illinilaw08

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Nov 9, 2017 -> 01:41 PM) I don't think it is, I think it's a fair assessment of how this is treated. Last week a guy walked into a Walmart in Colorado, pulled out a gun, and randomly shot 3 people. That shooting isn't even being counted by the official "mass shooting list" because he only shot 3 people and the cutoff is 4. That's a normal Wednesday in this country. It didn't get flags at half staff or a statement from the President. The ones big enough to talk about happen once or twice a year, we send our thoughts and prayers and do nothing afterwards. The next day, some place that has a flag at half staff will have 3 people shot and it might not even be above the fold in the newspaper. 3 people being shot is not a big deal. I was about to post about that one, Balta. With respect to that Walmart shooting in Colorado, law enforcement said that because so many people with concealed weapons drew when they heard the gunshots, it made the investigation into the actual shooter was slower (they had to eliminate every person in the store with a gun in their hands). http://www.denverpost.com/2017/11/02/shopp...lmart-shooting/

QUOTE (greg775 @ Nov 7, 2017 -> 03:42 PM) Meanwhile, if there's a hurricane we all help each other. All races, all religions, no questions asked. Total assistance. Very weird non sequitirs. This is a kind of weird post. In the aftermath of mass shootings, lots of stories come out about people helping one another during the shooting - take a look at all the blood that was donated in the Vegas aftermath. The difference is obvious - people's homes are destroyed by hurricanes. The flooding can last for days. In PR, the power outages have lasted for weeks, if not months. So the responses linger. They are completely different events, and the responses to those in immediate risk are pretty similar. The disconnect with mass shootings is what do you do about them. The Republicans tend to send out their thoughts and prayers, but not do anything on a policy level. The Democrats tend to push for greater gun control, but can't get anything done. ETA: And obviously, as previously pointed out, the response to Puerto Rico was not "no questions asked. Total assistance."

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Nov 7, 2017 -> 01:23 PM) If it won't have a real impact, why do it? Just doing something for the sake of doing something is crap and usually ends up making things worse for everyone else. You are then just virtue signalling. Doing nothing definitely does nothing. Titling firearms like cars won't stop all mass shootings, but it would absolutely make it easier to track the private sale market. Eliminating bump stocks won't stop all mass shootings, but it might make a subsequent mass shooting less deadly. Again, one side of the aisle wants to do nothing because any firearm regulation is a precursor to taking everybody's guns. Also, it's mental health issues that are to blame. But let's not make it easier for people to access mental health diagnoses or treatment. Oh and if they are diagnosed with a mental health issue that prevents them from legally purchasing firearms in the future, we definitely shouldn't try to divest them of ownership of their previously purchased firearms....

QUOTE (Iwritecode @ Nov 7, 2017 -> 12:54 PM) The rest of the world doesn't have the US constitution working against them. My point is that even passing more laws may not help. Take the Vegas shooter for example. I haven't looking into it much but from what I've read, he didn't really do anything illegal up until the point he started shooting at the crowd. He purchased all his guns legally and there was nothing in his background to trigger any kind of warnings. IIRC the guns used in Sandy Hook and the Colorado movie theater shootings were purchased legally as well. It's possible that the answer is in mental health but then we have to have a line drawn somewhere as to who is or isn't mentally stable enough to own a gun. I can't imagine that would be an easy distinction to make. Here's the problem for me. One side of the political aisle screams mental health every time there is a mass shooting. But they continue to push health care bills that make mental health prohibitive from a cost standpoint. That same side of the political aisle retreats to this very slippery slope argument that any gun regulation is a precursor to confiscation of all firearms. In this very thread, Alpha used efforts by California to take illegally owned guns as a precursor to government taking away all guns. If any and all government regulation is overly broad, and universal access to mental health care is a non-starter, yeah, you aren't going to effectuate any real change to the mass shooting problem. On Vegas in particular, the bump stock made the shooter much more efficient and probably led to greater loss of life. As Balta has harped on here, bump stocks are still legal and are selling like crazy. The Republican majority has not introduced any legislation to make bump stocks illegal... Some proposed legislation might not have a real impact, but doing absolutely nothing will definitively have no impact.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Nov 7, 2017 -> 12:02 PM) Look it up, lazyass. He doesn't have a resume that I can see at that link, and a google search of his name doesn't retrieve any "constitutional scholar" qualifications. Suffice it to say, however, that you can find actual constitutional scholars - even on the Supreme Court! - that come down on either side of the meaning of the 2nd Amendment...

