At Cooper City High School, students and faculty set up 17 desks and podiums in a circle, all meant to honor the 17 victims.
I loved Betty’s title from earlier today, so I stole it. I’ve been confined to the couch all day, under a blanket, arguing with people on twitter and facebook. Not the best use of my time, but these NRA humpers need to know facts are not on their side. Anyway, there was some heartwarming posts on today’s walk outs.
This kid is my new hero:
Wow I’m literally the only one #NationalSchoolWalkout pic.twitter.com/2F95qY2vTI
— Justin Blackman (@JustinIBlackman) March 14, 2018
Miami Palmetto Senior High School @OfficialJoelF @studentswalkout #MSDStrong pic.twitter.com/0bjyqkPBcj
— alexis (@alexis_ayala126) March 14, 2018
Students at a Los Angeles school held a die-in spelling #ENOUGH with their bodies as a gong sounded 17 times, one for each student killed in the Parkland, Florida, school shooting https://t.co/06T5j07Czb pic.twitter.com/OGNcwLJBel
— CNN (@CNN) March 14, 2018
What struck you most about today’s walk out events?
Oh, and I’m sure you’ve already heard that there were two school gun incidents involving teacher/cop and resource officer. But you know, more guns.
trollhattan
We had a lot of area schools participating and there was also a rally in front of the NRA offices. We may be blue meanies but that doesn’t mean NRA isn’t free to spread their lobbying cash around like a Kudlow coke fling. Will be interested in what the kid has to say about her day.
debbie
Marjory Stoneman Douglas’s quote is perfect!
Have there been any reports of suspensions, as was threatened?
Brachiator
Some great photos and clips here and here.
What a day!
And a great old tune to match the spirit of the day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZ52lk9wjZI
Argiope
We got two robocalls from the spiderling’s high school principal yesterday: the first, in the morning, warned that students couldn’t leave class without parental permission without consequences and encouraged the wearing of MSD colors instead. He must’ve heard a lot of parental and community pushback, because the second robocall in the afternoon offered the gym as an alternative. What he ended up actually *having* was an outdoor protest with community members standing with students in support, plus a few volunteers registering students old enough to vote. Is our principals learning? The kids certainly are.
NotMax
Is our kids learning?
Damn straight they are.
trollhattan
@Argiope:
The principal sent this to parents yesterday:
No threats, let each kid and family decide for themselves, I was fine with the tone.
Mustang Bobby
I’m very proud of those kids at Miami Palmetto Senior High School. (Full disclosure: I work for them.) @debbie: The District’s policy was to encourage the students to participate if they wanted to, but to stay on school grounds to keep them safe.
NotMax
Hoping the participants included those from DeVos’ beloved charter schools.
debbie
@NotMax:
A Cleveland charter school did.
clay
Reposted from below:
We had a pretty good-sized walkout at my school. I told my students I supported their cause, and that we wouldn’t be doing anything while they were gone. I think about 60% of my kids participated.
NotMax
Now remembering our own student walk-outs for the Vietnam Moratorium.
la caterina
This is so heartening for me. These kids are our future and they’re awesome and creative and unstoppable.
George Spiggott
My post from below:
My school, Berkeley High, had an impressive walkout: http://www.berkeleyside.com/2018/03/14/went-school-never-came-home-students-across-berkeley-u-s-grieve-gun-violence-victims
“The school administration embraced the students’ plan, helping facilitate the event. Several school and district leaders, Berkeley School Board members and Berkeley High teachers and staff came to the protest Wednesday, while designated teachers stayed behind with students who chose not to walk out of class.”
“I’m not here to tell you that the constant threat of being shot at school can destroy our ability to learn — because you know that,” yelled one student into the microphone. “Today we must move past our primitive ways. When leaders act like children and children act like leaders, you know change is coming,” he said.
MomSense
My son’s school walkout is postponed until tomorrow because they had a snow day today. He was really pleased that his teacher decided to join them.
Mnemosyne
I saw one report of “trouble” in central CA where the brainiac principal of a high school decided to chain the gate of the school shut. It did not end well for the gate.
Argiope
@trollhattan: The encouragement to talk to each other is also a nice touch. Our principal surprised me with his initial take as reported in the local paper, which was to not “permit” a walkout and to issue detentions or suspensions if one happened anyway. A real mismatch of an approach for our uber-liberal community. His position apparently evolved over the last several days–maybe because the reported positions of his fellow principals in surrounding communities were much more permissive/supportive. I’m just glad my kid decided to participate. I look forward to the report when I see the teen, though I imagine it will be fairly monosyllabic.
Mnemosyne
Found the story — it was Mt. Diablo High School in Concord, CA.
