FACTORYRAT

I'm not sure why you disagree with the Brady bill, unless you think it's a good idea to sell openly to convicted felons and mentally disturbed persons without any restrictions. The fact is that almost no one is denied the right to buy a gun here. It is our second amendment right and that's what we live by. Much of the homicide going on is bad guys shooting bad guys, not a bad crime solution in the long run. Congress knows that there is no support for gun restrictions and I doubt we will ever see anything serious come out of Washington, ever. We are the most heavily armed citizens in the world.

What I would like to see, though, is a system of universal service where all able bodied persons 18-22 have to serve in a national service, get basic military and firearm training, and become citizen soldiers, just like the Swiss or Swedes. At least then we know that we have all had basic training, and god forbid another large shooting war, we have a huge reserve to call up on short notice. We let the children of the rich and privileged (can you spell Romney) avoid service and the rest of the fighting is carried by a very small percentage of the population. Just look, for instance, how many children of Congressman served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Ya.... How many kids of the top 500 CEOs served? Aha.... Bring back universal service and see how fast these wars come to a conclusion.

Amen to national service! 2 year mandatory military enlistment for the guys and I don't know for the girls (teaching or child care). Basic shooting skills and prepaying the priviledge of being an american.

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In solidarity,
firebug (aka Dave LaBenne, your friendly neighborhood pyro-man)

Compulsory service will not fly in this country since the the Korean and Vietnam conflicts left such horrible taste in people's mouths. This country does not need a large standing military like nations like China, and to a lesser extent Russia, it's former Soviet satellite states, and many European nations. Those nations have large militarys for different reasons such as proximity to other nations, populace suppression, local/political power projection, and lack of/insufficient technology just to name a few. We have a large military mostly to appease the single largest government employer, the arms manufacturing industry, as well as political pawn. I'd like to see the Marines turned back into an amphibious force (which they are talking about doing now), reduce in number, yet deploy our army along the southern border to defend and protect it against the war in Mexico, and increase investment in Air Force and Naval units which are MOST essential to national defense.

All in all, there's a reason why people voted in governors and legislators such as Snyder and Walker to name a few, and that's because they're tired of the same old crap where everything has been run to hell, and reality shows that mostly it's been democrats/liberals that have destroyed states. And now people and special interest groups are pissed off because things aren't the way they used to be anymore.

Heaven forbid a budget be balanced.
Heaven forbid public workers contribute like private workers do.
Heaven forbid we attract business (job creators) to a state that businesses would in old times be afraid to do business in.
Heaven forbid we put limits on welfare/unemployment benefits. (accused of being racist)
Heaven forbid we drug test for said benefits. (accused of being racist/profiling)
Heaven forbid we put more power/freedom back into the hands of the people.
Heaven forbid we encourage individualism and not generational poverty. (accused of being racist)
Heaven forbid we discourage the elevation to 'protected status' of people like gays, Muslims, etc.

I could go on and on, but I think you get the picture. A blind man can see the reality here.

Liberals prefer grandiose magic wand style policies that they think they can whip up out of thin air and will magically happen overnight, and then everybody could hold hands and sing Kumbaya. Obama, the man born from the corrupt, powerful, ultra-left Chicago political machine, is the king of all this. Obama will probably win this election because he's like the pied piper tooting his flute while most of the people that will vote for him are skipping along after him all happy and gay, and clueless, just because they are a minority (most blacks are going to vote for him just because he's black, let's face it) or they want to be on the dole forever or something, I don't know.

Sadly enough, neo-conservatives have poisoned the very heart of what true republo-conservatism stands for and am thoroughly against it. I take pride in the fact that I am to the right because I believe in getting ahead through hard work, having nothing outright handed to me, individuality, self-worth, self-merit, and being able to for the most part choose my own path in life among many other reasons. The leftists want to choose everything for you whether you like it or not, and it's not rhetoric. It's true reality. Obama is the most radical president since Carter, and gives him a run for his money.

