Saturday, March 31, 2018

WATBs, Explained

From Wonkette:

It is not a coincidence that the people who face the least amount of injustice are the ones who can’t handle it when things don’t go their way.

Teachers Walk Out Against New Repug State Budget That Firebombs KY Economy

When you can't get through to 911, when your children have to learn standing up in classrooms of 40 and 50 kids, when you have to pay $30 tolls to drive 10 miles on a highway that's more potholes than pavement, when you can't find a local doctor and the nearest hospital is a 3-hour drive, when you have to buy bottled water to shower in because the tap water is that contaminated ...

... be sure to thank the repug super-majorities in the General Assembly, for passing a budget that is an abomination, but still not as bad as the hellish cuts Gov. I Got Mine Fuck You wanted.

From the Herald:

Kentucky’s two largest school districts in Jefferson and Fayette counties were among 26 across the state that closed schools Friday after hundreds of school employees refused to work following the legislature’s passage of pension reform.
Fayette County District spokeswoman Lisa Deffendall said on Thursday night, more than 1,200 school employees reported they would be absent.
The news came after the state legislature passed a surprise pension-reform bill in Frankfort. At least 15 districts said they were closing because of teacher absences. About another 10 closed Friday morning without explanation. In addition, Breathitt County said it’s dismissing at 12 p.m. but gave no public explanation.

SNIP

“After exhausting all means of positive protest such as, emailing, texting, calling, visiting Frankfort, having walk ins, pension forums, it was evident that drastic measures had to be taken for us to be heard,” said Fayette Education Association President Jessica Hiler . “Although closing school was not an option that we wanted for our students, they have no better advocate than their teachers and other public school employees. We have to be the voice for our students and that means we must continue to advocate for funding and resources needed to provide all students with a world class, 21st Century education.”
Deffendall said teachers at several schools were spending the morning packing food for their students living in poverty who wouldn’t otherwise be able to get meals provided by the school. 
"Lawmakers" gutted teachers' pensions in a secret, last-second move that violated state law requiring open discussion and an actuarial analysis.  Attorney General Andy Beshear vowed to file suit against the bill the instant Bevin signs it.

The governor's race next year is going to be about 14 Democratic candidates competing to be the one who hates Bevin the most.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/local/education/article207399739.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/local/education/article207399739.html#storylink=cpy

Tuesday, March 27, 2018

Too Easy

Here's the question I want someone to ask the human simalcrum whose name, thanks to Dan Savage, means "frothy mixture of semen, lube and feces."

"Given your insistence that the only allowable sex is procreative sex, and given that your wife is post-menopausal, are you now celibate and if not, who or what are you fucking?"



Monday, March 26, 2018

Sleet Can't Stop Louisville March for Our Lives

It was the usual Kentucky disgusting March weather: sleet then rain but with winds that snatched umbrellas inside-out.  These marchers were defying the NRA; freezing rain was nothing.

WDRB:

Hundreds of teens and adults spent a rainy Saturday marching to feel safe in school.

“Not one more, not one more!”

“Kids not guns, kids not guns!”

Those were some of the chants heard as a crowd of hundreds of people marched their way downtown from Waterfront Park to Metro Hall. The student-led March for our Lives rally voiced it's concerns with gun laws after recent school shootings.

“It feels empowering,” said 15-year-old Rayna from Jeffersontown High School.

“We need to take control. If someone else isn't going to help then we have to do it ourselves,” said Rayya, an 8th grader at Meredith Dunn.

“You shouldn't have to be worried about getting shot while you're trying to learn,” U of L student Jared Showalter said.

“We're gonna make changes and no one else is gonna have to die,” said U of L student Sarah Duvall.
As the crowd made its way down Main Street, supporters cheered from windows above in agreement with this message:

“Hey, hey NRA how many kids have died today?” 
Yeah, of course there was an ammosexual saying stupid shit.  Losers.

Saturday, March 24, 2018

Abortions Are Safe. Restricting Them is Deadly.

When I say that anti-abortion bills are summary executions of millions of women, that's what I mean.

Legal abortions in the United States are safe and effective, but the quality of abortion care depends on where a woman lives, according to a landmark study released Friday by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
 
What’s more, placing restrictions on abortion actually makes women less safe. And although Republican lawmakers often cite safety as a reason to restrict abortion access, those claims are not borne out by the evidence.  
 But the Kentucky General Assembly doesn't care about that.  It cares about using myths of fetal viability to force women into a Handmaid's Tale prison.

