Every year Sidwell Friends School has X number of students who would make an appealing kidnap target for political crazies, major criminal organizations and rogue states. This is independent of whether the President specifically decides to send his kids there. Parents who choose the Sidwell School therefore pay $34,000 per kid (plus fees) to ensure new books and computers, keep mold off the wallpaper and Legionnaire’s out of the air vents and, also, to pay armed security to watch the front gates. Public schools spend about $10k per year per student. If we want armed guards in every public school, great! Put a line for it in the tax code. No doubt the NRA will jump right on that plan.
Archives for January 2013
Open Thread
From Kip the Wonder Rat, in comments:
Just got off the phone with the phone staffer for Lewis (GA-4). He says that the Congressman agrees with the President completely. BUT, “the other side has been much more vocal today.”
Chat about whatever.
Reasoning With The BlogFather (Or Something Fun To Listen To At 6 P.M. EST Tonight)
It’s that time of the month again.
I’ll be doing another one of my Virtually Speaking Science webcasts this evening at 6 p.m. EST/3 p.m. PST.
I’m always excited by my guests — but tonight’s conversation is a particular pleasure. I’ll be talking with Bora Zivkovic, who should be (though he probably isn’t) a household name. He’s certainly one of the best known-and-loved member-leaders of the online science community. Bora’s scientific training lies in the field of chronobiology, how animals — Japanese quail in his Ph.D research — tell time. But for something like a decade now he’s been devoting his extraordinary smarts and stamina to the cause of communicating science to ever wider communities that seek or need that knowledge.
He’s made a career out of that goal: he was one of the founding bloggers at the ScienceBlogs network, a gig the helped lead him to his role as online community manager for the PLoS family of scientific journals (working mostly with PLoS 1) — a job that embedded him in the movement to enhance public access to scientific information. Since 2010, he’s been serving serves as the network pooh-bah for Scientific American’s blog network.
That’s the formal bit of the resume. Bora is, however, much more than the sum of his day jobs. He has been relentless as a community builder, a nurturer of talent, and as a thinker about approaches to communication, knowledge, and the dissemination of ideas in our transforming media environment. He’s called the BlogFather…
…because he has been exactly that with so many of today’s most impressive science communicators — a task he redoubles every year as one of the co-founders and driving forces behind the ScienceOnline conference.
Git r done
Praise jeebus, the President just stuck his neck way out on the gun issue, and he did it with a set of proposals that non-lunatics will find pretty damn reasonable. Obama’s main problem now is Congress and the squish factor. Your Representatives only know what they hear from constituents and what they see on cable news, and most days the only thing dumber and more reactionary than one is the other. Have a laugh at Beck and Limbaugh and the NRA, but respect their ability to get moron followers to dial the phone. Your Representative turns on the news and he sees FOX, or someone trying to be FOX. His call summaries tell him that Agenda 21 is a thing, grabbing guns will make us like the Soviets but worse and breaking the debt ceiling is like tightening your belt at home. Or, as Yeats said, The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.
If you want things to be different then get involved. The preznit thinks that guns are a political pressure point where calls might do some good. The guy seems to know what he’s doing, so get his back and pick up the phone. If you still have some time then try phoning a media outlet when you see something particularly outrageous (or praiseworthy!) and write a signed letter to the editor.
This is a message for everyone. You will need to talk a lot of Democratic Reps down from the ledge before they panic on the Sunday shows and cut off the President’s knees. Republicans need to remember that their district still has sane people in it.
Q: My Republican is an idiot. Should I phone him or her?
A: Yes.
Q: Even Virginia Foxx?
A: Yes goddamit, even Virginia Foxx. Full court press. Now git.
Find your Congressperson here.
Switchboard: (202) 224-3121
Guide for first timers below the jump.
Please use this thread to talk about how your Rep and Senators’ staffers are responding to the President’s proposal.
***Update***
From Handsmile in the comments:
During his remarks, President Obama asked each one of us to call his/her Congressional representatives to ask two or three questions: “Do you support universal background checks on gun purchases? and Do you support Congressional legislation on restrictions on military-style assault weapons and high-capacity magazines? And if the answer is ‘No’, ask Why not?” [quotation may not be exact]
Sounds like a plan.
Guns Don’t Kill People, Black People Kill People
Via Elon James:
At some point we’re just going to have to demand that these assholes appear on television in their Klan uniforms.
Guns Don’t Kill People, Black People Kill PeoplePost + Comments (159)
Turn me loose
It seems to me that with many Republican pundits now rejecting the idea of using the debt ceiling as a hostage, the smart move for Boehner is to turn non-teahadists loose to vote with Democrats on the issue, the way they did with Sandy relief and the fiscal cliff.
In fact, I wonder if that could be the solution to a lot of Republicans’ political problems. They could do the same with immigration. There must be 50 to 60 Republicans who are either unafraid of primaries or at least more afraid of general elections than of primaries. If they all feel free to vote with Democrats on issues where other Republicans’ positions are unpopular, they could spare the Republican party a lot of political pain.
But…WOLVERINES, I know. Still, a pattern is beginning to emerge.
How Is This Even Remotely Controversial
I’ve gone through the President’s proposals for gun control, and for the life of me, I can not see how anything he suggested is even remotely controversial. Like this, for example:
The proposals also would require criminal background checks for all gun sales, closing the longstanding loophole that allows gun buyers to avoid such checks by purchasing their weapons at gun shows or from a private seller. The background database, in place since 1996, has stopped 1.5 million sales to felons, fugitives, convicted domestic abusers and others, but today nearly 40 percent of all gun sales are exempt from the system.
Can you imagine the reaction to this if instead of drugs, we were talking about something else- like pharmaceuticals. Can you imagine a world where there are all sorts of rules, regulations, and enforcement of drugs sold in pharmacies (to include sinus meds), but that 40% of the oxycontin and other opiates and birth control and plan B and everything else were sold in drug shows in campgrounds all over the country by overweight shady characters wearing Don’t Tread on Me t-shirts?
How long do you think that situation would last?
How Is This Even Remotely ControversialPost + Comments (229)