misteraven

It's statistically irrelevant. In fact gun violence as a whole, judged in the context of preventable american deaths is statistically irrelevant and when you look at how many of them are by AR15's, its hardly more than a rounding error. Not only is it not in the top 10, but its a tiny fraction of the number one killer of Americans, yet it dominates the social conversation thanks to the mainstream media. If truly the intent is to save lives, far less investment could be made to any of the first few causes with a return on that investment being exponential by comparison. As such, its hard to believe that there isn't a different agenda at play. Sort of speaks for itself until you infuse the topic with all the emotion that the talking points in that document actually advise. And I'm not saying that the topic you bring up shouldn't be studied, but seems ridiculous to me to see NPR chase that article and not see it as more than another bit against gun rights like so many more of their articles have been.

Not sure what PBS has to do with NPR. One is a non profit, member based lobbying group and the other is a media organization that is partially tax payer subsidized. Growing majority according to mainstream media? Most of which are left leaning and staking surveys incorporating the psycho linguistics of documents like I've posted? The same polling groups that said Hillary Clinton was going to win the presidency by a landslide? Sorry man, I have zero faith in polls. I've actually sat in on focus groups as part of brand consultancy work we did for the agency and subsequently advised in every instance to the brand that its an absolute waste of time. You can produce any result you want and end of the day, its not at all representative of anything since its logistically impossible to survey a group large enough to accurately reflect the entire demographic. Its your prerogative if you have more faith in them than I do, but don't see whatever result comes out of whatever poll as anything meaningful regardless of whether it supports my position or not. Indeed, the Electoral College was specifically intended to break up dense populations from dominating politics. Has zero to do with education and everything to do with keeping a key city or two for speaking for the entire nation. Boston, Philadelphia and New York were already densely populated at the time that was established and it was clear to them as now, that if there was no electoral college, basically the entire country would be at the mercy of whatever those cities felt was a priority. Obviously like in Los Angeles differs greatly from life in New York City, but neither of them are very representative of life in the vast majority of the other 98% of the geographical United States. I've had the benefit of living in the most densely populated parts of the USA and now, one of the least populated... Not only is the culture entirely different, but the day to day reality hardly resembles each other. Personally, I think at this point we might all be better off just splitting the country up, but then again if we followed our own charter and left the larger concentrations of power in the hands of the state governments instead of the federal, you'd immediately eliminate most of the problems.

Lead poisoning from shooting is a non issue or we'd see evidence and discussion based around occupations that center around exposure to shooting... LEO and Military. Fact of the matter is that the vast majority of small arms ammunition is FMJ, which means you don't even get exposed to lead. Further to that, more and more ammo these days isn't even lead core in an FMJ round. There's very few companies producing the core components to ammo in the USA anymore, which obviously is the bullet itself. Under the Obama administration, they managed to shut a few down based on new EPA legislation, but again... Not a huge deal since since ammo was already migrating to more sophisticated production and materials with better ballistic characteristics. So yeah, when you start to look at threat assessments as to what can actually inflict unnatural death and illness, you're way reaching to be considering that you might get lead poising from breathing blowback resulting from shooting guns or otherwise handling ammunition. To spend time on an article about it, therefore is either a scientific paper exploring a possible topic or agenda driven propaganda and considering NPR and their track record, which of those two was pretty obvious. Google it... Find how many credible cases of lead poising have actually been attributed to firing modern ammunition instead of articles talking about how guns have yet another danger attributed to them.

Except it doesn't. Fact of the matter is statistically the USA basically boils down to a 50/50 split in terms of political identity.Between natural (minimal) changes and margin for error its almost dead set at 50/50 and has been throughout political history. Whole other conversation, but some say that is by design. Geographically speaking, which is important to note in an electoral college system such as ours, it actually more often skews conservative.

source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-death-by-us-police-by-race/

Betting the EU breaks up the monopoly first followed by the USA if it can get its shit together.

I'll be amazed if Libra ends up going anywhere. The name alone, is a bad move in terms of the US market and I can't imagine how low the metrics on trust in Facebook must be, even with how oblivious / distracted / uncaring most of our population is. Honestly, its fascinating how arrogant Facebook is that they think they can step into a space like this. But I've been saying all along they're allowed unfair competitive advantage by our government, so I wouldn't be surprised if they can leverage the same to pull it off. I do believe that more likely as it evolves, the underlying tech becomes further abstracted by simple and intuitive UI and tools and that it'll be awfully hard to fend off the advantages of going with a more traditional crypto that isn't issued / regulated by the establishment. Looking forward to seeing the Fed becoming irrelevant along with most, if not all, of the middle men that make up the banking system.

You have more faith in people that I do. In business, strategic alliances are part of business. Politics most often takes practices you see in business to the extreme, presumably because the stakes are higher and likely because at the end of the day, they're the same (crony capitalism). I have a very tough time believing that the two entities are entirely independent and that a basic closed door deal along the lines of, 'if we're in power, your funding is assured' type conversations / deals have not taken place. Regardless of such, they are not unbiased and objective and truth be told, there is no charter in our government that puts programs like that as a government responsibility. It's a misappropriation of tax payer funds no matter what, but fact that its also obviously bias, should not only trigger congressional investigation, but very real consequences for those on both sides of facilitating this situation. Even if NPR was fighting for constitutional rights and encouraging gun ownership, I would not be okay with my (or any tax revenue) being used to bank roll it.