Take a look around the government for a moment. Now I'm not saying everybody on the right is perfect because they most certainly aren't and there's several I'd like to see go, but that's a different discussion. Take a look at the people we have in government (or aspiring to office) that are just completely out of touch with and/or against everything that this country stands for.:

Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Dick Durbin, Claire McCaskill, Henry Waxman, Elizabeth Warren, Patty Murray, etc. These people would like nothing more than for Capitalism to be abolished so that they could exercise their neo-socialistic agendas. As long as the clueless, short sighted, narrow minded, close minded drones keep voting people like this into office, this nation will always be struggling. Always. The only solution is to give power back to the people and allow them to *gasp* make decisions in their own lives that will affect where they go, instead of telling them what they want such as what cars to buy, what they should learn in school, to purchase healthcare or else, what they should eat, blah blah blah....this is the Roman Empire all over again unless we get back to the basics and ideals of what this country was founded upon and prospered under. Wilson started it, Roosevelt enhanced it, and Carter and Obama have perfected it. Two of the most damaging presidents in American history are in the past 35 years and it's not Reagan, Bush, Clinton, or Dubya. The decline and erosion of traditional US morals and values started sharply with Carter, again with Clinton although he was a far better president than Carter, Obama, or Bush for that matter, and the bottom has fallen out with Obama.

Obama has made us a joke, bowing to kings, apologizing for everything in the past, appointing people like Kagan to the high court who have no business being there, and so on and so forth.

I hope Romney wins, as much as I personally don't care for him, just to get this bum and absolutely devastating administration out of office for the good of this nation and the world.

The idea of universal service won't really mean a large standing army. Look at the Swiss. It is a way of giving service to your country, maybe in a military way, maybe in construction or teaching, who knows. Do a year or two, and go home to civilian life.
Don't be fixated on the "liberal establishment". The local states have to balance budgets, and here in Michigan, as much as they hate Snyder, he is getting some fiscal sense back into Lansing. Nothing wrong with that. He should respect collective bargaining, but look at Detroit. Finally, under threat of an emergency manager, they have agreed to make some drastic changes that will balance the budget soon. Michigan has some very well run governments that live within their budgets, are pro business, and handle the tax money well. I'm sure Ohio is the same.

The changes happen bottom up. Start with you local government, your school board, make yourself heard. It's just like the union- make some noise.

Why are country is doomed. Would someone who really cares about there country really just want someone they know sucks to win so someone they are told not to like will lose? We just want our team to win even when it has no effect on our life what so ever. Romney is Obama 2.0. Sitting around talking about what these clowns say but never what they do. Crash, Romney isn't going to win, but I hope he does. I can't wait to see you come in here and parrot corporate news talking points on how this statistic or that shows how we are so much better now like they do with Obama. "Unemployment is down .000001% because Romney added to the defecate spending but told us it would be less". Enjoy everyone while we cheer on the destruction of our own country.

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Thank a tier 2 for your pay check

Romney is the biggest phony I have ever seen in national politics. Silver spoon baby from day one in Michigan. Comes here and tells us what a native Michigan son he is. Just like Madonna, he couldn't wait to get out of town and start gobbling on the big stuff. Hope he chokes on it.

Back on Romney, what a two faced idiot. The big "varmint hunter" sucking his way through the NRA. Guy has no pride at all. I'll just say that the NRA does some good work, but they do have their own fair share of the tin hat brigade and Romney is right there with them. Maybe they can explain what a varmint is to him.

Mitt Romney Courts Big Tin Foil
—By Tim Murphy
| Fri Apr. 13, 2012 11:54 AM PDT76

In the last four years, the National Rifle Association has accused President Barack Obama of plotting to ban handguns, quintuple the price of ammunition, eliminate the entire legal construct of "self defense," and working with the United Nations to do everything short of taking Charlton Heston's Glock from his cold dead hands—although surely that will come in due time. Few organizations have done as much of the nation's leading gun lobby to gin up right-wing fears about the President's secret motives—a sinister agenda that could end, NRA president Wayne LaPierre warned in February, with the end of freedom and the collapse of America as we know it.