Also, the kid who did a one-man walkout should get a full ride scholarship to a top university, because clearly he’s smarter than the rest of the kids around him.
Mnemosyne
@Argiope:
One of my co-workers was a little nervous because her kid was one of the organizers and she was worried that no one would join in. Fortunately, her fears were groundless. ?
MobiusKlein
Got some pictures of San Francisco kids marching down Market Street from my 13th story office to
Grover Gardner
*Someone* called in a hoax threat to my daughter’s school so they had to assemble in the gym. :-/
raven
@NotMax: I’d been home a bit more than a month.
Argiope
@Mnemosyne: Awwwwww. I wonder whether coming together for something really meaningful will reduce the level of mean-girlness and other horizontal violence that happens in participating schools. We have yet to hear how these movements affect classroom and hallway dynamics, but seems like they might.
raven
@George Spiggott: When did you go there? My friend’s kids graduated from BHS.
TaMara (HFG)
Mustang Bobby
@NotMax: Me too. October and November 1970 Toledo and Ann Arbor.
Mary G
This second grader rocks (link to the Hill):
Nobody will protest with me, I’ll go to the high school and hold up my sign there.
efgoldman
@NotMax:
I was in between: graduated college ’68, married first mrs efg, took first full time grownup job. Worked in the back office of a trucking company, where I was basically the token office commie (not really, but I opposed the war and supported civil rights). I always felt that I missed out.
efgoldman
@MomSense:
Lots of kids in New England took the snow day to march and demonstrate.
ruemara
@TaMara (HFG): They get it better than some lefty adults do.
@Mary G: And he’s got those cheeks.
George Spiggott
@raven:
Long time ago, class of ’76.
Now, maybe my nephew and niece went around the same time as your friend’s kids.
NotMax
@Mustang Bobby.
Slight correction – October & also November of ’69.
TenguPhule
In 2018 the Kids deserve better monuments then this.
/And by better I mean this shouldn’t have to be refighting the same fucking battles about fucking guns in order to not live in terror of being suddenly shot to death. The schools should be happier and better funded places of learning, not this fucking mess.
MomSense
@efgoldman:
We were still having snow and mixed precipitation today. They were disappointed but they will walkout tomorrow.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
Rumors of a threat caused one local school to postpone the planned walkout.
HinTN
@NotMax: I was in Washington for the Moratorium. Slept on a church pew the night before. Manned a walkie talkie on a corner near the White House as the candle-holding marchers went by. My first protest. May Day was next. Shut ‘er down!!
TenguPhule
Ben Carson and his wife need to DIAF. Immediately if not Sooner.
I hate these grifting assholes with the fury of a thousand grammar pedants.
Mnemosyne
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
Gun-huggers on Facebook keep telling me that the 2nd Amendment guarantees the 1st. I still haven’t figured out how threatening to kill someone for speaking out against guns is “defending” freedom of speech. ?
El Caganer
@TenguPhule: How could it take up valuable employee time? He doesn’t have them doing anything useful anyway,
HinTN
@efgoldman: I didn’t get arrested at May Day like several of my friends, who were corralled in RFK, but I did almost get my foot crushed by a DC motorcycle cop who rolled up to the curb where I was waiting to cross and… well there it was.
TenguPhule
@El Caganer:
They have their jobs to do and they don’t need him around to get in their way. Which is all that lazy fuck is doing.
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne:
It defends their speech, not yours. As White Jeebus intended. //
frosty
@Mustang Bobby: Moratorium, October ’69 and then May ’70 because of Kent State.
Steeplejack
I have to admit I skipped through a lot of the TV coverage of the student walkouts today. I got the gist—they were widespread and very successful—but I didn’t like the sort of vaguely pornographic vibe of the various networks getting good video and playing the whole thing like just another time-filling spectacle.
Anyway, I’m glad I didn’t skip through one bit on Chris Matthews’s Hardball. He played a clip of Ryan Petty, father of one of the slain Florida students, addressing a House Judiciary Committee hearing today, asking why the massacre wasn’t prevented. Lots of stuff about Nikolas Cruz’s troubled background, “worst-kept secret in the community,” reported to multiple law enforcement agencies, etc.
One of Matthews’s two panelists was Daniel Gelillo, a senior at Richmond Montgomery High School (wherever that is).
Suck it, Chris.
Then the other panelist, Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL), bloviated a bit about the awesomeness of the legislation the Florida legislature just passed. “We don’t know that we can always prevent these,” but age-21 limit, background checks, yadda-yadda-yadda. That sounded all the more pathetic following Gelillo’s clarity. The kid nailed it.