From the Herald:
Emotions ran high in a Senate committee Thursday afternoon as the panel approved a bill that would ban a common form of abortion for women who are 11 or more weeks pregnant.

The measure then went to the full Senate, where it was approved 31-5. The House must now decide if it will accept or reject changes made to the bill by the Senate.

The proposal would prohibit doctors from performing an abortion procedure called “dilation and evacuation” on women who are 11 weeks or later into a pregnancy, except in medical emergencies. Doctors generally use the procedure in the second trimester.

Opponents of House Bill 454 claim it would force many women to undergo a procedure that is more costly, takes longer and involves a hospital stay. Supporters of the bill call the procedure, which involves dismemberment of a human fetus, cruel and gruesome.
Yep, about as cruel and gruesome as disposing of a mouse that died under your refridgerator.

For the nth time, a fetus is not a baby.  It is not a child.  It is not a precious anything.  At 11 weeks, it's just a clump of cells.  It's a tumor. It's an unwanted growth in a womanb's body that she can get rid of anytime right up until the moment the thing breathes oxygen outside her body. 

Then it's a baby.  And the anti-abortion freaks don't give a flying fuck about it.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article206438299.html#storylink=cpy


Home Schooling Creates Terrorists

The white male racist conservatard freakazoid gun nut kind.

Political Animal:

* The man responsible for the bombings in Austin, Texas was killed after detonating a bomb in his own car. Here’s what we know about him:
The oldest of four children, [Anthony] Conditt was homeschooled by his mother. BuzzFeed spoke to a 21-year-old woman named Cassia Schultz who said she “ran in the same conservative survivalist circles in high school as Conditt.” She mentioned that she and Conditt were a part of a social group for homeschooled kids called Righteous Invasion of Truth (RIOT).
“A lot of us were very into science; we would discuss chemicals and how to mix them and which ones were dangerous,” Schultz told BuzzFeed. “We were into weapons and stuff. A lot of us did role-playing, and RPG [role-playing games]; we’d have foam weapons and act out a battle.”
Conditt attended Austin Community College from 2010 to 2012, though he didn’t graduate. A series of blog posts he wrote for a U.S. government course at the college provide a glimpse of Conditt’s political views. The Austin American-Statesman reports that Conditt wrote about his opposition to gay marriage and abortion, and his support for the death penalty. He also advocated for the abolishment of sex-offender registries.

Sunday, March 18, 2018

KY Repugs Have No Budget, Just a Mandatory Day of Prayer for Students

Also no gun laws. No pension fix. No tax reform.

Just the most grossly unconstitutional gambit by a bunch of freakazoids that specialize in unconstitutional bullshit.

There should be some kind of fine these assholes have to pay for pulling this shit, wasting taxpayers' money and time.

From the Herald:

An annual day of prayer for Kentucky’s students at school would become state law under a bill passed Thursday in the House.

But Amber Duke, a spokeswoman for ACLU Kentucky told the Herald-Leader Friday that if the bill passes the Senate and is signed into law, “it should be made clear to our public schools that they should not be in the business of endorsing religious practices in violation of students’ constitutional rights.”

“The content of the bill doesn’t mandate prayer, but as we’ve seen time and time again in the Commonwealth when it comes to religion and schools, what is intended by the General Assembly can be lost in translation when it reaches the local school level,” Duke said.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/local/education/article205562774.html#storylink=cpy
How about this?  Every time a bill gets overturned in the courts by a lawsuit, the bill's sponsors, NOT the taxpayers of the Commonwealth, have to pay all the legal bills and courts costs of both sides, plus a six-figure fine to the ACLU, Freedom from Religion Foundation, NAACP, American Atheists, Fairness Campaign or whatever civil rights organization won the case.

Saturday, March 17, 2018

Dirty Energy Fighting Dirty to Kill Solar in Kentucky

Jim Gooch has been the stupidest and most corrupt member of a stupid and corrupt General Assembly for decades.  His name on legislation guarantees the bill will severely harm the poorest and most defenseless Kentuckians.  Compared to the Gooch, Jim Inhofe is a tree-hugger.

Of course Gooch is getting rich by doing utilities' dirty work to kill renewable energy.

Tom Eblen at the Herald:

The anti-solar energy bill that was narrowly passed by the House and is awaiting action in the Senate illustrates two weaknesses in Kentucky’s civic character: We try to cling to the past, and we tolerate dirty politics.

House Bill 227 was written by electric utilities to protect their monopolies by discouraging Kentuckians from installing solar panels on their homes.

