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Elevated paths give San Francisco cyclists the high ground

Elevated paths give San Francisco cyclists the high ground

By on 6 May 2015commentsShare

Pretty soon, bikers in San Francisco won’t just have the moral high ground over cars: They’ll literally ride on higher ground.

The city plans to install new elevated bike lanes that will not only keep cyclists safe from speeding cars, but also give them a better vantage point from which to flip off the drivers of said cars. Here’s CityLab with the details:

The city’s Municipal Transportation Agency will oversee the construction of an elevated pathway on Valencia Street in the southern Mission District. The curb-hugging lane will be raised about 2 inches above the road surface, and will measure 6-feet wide with an additional 5-foot “buffer zone.” The city will follow up with a handful of other raised lanes next year, all planned for areas with high rates of bicycle injuries.

Of course, this is already a thing in Europe, where cyclists rule and drivers drool:

Raised lanes are a relatively new concept in the United States, though they’ve been around for a while in Europe. The idea is that by jacking up the path a bit, motorists will be less likely to stray into cyclist space. Cyclists, meanwhile, won’t feel as compelled to ride on the sidewalk in heavy-traffic corridors. It’s a minimalist form of what’s known as a protected bike lane, and one that’s not as in-your-face as, say, defensive lines of bollards or planters.

You can imagine the city of San Francisco is a lot like a mom (let’s call her Fran) with three kids: the jerky eldest (Auto), the quiet middle child (Walker), and the quirky and rebellious younger one (…Bike? Wheeler?), and this is Fran’s way of saying “Auto, Bike — stop hitting each other! And leave your poor brother Walker alone; if he just wants to sit by himself and read, let him!”

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San Francisco Wants to Lower Bike Injuries by Raising Bike Lanes

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Elevated paths give San Francisco cyclists the high ground

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Former Walker Aide Blasts Walker for Immigration Flip-Flop

Mother Jones

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Liz Mair, the GOP operative who resigned from Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign-in-waiting after a day on the job, is in campaign mode again—and this time, she’s targeting her former boss. On Tuesday morning, Mair sent an email detailing Walker’s “Olympic-quality flip-flop” on the issue of immigration.

On Monday, Breitbart reported that Walker is the only declared or likely GOP candidate so far to support rolling back legal immigration to the United States, including for highly skilled workers. In her email, Mair pointed out that, historically, Walker has hardly been an immigration hardliner: In 2013, he vocally supported expanding legal immigration, and as recently as March, he said he was in favor of giving undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship. She suggested that Walker’s back-tracking could make him an easy target for strong GOP rivals.

Mair, who served on Walker’s recall campaign in 2012, resigned from the governor’s PAC in March in the wake of a kerfuffle over several tweets in which she criticized Iowa and its outsized political importance. Mair told Mother Jones she did not call out Walker in service of a client. She said she is “in the camp of people who see immigration as a benefit, who believe we should be welcoming to immigrants and make legal immigration easier, and who favor comprehensive immigration reform in some form…I’ve also long been highly critical of flip-floppery.”

Here’s an excerpt from her email:

In fulfilling my professional duties as constructed today, as opposed to on March 16, I wanted to flag the below Olympic-quality flip-flop on immigration policy to you. Apologies if this seems crass to some of you, but I would not be meeting certain responsibilities if I did not shoot this email out.

Yesterday, it was reported that Scott Walker has now adopted the immigration position of Sen. Jeff Sessions and has been taking instruction from Sessions on the issue of immigration. Notably, Sessions wants to further restrict legal immigration including high-skilled immigration, a position that is at odds with the traditional GOP anti-amnesty stance taken by virtually all presidential candidates, and which also puts him at odds with conservative policy experts and economists…this new positioning seems to represent a full 180 degree turn from where Walker has been on immigration historically, which is to say in the very pro-immigration and even pro-comprehensive reform camp…

Setting aside the substance of the policy, as the 2008 election demonstrated, it is really difficult in the age of Google to execute full policy reversals without earning a reputation as an untrustworthy, “say anything to win,” substance-and-guts-free politician. Even in 2012, when Republicans nominated Mitt Romney, his reputation for policy, er, flexibility was a significant negative for him and one that diminished enthusiasm for the candidate, probably adversely impacting his performance in that race.