So that made me feel better. But it also pissed me off again because it pointed up how much of the content of the pundit shows—even the good ones—is pure bloviation.
(Note: Not saying Hardball is one of the good ones. It is the weak sister of the MSNBC evening lineup. But still better than the stuff on the other networks.)
Mnemosyne
@Steeplejack:
I may need a t-shirt that says, “It’s the guns, stupid.”
Every other factor that people point to is present in other countries. What other countries don’t have is easy access to guns for anyone who wants one.
frosty
@TenguPhule:
Ooohh, now that’s some fury!
TenguPhule
@Steeplejack:
All of which the NRA and friends have sued to ensure that these can’t be used to restrict access to firearms.
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne:
Well, the countries where nobody gets shot a lot.
HumboldtBlue
We had kids from schools across the county walk out. Humboldt State students walked out as well.
Mnemosyne
@TenguPhule:
Name another first world country where as many people get shot as in the US.
HumboldtBlue
@trollhattan:
The letters from local school districts were all of a similar vein.
Steeplejack
@TenguPhule:
I also love the unspoken subtext that “we need our guns to protect ourselves against the oppressive Big Brother government,” but apparently the only way to accomplish gun safety is to set up oppressive Big Brother government measures for everybody else: fortress schools, preëmptive surveillance, widespread profiling of citizens, cops blasting away at will, etc., etc. Freedom!
Seanly
@efgoldman:
My parents were college students around the same time. Until they had me in ’68, my Dad had to rely on his student deferments. He told me once that he was too poor to protest much – had to maintain his grades to maintain the deferment. Only the rich kids could afford to be hippies.
oatler.
Evil Hippies! It’s a goldmine to Kochs et al. Can personify every student who gave you shit for your Star Trek nerd equipment…
Elizabelle
FWIW, it makes me sick that Florida prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Nicholas Cruz. What Cruz did was horrible, but he’s clearly a very troubled and very young man. Who had recently lost his mother.
Fuck the Florida prosecutors. Bloodthirsty, and this is not justice. It’s for their own egos. Life in prison is far better justice for Cruz.
efgoldman
@Seanly:
Or the other kids could drop out.
And Jimmy Carter’s amnesty took most of them off the hook.
cain
The Gen Y generation is going to be most politically active of all the generations. Unlike the cynicism of the Gen X and millenials, they can see that they have political power and they are just hitting 18. Hell, they have more political power than millenails which should shame the shit out of millenials who don’t bother to show up for elections.
schrodingers_cat
@Steeplejack: The argument, that guns are necessary to protect against government tyranny is such bullshit. What guns stand a chance against the government’s war making machinery?
Matt McIrvin
We had no school today, because we were digging out from a massive snowstorm that went on all through yesterday and last night, about 18 inches total. My daughter hadn’t heard about the walkout and I don’t know if there was anything planned at her school (I get the impression that a minority of kids there are at all politically aware, and some are junior Trumpies).
efgoldman
@oatler.:
They’re still mining it – fifty fucking years later!
It’s the equivalent of re-litigating the Great War in the 1960s
Skepticat
@Mnemosyne:
I so agree, and though I don’t do Twitter, I hope someone will pass on my heartfelt admiration and gratitude to him.
Having been brought up in a hidebound New England Republican home and immature, I wasn’t really smart enough to think for myself when I was in college in the ’60s, and I always have regretted and been mortified that I didn’t have this kind of sense, bravery, and strength then. I’m very proud of my thirtysomething niece who’s an activist now, and I am so in awe of and humbled by these young people. For the first time in a long time, I actually have hope for the U.S. Those “kids” are welcome on my lawn anytime!
Feebog
That last CNN post is Granada Hills Charter High School, my alma mater. I still interact with these kids as I am on the campus frequently and know most of the administrators. These students are smart, politically tuned in, and ready to cast their first vote. Blue California is going to get even bluer in November.
efgoldman
@Skepticat:
The only “kids” I want off my lawn are the smart asses who post here and mock my onion.
Kent
Teacher here. At my suburban school in Vancouver WA about half the students walked out and assembled in the courtyard where there is an old bell mounted on a tower. A student climbed up and slowly rang the bell 17 times. And then some students spoke. The admin basically said we are remaining neutral but encouraged teachers to use it as a learning experience and discussion point. Any student not back in class by 10:25 was to be marked as unexcused absent. My kids all made it back in time. Had a few right wing white boy MAGA NRA type boys try to mock the rest but they were pretty much ignored.
At my daughters school same deal. Except a lot of teachers joined.
debbie
@Seanly:
That is bullshit. Most of the hippies I ran into had very little.