Under current law, homeowners with solar panels get full credit for excess power they feed into the utility grid on sunny days for when they need to draw it out at night or on cloudy days. This bill would significantly cut that credit, while making them pay full price for power they draw out.

SNIP
 
Solar panel installers — mostly small businesses scattered around the state — say drastically cutting the so-called net metering rate would all but put them out of business, costing Kentucky hundreds of jobs. Fewer homeowners will install solar panels if low credit rates make it harder for them to recoup their investment. 

What this bill is really about is protecting the utilities’ traditional business model and protecting their monopolies on generating electricity. It’s as if carriage makers a century ago had tried to ban automobiles from the road, claiming they were unfair to horses.

SNIP

 he story of how this bill even made it to the House floor is a case study in dirty politics. 

It was the work of Rep. Jim Gooch of Providence, a Democrat-turned-Republican and longtime chairman of the House Natural Resources and Energy Committee. Gooch, the coal industry’s best friend in Frankfort, is most famous for a 2007 legislative hearing he organized on the science of climate change that included no scientists, only climate-change deniers.
ead more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/tom-eblen/article205488339.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/tom-eblen/article205488339.html#storylink=cpy

Thursday, March 15, 2018

Pro-Choice Means Anti-Abortion

He holds the Tim Kaine position on abortion: He doesn’t personally support abortion but believes it should be legally available—a position known as being “pro-choice.”
And that's exactly the problem. If you don't "personally support" abortion, then you don't "personally support" a woman's bodily autonomy.  You don't "personally support" a woman's human rights.  You don't "personally support" the reproductive freedom that is the sole foundation of women's civil rights.


Not "personally supporting" abortion on demand is buying into the misogynistic position that abortion is something bad that people should not "personally support."


Not "personally supporting" abortion on demand is buying into the freakazoid position that imaginary invisible sky wizards give men the right to control what women do with their own bodies.


Not "personally supporting" abortion on demand is buying into the patriarchal, MRA position that women are mere appendages to men, just wombs at their service, not really human.


I am proudly Pro Abortion.  Any candidate who does not full-throatedly support free, no-restrictions, on-demand abortion clinics on every fucking corner in the land is anti-woman, no Democrat and undeserving of my vote.


Fuck you, Conor Lamb.  I hope a real Democratic candidate, preferably a woman, beats your ass in the primary this year.
Safe Legal and Rare, my ass.  Safe, Legal, Frequent and Nobody's Fucking Business.

Bevin Shits Himself in Public, Throws Poop, Loses Re-election

Is there no one on his staff who knows that the overwhelming majority of voters in Kentucky are public employees and teachers?  Legislators understand that, which is why the pension bill fucking over teachers is going nowhere in the General Assembly.

When Kentucky teachers chant "Vote. Them. Out. Vote. Them. Out." that's a death knell for any politician stupid enough to not do what the teachers tell her to do.

Jack Brammer in the Herald:
Gov. Matt Bevin ignited fresh outrage among Kentucky teachers Wednesday after he delivered a tongue-lashing to them for opposing Republican efforts to cut their retirement benefits, stupefying some of his GOP colleagues who called the remarks “inappropriate.”

During an interview Tuesday on WVLC radio in Campbellsville, Bevin called teachers who oppose Senate Bill 1 “selfish” and “ignorant,” comparing them to disloyal Americans who hoarded rationed goods during World War II.

“This would be like people having mass demonstrations about, ‘No I want my butter, I want my sugar, I’m going to keep all my steel and my rubber and my copper, and to heck with the rest of you people, you better keep giving me mine,’” Bevin said.

“That’s what it is, it’s the most remarkable commentary about who we are in modern times,” Bevin said. “It’s just straight up about wanting more than your fair share.”
Wednesday afternoon, Jefferson County Teachers Association President Brent McKim fired back: “We were shocked today by the disrespectful verbal attacks leveled at the teachers of Kentucky by Governor Bevin.”

“It’s true that countless teachers have had the audacity to stand up to our governor and the state legislature to demand the funding our students deserve and the retirement benefits we were promised,” McKim said on Facebook. “We ask our governor to remember he is a role model for Kentucky students too, so he should not be modeling name-calling or the disparaging of any group of our commonwealth’s citizens.”

Bevin’s remarks also were condemned by House Speaker Pro Tempore David Osborne, R-Prospect.

