…at NBC.
I don’t believe the journalists should be licensed, but if they were, these clowns should have had theirs pulled years ago.
[Update a while later]
NBC is “reviewing” how they managed to generate a widely-dispersed slander on civil rights defenders. As Bryan says, they’re probably “reviewing” how to better get away with it the next time.
…”saved my life“:
Could proposed restrictions on magazines greater than 10 rounds endanger ordinary people caught in situations like the one you faced?
There is definitely a risk involved with arbitrarily limiting normal citizens to ten rounds (or seven in the case of New York). Statistics generally indicate multiple shots being required to stop a single threat regardless of caliber, and there is almost always a degradation of accuracy in a high-stress situation.
If someone is unfortunate enough to be in a self-defense situation with three or four attackers, the difference between ten rounds and thirteen (or twenty) could mean the difference between life and death.
The only person qualified to determine what you need for your own defense is you.
[Update a couple minutes later]
I agree that Glenn’s headline for this story is much more accurate:
National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre and Mark Kelly, the husband of former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., who survived a shot to the head two years ago during an assassination attempt that left six people dead, are among those slated to testify in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. One congressional source tells CBS News that Giffords herself is expected to attend the hearing; she is expected to accompany her husband and address the committee, although she’s not expected to take questions.
Unfortunately, being shot (or being a former astronaut) doesn’t make one an expert on guns or their use for self defense. This is about emotionalism, not a rational informed debate.
The full privatization of U.S. space transportation will bring two immediate benefits. First, America can and will recapture global leadership in commercial space transportation (we are currently fourth in launches per year, behind Russia, Europe and Ukraine), bringing thousands of good jobs back to America. Second, since NASA will be purchasing services—essentially tickets for crew and cargo—on the same commercial transportation used by the Defense Department, the department will save money, which can be used to improve U.S. national security.
One of the biggest beneficiaries of this transition will be NASA. Private industry can build the rockets, and do a much better job at lowering costs than any government agency. NASA can then focus on the important and difficult jobs that only NASA can do Among other things, this would include developing gamechanging technologies such as advanced electric propulsion that are still too risky for any company to invest in, and which will create brand-new industries in the 21st century.
A renewed and refocused NASA is critical to America’s future. So as the country struggles with trillions in debt and deficits, it makes no sense for NASA to build rockets that are already available or can be developed at much lower cost by U.S. private industry. Why spend approximately $20 billion to build an unneeded SLS super-heavy-lift rocket, for instance, when existing commercial rockets can carry payloads more often, efficiently and cheaply?
Unfortunately, it makes lots of sense once you understand that the purpose is not to actually do anything useful in space. That’s just lagniappe, if we’re lucky enough to get it.
The latest issue of Space Safety Magazine is dedicated to it. I disagree with Andrea’s take here, though:
The focus of commercial space is very much on cost-cutting, while vague assurances are made about safer vehicles. Sometimes safety is even presented as a stubborn obstacle to industry development and progress [I plead guilty as charged – RS]. The commercial human spaceflight industry needs to remember that the primary goal of the Shuttle Program was cutting the cost of transportation to orbit by an order of magnitude, a goal at which it failed miserably. As with the supersonic Concorde, the Shuttle was doomed by being both expensive and unsafe. Being expensive made it in turn unaffordable to undertake any further development or safety modification. But even being expensive to operate did not stop either the Shuttle or Concorde from operating for about 30 years. What ultimately ended these programs was their inadequate safety.
Probably true for Concorde, but not for Shuttle. As I write in the book: Continue reading The Columbia Disaster
…is like taking chemotherapy for a cold:
I cannot see why this relatively poor generation should bear the cost of damage that will not become apparent until the time of a far richer future generation, any more than people in 1900 should have borne sacrifices to make people today slightly richer. Or why today’s poor should subsidise, through their electricity bills, today’s rich who receive subsidies for wind farms, which produce less than 0.5% of the country’s energy.
As Glenn often says, the poor don’t have the juice (literally, in this case). It’s always about the juice.
We never intended a fundamentalist Green movement that rejected all energy sources other than renewable, nor did we expect the Greens to cast aside our priceless ecological heritage because of their failure to understand that the needs of the Earth are not separable from human needs. We need take care that the spinning windmills do not become like the statues on Easter Island, monuments of a failed civilisation.