MCA1
@Mary G: I get that and commend him, but I think it’s a little unfair to paint every other 8 year old around as afraid to protest. My first grader, for instance, is blissfully unaware of the events at MSDHS and will remain so for the time being because he’s not really old enough to process it and sleep at night. I’d venture 90% of his classmates also have no idea that their older siblings were walking out of class today.
TenguPhule
@efgoldman:
Seems a bit wrinkled and smelly.
efgoldman
@TenguPhule:
See?
Punk kid!
TenguPhule
@schrodingers_cat:
They plan to wage guerilla war by emulating Iraq, apparently. The “plan” is apparently to kill enough liberal civilians and troops in transit to force a surrender.
Yeah I know it doesn’t really make sense, I’m just reporting that’s what they’re thinking.
JanieM
@efgoldman:
I graduated from college in ’72 but had friends from the class of ’68, and also younger ones. It’s amazing how much difference one college “generation” made in that era.
TenguPhule
@Elizabelle:
Sorry, can’t agree with you on this. This is one of those cases where life in prison isn’t going to cut it.
TenguPhule
@Steeplejack: They want to return to warlords and serfs. All of them imagine they’ll be the warlord.
efgoldman
@JanieM:
Yea. I had to be a responsible adult (allegedly). mrs efg1 and I were thinking about kids and a house. But not for long. Divorced by 1970.
rikyrah
@TenguPhule:
It is the civil servants who are dropping the dimes on these clowns ?
efgoldman
@TenguPhule:
Not everybody is as bloodthirsty as you
John M weiss
Can I just say, I just received a robot call from my daughter’s high school about the walkouts. Supportive. Helpful. Encouraging. And safe. I’m thankful for the support of staff. Unparalleled. God, I love these kids.
raven
@HinTN: The May Day after Dewey Canyon III?
raven
The kid were chanting
Hey Hey NRA
How many kids did you kill today
fuck lbj
Eural Joiner
At my school we had a student post threatening messages on social media and get arrested. Last name is Roof, if that rings any bells. Administration moved very quickly!
Mnemosyne
@cain:
You got your generations flipped — the Millennials are just turning 18 now. Gen Y are the ones sandwiched between X and Millennial.
Mandalay
@Mnemosyne:
This.
Marco Rubio tweets a lot on a lot of subjects every day. But in every thread he is viciously and consistently attacked on two fronts:
– Stop taking blood money from the NRA.
– Ban assault weapons.
While Rubio dances around the problem with solutions such as arming teachers and improving background checks, those simple attacks are sinking home.
SiubhanDuinne
@TenguPhule:
No, Tengu, his onion!
JR
@TenguPhule: I cannot wait for future Republicans to wax poetic about what a great guy OBL was and how much of a meanie that pussy Obama was to have him killed.
I mean, they already went there.
TenguPhule
@efgoldman:
He committed the crime. They have the penalty. It doesn’t get more bright line then that.
JR
@Elizabelle: Fuck him. ADX Florence would be my choice.
Luthe
@Mnemosyne: Gen Y = Millennials
Kids these days = Gen Z
/Millennial
efgoldman
@TenguPhule:
Or, the state imposing the death penalty arbitrarily and capriciously depending, among other things, on the race, financial circumstances, and state of residence of the accused is a bright line for many of us.
Lapassionara
@raven: Well, that brings back memories.
Denali
At the grocery store, the cashier told me that her school decided to move the protest inside because of the snowy weather. About 30 kids went outside anyway, and they received in-school suspensions. Hope the suspensions were dropped.
Omnes Omnibus
@TenguPhule: As efg said, not everyone is as bloodthirsty as you.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: Although the Supreme Court disagrees with me, I still consider the death penalty Unconstitutional for the reasons that you list. I also think it is immoral.
Redshift
@TenguPhule:
And it’s not like it was hard to foresee, since Carson wasn’t even able to say for certain, when asked, that his own presidential campaign wasn’t just a money-making scam.
It’s one of the parts of the Trump organized crime organisation that especially pisses me off, because I’m involved in affordable housing advocacy. The funding hasn’t been hit too hard yet, but not for lack of trying; the budget proposal is a disaster, and Carson’s statements are beyond asinine. They were so incompetent last year that the funding was delayed by several months because Carson and the other Trumpers couldn’t find their asses with both hands and just say “okay” to the stuff that was in process before they started.
And I’m absolutely convinced that the only reason Trump appointed Carson to HUD was because he’s “the black guy” and the department has “Urban” in its name.
OldDave
@Steeplejack:
Richard Montgomery HS is in Rockville, Maryland. Maybe there?
efgoldman
@Omnes Omnibus:
Also, of course, irrevocable.
