Obama seems amenable to the NRA idea of armed guards in schools.

On today's "Meet the Press": David Gregory asked him what he thought of having "armed guards at every school in the country," adding "That's what the NRA believes. They told me last week that could work." Obama said:

You know, I am not going to prejudge the recommendations that are given to me. I am skeptical that the only answer is putting more guns in schools. And I think the vast majority of the American people are skeptical that that somehow is going to solve our problem. 

Of course, we are also skeptical that gun control is going to solve our problem. My only point here is that Obama didn't denounce the idea and treat it as crazy, which seemed to be the left/liberal spin last week after NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre made the proposal. Obama is saying that the idea deserves consideration. And to say you doubt that it's the "only answer" is to imply that it may belong in a package of items that together are the answer. In fact, later, he said: "I'm going to be putting forward a package..."

At the Sunroom Café...

... we can wait out the winter.

Fiscal cliffhanging on their every word.

Are you?

On "Meet the Press" today, Obama mostly came across as the moderate, pragmatic politician I like.

Now, I'm not a sucker for mere posing, and in fact, I get suspicious when I hear what are simply assertions of pragmatism:

But generally if you look at how I've tried to govern over the last four years and how I'll continue to try to govern, I'm not driven by some ideological agenda. I am a pretty practical guy. And I just want to make sure that things work. And one of the nice things about never having another election again, I will never campaign again, is I think you can rest assured that all I care about is making sure that I leave behind an America that is stronger, more prosperous, more stable, more secure than it was when I came into office.

Well, no, I'm not going to rest assured. Much as I would love these statements to be true, they make me nervous. And that assurance came right after the most partisan thing he said in the whole interview. The moderator, David Gregory, had asked Obama how "frustrated" he was about the difficulty of getting things done with Congress. Gregory asserted that people were constantly coming up to him saying "Don't they realize, all of them, the president, Republicans and Democrats, how frustrated we all are?" And President Obama showed a little irritation:

Well, I think we're all frustrated. The only thing I would caution against, David, is I think this notion of, "Well, both sides are just kind of unwilling to cooperate." And that's just not true. I mean if you look at the facts, what you have is a situation here where the Democratic party, warts and all, and certainly me, warts and all, have consistently done our best to try to put country first.

Country first. Where'd he come up with that slogan?

Then Obama started inching away from this assertion that the Democrats are better. He shifts to more neutral boilerplate about trying "to work with everybody involved to make sure that we've got an economy grows" and "Make sure that it works for everybody. Make sure that we're keeping the country safe." Then he retreats again, making abstract concessions (in question form):

And does the Democratic party still have some knee jerk ideological positions and are there some folks in the Democratic party who sometimes aren't reasonable? Of course. That's true of every political party.

So are the Democrats better or not? He's melted into squishy blandness. And it's exactly here that he does the not-an-ideologue/practical-guy riff that appears at the beginning of this post.

"Shut up. Shut up. Shut up."

"Please. Shut up."

"What I learned about beauty from my 56 hours in jail."

I hope you learned not to do that duck-lips thing with your mouth that you did in the "Self-portrait from the day before the incident." But no, it's stuff like:

These women were endlessly resourceful: colored pencils for eyeliner, lip liner, and eye shadow (yeah, it fucking hurts to apply). If you bend every other prong of the standard-issue comb, it becomes a makeshift brush....

The worst thing about my short time in jail? Honestly? Besides the indignity and the shitty food and the crushing boredom and the derision from the staff and the self-loathing just being there obviously inspired? Chapped lips.

OK, maybe I’m being a little facetious, but I was parched. My lips were cracked and bleeding, spoiled with a steady diet of Fresh Sugar lip treatment. Licking my lips only made it worse, but I couldn’t help it — it was Pavlovian. It sounds stupid, but I remember that agony more clearly than anything else. When my cellmate shared her makeshift chapstick (shave gel mixed with something pink that I never actually identified) with me, I practically kissed her. 

