Shooting at Congressional Baseball Practice

[thesloppy]

When it comes to second ammendment/gun rights, the 'both sides' argument (which I can be quite fond of myself) rings pretty false. Those particular lines are well divided, and the opposing positions are pretty much a fundamental part of each party's platform. Are you going to see bias from the constituents & politicos on the topic? Absolutely, because the political lines are well set & divided. The only thing the parties seem to share on the topic of guns is that they like to talk a lot, and really loudly, but they're not particularly concerned about decisive legislation.

[Warhammer]

Originally Posted by SackAttack

1) if you can't show your work, what you have is a dismissal of the litany of rhetoric on the right based on your casually held belief that both sides are bad, so vote Republican.

2) despite the fact that I can, and have, cited a litany of rhetoric from the right, I'm pretty sure my exhortation upthread said "whatever your politics, there are no shortage of people for whom to vote who can represent your ideals without casually suggesting the murder of their political opposites as the only way to advance those ideals, so maybe vote for the rational folks, instead?"

Or words to that effect.

Spare me the holier than thou crap.

I may not have been clear, but both sides of the aisle pull the crap with demonizing the other side, putting crosshairs on target incumbents, saying we need to kill the other side, calling the opponent a Nazi, Stalinist, etc., and crap like that. The fact that I do not have the inclination nor the time to go digging for 10 different sources only to illustrate that point, only to have those sources called into question because they are not a given side's preferred source for news does not invalidate the argument.

[thesloppy]

Originally Posted by Warhammer

I may not have been clear, but both sides of the aisle pull the crap with demonizing the other side, putting crosshairs on target incumbents, saying we need to kill the other side, calling the opponent a Nazi, Stalinist, etc., and crap like that.

I think that's a fair point. That said, that kind of violent rhetoric & innuendo is much more potent and suggestive coming from someone who is also inciting you to protect your second amendment rights (sometimes in the same breath) versus someone who is using those same questionable metaphors to sell you a platform of social programs.

[JediKooter]

Originally Posted by thesloppy

I think that's a fair point. That said, that kind of violent rhetoric & innuendo is much more potent and suggestive coming from someone who is also inciting you to protect your second amendment rights (sometimes in the same breath) versus someone who is using those same questionable metaphors to sell you a platform of social programs.

Good point man. Not referring to Warhammer here or really anyone in this thread, but, I think you kind of picked up on a huge problem the conservative/republican side has and that's their almost complete lack of nuance, especially when it comes to guns...and taxes.

[nol]

Originally Posted by JediKooter

Good point man. Not referring to Warhammer here or really anyone in this thread, but, I think you kind of picked up on a huge problem the conservative/republican side has and that's their almost complete lack of nuance, especially when it comes to guns...and taxes.

That's a feature, not a bug, when the goal is to appeal to people incapable of understanding nuance and to create more of those types of people in future generations by cutting funding for education and research. I don't think anyone could really dispute that it's working.

[JediKooter]

Originally Posted by nol

That's a feature, not a bug, when the goal is to appeal to people incapable of understanding nuance and to create more of those types of people in future generations by cutting funding for education and research. I don't think anyone could really dispute that it's working.

You have a very good point, Nol. I think I've sprained my neck from shaking my head in disappointment.

[Brian Swartz]

Originally Posted by SackAttack

it's clear to anybody possessing the most basic reading comprehension that what the conservative political class means isn't "call your Senator and get engaged in political advocacy."

No disagreement here. That's not what I said it was either.

Originally Posted by SackAttacki

You may not think the people who are voting think it's reasonable to assassinate their political rivals.

But they vote for the people who DO make such insinuations, and they donate to political groups that DO make such insinuations, and so on.

Yeah, but a lot of that simply goes back to the lesser of two evils stuff. Are the voting for those groups/people specifically because of those insinuations, or are they doing so because they generally are more aligned with them than their political opposition for other reasons?(Answer: much more the latter than the former). Or do you think that every single person who voted for Hillary is responsible for personally endorsing every single thing she's done? Perhaps, as the polling data overwhelming has indicated, most people held their nose and took the most acceptable of the bad options available to them, as they(using poor reasoning IMO) saw it?

Some of your examples(Angle and Sullivan) don't even directly support your point. Lowry and Pratt moreso, and I don't think I'm breaking any new ground here by calling such statements disgusting. As far as looking for example of 'the other side' doing it, you don't have to go any further than the 2004 Democratic Primary, in which eight of the nine candidates openly and most of them repeatedly referred to Dubya as the 'enemy', and demonstrated far primal response and emotional animus to the sitting president than the did to Al-Qaeda. There's also the 'this is one of the bad days' statement in reference to SecDef Rumsfeld, and so on and so forth, etc. Of course that '04 primary was a work of genius in comparison to the most recent Republican one, and I would agree there has been more inflammatory rhetoric on the GOP side in recent years. You won't catch me voting for either candidate's presidential nominees anytime soon unless they make wholesale changes. I'm not here saying 'oh both sides do it the same, and in the same proportions', but some of it isn't even dog whistle stuff. The statement by Angle and even Trump's seem directly pointed at exactly what I was talking about: people rising up in armed revolution as a counterbalance to existing tyranny.

[Thomkal]

Scalise discharged from hospital after recovering from an infection:

http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/26/politi...ged/index.html