Global news here is in the far minority. When I lived in Berlin, BBC and World News and some Russian news network was hugely popular and dominated the landscape. That’s not the case here. Most news, including CNN defaults to the American version and it’s rare for MSM to cover international news unless it’s about specific US interests. Bias in itself. maybe that’s why we get pegged as thinking we’re the center of the universe, but it’s not really part of the culture here. We hear about churches in Europe burning down and the rain forest on fire but it’s a temporary blip in our national news. You really have to go out of your way to be up on stuff outside the USA cause our streams are mainly only focused on here. Plus my perspective are based off my experience. I can’t speak for life in places like Australia or elsewhere because I’m here.

Oh yeah and in regards to the contradictions referenced in my references... Like any reference, they should be a starting point towards your own research and understanding of truth. But they might be defining a position in more than way, which here they are. One is talking about organizations controlling the media, whereas the other is talking about individuals that own them.

No doubt every person has a bias, but news was intended to be objective. That means at least making credible efforts to present facts, versus what we see, which is editorializing. Thing is, there was a time not long ago when editorials were preceded by bold identifiers that said, "opinion" or "editorial" and that is no longer the case. People don't want to think for themselves (general statement). We live in era where attention spans have been devolved to bite sized consumable content and engagement often requires sensationalist headlines to attain. News articles are no longer a presentation of fact and context, so that the reader can form their own opinion. I can't speak for your references to Australian national news source, neither can I speak to the British ones as I dont read either. But as you've mentioned yourself about America's NPR, they bash Trump at every opportunity ands if you go back and look, they rarely if ever were critical of Obama. That's the definition of bias. I'd challenge you to find a single objective article on gun rights and if you can happen to find one that flew under my radar, I'll show you 25 more advocating gun control for each. As stated, we are not Russia and power here is not consolidated. They aren't a moth piece for Trump, but a propaganda arm for the Democrats that is subsidized with tax payer money. Even still, at least most the country understands that NPR is hugely left bias which is a different thing the more insidious implementation allowed under the Obama era extension of the National Defense Authorization Act. Even the fact it was rolled into a bill with that name should raise red flags and get people nervous.

First you've put out there that I actually really like. Id have done a different outsole, but I can live with those. The upper and colorway is really strong assuming he's wearing a different color way on each foot and they didnt do some cross color bullshit. GoreTex is awesome.

Nice work @Ray40, you're making obvious progress with that last round.

@SukiSukiNowhas been holding it down quite a bit as far as putting up stickers... Maybe she'll jump in and post.

Unfortunately we're largely stuck having to cite MSM, but I'd please name any USA based MSM that isn't hugely biased. It was already bad tp begin with but with H.R. 4310 (National Defense Authorization Act) and changes made to the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 , for all intents and purposes was the government reestablishing itself as a news outlet. For all intents and purposes this was the US Government reestablishing a propaganda arm that had been previously banned through legislation and putting out 'news'. Considering how news media works, this means that suddenly news outlets had a steady stream of content to report, which in itself is already biased as you've now lined everybody up to report on the topics you've deemed to be important at that moment. Seeing as how it works on the media side I have experience with, coupled with what I've read and seen, you either play ball or you find yourself on the outside. Couple that with the fact that most major MSM is ultimately owned by the same handful of people, and for most of them news being an ancillary business and often run at a loss, you have to question what purposes they serve for these companies if profit is clearly not it. I get people that are critical of what I'm saying and acknowledge I don't have a secret smoking gun, at least beyond the reams of documents about this an so much more that Snowden through his life away for, but I find it exceptionally difficult to accept that the intent of MSM is unbiased reporting on its face and once you start to look at the context and mountains of circumstantial evidence (the best we have access to), it becomes more an issue of how can anyone trust a single thing they have to say, including the off topic innocuous shit. For reference, look at this entry from politifact analyzing this very topic... https://www.politifact.com/facebook-fact-checks/statements/2019/aug/23/facebook-posts/no-obama-didnt-make-it-legal-media-outlets-purpose/ They literally start by claiming it false (for the facebook generation that's incapable of reading anything longer than a meme) and then go through and briefly summarize it, which really does the legislation or anyone attempt to understand it very little justice. But the kicker comes in the conclusion... They have acknowledged Obama signed the bill into law and then qualify their ruling that he did not set up a propaganda arm or make it legal for "private-sector media outlets to present outright false information" and then moves on to describe how they did exactly that by saying, "Instead, it allowed government-sponsored news like Voice of American to be broadcast in the United States. It removed restrictions on U.S.-generated news from being presented to American audiences." Like seriously?! Are people that fucking stupid? Name one government that has established government based news arm that is not used for propaganda. Russia, China, Venezuela... What possible business does the government have in establishing a news arm of government? Personally I find it insulting reading shit like that, but if most the masses aren't going to ever bother getting riled up and just continue to jump on the bandwagon and fight with each other over whatever their team is saying and all the fake news put out by the other team while the whole thing chugs along, they fuck it... If it works, it works, as shameful as the whole thing is. And to clarify a bit on my statements above regarding government and propaganda... Obviously we do not have a unified government. Clearly there's a cold war going on at the highest levels with both sides under mining each other at every step. In fact, it's the only thing that differentiates our propaganda from those of nations like Russia and China is that over there they have a consolidation of power that is essentially absolute so the communications are simple and consistent. Here we have two sides in power struggle, likely driven by outside forces and trying to undermine each other at every step with increasing disregard for obvious the attempts are. These 15 Billionaires Own America's News Media Companies https://www.forbes.com/sites/katevinton/2016/06/01/these-15-billionaires-own-americas-news-media-companies/#49c33fae660a Who Owns the Media? (interactive file attached below) Massive corporations dominate the U.S. media landscape. Through a history of mergers and acquisitions, these companies have concentrated their control over what we see, hear and read. https://www.freepress.net/issues/media-control/media-consolidation/who-owns-media The 6 Companies That Own (Almost) All Media [INFOGRAPHIC] https://www.webfx.com/blog/internet/the-6-companies-that-own-almost-all-media-infographic/ Who Owns the Media_2018 Data.xlsx