Any thinking person (which apparently excludes our bloodthirsty friend and lots of Americans) just has to read up on Texas.
feathers
Interesting coincidence: George Mason, the elementary school all over twitter and talked about in the previous thread (including by me because I went there!), is a feeder elementary school for George Washington Middle School, one of the two schools with “gun incidents” mentioned at the bottom of the post (which I also attended – go Prexies!*). So they protested, knowing that the school resource officer at their next school had fired a gun within the school. Calling back to old friends, learned that the parent’s Facebook group for GW is on fire with lots of parents complaining that the kids love Officer X so much, it would only be worse for the kids if anything were to happen to him because of this. Needless to say, also STRONG pushback against this attitude and parents noting whose houses their kids are never going to be allowed in.
Although a full official report on the incident is promised, in the interest of being able to find out all important news from fellow jackals, I can report via the above mentioned Facebook group that the bullet did go through a wall and into another classroom. Thankfully, it hit a mini-fridge that was along that wall, causing the freon to hiss and leak out. Unclear whether there were kids in the classroom or not. The mini-fridge was not an authorized one, although apparently many teachers have them and a blind eye is turned. The teacher was allowed to go home for the day because she was so upset. This is all early reports, of course, but it is the current story on the ground among the parents.
*Yes, when GW was a high school, the team name was the Presidents, which somebody gave the horrible shortened nickname of Prexies. I really wish now that I had bought a t-shirt or at least something with the name.
Tom Levenson
@George Spiggott: good for my alma mater. The kids there (including my niece) are all right.
Mandalay
@efgoldman:
Regardless of your views on the death penalty, I have never understood why each state is free to accept or reject the death penalty, yet on relatively minor issues such as sanctuary cities and the legalization of marijuana they can incur the wrath of the federal government.
I’m sure lawyers and constitutionalists can explain why that is the case, but it seems odd; states can decide on the big stuff, but not the little stuff?
efgoldman
@feathers:
One of our daughter’s best friends teaches there. She’ proud of all the kids and faculty.
efgoldman
@Mandalay:
SCOTUS says it’s permissible, but not mandatory. A state may impose or not. But, yes, arbitrary and capricious in so many ways.
jonas
@TenguPhule: I’ve always had trouble believing that someone who was this transparently an asshole grifter and all-around dimwit was ever a remotely competent doctor. Was his widely-touted record as a surgeon ever really vetted? I know, I know, people, including medical professionals, will tell you that it’s supposedly possible to be a technically skilled surgeon and a real dumb shit in many other areas of thought/life, but this is getting out of hand. This guy is seriously messed up. I can’t believe that if anyone started really scrutinizing his professional record, it wouldn’t turn out to be a big ol’ jenga tower of lies. It seems to be all he does.
Mnemosyne
Waiting in vain for an open thread. I got my scores back from the writing contest I entered and I was solidly in the top quartile — 15th out of 60 entries. Not too bad for a first try, and I got some valuable guidance.
Redshift
@OldDave:
Probably; Hardball is taped in DC.
efgoldman
@Mnemosyne:
They’re all open threads. And you already did.
Mnemosyne
@jonas:
There have been rumors that Carson retired so young because he was starting to show signs of early dementia or a similar organic brain problem. It would seem to fit — he seems like a very different person than he was as a surgeon, and it’s not uncommon for people with dementia to swing to the right as their paranoia worsens.
That’s no excuse for his family, though.
satby
@efgoldman: @Omnes Omnibus: the thinking is always that these “lone wolf killers are not rational and that’s why gun control won’t help” according to the gun humpers and their purchased legislators.
But what kind of society executes mentally ill people who aren’t responsible for their actions?
Calouste
@Mandalay: It’s simple: states can do stuff conservatives want, but they can’t do stuff conservatives don’t want. Guiding principle of the USA since 1789.
Redshift
@Mandalay: Technically, they can’t really incur the legal wrath of the federal government over sanctuary cities, no matter what Jeff Sessions thinks. Despite all the blustering by wingnuts and racist demagoguery from Trump, sanctuary cities (except perhaps in a few places that take it further) just mean that local authorities won’t do the work of the federal government in enforcing federal immigration law. The feds can try to coerce them by withholding federal resources (the same way they pressured states to adopt the old 55mph speed limit, or encourage them to submit info to the gun background check database), but they can’t legally require them to.
Mnemosyne
@satby:
I’ve also never seen any evidence that death penalty states have lower murder rates than non-death penalty states. IIRC, the evidence mostly goes the other way.
satby
@Mnemosyne: Congratulations!
