Gas Bandit's Political Thread V: The Vampire Likes Bats

Europe is super left because socialism is easier to afford when America can do all your military spending for you. ;)
America could do a little more socialism for the middle and lower class if the MIC didn't keep bribing for more 'not for the troops or vets' military spending.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
America could do a little more socialism for the middle and lower class if the MIC didn't keep bribing for more 'not for the troops or vets' military spending.
One of the zingers from the last debate: "If you think defending America is too expensive, wait til you see how expensive NOT defending it will be!"

But yeah, there's a whole lot of "$300 hammer" nonsense going around, methinks. Also it's time to cut our losses on the F-35.
 
Very well. How about the fact that Trump may be an idiot talking about building a wall, but we've already built several hundreds of kilometers of wall to "stop" the immigration from Syria and Afghanistan?
Politicians advocating "renegotiating" the Geneva Convention to limit refugee rights?
Politicians suggesting only allowing refugees in after they've signed a waiver to not practice their religion?
Politicians ordering all immigrants to visibly wear colored badges to indicate their status?

The Nazi's aren't all that far away in some European countries; mostly Central and Eastern Europe, but the right wing politicians in Belgium or the Netherlands would gladly follow their examples. The migration crisis is really showcasing how completely backwards some parties still are on some topics.

And mind you, I'm far from in favor of open borders, but....
This just reminds me how amused I get when people bitch about our immigration policies. I get that it's because historically the US was more open about it, but damn.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
I don't think a wall is as "insane" as a lot of people claim, but if you ask me, the way to go about this is to "sour the milk." Spend 4-8 years doing a federal audit of employment. Anyone found employing a person illegally in the U.S. gets a year in jail per illegal hire, plus a $1mil fine to the company each. Also, the jail time applies to every single manager from the hiring manager up - they all get the slammer. That will prevent boardroom suits from pressuring middle management to break the law, because it will be their ass, too.

Also, naturally, any state, county, or city functionary who tries to block enforcement will also get jailtime. No more "sanctuary cities."

When the jobs for illegals dry up, they'll self deport. They got themselves here, they can get themselves out.
 
Jeb Bush. And nobody wants him. Except, of course, for the GOP Leadership/Establishment. But nobody else.
Did Kasich drop out? I've been sorta incommunicado as I traveled from home to the West Coast. I know that for awhile there the issue for Jeb AND Kasich was that the other guy was around and they didn't need two of them.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Did Kasich drop out? I've been sorta incommunicado as I traveled from home to the West Coast. I know that for awhile there the issue for Jeb AND Kasich was that the other guy was around and they didn't need two of them.
Kasich spent the whole last debate just interrupting people and being a dick, he's pretty much done I think - as if he ever had a chance to start with.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Hostages apparently taken at the concert hall. But not a lot of clarity about what is going on. News websites lag, naturally, and twitter is flooded with "omg the world is so dark (frowny)" spam.
 
Yeah, only heard about it 10min ago myself. So many people's phones keep going off because they're subscribed to feeds from CNN, MSNBC, etc.

--Patrick
 
At least 30+ dead
-> Hostage situation in concert hall Bataclan
-> Shootings in at least one restaurant (le Petit Cambodge) and one bar (Le Carillon)
-> At least 3 explosions around the football stadium (where the friendly France-Germany match was going on at the moment)
-> Public of that football match is still being held locked in by police while they sweep the area
-> President (present at football match) was evacuated
 
-> Declaration of National Emergency, all borders closed, all non-essential transport asked to stop.
-> 35 dead confirmed, some media says 60+
 
...why France?

--Patrick
Most problems faced in France in the past ten years have been because of home grown terrorism. France was 'closest" to Northern Africa and the Middle East out of the "big" countries and colonial powers. After liberating (or however you want to call it) Algeria, it was, for a long time, possible for Algerians to move to France and get the nationality without much ado. Combined with a shared language, this means there was a lot of immigration in the seventies and eighties. Many of these ended up in poor neighborhoods, slums, unemployed, uneducated, and so forth; their descendants form a large, and angry, part of the lower classes of Paris (see: riots in the Banlieue a year or two back). These are, of course, easy targets for radicalization.
 
Seems really, really, really unlikely. The subway bombings in Madrid were first attributed to ETA as well....

Given that you can hear the bombers cry out for Allah and Syria, it seems reallllly unlikely they're to blame, though, in this case.[DOUBLEPOST=1447458969,1447458922][/DOUBLEPOST]
Don't do that at work.
Too late :p
But that's far from enough to be a problem here :p

I didn't know that was called a "basque".
 

GasBandit

Staff member
French media is now reporting that as many as 100 people, previously reported as hostages at the Bataclan concert venue, are dead.[DOUBLEPOST=1447461932,1447461778][/DOUBLEPOST]An unidentified French police union official has said the explosions heard were suicide bombings.
 
French media is now reporting that as many as 100 people, previously reported as hostages at the Bataclan concert venue, are dead.[DOUBLEPOST=1447461932,1447461778][/DOUBLEPOST]An unidentified French police union official has said the explosions heard were suicide bombings.
Shit, last thing I heard about Bataclan was positive and now this :(.
Nothing official yet but media reporting more than 150 dead.
 
I saw something earlier about attacks at the Louvre. This was in addition to the stadium, restaurant, mall, and concert hall. Was that just a rumor that someone ran with?
 
Most problems faced in France in the past ten years have been because of home grown terrorism. France was 'closest" to Northern Africa and the Middle East out of the "big" countries and colonial powers. After liberating (or however you want to call it) Algeria, it was, for a long time, possible for Algerians to move to France and get the nationality without much ado. Combined with a shared language, this means there was a lot of immigration in the seventies and eighties. Many of these ended up in poor neighborhoods, slums, unemployed, uneducated, and so forth; their descendants form a large, and angry, part of the lower classes of Paris (see: riots in the Banlieue a year or two back). These are, of course, easy targets for radicalization.
And the French response to this has basically been "Well, if you were more FRENCH, you wouldn't have these problems." It's ironic how close American and French attitudes to domestic terrorism arising from class are.
 
Missouri hasn't been quite right since the '50's.






The 1850's.
Yeah. The "Bleeding Kansas" border war kind of set the whole stage.

For those not familiar, Kansas was, due to the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, going to chose whether to be slave or free by popular sovereignty - ie, votes by the settlers themselves. In November of 1854, hundreds of "border ruffians" from Missouri crossed over and flooded the ballot boxes with votes for pro-slavery Congressman John Whitfield, with 1729 fraudulent votes compared to 1114 legitimate votes. In March of 1855, the Kansas Territory had an election for its Territorial Legislature, which would determine whether the state would be slave or free. Once again, Missouri pro-slavers crossed over and pro-slavery delegates were elected in 37 of 39 seats, with many places casting more votes than they had residents. Over the summer of 1855, 1200 New Englanders emigrated to Kansas and were armed by Abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher with Sharp's rifles. In 1856, Congress sent a special committee to review the elections, and determined that "if the election had been limited to actual residents, a Free State legislature would have been elected." They determined that the current legislature had been falsely elected and had no power to pass law. The territorial legislature decided that Congress's special committee could suck a big bag of dicks, and proceeded to seat the pro-slavery delegates that had been fraudulently elected, then moved the capital closer to the Missouri border and started passing pro-slavery laws. Anti-slavery residents protested these actions and drafted the Topeka Constitution, which basically no one paid attention to. In May 1856, Missourians crossed the border to sack Lawrence, KS, burning the Free State hotel, destroying the newspaper offices, and ransacking homes and businesses. Intermittent violence flared basically until the start of the Civil War.
 
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