That sets up a hilarious lampooning by a commenter. Excerpt:

We broke our inkpins and blew the black ink out into our small cups of vasaline, then took a small 2 inched toothbrush to apply... some girls lined their eyes with Sharpies, meant to label our personal property. We made lip gloss with color out of red Kool-Aid or red jello and neosporin. We had clear toothpaste gel that did everything but brush your teeth, and we used this for everything from hair gel to adhesives for our pictures and calanders... We took our Gold Bond Foot Powder and dripped coffee and red Kool-Aid in our cups to try and create eyeshadow and blush....

Another commenter offers a tip she learned in school:

This sounds gross, but my 8th grade science teacher told the class that he just used his own ear wax as lip balm...

The worst part is that he wasn't even mentioning this as like a survival technique....

I love when science teachers challenge their students.

Look, don't even get started with the chapstick. It's addictive:



You'll wake up thinking about it:

"Impractical Accessories."

There's some great stuff in this slideshow, but attention must be paid to the 10th image, shoes designed by Iris Schieferstein, with the toe portion made from real horse's hooves and the high heels little pistols.

"Treating OWS as 'potential criminal and terrorist threat' was exactly the right thing to do."

"No one knew whether these protests were going to stay peaceful or not. OWS certainly wanted it to turn into a phenomenon of national civil unrest. Why the FBI wasn't supposed to treat it as if it had the potential to go that way is beyond me."

Writes one Metafilter commenter, who gets 3 "favorite" votes from the community and — 8 minutes later — this response:

Treating OWS the Tea Party movement as "potential criminal and terrorist threat" was exactly the right thing to do. No one knew whether these protests were going to stay peaceful or not. OWS The Koch Bros. certainly wanted it to turn into a phenomenon of national civil unrest. Why the FBI wasn't supposed to treat it as if it had the potential to go that way is beyond me.

FTFY

The response now has 33 "favorite" votes.

"[I]ncredibly articulate and human... charmingly personal while at the same time substantively deep."

Who can it be?!

The notion that technology is the reason the murder rate has fallen by half.

"A deranged woman who told cops she detests Muslims broke into a maniacal fit of laughter as she was charged with a hate crime Saturday..."

"... three days after she allegedly shoved an Indian immigrant to his death in front of a Queens train."

“Tell your client this is not funny,” Queens Criminal Court Judge Gia Morris thundered, speaking to defense lawyer Dietrich Epperson. “This is not appropriate.”...

Before she was ordered held without bail, prosecutors revealed [Erika Menendez, 31] has expressed no remorse — and even bragged about smoking pot and having sex with her “man in Brooklyn” after the murderous deed.

The deranged drifter - who witnesses said was mumbling to herself but never said a word to Sen before the fatal shove - ran downstairs from the elevated tracks after the attack....

A wild-eyed Menendez seemed startled as she was led out of the stationhouse in handcuffs, en route to her arraignment, about 8:30 p.m. Saturday....

“I know her. ... You could tell that something was not right, like she needed medication or something,” said [one doorman at her mother's apartment building]. “It’s just very sad what happened.”...

“When she didn't take her medication, she got wacko,” said [another doorman].

There are no guns to propose banning, and we're not going to ban subway trains or enclose the platforms in elaborate sliding panels. Maybe something more needs to be done to institutionalize the mentally ill or to supervise the taking of anti-psychotic medication. But one must observe that this subway pushing comes less than a month after an earlier subway pushing in NYC, one that receive a great deal of publicity. There are many murders, but some get more media than others.

A subway pushing is one of those riveting events that the media fixate upon. That becomes an idea vividly imprinted on millions of brains, which intensifies as they head down into the subway, see the platform, the platform's edge, the people standing near it, and hear the sound of the train coming into the station. Emotion is stirred. Most people either ignore that idea, or it's an idea that makes them step from the platform's edge and try to get a wall behind them or keep an eye out for odd movements. But some people are mentally ill. The idea rages up into a powerful impulse, the train is pulling into the station, and they can't resist.

The media reports are — I must assume — a causal factor in the creation of a murderous impulse that some people are not going to be able to control. And yet, the media have their own irresistible impulse to publish these highly stimulating stories, an impulse which, by linking, I am stimulating.