Calouste
@Mnemosyne: Either that or he realized that he could make way more grifting off evangelicals than he could make as a surgeon. Probably an and instead of an or.
efgoldman
@Redshift:
Shorthand: Cleek’s Law
It permeates every facet of what’s left of the flying monkey brain
Mnemosyne
@satby:
Thank you! It would have been nice to be a finalist, but it was not meant to be.
Redshift
@Mnemosyne: And there’s speculation that he’s suffering from a prion disease like Creutzfeld-Jakob, because he was a brain surgeon before they knew what the cause of those was and how to protect against them.
JR
@Mandalay: Basically because the death penalty was an established practice of European states while marijuana and legal restrictions on immigration were unknown or beneath governmental notice in the late 18th century.
Mnemosyne
@Calouste:
I may have an overly inflated opinion of surgeons, but it seems weird to me that someone would go to the trouble of becoming a top brain surgeon and then throw it all away just to make more money. If nothing else, grifting can’t possibly require as much skill as brain surgery. Wouldn’t it get really boring, really fast?
FlyingToaster
@TenguPhule: Bullshit. The state has no more business killing people than Cruz had.
It’s the thing that pissed me off most about Johar Tzarnaev’s trial. His crimes were committed in Massachusetts, all of his victims were in Massachusetts, his co-conspirator was in Massachusetts, but the Feds HAD to have the trial for the bombing only so that they could force the death penalty. No trial for killing the MIT cop or the carjacking. FFS.
SiubhanDuinne
@Elizabelle:
Totally agree. I am certainly no lawyer, so can’t argue on Constitutional grounds, but the death penalty AFAIAC is unjust, unfair, reprehensible on moral and ethical and humanitarian
grounds, and logically indefensible. I believe in punishment and proportional response, but the irrevocability of the death penalty makes it something I cannot countenance.
(ETA: If I’m sounding like a character in a Regency novel recently, blame BJ writer-jackal JoyceH. I’ve been bingeing on her novels, and they are wonderful.)
Steeplejack
@Mnemosyne:
That’s good news! Can’t remember—did that come with some criticism/feedback?
efgoldman
@FlyingToaster: Some people (I have no opinion) think life without parole in Cedar Junction (the MA maximum security state prison) is much worse than death.
Mnemosyne
@Steeplejack:
Yes! I got back 3 three-page scoresheets addressing 10 different areas and 2 copies of my manuscript with comments on specific scenes. (It was read by 3 different judges.) I feel like I got pretty good value for my $35 even if I didn’t final.
I am currently drinking a can of hard cider so I can go face the scoresheets.
Steeplejack
@satby:
That’s one good point that Chris Matthews did make tonight: the gun nuts always claim that the shooter was mentally ill, so gun control won’t work, but as soon as the shooter goes to trial they’re baying for the death penalty.
TaMara (HFG)
I know it was mentioned above. But this family
http://www.thestate.com/news/local/crime/article205168669.html
SFBayAreaGal
FYI, Concord, CA is not Central CA. It is part of the SF Bay Area. East Bay Area.
clay
@satby:
Chris Matthews, for all his faults, has been harping on this: “They’re saying he’s mentally unstable, but they want to execute him?” Which is it: if he’s mentally fit to stand trial, then this isn’t a mental health issue. Must be some other cause, hmm, what could it be….?
efgoldman
@Steeplejack:
Shouting while he made it, no doubt.
Can’t stand him, He has no inside voice
Omnes Omnibus
@SiubhanDuinne:
Exactly. If a mistake is made wrt someone sentenced to 20 years, 30 years, or life, the state can try to rectify it. Death sentence? The state can say “Oops. My bad.” Rubin Carter had a good life and did much good after he was exonerated.
Mnemosyne
@SFBayAreaGal:
It’s an ongoing geographical argument: is the Bay Area the northernmost point of central California or the southernmost point of northern California?
Frankensteinbeck
@Mnemosyne:
Ego. Never, ever underestimate what people will do for ego. Carson has built a post-surgeon career out of being patted on the back and having people listen in rapt wonder as he talks about being the only black guy who isn’t lazy. From there, it’s downright easy to find ways for that to also pay money. That shit really rots your brain, too. Locks you in a fantasy world.
Calouste
@Mnemosyne: Everything is a lot less boring if you have dementia. But from the things he said during the campaign, the grain pyramids and crap, it was already clear that he wasn’t all there any more. But evangelicals, like my in-laws, lap it up.
Normally people who rise to the level in science or medicine where Carson was purported to be go on until they die. Same in other fields. Lots of top musicians are still active in their 70s.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
The Dotard is dotarding
the article, unfortunately, never mentions that Lamb explicitly ran against the tax cuts, and never said very nice things about trump.
