Bernie Sanders vs. Martin O’Malley on Gun Control

I pray your right.

I propose a vote of No Confidence in government.

Made in large quantities by the lowest bidder?

I had the same reaction, knowing that for many years the most popular rifle caliber in the US for hunting was (for all I know still is) the .30-06, a “military” round. So it must be that “high powered” ammo sold for use in “assault weapons”, specifically .223, as it was designed “for the sole purpose of killing people,” and does “catastrophic damage” to a body. Of course, O’Malley fails to note that there is no law that requires an ammunition seller to do background checks on ammo buyers, and I really doubt that Holmes was the one and only high volume purchaser in the country (separate and apart from the fact that he didn’t order it at one time, and that most of it was left in his apartment where is did no harm to anyone.) Nor did he explain why a law protecting manufacturers from liability for the independent criminal acts of third persons (that the Phillips directly challenged) should be changed. (Actually, Hillarity wants that changed also.) But from a lawyer’s perspective, a law permitting such actions would be contrary to the last seventy years of products liability law that holds manufacturers (and sellers) strictly liable only for manufacturing or design defects in the product sold–and where misuse is an affirmative defense.

While share your views and frustration, the Democratic Party isn’t the problem: those people that support them are the problem. The democrats are smart and understand just who they’re wooing. This country has a significant percentage of bed-wetters, free-loaders, racial-dividers, union goons and outright socialists/communists. This is their core, but it still isn’t 50%, so they try to demonize and demoralize the conservative viewpoint. But I think that and the race card are just about played out. Now they’ve introduced the gun control and LGBT-cards. Know the enemy and never assume they’re out of touch.

O’ Malley is used to getting his way in Maryland with it being essentially a one-party state.

Well, the rest of the country is not Maryland and this time he will actually face stiff competition from the opposing party unlike the cake-walk of gerrymandered Maryland.

Recent trends are in the opposite direction. California is a large state with regions that are geographically and culturally diverse. Its liberal politics are due to the large coastal cities. The inland regions are quite conservative. It has been suggested to break California into five separate states. One sees the same split in Colorado, which is dominated by Denver, and Illinois, which is dominated by Chicago.

I think from a constitutional aspect, you COULD consolidate states, but why would they? The newly consolidated state would lose their Senate representation, or rather, have it reduced to only 2 senators. You’d have to amend the Constitution to change that, and the less populated states would never agree to allowing the larger states to have more senators than the smaller ones. Increasing the # of Senators per state is the only part of the Constitution that cannot be amended. That’s the last line of Article V. (5)

It only takes 13 states to prevent a Constitutional Amendment from being ratified, which is why the Second Amendment will never be repealed. They’ll just continue to nibble away at it through Supreme Court cases until it’s as dead and irrelevant as the Tenth Amendment is now. That’s why we can’t let Hillary into the Oval Office, nor let the democrats retake the senate if she does. Four of the SCOTUS Justice’s are over 75 years old, they could go anytime.. Ginsberg and Scalia are the 2 oldest of the bunch

I think you could draw a circle around Seattle and another around Olympia, cut those out and make those areas a liberal state. The rest of WA would gladly go with the Conservatives for the most part. Problem is the other state would lose the revenue from Microsoft and some of the other software companies in Seattle and Bellevue. As well as the employment from Amazon, Boeing and some other large companies.

Yeah, it’s been talked about for a long time. May as well continue down California and lop off the coast from the Eastern ~2/3 of the state. Basically the same as how it breaks down in OR and WA, where the population centers are on the left (and the Left) and basically everything East of there is heavy into farming/agriculture, less populated, and to the Right.

Well, the DNC originally thought that Bernie was a harmless, lovable old man, that he’d just go out on the campaign trail and yell at the clouds. He’d be a nice counterpoint to Hillary, and make her look a little less lefty than she is. IOW, Bernie would serve a useful purpose without really hurting anything.

Now that he’s getting serious money, they have a problem. But even worse than that for the DNC, Bernie is attracting the True Believers (the students, the activists, the small donor class) in the Democratic Party, whilst the broom pilot in a pantsuit has negatives that just keep going up, up and up.

Sooner or later, the issue of party non-affiliation will have to come up.

I wouldn’t be surprised if he was a “stood up” candidate just to make Bernie look reasonable.

He’s ready if something happens to one of the front runners, and to build his credibility for another job, say, running next time. Personally, having a character in The Wire based on you is an automatic disqualification in my book (Tommy Carcetti, the politician).

“That boy in the middle ain’t right.”

If you put any person with a Democrat party membership in any executive office, they get to choose all cabinet officers and initiate most foreign policy.

Think about that. Another Dem controlling the DOJ and therefore the ATF. No Garands from South Korea because that’s international trade, or lifting the trade restrictions for guns with Russia.

You’re seeing one empty seat – there’s tens if not hundreds more we have to think about.

OK, here’s two reasons why Sanders won’t be the next POTUS, barring a complete implosion on the GOP side (like a convention that produces Jeb as the nominee):

1. Sanders’ spending plan is absolutely unrealistic, and in order to fund it, or even just a part of it, he would need to raise taxes substantially. Where has Sanders been talking about raising taxes? Oh, that’s right, on the richest DNC constituency there is, Wall Street:

https://berniesanders.com/issues/reforming-wall-street/

The transaction tax would effectively end HFT. That’s a big profit center for several investment banks. The attack on bonuses will drive Wall Streeters insane, and his ideas of about reforming the Fed would pull the bailout rug from beneath their feet. Oh, and as of this past weekend’s debate, Sanders is saying that he would lock Goldman Sachs out of his cabinet. That was a huge applause line in the debate.

Result? Wall Street is going to work very hard to see Sanders fail.

Now, the irony is that I agree with many of Sanders’ perspectives about Wall Street and the Fed. I might differ in a few solutions, but I wholly and completely agree with him that they’re a group of frauds and thieves.

2. Sanders’ posture and motions aren’t those of a leader. People take a lot of cues from body language, and for observations about this, I defer to my wife, who has proven herself highly astute in this regard.

Her observation about Sanders in this past debate was that “the way he stands, the way he moves, the way he speaks … none of it says ‘presidential material.’ ” O’Malley looked/moved more like a POTUS, she said, but what comes out of his mouth is USDA Grade-A nonsense. She also noticed that Hillary is now wall-eyed – her right eye looks to her right of where her left eye is looking. We stopped the DVR a dozen times to look at this, and my wife has it nailed. Hillary does have a problem with her eyes.

Talking to a couple of women who also saw the DNC debate, they had issues with Sanders too. Sanders just didn’t give them confidence. They agree with him (these were Democratic women), but they said “he is just missing something.”

One thing that Bernie has demonstrated is that he’s willing to talk seriously just about anything and to anyone, no matter how distant they might be politically. I mean, what other liberal candidate has given a talk at the Liberty University, specifically prefacing it with: “I believe from the bottom of my heart that it is vitally important for those us who hold different views to be able to engage in a civil discourse .. It is easy to go out and talk to people who agree with you … It is is harder, but not less important, to try to communicate with those who do not agree with us on every issue.”

With that in mind, gun rights org should call Bernie out for a debate on the subject. But I do hope they’ll have some smart, educated people for that, and not just Wayne LaPierre.