tvashtarkatena

Guantanamo National Monument. Ages 15 and under and over 90 get in free.

Well, it was Vegas before Vegas was Vegas, so....

We should establish Pakistani Tribal Areas National Park and issuing citations to the Taliban for camping without a permit. Delivered by Hellfire missile, perhaps.

Got your locks wrapped around my axle again, Manpony? You'll live. Apparently while reading every single thing I post

Cuba's reported to have some of the most pristine reefs in the world. If the rest of the Caribbean is any guide, it won't fare well under the massive tourism that will inevitably come from it's close in northern neighbor. Much of the damage to reefs elsewhere (other than ocean warming and storm damage, which increases as sea surface temps rise), is due to recreational boat anchors, pollution from onshore development and boating, and agricultural runoff. It's a safe bet all three will increase as Cuba is opened up to American development. These can be mitigated through wise development, but so far development in places like the neighboring Dominican Republic have gone the way of the all included mega resort with few to no anchoring restrictions nor anchor buoys. I traversed the region in a kayak from Trinidad to the DR and found most of the reefs pretty denuded. Having said that, Cuba's reefs are more extensive and protected from the open ocean than further down the chain, so some of that is due to natural aspect. The popular anchoring spots, even in low population areas like the St. Vincents, were completely destroyed, however. Sad. I did find the island reefs off Belize - Lighthouse Reef in particular, to be relatively untrammeled. 25 miles of open ocean protects Lighthouse from mainland traffic, and the local population is probably less than a 100 out there. The Atlantic is also less rough off Belize than the Eastern Caribbean, and Lighthouse is protected by its large extant. The region further south from there had had the shit kicked out of it by Hurricane Mitch, which just grazed the south end of Lighthouse Reef (removing all the sand from its beaches in the process). I'm going to kayak the Northern reefs of Cuba at some point. Man, I want to experience that place before its too late.

There goes that artery. Boring.

What did you say about literalism again, Big Man? Hint: It's a joke, dude. Take a sedative before you bust an artery or something.

BTW, Curiosity has detected, for the first time, organic molecules on Mars. They are not necessarily of biological origin, but do provide the first definitive evidence that at least some of the molecular precursors necessary for life existed on Mars, which had conditions suitable for life about the time life first evolved on Earth.

If you want to hear both sides - there's always Bill Maher, Dog love 'im. If you want pure genius - John Oliver. Speaking of Dog - where the HELL did all the nativity scenes run off to this year? I can't find a Baby Jebus to steal to save my eternal life this year. A Christmas Tradition - shattered.

He used to be funny when his humor was more general. Pretty repetitive now. What the hell - he's got a steady, well paying gig. Please, he gets to get split screened with heavy hitters like Palin and Huckabee. Conservatives should be more funny, considering how much of a joke modern conservativism has become.

"Why would I drag my finger across my throat?"

Good morning! There aren't many conservative comedians - and the whole handful (Gutfeld, Miller, et al) employ put down humor almost exclusively, and it's always partisan. Find the hipster/airhead hippy chick or other liberal stereotype - you know the drill. It's all cringe jokes. Bigger, more highly paid things hitting littler, less highly paid things. The conservative sense of humor is limited because conservatives are often, by definition, easily offended, and therefore defensive. They Just Don't Go There - and There is a very big place, and getting bigger as society modernizes. They are more concerned with adhering to social norms, hence the typical "You're (crazy, on meds, sociopathic, anti-American...) routine, as well as their discomfort with 'liberal humor' - which is most humor, actually. Sexual connotation, unless it involves a bag of dicks or some form of ass rape, makes them uncomfortable - hence the apoplectic reaction to the word 'fetishist' - an accurate descriptor for the self affirmation and pleasure many conservatives seem to gain from their firearms. I refer to social conservatives, of course. Fiscal conservatives can be positively libertine. But then, so can social conservatives when no one is watching.

Consider the walrus: Excellent swimmer, loves seafood, a bit long in the tooth, thick skinned, immune to cold, loyal, the only animal of its kind, and a worthy adversary. Fine animal, the walrus.

How about that Taliban today? ||||>:^{O)## Kinda re-kindles that drone discussion.

I said 'fetishist' LOL... Damn it, Big Man, that's a sock monkey. THIS is a walrus :{=

Hummers at dawn? This thread was all rainbows until that partisan sock puppet OW showed up :€( Does anyone own The Judge? I tots wanna shoot one a those. Stay outta the Cabela's Gun Library, boys. That's all I'm sayin

i'm left.

Heller rubber stamped what almost all state constitutions had already done. Effect? Not much. Anyway, who really cares? All gun fetish fests look exactly the same. You folks can circle jerk the ritual from here.