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Former Walker Aide Blasts Walker for Immigration Flip-Flop

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Scott Walker Is the Worst Candidate for the Environment

Mother Jones

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Scott Walker is killing it with Republicans. The Wisconsin governor is one of his party’s rising stars—thanks to his ongoing and largely successful war against his state’s labor unions, a fight that culminated Monday with the signing of a controversial “right-to-work” bill.

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Now (for the moment, anyway), he’s a leading contender for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. At the Conservative Political Action Conference a couple weeks ago, he polled a close second to three-time winner Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.), beating the likes of Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas) and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush by a significant margin.

It probably won’t surprise you to learn that none of the prospective GOP presidential candidates are exactly champions of the environment. Probably the least bad is New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who at least acknowledges that climate change is real and caused by human activity. Walker just might be the worst. He hasn’t said much about the science of global warming. (In the video above, you can watch him tell a little kid that his solution to the problem will center on keeping campsites clean, or something.) But his track record of actively undermining pro-environment programs and policies while supporting the fossil fuel industry is arguably lengthier and more substantive than that of his likely rivals.

“He really has gone after every single piece of environmental protection: Land, air, water—he’s left no stone unturned,” said Kerry Schumann, executive director of the Wisconsin League of Conservation Voters. “It’s hard to imagine anyone has done worse.”

Here’s a rundown of Walker’s inglorious history of anti-environmentalism.

Attacking Obama’s climate agenda: Walker is a key figure in the GOP’s battle against President Barack Obama’s flagship climate policy—the proposed Environmental Protection Agency rules that are designed to reduce the carbon footprint of the nation’s electricity sector 30 percent by 2030. The rules will likely require states to retrofit or shutter some of their coal-fired power plants. That could be a big deal in Wisconsin, which gets 62 percent of its power from coal.

In a letter to the EPA in December, Walker said the plan would be “a blow to Wisconsin residents and business owners.” He cited an analysis from his state’s Public Service Commission that predicted household electric bills would skyrocket. They won’t, necessarily, since the state has a lot of options—including boosting renewables and energy efficiency—that it could use to meet its EPA carbon target without jeopardizing the power grid. But rather than preparing for the new rules, Walker seems bent on stonewalling them. In January he announced that his new attorney general was already preparing a lawsuit against the EPA, a move that was lauded by the Wisconsin director of the Koch Brothers-backed group Americans for Prosperity. Walker has also signed a pledge, devised by Americans for Prosperity, that he will oppose any legislation relating to climate change—presumably a cap-and-trade plan or a carbon tax—that would result in a “net increase in government revenue.”

Indeed, Walker has close ties to Charles and David Koch, the billionaire brothers who made a fortune in fossil fuels and who for years poured money into groups that cast doubt on the science of climate change. They own paper factories and a network of gasoline supply terminals in Wisconsin, and they have an interest in the state’s trove of “frac sand” (more on that below). Koch Industries gave $43,000 to Walker’s 2010 election campaign, and just after he took office, the Kochs doubled their lobbying force in Madison. In 2011 and 2012, David Koch and Americans for Prosperity spent $11 million backing Walker’s agenda and his successful effort to avoid being recalled.

Turning off clean energy: As much as he apparently supports fossil fuel development, Walker has taken steps to put the brakes on clean energy. Last month, he released a budget proposal that would drain $8.1 million from a leading renewable energy research center in the state. That same budget, however, would pump $250,000 into a study on the potential health impacts of wind turbines. (Wind energy opponents have long suggested that inaudible sound waves from turbines can cause insomnia, anxiety, and other disorders, although independent research has repeatedly found these claims are more connected to NIMBYism than legitimate medical concerns.) Walker’s budget would also cut $4 million in state subsidies for municipal recycling programs. That, at least, is an improvement over his first budget as governor, which proposed to eliminate recycling subsidies altogether.

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Scott Walker Is the Worst Candidate for the Environment

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Is It Fair to Keep Peppering Scott Walker With Gotcha Questions?