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Nov 7, 2017 -> 11:58 AM) The current background check system is crap, and the forms are rarely enforced and sent in at gun shows. I've had a guy literally stand there and tell me it doesnt matter. The electronic auditing and records from these sales are an area where there is tons of room for improvement. private sales are something that for sure should be stopped or augmented. At the end of the day, the RIGHT people should be able to own and operate a gun for personal defense or sport AFTER they pass a check, instruction, and certification IMO. And if circumstances change so a person is no longer eligible to own firearms (felony conviction, mental health diagnosis, etc.), there should be systems in place to divest them of their firearms in exchange for some monetary compensation.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Nov 3, 2017 -> 08:20 AM) One thing that's not being covered too much in the tax plan from what I've seen is that while they are doubling the standard deduction, they're eliminating the personal exemption. This means the changes are more or less a wash when you combine those two, and you lose out if you're currently taking SALT, student loan, medical, or mortgage deductions. This is the thing that needs to be shouted from the rooftops. For my wife and I, we'd be losing over $7,000 in deductions under the new plan - not because deductions are being cut (we'd lose a little bit on the loss of student loan interest, but that's all) - but because the personal exemption is being cut. For married couples, this is a loss if you itemized more than $15,900.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Nov 3, 2017 -> 08:22 AM) The crazy thing is that for a Science Fiction writer, Hubbard is one of my all time favorites. As I have gotten older, I now wonder how much of that was intentional, and how much of that he actually believed. Mission Earth and Battlefield Earth are spectacular SciFi. Back to the Documentary, it was very good. But I will say the stories and situations outlined in the Leah Remini series are beyond f***ed up. Just horrible, horrible stuff. SSK - if you are interested in this stuff, check out the book "Going Clear" by Lawrence Wright. It was a quick read for me and was really, really interesting....

QUOTE (bigruss22 @ Oct 26, 2017 -> 04:21 PM) I'm worried about the PR hit, but I'm really worried about this Ayo situation going forward. He just (and yes, it's on him though I understand the adults carry a large burden of this) denied a recruit that the staff REALLY wanted, how the hell do you have any confidence for the future with him now? How do you not expect him to pull some other s*** at some point? And to those saying it's not on the kid, come on man, you're telling me if Ayo stood up and told his parents and coaches to get over it, he wants to play with THT, etc that they would hold their ground? Ayo holds the cards, those coaches are dependent on kids like him, if he wanted the hand to play differently he could've changed it. I'm just really hoping that at this point his tenure at Illinois is as smooth as possible. Honest question - this incident aside, have there been any issues with Ayo? Jereme Richmond ended up being a headache for Weber, but there were a lot of red flags in his HS career. Ayo deserves to take some of the hit on this one for all the reasons you laid out. Hopefully this is smoothed out when he gets onto campus...

QUOTE (JenksIsMyHero @ Oct 26, 2017 -> 02:33 PM) This could be the situation, or they could have been talking to Ayo's camp about this and got the impression they didn't care. The clearest evidence of this is that Illinois continued to recruit THT and set up an official visit with him just days before Ayo was going to commit. If this is such a big deal to Ayo's camp, why isn't this communicated to Illinois? "i'm not committing if you still intend to recruit THT." But maybe the answer there is that Ayo's camp wasn't going to make a big deal of it unless it had to. THT has been an ISU lock for a while. The visit apparently sold him on Illinois. So once those rumors got out they felt compelled to make their position known. Who knows, the whole situation is f***ed. I'm behind them choosing Ayo over THT given the upside going forward. But you're right, if they whiff on those guys the next year or two at Morgan Park they're really setting themselves up for more Chicago recruiting failure (although it's been that way for decades, so it's not like this staff is any different than any post-Henson) It was pretty well known that there was an issue between THT and Ayo since THT left the Fire. The staff thought they could smooth things over because everybody cares about winning. That's been well sourced all summer. Under these circumstances, obviously you take Ayo over THT because it became a binary choice. And MIF has a lot more kids in their pipeline than Simeon does at the moment. You have a couple years to repair those relationships, and in the meantime, hopefully you get some of the MIF kids in the next couple classes. By the time, Simeon's kids are back, Underwood should have the program winning again (knocks on wood). But the point is that this is a PR nightmare only because IL backed off of THT at the 11th hour. The staff was confident they could smooth this over and get both. That was an obvious misplay, and it turned this thing into an ordeal.

QUOTE (Y2JImmy0 @ Oct 26, 2017 -> 01:26 PM) Maybe so. Simeon is down too but you get run the risk of alienating them. What if you do this and then you don't land the MIF guys? If it's a binary choice between Ayo and THT, you take Ayo. The mistake here was the staff not understanding how deep the rift was between the Ayo camp and THT. The staff could have exited the THT sweepstakes gracefully last week when everyone thought he was a long shot to come to IL. Then there's no shade thrown at Ayo, no issues with Simeon, and no drama. Staff made a bad read here and they are going to pay for it. Note, that I understand why the staff pushed for THT - Underwood loves him, and he and Ayo would have a great 2 man start to a class. The upside of pushing for THT to join Ayo was high. Staff didn't have a good read on how deep this rift (at least from the Ayo and MIF side) was.

