economy either.

I think the solution is clear. Everyone should become a police officer.

Ok I will mark you down as wanting another near depresion cycle soon I would argue that one of the major causes of this near-depression is the post-9/11 military spending without the revenues to pay for it. You would? I would argue that we haven't taken the hit for having spent the money yet, thus it doesn't follow that it can be blamed for the economic downturn we saw.

I haven't seen the article, but from my knowledge of IQ tests I would guess that the IQ and RQ tests are essentially both imperfect measures of the same thing that happen to yield varying results because they each have unique biases.

No, do you? No. I think his owning and carrying firearms didn't end up helping in the end, but it probably didn't hurt anything either. It would also appear that the couple was killed in a targeted hit that most folks aren't going to be up against, making conclusions drawn from this event pretty narrow in scope. The old good guy with a gun bad guy with a gun phrase should more accurately read, "Nothing stops a bad guy who, having a gun or not, doesn't expect to encounter someone else with a gun quite as well as a good guy with a gun. However, not much of anything reliably stops a bad guy with a gun, the element of surprise, and a mission to kill you (even the secret service doesn't have a perfect track record) but that's not what you should be worrying about."