billvon

It's worked in other countries. It might take longer here - so best get started. In Uvalde they had an armed guard assigned to the school. He drove right by the shooter and chased a teacher instead. And the entire Uvalde police force showed up to stop him after he entered the school. And they couldn't. Pretty good evidence that "just use an armed guard" and "just add more armed guards" doesn't work.

Meanwhile back in reality: Electric vehicle (EV) sales are accelerating faster than predicted and are now expected to reach 55 per cent of total global vehicle sales by 2030, significantly earlier than previously forecast, according to a new report by consultancy organisation EY. https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2023/03/27/ev-sales-now-expected-to-account-for-55-of-total-global-vehicle-sales-by-2030/ Electrification of cars in the United States significantly accelerated in early 2023, according to the latest reports for the month of January. According to the registration data from Experian (via Automotive News), out of 1.24 million new light vehicles registered in January, some 87,708, or 7.1 percent were all-electric. That's a 74 percent increase year-over-year and a noticeable change, compared to a 4.3 percent share in January 2022. The 7.1 percent share is also a step change from 5.6 percent in the 12 months of 2022. https://insideevs.com/news/657660/us-electric-car-sales-january2023/ US EV Sales Hit New Record, And People Are Buying More Than Just Teslas https://www.pcmag.com/news/us-ev-car-sales-hit-new-record-and-people-are-buying-more-than-just-teslas

Congress is working on a bill that would criminalize transporting women under 18 for the purposes of abortion. Because of course they are.

Also in Florida: DeSantis announced his plans to gut First Amendment rights in Florida by making it easier to sue people for defamation. The standard is now pretty high for reporters and the like - the defendant has to prove that they knew they were wrong and were doing it to harm the defendant. By reducing that threshold it makes it easier to (for example) sue CNN if CNN says that Trump lost the election. DeSantis put it this way: "It’s our view in Florida that we want to be standing up for the little guy against some of these massive media conglomerates." Unfortunately there is now a little guy (Dominion) suing a massive media conglomerate (FOX News) for defamation. And there is growing concern that the next Dominion will be able to sue FOX in Florida - and have a much easier chance of winning. Trump's GA Bill Barr put the concerns of FOX News consumers like this: "For the foreseeable future, we will likely be on the wrong side of the culture-setting consensus. There are precious few conservative news outlets as it is. Why make them more vulnerable to the multitude of left-wing plaintiffs’ lawyers?” Many conservatives hate it when the laws they pass to own the libs turn out to apply to them as well.

And in Florida news: DeSantis announced his plan to cancel Disney a while back, and they have since gotten into gear trying to do everything they can to destroy the "woke" company that dares to (for example) put a black mermaid in a movie. Or more importantly, opposes teacher gag orders. They have recently run into a problem. Turns out that, right before any of those plans to cancel Disney went into effect, Disney had a meeting with the outgoing board and changed a few things, including much of the details of who controls the Reedy Improvement District where Disney resides. Some of the new provisions last for 30 years. Some last until "21 years after the death of the last survivor of the descendants of King Charles III, king of England." A new board member put it this way. "This essentially makes Disney the government. This board loses, for practical purposes, the majority of its ability to do anything beyond maintaining the roads and maintaining basic infrastructure.” So why didn't DeSantis stop this meeting or put restrictions on it? Because he didn't know it was happening. Disney did all the notifications required under the law, including notices in all the local papers that the meeting was occurring. Desantis, and his new board, missed them. A Trump spokesman put it this way: "Ron DeSantis just got out-negotiated by Mickey Mouse."

Not only has it become a religion that causes knee-jerk reactions almost as strong as the "War on Christmas" does, it's very good money for a lot of people. Come to think of it, that makes it very similar to the right's other religions. A good overview of who pays for climate change denial, and why. From the referenced study: "This is how wealthy individuals or corporations translate their economic power into political and cultural power. They have their profits and they hire people to write books that say climate change is not real. They hire people to go on TV and say climate change is not real. It ends up that people without economic power don't have the same size voice as the people who have economic power, and so it ends up distorting democracy." https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/meet-the-money-behind-the-climate-denial-movement-180948204/

Yep. DZ's often get around that (when they, say, fly Eloy jumpers up to Lost Prairie) by saying "well, they are intending to jump when they get there, and heck, they might even jump in! They have the rigs, after all.) But that might not fly (no pun intended) for a non-skydiver.