SiubhanDuinne
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yup. All of this. I am one who, if it came to the choice, would rather see a dozen guilty men go free than one innocent executed.
I realize I am probably in the minority. And sometimes it’s hard. Tim McVeigh was a bit of a moral struggle for me.
El Caganer
@jonas: I’ve read that while he’s a very talented surgeon, he also tended to overestimate his ability and had some very serious malpractice lawsuits lodged against him. I’m neither a lawyer nor a doctor, so what I’ve read might be a slur – let’s face it, if you’re good, they’re usually going to give you the toughest cases and those don’t always work out for the best.
SFBayAreaGal
@Mnemosyne: Well, as long as I lived here, I’ve heard it referred to as part of Northern California.
efgoldman
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Since every phrase or sentence out of his ugly mug is a lie, I don’t know what difference it makes.
Just let it be the harbinger it appears to be.
clay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’m sure Fox & Friends told him that Lamb said all those things, so it must be true!
Steve in the ATL
@Omnes Omnibus:
We agree on more than just music
Mnemosyne
@SFBayAreaGal:
The counterargument I’ve heard is from the folks even further north of you, who argue that there’s a lot of the state that’s north of the Bay Area.
And central California has been making a play to be considered its own region. Otherwise, “northern California” starts at San Luis Obispo.
I’m in So Cal, so I’m mostly going by what other people have told me.
ETA: I have a college friend who grew up in Gilroy and now lives near Santa Cruz. i’ll have to ask her if she’s in NorCal or central California. ?
Mnemosyne
@clay:
You beat me to it.
efgoldman
@Steve in the ATL:
Even for union thugs?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
the screen shot will give most Juicers a chuckle, I think
Omnes Omnibus
@SiubhanDuinne:
Life. I may want to beat someone to death with a spiked baseball bat for what they did, but the state shouldn’t do it.
efgoldman
@Omnes Omnibus:
In his case, would have been in a federal supermax. Hardly a vacation.
Mnemosyne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Okay, I LOL’ed.
I have a soft spot for New Zealanders. They’re the Canadians of the South Pacific. ??
trollhattan
@Mnemosyne:
Let’s just call everything north of, say, Santa Rosa Baja Idaho. Bay Area is Nor/Cal, SLO and Santa Barbara are generally called the Central Coast and the San Joaquin Valley (hi Fresno!) is kind of its own thing.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve in the ATL: Ditch the DB-9. Get a JCW Mini – with the fucking manual. Usable insanity. You will thank me later.
FlyingToaster
@efgoldman: Either Walpole or Concord. I consider 60 years in either to be a fate worse than death.
Amir Khalid
@Mnemosyne:
The death penalty certainly doesn’t work to deter other people from murdering. No deterrent can take away a person’s motive for murder; it can only discourage murder, and that it cannot do for anyone who is heedless of the consequences. A lot of the arguments in favour of it that I’ve seen are based on the Biblical idea of “an eye for an eye”, or its equivalent in other traditions — in other words, retaliation under state auspices. These people just want to see another death.
The Ferengi Rules of Acquisition teach us that there is no profit in revenge.
Omnes Omnibus
@FlyingToaster: If you are there and “opt out,” that is your choice. The state didn’t do it.
Matt McIrvin
@Mnemosyne: Just eyeballing maps, it looks to me like there’s no correlation whatsoever. There are states with very high and very low murder rates that have both the death penalty and no death penalty. Higher murder rates seem to be associated to some degree with poverty and also with big cities; having the death penalty is associated more with being politically conservative.
Mnemosyne
@trollhattan:
Look, do you want to indulge in some interregional insult-flinging, or not?*
* It’s kind of a moot question because I have to wander off and do some stuff now anyway.
Steve in the ATL
@efgoldman: death penalty for union thugs? No way—hard labor instead!
Matt McIrvin
@Amir Khalid: What I’ve read about the efficacy of deterrence in preventing crime implies that the probability of getting caught is way more important than the severity of the punishment. If people really think they’ll get caught, the punishment can actually be mild by US standards and it will be effective. On the other hand, you can’t substitute for lax enforcement by making punishment incredibly harsh; potential criminals are not computing a probabilistic expectation value of punishment. But increasing punishment is much easier to do, and politically satisfying.
Steve in the ATL
@Mnemosyne: @Matt McIrvin: @Amir Khalid: we studied this extensively in law school. Death penalty has no discernible deterrent effect; it is purely about retribution.
How any alleged Christian could support that, I don’t understand.
Steve in the ATL
@Omnes Omnibus: I’d be concerned about reliability.
J/k!
