This.
Let them live here, let them work here, let them have drivers’ licenses, but if they want citizenship, they have to go to the back of the line. And that means no welfare either.
Of course, the Dems hate it, because it doesn’t give them all the new welfare-state oriented voters they want and need.
[Update a while later]
What this comes down to is two fundamentally different views: citizenship as a right, versus a privilege to be earned. Heinlein had it right.
Is it warping our kids?
It’s not necessary to plot progressive indoctrination with other true believers; they already know what to think and what to do, and from whom to take their cues. At the moment, that would be Mr. Obama and other members of his administration on the permanent campaign trail. This time, they are specifically campaigning against the Second Amendment.
As powerful as political motivation might be, the faddish nature of education is equally compelling. For some time, “zero tolerance” policies of one kind or another have enjoyed substantial popularity.
The zero tolerance policy most familiar to the public is the “gun free” school zone, which for some produces feelings of safety. Unfortunately, like all zero tolerance polices, this is a complete failure, actually encouraging attacks rather than enhancing safety. Those who need to “feel safe” cannot admit this obvious reality lest their belief system come crashing down, so they redouble their efforts, striking out at even imaginary threats and guns.
Understanding this sort of thinking, it is easy to realize that such people think nothing of applying a zero tolerance policy prohibiting actual firearms to not only toys bearing a slight resemblance to firearms, but to depictions of firearms and even imaginary weapons. Thus have elementary-aged children been punished for pointing fingers at each other and fighting imaginary heroic battles for mankind. Thus is childhood warped and wrenched from children.
Some of these bizarre incidents are the direct result of human confusion or incompetence. School systems have multiple levels of management that theoretically can avoid abuses in student discipline. Take the case of the five year-old girl who dared think of blowing bubbles on her friend and herself. Even if her teacher could not tell the difference between a Hello Kitty bubble gun — a toy the girl left at home — and a real weapon, and even if she could not tell the difference between five year olds playing and a threat of serious bodily harm or death, what’s the principal’s excuse? What’s the excuse of the assistant superintendent and the superintendent and the members of the school board?
They’re morons, who rely on feelings instead of thought?
More and more, it appears that sending your kid to a public school is malparenting, particularly if it’s a boy.
Also, as a commenter over there points out, these people can’t be said to be college educated. They’re merely college degreed.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Oh, good lord:
If your children express that they are troubled by today’s incident, please talk with them and help them share their feelings. Our school counselor is available to meet with any students who have the need to do so next week. In general, please remind them of the importance of making good choices.
These people shouldn’t be allowed within a hundred yards of a child.
[Update a few minutes later]
Officials said that even though it was not a real security situation, everybody in the school system did what they should in light of the reported threat, The Times reported.
Yes, apparently, if “doing what they should” means being moronic and hysterical.
Roger Handberg says it’s time for space advocates to move beyond the old false paradigm.
When I was in college, disillusioned by the end of Apollo, these were the images, from Don Davis and others, that re-inspired me to get involved in space again.
Charlie Martin, who is making good progress on his goal toward healthier lifestyle, notes that the focus on weight is misguided:
In the first 13 weeks I lost two inches on my neck and two inches around my waist. In the following four weeks, I’ve lost another 3 inches (a total of FIVE inches) around my waist.
Obviously, I like the Army’s numbers better, so let’s use them — according to the Army, I’ve lost 5 percentage points of my body fat over the last four weeks, with my weight remaining stable. (Other methods give me somwhere around 29 percent, which is the most common value from the Withing body impedance too.) My weight is around 273, and 5 percent of 273 is 14 pounds close enough.
To have lost that much body fat, and still gained roughly 2 pounds over that four weeks means I’ve exchanged some amount of body fat for muscle, while also being around 32,000 kcals in arrears for that whole four weeks.
I’d remind Charlie that a lot of linebackers weigh more than him. I don’t think they’re necessarily fat.
…is a nightmare for California’s middle class:
Unfortunately, California environmentalists are trying to turn much of the Central Valley’s farmland back into desert too. Thanks to the Endangered Species Act, federal courts have ordered farmers to divert hundreds of billions of gallons of water away from crops and into the Sacramento River, where it is supposed to help revive the delta smelt.
The diverted water has not helped the smelt much, but it has turned hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland fallow and sent unemployment in some farming communities as high as 40 percent.
California could solve this problem by building more dams, thus adding water capacity. But the state hasn’t built a major new dam since 1979 and none is on the drawing board.
One reason is the California Environmental Quality Act of 1970. Modeled after the federal National Environmental Policy Act, CEQA was intended to make infrastructure planning easier. As the accompanying chart shows, it is anything but an easy law to follow. Unlike most state environmental planning laws, CEQA allows plaintiffs to recover attorney’s fees from defendant infrastructure developers (whether they be state, city or private actors).