I'm not even worried about that. I don't think school shooters do much thinking before they head to the school. I am more worried about some clueless rightie passing a law that says schools have to have at least one armed guard per 200 students (or something equally absurd.) So a school of 450 suddenly needs 3 guards. Where do they come from? Do they hire cops who work part time at the school? They cost $$$. Do they hire from reputable guard companies? They cost $$, and the school already can't afford textbooks. So they let one teacher go and hire two full time guards from the pool of people who couldn't make it as cops or actual employed armed guards. Then they get a part time guard and hope that flies with the local government. The part timer is a kid who dropped out of school two years ago because he was beating other kids up and torturing animals. But he was never convicted of anything, and heck, now they are going to PAY him to carry a GUN! He's ecstatic and shows his gun to all the kids in school who seem very impressed. Sure, he occasionally leaves it on the sink when he's taking a dump in the school bathroom, but it's between classes when no kids are supposed to be in the bathroom anyway. And he's not a fan of all that loser lib gun safety stuff, because he's smart enough to know when it's loaded and when it's not. And then a kid is accidentally shot at that school. And they fire that guard, and the conservatives think-and-pray themselves a bit, while patting themselves on the back that they did something to protect kids. And another kid is dead. But at least they sold more guns, I guess.

No, it doesn't. The reason you think it does is because of the pervasive media that surrounds you, that ignores the thousands of talks by unpopular people that happen at schools every day in favor of the single outrage-generating one.

That's perfect. And when one of those underpaid armed guards goes postal and takes out a second grade, we can get national guards to watch the armed guards. There is no possible downside to this.

"Anti-woke" is the latest meme that conservatives are using to describe their heroic battles against . . . awareness of injustice. No doubt revisionists everywhere are trying to define being woke as hating babies or some such, but that, of course, is simple sophistry. Being woke is being alert to injustice in society. It applies to all injustice, but especially racial injustice. There are surely woke people today, as there have been throughout history. Some of those people have even become woke heroes. Martin Luther King. Harvey Milk. Nelson Mandela. Jimmy Carter. All aware of the injustice in the world, and all working to bring awareness to that injustice, and to reduce it. We are better off for their efforts. We, of course, have a great number of non-woke people out there today as well. People who are sure that there is no injustice in society, and that any attempt to correct it is evil socialism or "woke madness." People who are either simply ignorant of it, or who work hard to not understand it, lest they think less of their own accomplishments. Such people believe that if there is injustice against someone other than them, it lessens them, and reduces their sought-after status as victim. We also have the anti-woke - people who are actively working to disguise and promulgate these injustices. This takes the form of everything from race-baiting to active denial to revisionist history to actually fostering and committing those injustices. There is a long history of that in this country from the 1700's well into present day. I won't bother with examples; they are too numerous to mention. Instead I'll use this thread as a way to call out the heroes of the anti-woke - those people dedicated to hiding and even promulgating those injustices in society that apparently don't exist for some people. The first one up is the anonymous meme-maker who created a false meme, where a "parent" of one of the recently slain schoolchildren purportedly vowed "to fight with every fiber of my being for the end of the trans evil." This meme is intended to promulgate hatred against trans people. For using this tragedy to push their anti-woke agenda, this meme creator wins today's "Hero of the Anti-Woke" award.

Ah. A true hero of the anti-woke! They must be proud today.

I agree. I'd prefer to hear him out first, and reserve shouting him down for him saying something really outrageous. I am not sure that having some judge give a speech at some college would have accomplished anything - whether or not he could be heard over the people shouting him down. I mean, you could say "how are we ever going to get anything accomplished if the right wing cancels Colin Kaepernick just because they disagree with him?" - but again, having one football player cancelled probably doesn't stop things from being accomplished out there in the real world.