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve in the ATL: Yep. No upside, but racist, arbitrary, vicious, mean, and irreversible. What great idea. Wi had it for a few years. No one ever got it. It was eliminated in the 1860s.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve in the ATL: Gah!
FlyingToaster
@Omnes Omnibus: E.g.: John Salvi.
This is a very simple concept. Killing people is wrong. If you choose to kill yourself, it sucks, but as a society, we probably can’t stop you.
But if we as a society believe in killing people, the how on earth do we justify telling you not to kill people? It makes no fucking sense.
clay
@Steve in the ATL: C’mon, it’s not like a misuse of capital punishment is central to Christian theology!
Omnes Omnibus
@clay: It is not like we need to buy in.
nice strategy
The California Teacher’s Association and the Association of CA School Administrators worked together to make it possible for schools such as mine to give students and teachers more options for this particular day. At my school, if a majority of a class was intending to walk out, teachers could go with them to supervise and/or participate and have non-participating students to go to the library to chill. If a majority was planning to stay, the teacher needed to stay with them in the classroom. The event was relatively low-key and non partisan, with a reading of the names of the MSD victims each minute for the 17 minutes. I was grateful for a chance to observe and participate in today’s walkout, but schools have to be careful about policies surrounding walkouts, as they can’t discipline students selectively on the basis of political viewpoint by enforcing attendance policies inconsistently from walkout to walkout. So I’m hoping that student activism can prosper without walkouts specifically becoming so common as to be divisive or unduly disruptive. By not leaving campus and by basically avoiding gun policy advocacy, our version of the walkout, which was advertised to captive audiences through student leadership announcements, was less about civil disobedience and more centered on the idea that we all have a right to be safe at school — students, teachers, and administrators. In short, my school had a good day today.
Hellbastard
How long before the wingnuts try to gin up some right-wing protest movement among “conservative” school kids to prove bias. Clock is ticking…
J R in WV
@SiubhanDuinne:
My father was a newspaper editor and editorial writer. He opposed the death penalty, which we do NOT have in West Virginia, except in cases with already convicted prisoners who commit violent crimes against other prisoners or Correctional Officers. His reasoning was that you needed that penalty to hold against people already sentenced to life without parole, they would feel free to kill in prison without the death penalty.
I’m torn. I served on a jury that found a man not guilty after he killed a man he helped convict of murder for hire, sentenced to life with mercy, which here means a chance of parole after 15 years. When the convict was released, he went around the neighborhood promising to kill Donald, the witness. It was a two week trial. The convict should never have been released, he was obviously a sociopath. I don’t know if Donald and his friend set Billy up or not, but there was reasonable doubt about an intention to kill, so we found him not guilty.
Murder trials are the next to worst, sex offenses would be worse. I’ve not had to do that on a petit jury, but the grand jury was a dozen cases in one afternoon.
J R in WV
@Steve in the ATL:
Friend has a Mini, around 250,000 miles on it. She has done 2 transmissions, much routine maintenance, brakes, etc. But a blast to drive, pretty reliable overall.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I modestly suggest that there needs to be enough guns in the schools that our children can take shelter behind piles of firearms when the shooting inevitably starts now that we have decided as a nation to adopt the Warhammer 40K phrase “daka” as an educational philosophy.
Amir Khalid
@FlyingToaster:
For consistency, I think you’d have to either make an exception for the military or make yours a pacifist state.
The Lodger
@Mnemosyne: Carson and I are of similar age, and in the last couple of years I’ve lost the ability to see fine details of objects I’m holding in my hands. In my case, I’ve lost the ability to grade the condition of coins. But if I were a surgeon, I’d be forced to retire by now. The televangelist-level grifting, however, is another matter entirely.
Gretchen
JerusalemGreer on twitter said that her son, in a conservative public school in Arkansas, received corporal punishment for participating in the walkout. He had the choice of that or some other form of punishment and chose that. I was shocked to learn that 22 states still allow corporal punishment in schools, including my state.
Buckeye
@Redshift:
My mother died of CJD, whatever Carson’s got, that’s not it. I doubt it’s another prion disease either.
louc
My favorite protest: Students at an ATL high school chose to take a knee. http://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/atlanta/students-at-atlanta-high-school-kneel-to-protest-gun-violence/715966930
The district says this was their choice to do as a form of walkout though some media say they did it to protest not being allowed out of school. Since the school district PIO tweeted out the pic, probably not true.
Really, check out the walkout stories out of Philly, Chicago, Baltimore, Indianapolis. These kids have been protesting gun violence for years. Unfortunately it takes a deranged shooter in a well-to-do suburb to ignite the spark.