Mother Jones

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Lately Scott Walker has been asked:

Whether he agrees with Rudy Giuliani’s comment that President Obama doesn’t love America.
Whether he believes in evolution.
Whether he believes that Obama is a Christian.

Is this fair? Why is Walker being peppered with gotcha questions like this? Are Democrats getting the same treatment?

There are no Democrats running for president yet, so it’s hard to say what kind of questions they’re going to be asked. But if Hillary Clinton attends a fundraising dinner where, say, Michael Moore suggests that Dick Cheney should be tried as a war criminal, I’m pretty sure Hillary will be asked if she agrees. And asked and asked and asked.

As for the other stuff Walker is being asked about—evolution, climate change, Obama’s religion, etc.—there really is a good reason for getting someone like Walker on the record. He’s basically a tea party guy who’s trying to appear more mainstream than the other tea party guys, and everyone knows that there are certain issues that are tea party hot buttons. So you have to ask about them to take the measure of the man. Sure, they’re gotcha questions, but they have a legitimate purpose: to find out if Walker is a pure tea party creature or not. That’s a matter of real public interest.

Conservatives are complaining that Walker is facing a double standard. Maybe. We’ll find out when Hillary and the rest of the Democratic field start campaigning in earnest. But I’m curious. What kinds of similar questions would be gotchas for Democrats? Drivers licenses for undocumented workers? Support for single-payer healthcare? Those aren’t really the same, but I can’t come up with anything that is. It needs to be something that’s either conspiracy-theorish or else something where the liberal base conflicts with the scientific consensus, and I’m not sure what that is. GMO foods? Heritability of IQ? Whether George Bush stole the 2004 election by tampering with voting machines? I’m stretching here, but that’s because nothing really comes to mind.

Help me out. What kinds of Scott-Walkerish gotcha questions should reporters be saving up for Hillary?

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Is It Fair to Keep Peppering Scott Walker With Gotcha Questions?

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Scott Walker Still Having Some Teething Problems Balancing the Tea Party with the Mainstream GOP

Mother Jones

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I’ve been talking up Scott Walker as a good bet to win the Republican presidential nomination next year, but there’s no question that he first has to find the right balance between the bullheaded “Hulk Smash Democrats” persona designed to appeal to tea partiers and the more mild-mannered Midwestern executive persona designed to appeal to moderates and big-money donors. The latest example of his difficulties with this balancing act comes from a laughable attempt to change the mission statement of the University of Wisconsin. Here’s Walker’s proposal:

The mission of the system is to develop human resources to meet the state’s workforce needs, to discover and disseminate knowledge….

So far, no problem. He just wants to add a bit of boilerplate about training future workers. No one objects to that. But then there’s more. Everything he wants to delete is in bold:

….to extend knowledge and its application beyond the boundaries of its campuses and to serve and stimulate society by developing develop in students heightened intellectual, cultural, and humane sensitivities, scientific, professional and technological expertise, and a sense of purpose. Inherent in this broad mission are methods of instruction, research, extended training and public service designed to educate people and improve the human condition. Basic to every purpose of the system is the search for truth.

By cracky, we’ll not have our universities extending knowledge beyond the borders of their campuses! And the search for truth? Sounds like a steaming pile of secular liberal claptrap. Off with its head!

But that’s not the end of it. Heather Digby Parton describes what happened next:

After the changes were revealed publicly Walker made a hilariously fatuous claim worthy of Rosemary Woods and the 18 minute gap: somehow those changes just appeared and he didn’t know nothin’ about how they got there and anyway it was the University’s fault for “overlooking” it. He has had to backtrack from that as well, admitting that his people did make these changes and the university official argued vociferously against it. But none of it is his fault because well, it just isn’t. Or anyone else’s.

Last Wednesday, according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Walker finally acknowledged that university officials had raised objections about the proposal but “had been told the changes were not open to debate.” And as the Sentinel graphic on the right shows, the proposed changes were, in fact, quite deliberate.