So the reasons for so many school shootings, according to republicans, is: -evil -drag queens -Biden eating ice cream -"Washington" -woke madness -naked statues The reason is NOT: -easy availability of guns

And there's a reason for that. Ireland guns per capita .07 US guns per capita 1.2 Ireland homicides per 100K: .7 US homicides per 100K: 6.5 No conservative I have ever talked to knows what CRT is. Even conservative authors who have written about it can't give straight answers. To them it's teaching white people to hate themselves, or sowing division among races, or making kids feel guilty. In reality it is an analysis of structural racism in America. In reality it is not taught anywhere other than as electives in colleges. In reality it says nothing about how much white people should hate themselves. It has nothing to do with this topic. We don't have an open border. Nor do people want one. You're just repeating memes you heard that you don't understand. That's not a great path towards better understanding. Also LAADDA, from their president: "Do you admire Blair [a black woman] for falling on her sword, I mean, banana to protect her meal ticket?” Find a better source than a source that even conservatives have disavowed.

Sounds like he was exercising his right to free speech. Sounds like the students were exercising their right to free speech. Sounds like Stanford supported both of them. Bravo Stanford. If this upsets you, please tell us whose speech the government should suppress.

I don't get it. How does that own the libs?

Not _quite_ what was happening. This particular school district had shown exactly the same images several times in past years. However, there is a (dumb) Florida law that requires parents be told what their kids are being shown. This principal did not do that, and that's why she was fired. Previous principals did. It's still a dumb law, but she was fired for not informing parents - not for allowing images of David to be shown.

Or she's just living her own life now without him. The two are rarely seen together; occasionally at Mar-A-Lago dinners. I suspect at this point she can just say "leave me alone, Donald, or I talk."

George Santos is not just a prolific and regular liar - he's also just really bad at it. He recently claimed that he was one of the producers of "Spider-Man" the broadway play. I mean, that's a terrible lie! First off, it's very easy to verify that he wasn't. Secondly the play itself was a spectacular failure, so everything about it is going to be very well known, since people are going to be curious about why it failed. Three, why lie about being part of such a failure? It's like lying about being the guy who designed the 737MAX MCAS. "Yeah, that was me, terrible design. No redundancy, and makes it very easy to cause a runaway trim situation. But boy am I smart!"

Yep. Unfortunately for him that can backfire. Posting pictures of him threatening the judge with a baseball bat, and calling for "death and destruction" if he's indicted, is getting him treated more like a mafia boss than a politician. Specifically, the jury will be kept anonymous. "In these circumstances, this Court is obliged to consider the likely effect on jurors of the matters just described, similar events in the relatively recent past, and the likely future course of events, including the inevitable extensive media coverage. And it cannot properly ignore the significant risk that jurors selected to serve in this case will be affected by concern that they could be targeted for unwanted media attention, outside pressure, and retaliation and harassment from persons unhappy with any verdict that might be returned."

So we have: Trump's lawyer: "I used my own personal funds" to pay off Daniels Trump's other lawyer: "Paying some Stormy Daniels woman $130,000? Which, I mean, is going to turn out to be perfectly legal. . . . They funneled through a law firm, and the President repaid it." McCarthy: Trump paid with "personal money" Trump (on Daniels): "A total con job, playing the Fake News Media for Fools!" Trump: "With respect to the 'Stormy' nonsense, it is VERY OLD & happened a long time ago, long past the very publicly known & accepted deadline of the Statute of Limitation!" Trump: "Great, now I can go after Horseface and her 3rd rate lawyer in the Great State of Texas. She will confirm the letter she signed!" So nothing happened - but whatever happened it's past the statute of limitations. And Trump didn't know her but he is sure she signed that nondiscloure agreement to keep quiet. Apparently Trump's latest angle is that he is going to claim that he paid her off to keep Melania from getting mad at him (since she had just given birth and was home with the baby while he was banging Daniels.) Last week a Trump attorney said that “It’s not directly related to the campaign . . .He made this with personal funds to prevent something coming out (that was) false but embarrassing to himself, his family, his young son.” However, now it looks like Melania knew before the hush money payment, so they may abandon that angle.

"But your Honor, the intent of that amendment was clear - to own the libs! And allowing women to choose does not own the libs."

FOX News viewers know that the REAL threat to kids is drag queens converting them into trannies.

OK. I thought it was 2 days later, but you are probably right.