Ah, the innernut gun lobby. Such charmers. Butch's Guns, our (former) local shooter's boutique, has just been replaced by a hipster bar. I love this town! I 594 proved that gun control is very much a live issue. WA just provided a blueprint initiative for other states to mimic - particularly considering that the NRA finally got its ass soundly handed to it by our wonderful voters. Stay tuned for further hijinks. Heller was a big nothing. 48 out of 50 states already had the right to carry for self protection explicitly included in their constitutions. A large body of precedence continues to grant the state the right to regulate gun carry, ownership, and sale/transfer in a number of ways without constitutional challenge. Heller changed none of that.

If I had a nickel for every time you've called me a sociopath, I'd be runnin' over kittens in a new H2.

Thank you for verifying my thesis regarding gun fetishists, Ben. Now that you've thrown your little tantrum, perhaps we can get back to discussing the topic at hand - drones. Anyone care to take a crack at those questions?

Gun ownership isn't tracked. We do have gun sales, surveys, and crime stats to work from, however. Demographics and politics of gun ownership The takeways. Younger people own far fewer guns than older. Northeasterners own fewer guns than the rest of the country. Republicans own more guns than Democrats. Conservatives own more guns than liberals. Rural people own more guns than urban people. Considering that America is urbanizing, older folks are dying off, younger folks are (far) more socially liberal, and that the popularity of blood sports involving guns is no the decline, this data indicates the likelihood of a decline in gun fetishism in the coming decades. Gun proponents will cite short term upticks in gun sales since 2005. Long term trend? A response to Obamaphobia? War fever (wars do provide great marketing for kill toys)? Blip or long term trend? We'll see. the overwhelming passage of I594 a) indicates that in at least one western state voters want the gun violence to stop and they're willing to put limits on gun ownership to do it, and b) provides a successful blueprint for other states to follow suit. And actually, Ben, I can discern no difference between your insulting, aggressive, pro-violence statements and the rest of the gun fetishists I've encountered on the internet. The general web behavior of gun fetishists on the web is mostly homogeneous in this regard. You don't strike me as calm and reasonable at all, at least not in this format. Quite the opposite. Here's a hint - gun control isn't about hating anyone. While there is some concern about the number of aggressive, paranoid, mostly older men in this country being heavily armed, the main concern is about reducing the very high number of people who are shot in this country. The 'armed, polite society' is bullshit, of course - few gun fetishists even believe that whopper. If that were true, the Wild West would have been quiet and Johannesburg would be the safest city in the world. So gun control proponents enact a few reasonable safeguards - like background checks (duh) and time/place/manner restrictions (bars, schools). The gun fetishists invariably freak out - little wonder they haven't won the trust of the rest of the population.

Standard gun fetish bluster. It all sounds the same. The guy wants to torture people. What do you expect? Or, more accurately, he wants other people to do his torturing for him. Something just ain't right there. Creepy. As WA state voters just overwhelmingly proved, the NRA can be brushed aside.

I'm not fixated on guns. I don't work on the issue at all, in fact (other than voting). I grew up with them. I'm actually a good shot. But both gun violence and gun ownership are fantastically high in the US - both are outliers among civilized nations. This leads me to conclude that we can improve on gun violence by reducing gun ownership. Background checks are a start. I'm hesitant to fully support another widespread prohibition on anything after 42 years of failed and damaging Drug War, but I also believe that we need to vigorously act to reduce gun violence in the US. Sound public policy is one tool that should be used to do this. Ending the Drug War would do much to reduce gun fetishism, IMO. In the end, the new generation - not as enamored with guns as those it will replace, may solve the problem of extreme gun fetishism in the US. Who knows?

It's true that Americans practice unspeakable cruelty. Guantanamo torture camp, keeping a man alone in a tiny cell for 40 years for 23 hours a day, the warehousing of the mentally ill in prisons, our first place incarceration rate - the list is long. We've done arguably worse in the past - slavery, the ethnic cleansing of native Americans, the Civil War, strategic bombing, Hiroshima - so apparently we can and are learning to be better human beings. We can certainly do a lot better than we are now. Extreme wealth concentration, science denial (at our extreme peril with regards to the climate), repression of women's rights, voter suppression, glorification of warfare, solid support for the proliferation of guns in America, denigration of the environment, anti-gay bigotry. These are all examples of American dysfunction we can improve upon. Still, if history is any guide, war begets more war, and America does love war, apparently, considering how often this country not only engages in them but starts them. Still, there is the pesky little problem of what to do when groups like the Third Reich, Taliban, or the IS begins a campaign of egregious human rights abuses. If actual precision killing of their top leadership without civilian casualties were possible, would that be the most moral course of action? Stepping back a bit from the hypothetical to the actual, if drone strikes produce the least number of civilian casualties of the tactics available for killing said leadership, is that the best moral option to take? Both of these questions assume perfect intelligence with regards to the targets in question, and that is far from what reality at this point. Or is what happens in places like Afghanistan just not an American problem? I'm just asking questions here.