Finally, after all these years, not since the 90s, we will have a name for our decade!

I just realized that with the arrival of 2013, a great void will be filled. There will be an end to the lack of a name for the decade. With '13, will be in The Teens!

Don't tell me we had a name for the first decade of the new millennium. We talked a lot about what it would be called, and then it came and instead of calling it something, we just worked around the lack of a name. Don't tell me we called it the "ohs" or the "aughts." We did not. And we entered the second decade of the new millennium with the same problem. 2010, 2011, 2012... Don't tell me we called that the "tens." Obviously, we didn't.

Relief from the torment of namelessness arrives on Tuesday. Don't worry about 13 being unlucky. That's superstition. I am talking about real life. We need a name for a decade. I have fond memories tied with the 50s, the 60s, the 70s, the 80s, and the 90s. There's pizzazz and warmth and eclat and resonance in those terms. We've been empty and hungry for 13 years. The gnawing craving for meaning is over.

It's the Teens!

A couple of books.

I was just asking for some ideas for a conversation about end-of-the-year things, and now I've had the conversation, which I'll be showing you when it's up, but right now, I'm buying 2 books that were recommended in that conversation:

1. "When the State Speaks, What Should It Say?"

2. "Veil Politics in Liberal Democratic States."

After I bought them, Amazon started making recommendations in the philosophy category, and I noticed that "Complete Works of Plato" (only $1.99) was ranking at #5. Maybe you think that's about where it belongs, but that would depend on what else is ranking. Here are those best sellers in philosophy. #4 is "Fifty Shades of Grey Decoded: A Man's Playbook." I can understand why it's #4, but I can't understand why it's philosophy. By the way, it's only 19 pages long, which is to say, it's not only not philosophy, it's not a book. You can get the first page free at the link, and it tells you that "sex slave" contracts are all over the internet, so the author isn't going to write one out for you. You should just "find one that suits your needs and tweak it." And "keep in mind that this is not 'real' slavery." Noted.

What was the biggest pop culture phenomenon of the year, do you think? "Fifty Shades of Grey" or "Gangnam Style"? Those are 2 things that, in the future, will seem so 2012. We're not taking them with us into the new year, '13.

Blogging, paying attention to each day as it happens, makes it hard to assess a whole year.

So I'll feel better once we've crossed over into the new year. All this year end business is a drag to me. I used to do these year-end posts where I'd highlight one blog post from each month of the past year or list my favorite quotes. I had my archive to mine for this sort of material. But I've written close to 5,000 posts this year. I'm not going to run through all of that, even quickly. I can only wonder what the hell was it? I know the feeling of assurance that there is always something to write about, that each day brings a new set of topics, but I'm puzzled, at year end, at the what could have mattered. 5,000 things?!

If I had to list what really mattered, not for its day, but enduringly, what would it be? Of all the things we talked about, each in its own day, what do we carry with us into 2013?

I know: President Obama got reelected. We did a hell of a lot of yammering for that one take away. Is everything else ephemera?

A euphemism for "aging": "evolving."

Example:

One of my wise [yoga] teachers told us that after 50, she began to cross off the list poses that she no longer felt made sense for her evolving body.

Cue the episode of "Outer Limits" where David McCallum enters the evolution machine:



Tip for "wise" teachers: You're not evolving. And why you find the notion of evolving more comforting than aging is a mystery you might want to ponder.

"Your ignorance makes me ill and angry."

Also... here's the trailer for "Altered States":

"France's Constitutional Council on Saturday rejected a 75% upper income tax rate to be introduced in 2013..."

"... in a setback to Socialist President Francois Hollande's push to make the rich contribute more to cutting the public deficit."

The Council, made up of nine judges and three former presidents, is concerned the tax would hit a married couple where one partner earned above a million euros but it would not affect a couple where each earned just under a million euros.

Why does that make it unfair? It seems as though the court is sticking up for the single-earner household — for traditional marriage. Why does fairness require that? I think this is what we here in the United States would call a policy decision, to be left to the legislature. (Yeah, a 75% tax rate is really high, but that's not the legal flaw this court found.)