What he doesn’t (or at least didn’t) understand is that they want civilization, and humanity itself, to fail.
The Blue elites are wrong:
It is easy to see how rational people can conclude that the only hope of preserving mass prosperity in America comes from transfers and subsidies. If we add to this the belief that only a powerful and intrusive regulatory state can prevent destructive climate change, then the case for the blue utopia looks ironclad. To save the planet, save the middle class and provide American minorities and single mothers with the basic elements of an acceptable life, we must set up a far more powerful federal government than we have ever known, and give it sweeping powers over the production and distribution of wealth.
But what if this isn’t true? What if the shift from a late-stage industrial economy to an information economy has a different social effect? What if the information revolution continues and even accelerates the democratization of political, social and cultural life by empowering ordinary people? What if the information revolution, like the industrial revolution, ultimately leads to a radical improvement in the way ordinary people live and opens up vast new horizons of human potential and freedom?
Obviously nobody knows what the future holds, and anything anybody says about the social consequences of the information revolution is mostly conjecture; still, the elegantly paternalistic pessimism of our elites about the future of the masses seems both defeatist and overdone. The information revolution, one should never forget, may be disruptive but more fundamentally it is good news. Human productivity is rising dramatically. If the bad news is that fewer and fewer people will earn a living working in factories, the good news is that a smaller and smaller percentage of the time and energy of the human race must be devoted to the manufacture of the material objects we need for daily life. Just as it’s good news overall when agricultural productivity increases and the majority of the human race no longer has to spend its time providing food, it’s good news when we as a species can free ourselves from the drudgery and monotony of factory work.
Good news is bad news for people who don’t like (other people to have) freedom. They need a crisis to not waste.
…is back on.
It’s all part of their general war on any political opposition, because obviously, any opposition to their enlightened “progressive” policies is illegitimate.
Whether you are liberal or conservative, libertarian, moderate or politically agnostic, everyone should be concerned when leaders of our government believe they can intentionally try to delegitimize a news organization they don’t like.
In fact, if you are a liberal – as I am – you should be the most offended, as liberalism is founded on the idea of cherishing dissent and an inviolable right to freedom of expression.
That more liberals aren’t calling out the White House for this outrageous behavior tells you something about the state of liberalism in America today.
Just another example of how they aren’t really liberal (and why I refuse to apply that label to them).
Do they have an exit strategy for their war this time? You’d think they would have learned the last time around.
Love has no pride:
The thought that love has no pride is an old one. Indeed, it has become something of a cliché. Yet it is achieved the status of cliché by virtue of the truth in it.
CBS’s venerable 60 Minutes show brought us an example of the cliché in action over the weekend. 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft is smitten with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. He put his professional skills aside to do public relations for Obama and Clinton in their joint interview with him for the show.
A serious journalist might have tried to learn something on the issues of the day from them. Not Kroft. Lest there be any misunderstanding, Kroft thrust his tongue down their throats as fast as he could and kept it there for the duration.
Actually, it would be more accurate to say they have no shame.
I guess we have to elect Republicans if we want to get real journalism.
Police stood in awe as gun enthusiasts and collectors waved wads of cash for the guns being held by those standing in line for the buyback program.
People that had arrived to trade in their weapons for $100 or $200 BuyBack gift cards($100 for handguns, shotguns and rifles, and $200 for assault weapons) soon realized that gun collectors were there and paying top dollar for collectible firearms. So, as the line for the chump cards got longer and longer people began to jump ship and head over to the dealers.
John Diaz, Seattle’s Police Chief, wasn’t pleased with the turn of events, stating “I’d prefer they wouldn’t sell them,” but admitted it’s perfectly legal for private individuals to buy and sell guns, FOR NOW.
For now.
Hilarious. And yes, I know that “idiotic gun buyback” is redundant.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Just to compound the idiocy, a commenter points out:
What a deal. Way better deal than the pawn shop. You can report your gun stolen. Then bring it in for buy back and get your gift card (no questions asked, right?). Then the police return it to you. What a brilliant use of Seattle’s money.
Brilliant indeed.