In any case, even Walker is now being forced to pretend it was all a big misunderstanding. So what happened? My guess is that his inner circle thought the changes might win Walker some brownie points with the tea party crowd, which has always been suspicious of long-haired academics and their lefty ideas, but failed to see how bad it would look among the less wild-eyed crowd that looks to Walker as a pragmatic executive type. Walker’s team is having trouble balancing those two constituencies, and that’s a problem since Walker’s key appeal is that he bridges the gap between them.

Needless to say, this dumb little affair won’t do Walker any long-term damage. It’s just a minor dust cloud. Nonetheless, it’s an instructive dust cloud. Clearly Walker still hasn’t quite managed to polish up the balancing act that’s his biggest source of strength in the 2016 presidential race. That’s something he needs to figure out in short order.

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Scott Walker Still Having Some Teething Problems Balancing the Tea Party with the Mainstream GOP

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Why Scott Walker Might Be Our Next President

Mother Jones

In 2012, I basically considered Mitt Romney a shoo-in for the Republican nomination. I figured that he’d hoover up most of the moderate votes—and despite all the breathless press accounts, moderates still account for at least half of GOP voters—plus a share of the tea partiers, and that was that. The rest of the field would destroy each other as they fought over their own sliver of the tea party vote, eventually leaving Romney battered and unloved, but triumphant.

Sure enough, that’s what happened. But I don’t see a strong moderate in the field right now. I suppose Jeb Bush and Chris Christie come the closest, but even if they run, they strike me as having some pretty serious problems. Romney was willing to adopt tea party positions across the board, even as he projected a moderate, adult persona, but neither Christie nor Bush will kowtow in quite that way. That’s going to cause them problems, and Christie’s fondness for showy confrontations is going to be an additional millstone around his neck. Either one might win, but neither seems like an especially likely nominee to me.

All this is a long way of explaining why I think Scott Walker is the frontrunner. He has a record of governance. His persona is relatively adult. He doesn’t say crazy stuff. Relatively speaking, he’s attractive to moderates. But at the same time, the tea partiers love him too. The big strike against him, of course, is that he’s lousy on TV. He’s a terrible public speaker. And he’s just boring as hell. However, Ed Kilgore perfectly explains why this doesn’t make him another Tim Pawlenty or John Kasich:

This is why Walker is so very commonly compared to Tim Pawlenty in 2012; the Minnesotan was perfectly positioned to become the most-conservative-electable-candidate nominee in a large but shaky field. And he wound up being the first candidate to drop out, before a single vote (other than in the completely non-official Ames Straw Poll) was cast. His sin was congenital blandness, and the defining moment of his campaign was when he all but repudiated his one great zinger: referring to the Affordable Care Act as “Obamneycare.”

But TPaw’s demise does point up one big difference between these two avatars of the Republican revival in the Upper Midwest: nobody suspects Scott Walker may be too nice for his party. He may be bland, and a bad orator, but his bad intent towards conservatism’s enemies is unmistakable. He’s sorta Death by Vanilla, or a great white shark; boring until he rips you apart. I think Republican elites get that, and it excites them. But how about voters?

Mitt Romney managed to base nearly his entire campaign on hating Barack Obama more than anyone else. It worked. Whenever someone started to score some points against his sometimes liberalish record in Massachusetts, he’d just launch into an over-the-top denunciation of Obama and the crowd would go wild. Walker can do the same thing, but without the artifice. Unlike Romney, he really has been fighting liberals tooth and nail for the past four years, and he has the scars to prove it. This will go a long, long way to make up for a bit of blandness.

Besides, it’s worth remembering that people can improve on the basics of campaigning. Maybe Walker will turn out to be hopeless. You never know until the campaign really gets going. But if he’s serious, he’ll get some media training and start working on developing a better stump speech. A few months of this can do wonders.

Predictions are hard, especially about the future. But if he runs, I rate Walker a favorite right now. If his only real drawback is midwestern blandness—well, Mitt Romney wasn’t Mr. Excitement either. Walker can get better if he’s puts in the work. And if he does, he’ll have most of Romney’s upside with very little of the downside. He could be formidable.

