Politics

Guns on campus – one year later

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

One year ago the Harrold (Texas) Independent School District did something groundbreaking: they allowed teachers and staff members to carry concealed handguns on campus, in the classroom, and — gasp — around children.

Here’s the story of how things are, one year later.

In short:

In the year since that historic decision, a gun was never brandished or fired at the school. There were no problems, [HISD Superintendent David] Thweatt said.

Granted that doesn’t mean that guns in school kept bad things from happening, but it does show that after a year with guns directly in school that nothing horrible did happen. The guns didn’t cause immediate death of all the schoolchildren. There weren’t any problems with teachers whipping out their guns to keep the kids in line. Nothing. Life just went about as normal.

So why have the guns in school? Response time, as a matter of practical importance towards keeping those kids safe:

However, one week after school began, police busted a methamphetamine lab set up in an abandoned house that sat 50 feet from the school property.

A deputy had peered inside and “saw something in the walls and windows and called for backup,” Thweatt said. “They made it to the abandoned house in 15 minutes. We had figured it would take 18 to 20 minutes in a typical situation.”

Had that been an armed intruder at his school, response time would have been too slow.

“We’re the first responders. We have to be,” Thweatt said. “We don’t have 5 minutes. We don’t have 10 minutes. We would have had 20 minutes of hell” if attackers had targeted the school.

So what did the kids think about the policy?

Harrold students, who grew up on ranches and in the middle of the North Texas gun culture, were unperturbed by the school district’s new gun policy.

“The kids just laughed about it,” Thweatt said.

It’s no big deal. Kids aren’t phased, everyone went about life as usual.

But if it is life as usual, why do it? Thweatt explains:

When a London reporter asked Thweatt to explain why so many kooks go into schools looking for a body count, Thweatt said he couldn’t explain such a devolution of society, but he did know a simple way to stop it — the same solution he chose for Harrold ISD.

“Good guys with guns — good,” he said. “Bad guys with guns — bad.”

John Mackey gets it

/ hsoi / 6 Comments

Whole Foods Market is headquartered out of Austin. It’s expensive hippie/yuppie food and culture all rolled into one. Truth be told, if I had money pouring out of my pockets, I’d probably shop there because they do have some cool stuff (I’m a sucker for a good olive bar).

But there’s something kinda fun about reading this opinion piece penned by John Mackey, CEO and co-founder of Whole Foods. I think it’s because I know the vast majority of Whole Foods’ customers wouldn’t agree with him. Something about the sort of people Whole Foods tends to attract vs. the Obama voter/supporter demographic vs. those that want socialized medicine and the government to cure all their ills.

What I think is great about Mackey’s piece isn’t that he’s taking the course some might think. He agrees that our healthcare system needs to be fixed, he just doesn’t think using other people’s money nor having the government administer it is the way to do it. He demonstrates what he does at Whole Foods, and how it works out quite well. He also takes it a step further:

Unfortunately many of our health-care problems are self-inflicted: two-thirds of Americans are now overweight and one-third are obese. Most of the diseases that kill us and account for about 70% of all health-care spending—heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes and obesity—are mostly preventable through proper diet, exercise, not smoking, minimal alcohol consumption and other healthy lifestyle choices.

Recent scientific and medical evidence shows that a diet consisting of foods that are plant-based, nutrient dense and low-fat will help prevent and often reverse most degenerative diseases that kill us and are expensive to treat. We should be able to live largely disease-free lives until we are well into our 90s and even past 100 years of age.

Health-care reform is very important. Whatever reforms are enacted it is essential that they be financially responsible, and that we have the freedom to choose doctors and the health-care services that best suit our own unique set of lifestyle choices. We are all responsible for our own lives and our own health. We should take that responsibility very seriously and use our freedom to make wise lifestyle choices that will protect our health. Doing so will enrich our lives and will help create a vibrant and sustainable American society.

Can’t disagree with the man. Well, except maybe about the plant-based diet thing. 🙂

Trigger the Vote

/ hsoi

TriggerTheVote.org

Regardless of your political stance, if you are eligible to vote, make sure you are registered and make sure you get out and vote.

Don’t just vote in the big national elections, but vote in every state, city, county, and local election that you have as well. What happens to you and affects your life on a daily basis is affected far more by the local elections than the national ones.

This isn’t the way

/ hsoi

I’m trying to avoid the healthcare debate here because it’s a lot of headache and contention that I don’t need in my life right now.

Nevertheless, reading this post from the Conservative Libertarian Outpost I can’t help but be aghast.

I don’t deny that our health care system needs improvement. But the proposal of the current administration is not the way to do it. Folks, the devil is in the details… and I do mean devil. If you’re unhappy now, you’re going to be miserable if this goes through.

Work for change, work for improvement. This… this may be change, but it’s not improvement and still no one has been able to convince me otherwise. You’re welcome to try.

Cling

/ hsoi

Murdoc makes a good point:

Why does it seem like it’s only guns that people “cling” to?

Can we accuse people of “clinging to freedom of speech”?

Well, apparently religion is also clung to. But he makes a good point.

Here, let me translate that for you

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

A couple of good posts on modern day translations. What they say vs. what they mean.

First, tgace gives us the language of the street.

Then Marko gives us some political translations.

All fairly accurate. Certainly no “all your base are belong to us” sorts of problems here.

Important statistics

/ hsoi / 6 Comments

So Sotomayor is now a member of SCOTUS.

I wanted to see how the vote broke down. The Washington Post has a breakdown of the vote.

They break it down by party, by state, by region, by gender (why not by race?), by boomer status, by next election year, and then… by astrological sign.

Leo’s and Libra’s seem to be big Sotomayor supporters. Taurus’ are about split evenly, but it seems Virgos in general have something against her. And apparently Edward Kennedy is a Pisces.

Hey Linoge! You seem to like making graphs and performing statistical analysis. I’d like to see some analysis of this. Maybe astrological signs should be the big issue in the next election.  You know… important things like that. 😉

Birthers – be careful what you wish for

/ hsoi / 10 Comments

This whole “birther” thing regarding whether President Obama is a natural born citizen or not… there’s one way to end it quickly: show the birth certificate.

I’ve never been a proponent of the “if you’ve got nothing to hide…” line of reasoning, but I do understand where it comes from. Furthermore, there’s no question that it does arouse suspicion because if things were the way you say they were and could easily prove it, why wouldn’t you? It would put an end to the whole thing. Done. ’nuff said.

So it is curious why President Obama doesn’t just put a simple end to this.

But the birthers have to realize one important thing. If you do get your way, then that means we’ll be stuck with President Biden.

I don’t know if that’s an improvement. 😉

Time to go

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

So my US Congressional Representative, Lloyd Doggett, refuses to listen to the people he supposedly represents:

Witnesses said that when Doggett was asked whether he would support the [Obama health care] plan even if he found that his constituents opposed it, Doggett said he would. People then began chanting “just say no” and overwhelmed the congressman as he moved through the crowd and into the parking lot.

Emphasis mine.

Wow. So your constituents say no, and you — as the person that is supposed to represent us — opts to ignore us.

Folks, it’s time (well, it’s well overdue) for Lloyd Doggett to go. I don’t care if you’re Democrat or Republican or whatever political ideology you subscribe to. This goes well beyond that. This is someone that has demonstrated he doesn’t care about you and will vote and behave in whatever way benefits him most. He has demonstrated a flagrantly disregard for the will of the people that he supposedly represents. If he doesn’t want to listen to us, then he doesn’t deserve to be our representative. He has totally forgotten what his job is all about.

(h/t to Robbie)