Their reward: A meeting on Friday with the man who just might be the next President. For the NRA, Mitt Romney's speech at their annual convention in St. Louis (alongside luminaries like Ted "suck on my machine gun" Nugent) was continued validation of their privileged status in national politics; for Romney, it was a reminder of just how far he's willing to go prove to conservatives he's one of them. Even if it means speaking to a group whose recent rhetoric would make the Birchers blush.

It is an awkward marriage. The NRA convention is not an especially friendly venue for a man who famously admitted to hunting "small varmints." Although he recently confessed to owning two shotguns, Romney has done little to suggest he really knows what to do with them. When asked, at a debate in January, to identify the last time he'd gone hunting, he cracked, "I'm not going to describe all of my great exploits," before briefly confusing elk with moose. He addressed the group by video in 2011, and only became an NRA member in 2006, when it became clear that he was going to run for president.

But Romney's appearance on Friday was about much more than hunting. In making his pitch in St. Louis, he cozied up to a group that has capitalized on fears of a dictatorial power grab to push through legislation like Florida's "Stand Your Ground Law," the statute made famous by George Zimmerman which gives gun-owners the right to shoot someone in self-defense outside their home without making any effort to otherwise removes themselves from the situation.

In 2008, the NRA sent out a mailing outlining what it called "Obama's Ten Point Plan to 'Change' the Second Amendment." Although "Change" was in quotes, Obama had never actually suggested changing the Second Amendment. But that was the least of the mailing's errors. Among the 10 steps: "close down 90 percent of the gun shops in America"; "increase federal taxes on guns and ammunition by 500 percent"; "ban use of firearms for home defense"; "ban the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns"; "Restore voting rights for five million criminals."

None of these were part of the Obama platform. None of them have since been acted on. But none of that really matters to the NRA, which uses out-there arguments to make money and shift the conversation.

Last summer, even after the Gabrielle Giffords shooting in Tuscon had come and gone without any movement on the gun control front—and despite a number of small measures to actually loosen federal restrictions on gun ownership—LaPierre resurrected another classic right-wing conspiracy. LaPierre, author of The Global War on Your Guns: Inside the UN Plan to Destroy the Bill of Rights, began fundraising off of fears of something called the "United Nations Small Arms Treaty"—an almost-finished compact that would allow the international body to confiscate handguns from law-abiding Americans, and force gun owners to sign up for an international gun registry. One problem: There's no such thing as the UN Small Arms Treaty. There is a proposed weapons treaty, designed to cut down on illicit arms dealing, which has yet to be drafted and which the US had taken steps to ensure won't interfere with Second Amendment rights (even if it did, the Senate would simply block it).

Now that his 2008 fears of imminent gun confiscations haven't been realized, LaPierre has a new line: It's a trap! Obama's support for pro-gun legislation is actually a trick to lure gun owners into a false sense of security, and then, Pow! "It's all part of a massive Obama conspiracy to deceive voters and destroy the Second Amendment in our country," LaPierre told the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2011. "Obama himself is no fool. So when he got elected, they concocted a scheme to stay away from the gun issue, lull gun owners to sleep and play us for fools in 2012. Well, gun owners are not fools and we are not fooled." He added, "President Obama and his cohorts, yeah, they’re going to deny their conspiracy to fool gun owners. Some in the liberal media, they are already probably blogging about it.* But we don't care because the lying, conniving Obama crowd can kiss our Constitution!"

And that seems to be the line of attack going forward. In February, he told CPAC that an Obama second term would mean "the end of our freedom forever." He added, "If you don’t remember anything else I say today, write this down: This is the most dangerous election in our lifetime. If Obama wins, we'll go to our grave mourning the freedom we've lost."

Does Romney really believe any of this? It's doubtful. He supported gun control laws as Governor of Massachusetts and practically never talks about the Second Amendment unless he really has to. But he's willing to pander to those who do. Taking the stage just after LaPierre finished up a speech warning once more that "America as we know it will be lost forever" and imploring his media critics to jump off the Old North Bridge in Concord, Romney wasted no time in buttering up to his host: "What a job Wayne LaPierre just did!"


*Guilty.

http://motherjones.com/mojo/2012/04/mit ... g-tin-foil