QUOTE (Y2JImmy0 @ Oct 26, 2017 -> 12:45 PM) What is the big deal though? THT is a SG and Ayo plays PG. I don't understand what the problem is. Ayo doesn't like THT.

QUOTE (raBBit @ Oct 26, 2017 -> 10:25 AM) It makes this better for me too man hah. I cannot stand when religion is involved in government. I am for less government in 95% of cases but when it comes to needles and birth control my utopia is a world where you can walk to your local government building and get as many of each as you want for free. Yeah, drug policy and birth control are two of my major, major pet peeves because all non-Bible based evidence supports greater access to clean needles and birth control being a net positive for society. Jeff Sessions strenuously disagrees with both of those statements, sadly...

QUOTE (raBBit @ Oct 26, 2017 -> 10:17 AM) Private prisons, prison guard unions, pharmaceutical companies, evangelical baby boomers, etc. On that note, there are some pretty terrifying quotes in this article about why an Indiana county ended a needle exchange program because the Bible. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/201...needle-exchange Also, Rabbit, I like when we agree on stuff!

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 25, 2017 -> 10:15 AM) If the Parks system is truly about the parks, the cottage industries of tourist towns are second to the needs of the parks. Living in a fully pledged tourist town, I understand the municipal dependency of tourism better than most. A lot of the parks themselves are suffering from the ridiculous amounts of people literally trampling them. Like I said the recovery of Mount Baldy over here was a big eye opener for me. This I agree with. I see it on the trails that I hike in CO all the time.* As SS said, it's a balancing act between providing access to the parks and dealing with the visitors who fail to respect the parks. But, IMO, upping the entry fee isn't the way to go about it because it makes it harder for all Americans to access the parks. * Quick anecdote that sums this up - I was on a hike in the Mt. Evans wilderness that has a very popular trailhead. The dog decided to take a crap at the very end of the trail, so I had to schlep his crap out 4+ miles (trails in CO have had some major problems with people not cleaning up after their dogs). I'm back at the trailhead, drop the crap in a garbage can, and the ranger at the trailhead comes up and thanks me for throwing away my dog's crap. People, generally, need to be way more respectful of the outdoors...

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 25, 2017 -> 09:52 AM) We get this debate a lot in my hometown as we have an admission price to our beach at lake Michigan and hear this argument a lot. I really don't mind the idea of the people who consume the national parks the most being the ones who pay the most towards its maintenance. It also isn't a bad idea to push the cost to the point where it discourages some amount of visitations as a lot of parks are under pretty high stress levels from human interference and could benefit from a lot less traffic. Personally we have the Dunes National Lake Shore in Michigan City and I am just awestruck at what Mt Baldy looks like today after being closed to the public for about five years ago (remember the kid who fell into the sand hole). For the first time in my lifetime it looks healthy and beautiful. It has also slowed the movement of the dune away from the lake front. I disagree with this a lot. We should be striving to provide greater access to our National Parks - not less. I can tell you that here in Colorado, a town like Estes Park would be really, really hurt if an increase in admission led to fewer visitors.

QUOTE (bigruss22 @ Oct 20, 2017 -> 08:15 AM) Super stoked to land a kid like Ayo, not only a great player from the CPL and a game changer, but he seems like a really good kid as well. Not sure how this helps with recruiting this class though, most of the top targets are already elsewhere. THT is still a huuuuuge stretch at this point, there's a chance but it's not really likely at this point. Beyond that, they have BPJ that could be helped with this move, but not too many other top targets are left in the fall. Will be interesting to see who they pick up interest in during the spring as well. I do think this helps a TON for 2019. Yeah, the good news here is that there are a lot of exciting, young guards on the roster. So we aren't looking at Groce's second year where there were like 6 guys who could actually play on the roster. And Alstork is the only guy that graduates, so you have the ability to take a transfer big who has to sit out a year with one of the remaining two scholarships. The product on the floor this year will hopefully be exciting. That plus Smith and Ayo in back-to-back classes hopefully jump starts things with the '19 class.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 19, 2017 -> 03:48 PM) More Republicans have spoken out against Trump than any President of the same part in my lifetime. By far. Yeah, but what Republicans are speaking out (and by speaking out, I mean consistently)? Those that have retired from political life or have already retired. People who aren't up for election in 2018. The fact that Flake - who is running in 2018 - is the only Senator running in '18 who has spoken out against the President speaks volumes. 89% of registered Republicans voted for Trump in '16. Lots of Republicans spoke out about Trump during the campaign, but 89% still voted for him. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cbs-news-exit-...-us-presidency/ After Donald Trump does something extreme, you get tepid "that's bad" from Republican legislators. I hope that if a similarly extreme Democrat was somehow elected president that you would get consistent pushback from the Democratic Party...