Quite hard to find references on Google unless you change the date range. All current searches are articles of his claims and criticisms of that claim, but if you change to a custom data range and redo the search so it predates this year, pretty much most of those same MSM sources have articles like this one... National Security Under Trump, gains against ISIS have ‘dramatically accelerated’ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/under-trump-gains-against-isis-have-dramatically-accelerated/2017/08/04/8ad29d40-7958-11e7-8f39-eeb7d3a2d304_story.html Trump has been hard charging from day one of his announcement to run for President. Again, I'm not a fan of the guy or much of what he's done, but reality is that he's been an outsider all along, if not a pariah and in comparison to most President's since Reagan and most especially Obama, dude has mostly done what he said he was going to do for better or worse. Sure we can point to dismantling the ACA and building the wall along the southern border as counters to those statement, but all things considered he's kept to what he said he would do far more than what we're used to seeing from candidates that ultimately make it into office. Hiring Mathis to the Secretary of Defense was going to all but guarantee the largest offensive to that end short of an all out invasion, which for most intents and purposes it was.

Begging for that red A-Team stripe.

@Lorne_Malvojust won the page. Congrats!

Seen it advertised and came up on some hunts I did last year when I was looking for pants that looked half decent she didn’t blow out with all the manual labor shit I’m always having to do out here. Settled on some other stuff from the locals sports store that looked okay and was on sale called Kuhl. Stupid name, but been pounding the shot out of it and it’s fairly rugged. Also comfortable so east to sit all day at the computer in then or wearing to go pound fence posts and string up wire. They look pretty low key and fit well, so was a worthwhile purchase that I’d make again. Especially if I can find them on super sale again.

How trustworthy do you think that source is? Wonder how they're pulling together accurate metrics?

Just a tip that if you type the '@' symbol followed by the first few letter of a person's name, a pop up appears where you can select them. This will send a notification to that person same way it does on other social platforms. Example... @Ray40

^ so freakin good....

What, getting third parties to wax ones balls isn't a human right?!

Like Trump or not, one of Obama's weakest areas (intentional or not is another subject), was his foreign policy. He's a young, good looking, highly intelligent individual and an excellent orator. But his foreign policy was an unmitigated disaster, which is why America's 'enemies' were so emboldened. Russia doing flybys of our carriers and military assets and probing American air space out near Alaska, cutting deals with Iran that involved landing planes stuffed with cash, trading prisoners with them, etc, etc... Perhaps easy for Trump to not do a horrible job (arguably), do to how low the bar was set after Obama in that regard. And Trump did put a hurting on ISIS unlike what happened under the Obama administration, but whatever label (ISIS being the most recent) for the fanatics out there, its like whak-a-mole. As soon as we kill them, new ones pop up. You can bomb the shit out of them, even kill them by the scores, but the ideology and circumstance driving it lives on. In fact, the point @Mercer is ultimately making is that our intervention over there is just giving them more cause to justify their ideology and recruit new members into their ranks. What would be an interesting thing, though it would take a Constitutional Convention to ratify, would be an amendment that requires a president and anyone involved in foreign policy, war and national security to be qualified through actual war fighter and command experience. You can't be proficient and Kung-Fu reading a text book, same (IMHO) regarding waging war and engaging in foreign policy. Willing to bet that most legislators know dick about the nuance and cultural differences at play here since they can't even be bothered to do the least in learning about the guns they keep trying to ban; a far simpler topic.

Have to take what they "want' with a grain of salt. The military is an industry of professional war fighters. Their job security comes from fighting. Their budgets are qualified based off demonstrable need. That need comes from preparing for or engaging in war.