In the wake of random tragedy, is to suggest there’s probably some new law that wouldn’t have prevented a damned thing, but will nonetheless sound good to those weak souls who demand that the government do something. We have plenty of these worms here in America, but I think the only difference is we’re a bit, and sadly only a bit, more willing to say publicly, for all to see, they are worms, and should be ignored. But maybe only a bit is enough to at least slow the advance of the lowest common denominator.
I can’t think of too many politicians I would regard as heroic figures, even ones that are on my side on the gun issue. In addition, many of the politicians who are on my side on the gun issue are decidedly not on many others. Just thinking here in Pennsylvania, I’ve always appreciated Rep. Daryl Metcalfe’s tenacity on the issue of Pennsylvanian’s Second Amendment rights, but I disagree with him pretty strongly on just about every other social issue of the day, and have always thought him a demagogue on a number of those issues.
Politicians aren’t our heroes. They are instruments that the interests of citizens are represented through. No more, no less. Todd is certainly not a hero of mine, as I had never even heard of the guy until this incident, and I certainly hope he’s appropriately punished for his transgression. But our opponents will continue to try to make us wear his shame as if it were our own. As if we were the ones who were caught in an aggravated DUI with a pistol strapped between the seat cushions. That is part and parcel for how they operate, and likely how they justify their intrusion into our personal choices.
Part of me feels for the people who were let go. Our management blew through 130 million, instead of 500, but some of the stories the employees are now speaking about in regard to waste sound eerily familiar. Nonetheless, it took us ten years to burn through our money in an industry that’s inherently quite costly. It’s hard for me to even fathom how a 1100 person manufacturing company burns through a cool half-billion in a year without just taking 100 dollar bills and using them for toilet paper, or as filters for the coffee machine, and even then I think it’d be tough. These people clearly put the management of my previous employer to shame, when it comes to wasting cash.
The other thing that upsets me about Solyndra is the fact that the GOP had to go blow the whole impeachment thing on Bill Clinton for getting a blow job in the oval office and lying about it. Giving a half-billion dollars of our money to your political cronies to take a match to is exactly the kind of thing I want to see a President standing before Congress in chains over. But that’s not going to happen. No, they blew that wad. Thanks guys.
Say it ain’t so Bill? But my first thought after seeing that headline, is that he’s probably sleeping with some chick that’s a vegan, and so now he’s a vegan too. PETA is happy now, though:
In December 2010, PETA named Clinton its Person of the Year, estimating that his diet shift spared the lives of 200 animals a year.
I hate to break it to PETA, but I ate those animals instead. Yum.
… forgot the first rule of PR is that when you find yourself in a hole, to stop digging:
What your officer did was unconscionable. There’s absolutely no fucking excuses for that video I saw. This guy needs to be raked over the coals. You Sir, no matter what you say, are against the Second Amendment. This guy should not have a council meeting for the next several months that is not inundated with angry gun owners from Ohio. This guy has thrown down, and it’s time to act.
Just because she votes the right way doesn’t make her any less of one. These are people I’d rather not have on my side. The media seems to keep harping on the gun not having a safety. I don’t care whether it has a safety or not, you don’t point it at people. I also don’t care whether the the reporter, as Klein claims, sat in front of her line of sight. If someone walks in front of the muzzle, you point it in a safe direction immediately. It’s hard for me to imagine a scenario where I let someone walk in front of my muzzle. It’s also, equally hard, to imagine a scenario where I agree to show off my loaded pistol to a reporter, or anyone. If someone asks to see the gun you’re carrying, the responsible answer should be “NO,” and the next question is how the person knew you were carrying in the first place.
“And after several rounds of going back and forth, our unwelcome visitors got the message that we were not going to allow them to take over or gain access to my room to plant bugging devices.” [...]
“I thought to myself, ‘I’m a dead man! I have just publicly denounced the governor, U.S. Senators, FEMA and the president of the United States,’” he writes. “I started wondering if during the night I would be visited by specially trained CIA agents. Could they secretly shoot me with a miniature, slow-acting poison dart? [...]
Nagin admits he also suffered pangs of paranoia on the Monday after the storm, when he visited the USS Iwo Jima, an amphibious assault ship that docked near the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center and served as a base of federal operations.
There, he was escorted to an infirmary where two medical staffers “had orders to examine me and give me shots.”
“I was still a little paranoid and again started imagining a secret CIA plot where in six months I would be gone,” he writes. “After thinking for a minute, I said to them, ‘Okay, you can give me shots, but I want you to do the same for my two security guys.’
“My thinking was it would have been easier to spin that stress ultimately took me out, but it would be much harder to explain all three of us suddenly dying mysteriously,” writes Nagin, who said during Wednesday’s briefing that his sense of suspicion abated shortly after his visit to the ship.
And this is before he goes into the conspiracy to rid New Orleans of black people. Now I understand why this guy doesn’t trust anyone with firearms. It’s projection. He probably doesn’t trust himself, and assumes everyone else is as much a loon as he is. He has good judgement for himself. I’m not sure Ray Nagin is the kind of guy I want having a gun either, let alone running a city.
Isn’t it amazing how off balance so many of our opponents are? At least he was kind enough to document his delusions for posterity.
An Open Letter to District of Columbia Parents with Children in Public Schools
Dear Parents,
When are you guys going to stand up and demand a better life for your children? Do you actually want to hold any of your elected leaders accountable for, oh, anything? Because that’s the first step in no longer making a better life not only for your kids, but for yourselves.
Take the scallion incident. Kids in the SE part of the city (the city’s poorest) were served raw green onions as part of the federal government’s Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program that cost us $1.2 million. Now the idea of giving kids a free fruit or vegetable is a noble one. I’m not going to get into a debate on spending issues since I suspect you and I would disagree on many of those topics. But, where I hope we can agree is on the fact that if we’re taking $1.2 million from taxpayers, that it should be spent on fruits and vegetables that children (and adults, for that matter) will actually eat instead of raw onions that will be thrown in the garbage.
There should be accountability here. Instead, the food service provider is dodging questions to both its leadership and the dietician on staff. I’m sorry, but there should be no excuse. If that dietician is charged with making sure your kids eat healthy food provided by the school, the company should have an open door policy to his or her office. These are your children, and the adults who carry the responsibility of caring for them during the day should not be allowed to hide from the public.
The school district is covering for the food service provider. They say that they are confident it was a one-time mistake and there was no big deal. If you care about your children, you need to tell them that making excuses isn’t good enough – and possibly research any political or friendly ties between the company and the District. If this happened in my poor school district in rural Oklahoma, parents would be at school board meetings demanding some kind of action. It might be as extreme as cutting the contract if there were other issues in the past. It also might be simply demanding some sort of restitution from the food service provider. According to the article, school staff had to scrounge up apples from their other supplies to provide the snack. That costs money for the apples and money for the staff time to do the job the contractor did not do. Force your school leaders to demand concessions, a statement, an open door policy when it comes to the contractor’s staff who make diet decisions for the school menus, and a plan of action to make sure these kinds of mistakes don’t happen again.
I’ll never understand the attitude that District residents seem to take with their leaders – that they will allow them to walk all over the citizens and treat them like crap. Serving raw scallions as a snack would not be tolerated in any of the wealthier schools & surrounding districts. Why do you allow your leaders to treat you and your children like this and then let them slide?
Just a few helpful suggestions from someone who thinks your kids deserve better.