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Oct 19, 2017 -> 03:05 PM) Bmags, Maybe in a better world people could understand nuances and not live in absolutes. But you play the hand your dealt. So if I think that calling people "evil" will result in Trump being re-elected Im going to argue against it until the end of time. And its the same with calling them racist. Words mean nothing. If you could have framed Hitler differently and it resulted him never being elected, wouldnt you do it? Who cares if its not "nuanced." Ends justify the means. Respectfully, I think you are looking at this the wrong way. Your flat Earth analogy isn't on point with what we're dealing with here because this isn't about convincing the flat Earthers that the world is round. It's convincing enough people who either don't care about the argument generally to agree that the Earth is round. The goal is to prevent Donald Trump - who is uniquely unqualified for the job as President of the United States - from winning a second term. That doesn't mean only convincing Donald Trump's supporters that he is uniquely unqualified, it also involves getting people who might not have voted because of voter ID laws, or people who feel that both parties are different sides of the same coin, or people who are apathetic about politics to participate in 2020. It's about creating as large of a tent as possible from the voter pool. If someone feels that the political machine systematically ignores the issues minorities face in this country because they don't confront racist words and acts, you risk pushing that voter out of your tent - and that should be an easier person to pull into the tent than the person who thinks that kneeling during the National Anthem is the worst sin an American can commit. Based on what we've seen in the first 10 months of the Trump Presidency, I have no hope that said support is going to come from Republicans in any meaningful way. Politico had an article up about Jeff Flake today (linked below) that was littered with quotes from Republicans wondering why Flake would criticize the President in an election year. Trump's base is rabid, and his base is keeping previously mainstream Republicans from talking about the stuff that makes President Trump uniquely unqualified to lead. You need more Republicans to speak out against the things that make Donald Trump unique. http://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/19/j...-arizona-243925

QUOTE (bmags @ Oct 19, 2017 -> 02:53 PM) Here's why I'm fine with your argument, because sure, evil is an absolute. But I find it immature that the approach is to force others to accept the framing that there can be no nuance in framing someone as evil. And I say this because it is so stupidly happening with racism. If you call someone a racist, people jump in front of him like heroes "No! No! he can't be a racist! Racists carry flaming torches and chant nazi phrases!" And when they ARE carrying torches and chanting nazi phrases "No, no, they...need to be physically attacking a minority and saying they are doing it because they are a minority!" Bush may not have been purposefully doing evil things because he likes doing things that offend the conscience, but he enabled and hired a whole lot of people in the administration that he was the executive that performed many evil acts. And maybe this was just a lack of uncertainty in the world. BUt their "we know the answers now give us the information to prove it" mindset created these gigantic cracks in the world that many innocent people slipped into with no way to get out. Crime charges with no way to prove innocence, captivity with torture, never ending war with no clarity with what constitutes success. But, at the very least, there were many moments in the Bush admin that showed they were still operating within the norms of American politics and civility. Ashcroft holding orders. When Scooter Libby was being prosecuted there was no sense they'd just pardon him before and refuse an investigation. They seemed to accept, if not respect, opposition performed through our institutional means. And that last graph is what I just don't see happening. They do not respect that checks can happen if they do not benefit them. And make the case that anything that does not benefit them is illiberal, but worse, partisan and part of a conspiracy. It's incredibly dangerous. This is an excellent post.

QUOTE (raBBit @ Oct 19, 2017 -> 10:41 AM) Wouldn't this post be better suited to be aimed at the person who posted the article? Not sure why you directed this at me as opposed to SS. I was just quoting the article to give a greater understanding of the poll results instead of nitpicking what suited an agenda. Well, the quote that you pulled out was done to suit your agenda right? You have been hammering away at the mainstream media since as far back as I can remember in the 'Buster. I assumed that the point of you pulling that quote was to support your position that Americans don't trust the media.

Rabbit, I know that this wasn't the point of your post, but the ignorance of the American voter can be staggering.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 18, 2017 -> 03:21 PM) The dog whistle has sounded. This is what fake news is to the right. I don't understand this response...

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 18, 2017 -> 02:55 PM) And there you go. Is discussing racial issues a waste of time? Your posts today sure appear to take that position.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 18, 2017 -> 01:47 PM) That is where this all should have stopped. The rest of it is a waste of time. The man is an insecure idiot who goes after whoever and whatever he thinks will either benefit him, or who comes at him. The rest of it is only a "waste of time" if you aren't impacted negatively by, or have benefited from, racist policies in the past.