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Why Scott Walker Might Be Our Next President

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Meet Another GOP Candidate Who’s Pretending He’s Pro-Choice

Mother Jones

Over the past few weeks, a number of Republican candidates have run deceptive advertisements or used sneaky language to paper over their hardline views on reproductive rights. Pols who’ve done this include Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Senate hopeful Scott Brown in New Hampshire, and Colorado gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez. Now you can add another name to the list of pro-life GOPers who are suddenly talking about choice: Oregon’s Dennis Richardson.

Richardson, a Republican state representative running for governor, cut an ad (watch it above) featuring a self-described “pro-choice Democrat” named Michelle Horgan. Speaking directly into the camera, Horgan says: “I trust Dennis. He’ll uphold Oregon’s laws to protect my right to choose, and he’ll work hard for Oregon families.”

The language in Richardson’s ad—”He’ll uphold Oregon’s laws to protect my right to choose”—hews closely to the rhetoric used by Walker, Brown, and Beauprez. All of those Republicans have previously sought to restrict women’s reproductive rights (Walker supports eliminating all abortions). But during this election season, they have each tried to strike a moderate tone on the issue.

Richardson’s ad is particularly brazen given his long record of opposing abortion rights. He wrote a letter to the Oregonian in 1990 saying that “a woman relinquishes her unfettered right to control her own body when her actions cause the conception of a baby.” As a state legislator, he sponsored legislation to give unborn fetuses the rights of humans and to require parental notification for abortions. In 2007, he voted against mandating that hospitals offer emergency contraception to women who have been sexually assaulted.

What’s more, Richardson has the endorsement and full-throated support of Oregon Right to Life, the state’s main anti-abortion-rights group. Oregon Right to Life’s PAC has donated $80,000 to Richardson’s campaign. (Right to Life’s $50,000 check in September remains the fourth-largest cash contribution of Richardson’s entire campaign.) In an email blast to its list, the group touted Richardson as “an excellent gubernatorial candidate” who, if elected, would offer the “opportunity to reclaim political ground and hopefully start changing the way Oregon politics treat the abortion issue. We might actually be able to end our ‘reign’ as the only state in America lacking a single restriction on abortion.”

No mistaking that message: In Richardson, the pro-life community sees an opportunity to finally start curbing abortion access in the state of Oregon. But you probably won’t see that message in Richardson’s campaign ads any time soon.

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Meet Another GOP Candidate Who’s Pretending He’s Pro-Choice

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Scott Walker Is Bragging About a Pro-Life Endorsement He Didn’t Receive This Year

Mother Jones

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Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has been caught again playing fast and loose with the facts on the issue of abortion. Earlier this week, as I reported, Walker’s campaign released a new ad about a bill he signed that restricted abortion rights for women in Wisconsin. In the ad, Walker says, “the bill leaves the final decision to a woman and her doctor”—a statement that falsely implies that Walker supports a woman’s right to choose an abortion, when in fact he wants to ban all abortions, even in cases of rape and incest.

Now, the Capital Times of Madison, Wis., reports that Walker’s campaign website touts an endorsement from a pro-life group that Walker didn’t actually receive this year. On his 2014 campaign website, Walker touts an endorsement by the group Pro-Life Wisconsin. Under the “Walker on Values” section, it reads:

In my campaign for governor, I am proud to have been endorsed by Wisconsin Right to Life, which recognized my long commitment to right to life issues and noted that my election “would greatly contribute to building a culture of life where the most vulnerable members of the human family are welcomed and protected.”

I was also endorsed by Pro-Life Wisconsin which said that a Walker Administration “will have far-reaching, positive effects for Wisconsin citizens who value the dignity of all innocent human life.”

Here’s the problem: That’s not true. Pro-Life Wisconsin endorsed Walker during the 2010 gubernatorial campaign and the 2012 recall election. But the group did not endorse him in this year’s gubernatorial race, as the Capital Times reported:

Pro-Life Wisconsin evaluates political candidates by their responses to a 10-question survey sent during each election cycle. In order to receive an endorsement, a candidate must answer “yes” to every question—giving them a “100 percent pro-life” rating—and complete an interview with members of the political action committee board.

“Scott Walker did not complete our 2014 candidate survey and therefore is ineligible for an endorsement,” wrote Matt Sande, director of the Pro-Life Wisconsin Victory Fund PAC, in an email. “His campaign manager stated in a letter that ‘our campaign will not be completing any interest group surveys or interviews.'”