“I have not seen the exact comments of what was said today, I’ve only heard bits and pieces of them, but if they are as I’ve been told, I think they’re inappropriate and I think that they show a lack of understanding of the people who are impacting the lives of our young people in this state,” Osborne said. “He’s not talking about many of the teachers that I know, many of the teachers I still consider friends and many of the people who are still active participants in the education community.”

“For us to lose focus on the fact that we’ve got to do something about this problem is inappropriate, but it is made exponentially more difficult when people make indefensible statements,” he said.

Meanwhile, Senate President Robert Stivers expressed doubt Wednesday that lawmakers will approve controversial changes to the public pension systems during the legislative session that ends April 13, possibly setting up a special legislative session later in the year.
Dead. Governor. Walking.

Wednesday, March 14, 2018

KY Students: "We Stand With Florida"

Unfortunately, planned walkouts in Lexington and most other Central and Eastern Kentucky counties were mooted by school closings in the wake of two heavy snowstorms and associated flooding.

But Louisville students made the point: these kids are going to turn 18 before November, if they haven't already, and they're chomping at the bit to vote the NRA motherfuckers OUT.

Students at duPont Manual High School participated in the National School Walkout that happened across the country to protest gun violence.

Students from almost 3,000 schools were marking National Walkout Day, most by leaving their classrooms at 10 a.m. local times to show solidarity for the 17 killed in the Valentine's Day attack at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, according to USA TODAY.

At duPont Manual students held a sign that said, "We Stand with Florida."

The walkouts were scheduled to start at 10 a.m. Wednesday. The walkouts were supposed to last 17 minutes to represent the victims of the Parkland, Fla. school shooting.

SKY11 also flew over Atherton High School on Wednesday. Multiple students participated there as well.
Some school districts in Kentuckiana did not allow students to take part in the National School Walkout but they were going to allow their students to voice their opinions in other ways.

Bullitt County Public Schools didn't feel it was safe for students to just walk out of the school, according to a letter the superintendent posted to Facebook on March 12. So principals were tasked with working with student leaders and advocates to find other means of protest like the following: writing letters, public service announcements, a moment of silence for those affected by violence, and random acts of kindness toward others.
Bullitt students surely already know their superintendent is a cowardly, lying motherfucker who doesn't give a shit about their safety but is terrified of losing his job.
WHAS11's Robert Bradfield will have a full report on the walkout during the evening newscasts. You can follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

Monday, March 12, 2018

GOP Tax Cuts Are Worse Than We Thought

Yep, the repugs just snatched the wallets of every working person in the country and handed them directly to corporate shareholders.  Do not invest in new factories, do not create jobs, do not pass go.  Just steal the savings of everyone who's not obscenely rich.

Political Animal

Corporations aren’t just spending their tax cuts on stock buybacks. They’re investing at almost record levels on mergers and acquisitions, which increases what they’re making on buybacks. Isn’t that special?

Let’s take all this one step further though. Mergers and acquisitions are the building blocks of monopolies, something the Washington Monthly has been warning about for years as perhaps the single biggest contributor to stagnant wages and income inequality.

We can all complain that Democrats didn’t do enough to tackle the monopolization of our economy when they had majorities in Congress and a president in the White House. But now we see what the Republican position is. They aren’t just ignoring the issue, they’re feeding it with their corporate tax cuts and expect the rest of us to be happy with an extra buck fifty a week.
Noah at Down with Tyranny has it in meme form:
Take a look at that $6 Billion for workers. Chances are that is you, the reader of this post. If you are one of the approximately 300 Million Americans (I'm rounding it off just in the interest of simplicity), your average share of that $6 Billion would be $20.00. How's that $20.00 changing your life? Oh, you say your share is well above the average? OK. Great for you! You say your share is what $100? $1,000? $1,500? Wow! I bet that's life changing for you! That money can buy you a lot of healthcare, no?


Sunday, March 11, 2018

We Could Have Told Him That


Noah strikes again:

Saturday, March 10, 2018

Nothing to do with gun ubiquity, no, not at all

He had a gun. So he used it to kill people he didn't like. That's what guns are for. He used it exactly as it was designed and built to be used.

Meanwhile, in Kentucky, a student shoots himself with a gun he brought to school in his pocket, and the response of school officials is to install a metal detector.  And expel the student. Missing the point completely.

Pride of the NRA, all of them.

Monday, March 5, 2018

Not Even Raising Taxes Will Save KY Repugs

As Molly Ivins wrote about Ross Perot when he declared that the problem with Texas schools was too much football, KY House repugs have gone crazier than a peach orchard boar.

They wrote a budget that not only reverses the governor's spending cuts, but does so by - wait for it - raising taxes.

