I had something else in mind for tonight, something about streaming services and net neutrality, but then this flashing breaking news thing came across my screen. According to the Washington Post, our president has bowed down to the NRA. This makes sense of course as the GOP is a fully owned subsidiary of the NRA. According to the Post, Trump is establishing the Federal Commission on School Safety to be chaired by Education secretary DeVos. How that ends up is anybody’s guess beyond “not well”.
But first, a word from our sponsors ...
Here at Top Comments we welcome longtime as well as brand new Daily Kos readers to join us at 10pm Eastern. We strive to nourish community by rounding up some of the site's best, funniest, most mojo'd & most informative commentary, and we depend on your help!! If you see a comment by another Kossack that deserves wider recognition, please send it either to topcomments at gmail or to the Top Comments group mailbox by 9:30pm Eastern. Please please please include a few words about why you sent it in as well as your user name (even if you think we know it already :-)), so we can credit you with the find!
We are all aware of Betsey DeVos at this point. She is the inept and unqualified Secretary of Education who seemingly wants to dismantle public education, make student loans harder to pay off, and put more money into for profit colleges. But don’t worry because she is now also in charge of keeping our kids safe too. This would be without any changes to the age requirement for buying weapons and arming some teachers.
From WaPo:
“We are committed to working quickly because there’s no time to waste,” DeVos said on a Sunday evening conference call with reporters. Invoking past mass school shootings, she continued, “No student, no family, no teacher and no school should have to live the horror of Parkland or Sandy Hook or Columbine again.”
So yeah, the president wants to arm teachers without providing any more funding to do so. So, yanno, let’s ask them to do one more thing for lousy pay. I know, let’s look into building a wall and finding someone else to pay for it.
I could go on and on about how this is a bad idea, about how this places the lives of kids with brown skin in even more danger, or how mush more dangerous this idea is going to make our schools. I could go on and on but I won’t. Arming teachers is not giving a “good guy” a gun and thereby solving a problem. It is adding to the chaos and confusion and putting yet another burden on underpaid and overworked teachers.
Brillig's ObDisclaimer: The decision to publish each nomination lies with the evening's Diarist and/or Comment Formatter. My evenings at the helm, I try reeeeallllyy hard to publish everything without regard to content. I really do, even when I disagree personally with any given nomination. "TopCommentness" lies in the eyes of the nominator and of you, the reader - I leave the decision to you. I do not publish self-nominations (ie your own comments) and if I ruled the world, we'd all build community, supporting and uplifting instead of tearing our fellow Kossacks down.
Note: Please remember that comment inclusion in Top Comments does not constitute support or endorsement by diarist, formatter, Top Comments writers or DailyKos. Questions, complaints or comments? Contact brillig.
TOP MOJO
Top Mojo for yesterday, February 18, 2017, first comments and tip jars excluded. Thank you mik for the mojo magic! For those of you interested in How Top Mojo Works, please see his diary on FAQing Top Mojo.
Top Pictures for yesterday, February 18, 2017. Click any picture to be taken to the full comment or picture. Thank you jotter!