That didn’t stop Walker’s website from listing Pro-Life Wisconsin as an endorser. Neither the Walker campaign nor Matt Sande, who runs Pro-Life Wisconsin’s Victory Fund PAC, responded to requests for comment.

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Scott Walker Is Bragging About a Pro-Life Endorsement He Didn’t Receive This Year

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Scott Walker Wants to Totally Outlaw Abortion. In This Sneaky New Ad, He Pretends He Doesn’t.

Mother Jones

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In one of the nation’s most hotly contested campaigns, incumbent GOP Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has recently been slammed by a new ad blitz highlighting his staunch opposition to abortion rights. He and his campaign consultants are obviously worried about this line of attack: On Monday, they issued one of the slyest ads of the campaign season. Titled “Decision,” the ad attempts to depict Walker as a reasonable fellow on this issue. It’s a brazenly misleading spot—almost a flip-flop—that is designed to create the false impression that Walker respects a woman’s right to choose. The ad is camouflage for the fact that Walker has supported outlawing all abortions, even in cases of rape of incest.

In the ad (seen above), Walker, talking straight into the camera, starts off by saying, “I’m pro-life.” He then defends the bill he he signed in 2013 that required women seeking abortions to first obtain an ultrasound and that required abortion providers to possess admitting rights at a hospital within 30 miles of their clinic. This law—which remains tangled in legal challenges—could greatly restrict abortion access in Wisconsin. But in the ad, Walker characterizes the legislation as a measure “to increase safety and to provide more information for a woman considering her options.” Then comes the whopper: “The bill leaves the final decision to a woman and her doctor.” With that statement, a viewer could easily conclude that Walker is personally opposed to abortion but supports the right of a woman to decide (in consultation with a doctor) to choose an abortion.

But Walker is as hard-core on abortion as a conservative anti-choice politician can be. In 2010, he told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorial board that he wants to ban abortion entirely—no exceptions for rape or incest. Here’s that exchange:

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: You oppose abortion even in cases of rape and incest.

Scott Walker: (Nods)

MJS: Tell me if I got that right.

SW: That’s correct.

For some reason, Walker neglects to mention this absolutist stance in his new ad. The ad is a clear sign that Walker and his strategists believe that this position won’t help him get reelected and that his best shot at winning depends on the most sophisticated of campaign craftiness.

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Scott Walker Wants to Totally Outlaw Abortion. In This Sneaky New Ad, He Pretends He Doesn’t.

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Gun Control Measures Are Going Nowhere, So Here’s a Bulletproof Blanket for Your Kids

Mother Jones

One way to curb mass shootings in America’s schools would be for Congress to pass gun control legislation. But since that plan failed miserably, an enterprising father in Oklahoma is offering another solution—equipping children with bulletproof blankets.

The Bodyguard Blanket™ was developed by Steve Walker, a father of two elementary school students who was horrified by the December 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newton, Connecticut, which left 20 children and six adults dead. In the 14 months following Newtown, there were at least 44 school shootings. “We wanted our children to have a layer of protection immediately,” Walker told Oklahoma NBC affiliate KFOR. “They can be stored in the classroom, and, when seconds count, they can be easily applied.”

It comes in both child and adult sizes and is designed to be bulletproof, made from the same materials that US soldiers and law enforcement wear, the manufacturer’s website claims. The manufacturers estimate that the blankets provide protection against “90% of all weapons that have been used in school shootings in the United States.”

The blanket is intended to be strapped on a child’s back like a backpack. When the child crouches in a ball and huddles up next to other children, they form a kind of human shield, like how the “Romans and the Greeks used to lock together,” managing partner Stan Schone told KFOR. (The blanket is also being marketed toward schools that might want to protect students from tornado-induced flying debris.)

Each blanket costs a little under $1,000, but the creators told KFOR they hope to offer discounts for large orders. There is also an option to donate blankets to “schools, daycare centers, churches, and other organizations located in your community.” In any case, there’s sure to be a market.

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Gun Control Measures Are Going Nowhere, So Here’s a Bulletproof Blanket for Your Kids

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