Or maybe they are not so crazy as they are fucking terrified of their pissed-off voters replacing them with Dems in November.

But don't worry: the taxes they propose are all on working people. They completely ignore the giant hordes of cash stolen by corporations and the already filthy rich.

Good job, House repugs.  Keep making it easier for Democratic candidates to turn out our voters.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/local/education/article202759424.html#storylink=cpy

From the Herald:
In a budget plan unveiled Wednesday, House Republicans proposed three tax increases they said would raise about $500 million over the next two years, which they would largely use to reverse spending cuts to education programs proposed by Gov. Matt Bevin. 

The Republican’s plan raises the tax on a pack of cigarettes by 50 cents, eliminates a $10 individual income tax credit and levies a 25 cent tax on prescription opioids each time a dosage is sold by a distributor to a pharmacy, the first such tax in the country, according to the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Steven Rudy, R-Paducah.

Sunday, March 4, 2018

KY School Shows How to Create Atheists

Forced prayer will do it every time.

From the Herald:

An organization of atheists and agnostics has taken issue with a prayer circle held after a high school basketball game in northeastern Kentucky recently.
Players, cheerleaders and coaches from cross-county rivals West Carter High School and East Carter High School gathered on the court and joined hands in prayer after their game on Jan. 26, according to a post on West Carter School’s Facebook page.
A photo of the prayer time was posted with a caption that said, in part, “What a way to end the game! #cometpride #wearecartercounty.”
The Freedom From Religion Foundation issued a news release Friday, asking that school employees stop praying with students and saying the school shouldn’t be using its official page “to endorse religion.”
The organization sent a letter to Carter County Superintendent Ronnie Dotson on Feb. 6, saying that “federal courts have held that even a public school coach’s silent participation in student prayer circles is unconstitutional.”
“These coaches’ conduct was unconstitutional because they endorsed and promoted religion while acting in their official capacities as school district employees,” the letter states.
It further argues that the posting on the West Carter Facebook page constitutes an endorsement of religion, which violates the Establishment Clause.
“We ask that Carter County Schools commence an investigation into the complaint alleged and take immediate action to stop any and all school-sponsored prayers occurring within any district athletic programs,” the letter states.
It also asks that the district remove “any posts on the district’s social media pages promoting religion” and make sure the staff members responsible for the post are “counseled that such conduct is not to be repeated in the future.”
Kentucky public schools are beyond broke and facing catastrophe when legislators forced them to start paying for teachers' pensions.

So Carter County schools will not waste money fighting this lawsuit.  Right?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.



Saturday, March 3, 2018

We've Got the Candidates. Now We Get Out the Vote.

Don't waste time trying to persuade trump voters and other repugs to vote Democratic.  They never, EVER will.  Spend your time tracking down the non-voting Democrats in your county. They are there. All they need is somebody to knock on the door and say "We need you.  Please help us."

From the Herald:

Three hundred Kentuckians filed to run for a seat in the Republican-dominated Kentucky General Assembly this year, with Democrats slightly outpacing their GOP counterparts in an election year that promises dozens of intense political battles.

Hoping to ride a wave of discontent, 155 Democrats filed for a seat in the 100-member House or 38-member Senate. The GOP, which holds a super majority in both legislative chambers, fielded 145 legislative candidates. The deadline to file was 4 p.m. Tuesday.

All 100 House seats and 19 of 38 Senate seats are up for election in 2018.

Republicans won control of the House of Representatives in the 2016 general election for the first time since 1920. After using their new-found power to quickly push through a package of anti-abortion and anti-union laws, House Republicans were beset by a sexual harassment scandal that prompted their top leader to step aside and helped derail an unpopular proposal to overhaul Kentucky’s financially ailing pension systems.

Democrats, though, hope to regain power by stoking discontent with President Donald Trump and harnessing outrage over Gov. Matt Bevin’s bid to overhaul the pension systems. 

“In my 31 years of serving in the Kentucky House, I have never seen as much enthusiasm on the ground as I have this election cycle, and you can sense the tide that is building as we prepare for the wave that is coming in November,” said Minority Floor Leader Rocky Adkins, D-Sandy Hook.

The filing deadline also brought an influx of women candidates. Ninety-three women are seeking a seat in the General Assembly, including 70 challengers. That’s a huge increase from the 11 non-incumbent women who ran in 2016 and the three non-incumbent women who ran in 2014.

There are only 13 uncontested House races, with six Republicans running unchallenged and seven Democrats. 