This has created an entire environmental lawsuit industry — a very profitable one that chills development. According to the California Chamber of Commerce, CEQA has become “a morass of uncertainty for project proponents and agencies alike.”
Local government smart-growth plans have made it next to impossible for developers to build single-family homes near job centers such as the Bay Area or Los Angeles. As a result, real estate prices along California’s coast are among the highest in the nation, forcing many middle-class families to downsize or move elsewhere.
But the moron voters keep reelecting these people.
Some thoughts from Jeremy Boreing, on the anniversary of Andrew Breitbart’s death. Hard to believe it’s been a year.
[Update late evening]
Iowahawk remembers Andrew as well:
Despite the differences in our extroversion (the mere idea of appearing on camera sends me diving under the furniture) I considered him a kindred spirit – another guy who loved his wife and kids, happy despite being sick of the bullshit. Although I can’t claim to have known him as well as others here at Breitbart, I cherished him a friend whose passing is still personally painful.
With all the tributes and venom being churned out today it’s obvious he still looms large in the political conversation, and it’s hard to think of another figure in media or activism who would be a trending topic a year after their death. I think the reason why is that he represented a new kind of cultural/social conservative. Maybe not in the conventional sense (it’s still fun to freak my liberal friends by noting Andrew’s status as a pro-gay marriage, pro-pot decriminalization Jewish activist for women and minorities who loved of 80s New Wave), but on the value of honesty. I’ve heard him referred to as a “reactionary.” I suppose he as a reactionary – in the literal sense – against an increasingly contrived, vapid, narrative-driven news culture, one that attacks and marginalizes any non-conforming message. He studied the bullies’ playbook, called them out, and bloodied their noses. Hard as it may be for these bloody-nosed bullies to believe, it had nothing to do with their ‘liberal’ politics. If there was a parallel universe with a dominant right wing media culture as dishonest and conformist and thuggish as the left wing one here, Andrew would’ve been more than happy to rocket there and punch them in the mouth, too. If that’s what a reactionary is, then sign me up for the t-shirt.
Me too.
A new White House petition demanding an apology.
<TROLL TYPE=”SELF”>Frankly, Star Wars and Star Trek both suck. They’re for people who can’t handle real SF.</TROLL>
The most openly and transparently thin-skinned administration in history.
If only Stalin knew.
This is a post for manned space geeks, arising from questions in comments earlier. As I note there:
We’re going to be stuck with both CBM and NDS for a long time. The latter is much more flexible, (e.g., allowing docking to an unmanned facility), but the former will stick around for its ability to transfer large objects.
Note that Dragon can’t serve as a lifeboat currently, because it has to have someone in the station, with power, to unberth from the CBM, even though it’s functionally capable of doing so with a rudimentary life support system. One of the key changes for commercial crew will be adoption of the NDS. One more reason that we should be accelerating that capability, because a Dragon lifeboat would allow the addition of another crew member, doubling or maybe even quadrupling the science that could be performed at the station.
I discuss this issue in the book:
To get back to the bizarre (at least that’s how it would appear to a Martian) behavior with respect to ISS, what is it worth? Of what value is it to have people aboard? We have spent about a hundred billion dollars on it over almost three decades. We are continuing to spend two or three billion a year on it, depending on how one keeps the books. For that, if the purpose is research, we are getting about one person-year of such (simply maintaining the facility takes a sufficient amount of available crew time that on average, only one person is doing actual research at any given time). That would imply that we think that a person-year of orbital research is worth two or three gigabucks.
What is the constraint on crew size? For now, not volume, though the life support system may be near its limits (the US segment can supposedly support four, and the Russian segment three) – I don’t know how many ultimately it could handle, but we know that there is currently not a larger crew because of NASA’s lifeboat requirement, and there has to be a Soyuz (which can return three) for each three people on the station. If what they were doing was really important, they’d do what they do at Scott-Amundsen, and live without. After all, as suggested earlier, just adding two researchers would immediately triple the productivity of the facility. In fact, because the ISS has recently been unable to average more than twenty-seven hours per week1, adding one person for a forty-hour week would increase it by two and a half times, and adding a second would increase it by a factor of four. If what we’re getting from the ISS in terms of research is really worth three billion a year, then quadrupling it would be, at least in theory, a huge value.
That’s not to say that they couldn’t be continuing to improve the safety, and develop a larger life boat eventually (the Dragon is probably very close to being able to serve as one now, since it doesn’t need a launch abort system for that role – only a new mating adaptor that allows it to dock to or depart from an unmanned or unpowered station), but their unwillingness to risk crew now is indicative of how unimportant whatever science being done on the station really is.
I should note that last week, the station did manage a record seventy-one hours, but I don’t think they’ll be able to keep that up with current crew size.