Comments

1

What about expiring all corporate tax depreciation, deductions, and incentives for all fossil fuel infrastructure in 2020.

We only have seven (7) years to reduce global emissions by seven (7%) each year.

TIME's UP!

2

@1 Will in Seattle: Agreed and seconded.

3

At least we're getting a cool dinosaur mascot I guess?

4

Wouldn't you like to know? Probably yo momma.

5

Going to keep my ammunition magazines. Guess I will have to live with Rich's scorn. Oh dear!!!

6

Given that WTF is a well known acronym, explicit profanity in the headline could have been avoided.

7

@5
Are the pages stuck together yet?

8

Pro-actively figuring out how to make for the funding lost if the horse's ass's initiative is upheld seems like a pretty responsible thing to do, if you ask me.

9

I completely support the zero-carbon standard, but what electric cars are not available to us in Washington as it stands?

10

@7 nice. I did not see that one coming. Pew pew.

11

Legalize prostitution. Decriminalize all drug use. Legalize having beer and wine at strip clubs to stop the oppression of female dancers.

12

You need to read the Carlyle "data privacy" bill more carefully, Rich. Don't be fooled by its title. The legislation fails to address many of the concerns that caused last session's legislation to come under scrutiny by consumer privacy and civil liberties groups, and ultimately led to its demise. The proposal this session is little different than the version that Carlyle's staff drafted behind closed doors last year with Microsoft, Amazon, Comcast and the Association of Washington Businesses. In fact, the facial recognition provisions are substantially worse than last time around.

We need Rep. Nguyen's standalone bill which has much stronger, enforceable limits on the use of face surveillance technologies which are completely unregulated right now.

13

"Suciasaurus rex"
Not Barney?

14

@11 " Legalize having beer and wine at strip clubs to stop the oppression of female dancers."
Huh? I think you'd better have a look at the police blotter back when Good Time Charlie's was around.

15

@7 spunkbutter for the WIN!!

16

Well golly. As an owner of an...an..."assault rifle" (funny, I always just thought of it just as a "rifle") and (gasp) a handful of 20 round mags I do not think this makes me a mass killer, a paranoid lunatic, or a nut. It just makes me a guy with a firearm. Sadly, incredibly sadly when one crosses their path, there are mass killers, paranoid lunatics, and nuts out there, but what makes them dangerous is not what's in their hands, it's what's between their ears. The rest of us, the incredibly overwhelming majority of gun owners, are just regular people who own guns. We laugh, cry, grow old and die just like everybody else, and senseless killings appall us just as much as they do everyone else.

Mostly my rifle is just an expensively satisfying paper punch. I go out in the forest once or twice a month, shoot some groups, feel good, have fun, and go home. The rest of the time it sits in the dark, unloaded and locked up. It is not something to be used to deal with the kid who picked on me in middle school, nor can I imagine it being brought to bear on the missus because she burnt the meat loaf. That's just not me, and the "me" in that equation, particularly my beliefs in the rule of law and the sanctity of life, not any bullshit about firearm details, is the reason that those things will never come to pass at my hand. Yes, I deliberated all this, and satisfied myself that I wasn't going down a tragic road before I bought.

On the other hand, should I someday find myself facing some kind of unwarranted deadly threat way out here in the sticks, then I might have to contemplate an affirmative defense, something my choice in rifles would offer me that would offer me some hope of parity with the threat I faced. Don't think that's realistic? Ask any law enforcement person, ask as many as you like, why they no longer carry six shot revolvers. And yes I thought about all this too before becoming a firearm owner, and I'm sticking by my choice.

The Bill of Rights is about the guarantee of enumerated rights to the citizens of the United States. It does not mandate that we will all agree on how those rights are exercised; it does not promise that a life of freedom will also always be one of bliss and unbroken harmony. No, there will be bumps in the road, and I think that the need for those bumps to be able to pop up was probably in the founders mind at the time the Bill of Rights was drafted.

The First Amendment guarantees free speech and religion. It is not about my comfort with your choices in religion and speech, nor about your comfort with mine. In fact it can be said that a belief in freedom of expression is nothing more than preaching to the choir until one is confronted with a point of view that they disagree with. You, for example, can freely kiss me off as a "paranoid loser", without repercussion, and since it's your opinion, without any regard as to whether your chosen words have any basis in reality. The first amendment guarantees that even those with unpopular or reprehensible beliefs are free to express them. It is true that when free speech cross lines drawn elsewhere there are legal repercussions; it is equally true that those repercussions do not come preemptively.

The Fifth Amendment is about the right not to be forced to incriminate oneself. It is not about anyones discomfort or second guessing of another party's decision to do so. It is about the right not to self incriminate, period, no ifs, ands, or buts. It is true that Fifth Amendment protections allow some of the guilty to escape prosecution or conviction; it is also true that those protections keep innocent people out of prison.

Coming now to my point, the Second Amendment states that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. It is not about duck hunting, nor is it about muzzle brakes, flash hiders, magazine capacity, bayonet lugs (can any one remember a mass bayoneting incident? ) or any other such details. It is about the right of the citizen to keep and bear arms in the event that a deadly threat needs to be countered with deadly force, period.

And I stand by that.

Hands off the bill of rights, please. If they displease you don't dick around with trying to chip away at them. Rather gather your support and amend the constitution.

I guess this all got rather wordy. Fuck the Nanny State and haveaniceday.

17

Democrats in Olympia: Please remove Thug Ericksen, R--Cambodia, and Tim Eyesore from Washington State--preferably via industrial sized garbage bags.
@16: Good LORDY, the long-winded word salad! I'm willing to guess that nobody (myself included) is going to fully read your irate novel. You immediately lost me upon defending the 2nd Amendment. Stop mistaking FOX-TeeVee as a reliable news source snd learn to edit.

18

Wimpy "Democrats" are enablers of the current Reagan Restoration era. A pox on their house. I'm tired of voting for lessers-of-evil.

19

@17: I did get kinda all wound up...but you have helped illustrate a part of the problem. To Rich Smith I'm a paranoid loser; in your mind I'm dismissed as a fox-o-phile. My crimes are what? Candor and existing outside the mold of your comfort level? I have meant, and done, you no harm. And, by the way, I'm neither.

Over there in gun-land, seeing their choices as the solution, they have their own little problems with failure to listen and with the ease of casting pejorative labels on those who view the role of firearms differently.

Everybody wants the same thing I think, let's start with zero violent crime and zero random shootings, but nobody's communicating, let alone working together...just glaring over the fence and hurling bullshit back and forth. Pretty hard to solve a major social problem if you can't even take an open minded look, isn't it?


Please wait...

Comments are closed.

Commenting on this item is available only to members of the site. You can sign in here or create an account here.


Add a comment
Preview

By posting this comment, you are agreeing to our Terms of Use.