SNIP

There is only one open seat in the Senate, which currently belongs to Sen. Joe Bowen, R-Owensboro. Two Republicans are vying to replace Bowen: state Rep. Matt Castlen and Diane Burns Mackey, who lost to Jim Gooch in a race for the House of Representatives in 2014. The winner of that primary will take on Democrat Bob Glenn.

Despite the retirement of only one Republican, Democrats have filed to run in all but two Republican-held seats up for re-election in the Senate.

Congress

In Central Kentucky’s 6th Congressional District race, three well-known candidates — Lexington mayor Jim Gray, former fighter pilot Amy McGrath and state Sen. Reggie Thomas — all filed to seek the Democratic nomination well before the filing deadline. They’ll be joined in the race by Geoff Young, Theodore Green, and Daniel Kemph, all from Lexington. 

U.S. Rep. Andy Barr, R-Lexington, drew a late primary opponent Tuesday. Chuck Eddy, of Lexington, said on his Facebook page he is running against Barr in the GOP primary to take Congress back from “renegade Republicans.”

A little more than an hour before the filing deadline, Health and Family Services Secretary Vicki Yates Brown Glisson, a Republican, announced that she would resign immediately from her role in the Bevin Administration to run against U.S. Rep. John Yarmuth in Louisville’s 3rd Congressional District.

“I want Louisville to succeed,” Glisson said. “And I want Louisville to become a city that is strong and robust and a place where our citizens can succeed. So that’s why I’m running.”

Yarmuth is Kentucky’s only Democratic congressman.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article197399989.html#storylink=cpy




Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article197399989.html#storylink=cpy

They Never Learn

Down With Tyranny:

Stay the Fuck Out of Pike County Schools

The teachers there are gonna be packin' and it's gonna be ugly.

Teachers could soon be carrying concealed guns inside schools in Pike County under a proposal that was preliminarily approved Monday evening by the Pike County School Board.

The unanimous decision came after the board heard concerns about school safety from teachers, parents and administrators during a town hall meeting at Pike County Central High School. The discussion was prompted by multiple school shootings in recent weeks, including one at Marshall County High School in Western Kentucky that left two dead and another in Florida that left 17 dead.

The motion authorizes the school board’s attorney to work with the Pike County Sheriff’s Office, which would oversee the program, to finalize a formal policy for the school board to consider.
Now that vote was taken before the teacher in Georgia barricaded himself in his classroom and fired a shot through the window.  But somehow I don't think that will deter the gun nuts in far Eastern Kentucky from spending the money they don't have for salaries and books on guns.

I don't care how carefully you screen job applicants; in every school with more than a dozen teachers, there is at least one who hasn't killed a student only because he didn't have a weapon to hand.

Homeschooling is a crime against education, but if I had a kid in a school with armed teachers, I'd take her out in a heartbeat and quit my job to teach her my own damn self. 

Friday, March 2, 2018

The Resistance: Seeds Coming Up

From Nancy LeTourneau at Political Animal:
Finally, as a budding gardener pinning for spring up here in the tundra, I love this!

KY Shooting Survivors Set Rally at Capitol

I knew those kids from Marshall County High School would stand up with their fellow survivors in Florida.

No, they're not demanding a ban on assault weapons, and it's a "teach-in," not a protest. But for far-western rural Kentucky, that's pretty hippie.

From the Herald:

As Marshall County High School student Keaton Conner helps other students across the state plan a march at the state Capitol in Frankfort, Jan. 23 is still fresh in her mind.

That’s the day she unknowingly was trapped in a room with the shooter who had just taken two lives and injured several other people at the school in Western Kentucky. 

“I had people hysterical who saw their friends shot, one of my friends was shot,” she recalls. She was approached by brothers who pleaded “for me to tell them that I had seen their sisters alive.”

“As much as I wish I didn’t have to think about it every second of the day, there’s a reason that I have to remember all this, so that I can try to make a difference,” Keaton, 16, said. “We will not let this go on anymore. I’m not going to give up before I know that it’s not going to happen again.” 

SNIP
 
But Keaton and another Marshall County student, Abby Henson, are hoping more Marshall County students will find their voice. 
 
The girls are working with the Prichard Committee Student Voice Team to plan a March 20, “March for Our Lives KY Student Teach-In” at the Capitol in Frankfort. It will highlight the issue of student safety and school climate in the context of recent school shootings and threats in Kentucky and across the country.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/local/education/article202625364.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/local/education/article202625364.html#storylink=cpy