Hopkins Not Planning to Freak Out
You know a guy shot a doctor at Johns Hopkins Hospital yesterday because his mother would never be able to walk again after surgery, and then killed himself. It's a tragedy all the way around.
The standard thing these days is to freak out whenever something happens and create a bunch of rules and policies to make sure it never happens again. One attempted shoe bomber, and millions of travelers have to show their shoes to the security guys. Maybe billions by now. We have come to expect meaningless displays of security, signs that the authorities are monitoring everything we do so that somebody doesn't do something wrong. It does not reduce the chance of terrorism or random violence such as yesterday's shooting, but it appears to make some people feel better.
I hate to have to say it, but this took a lot of courage.
Eighty thousand people a week, by my math that's more than four million people a year, year after year, and one guy shot somebody. It would be crazy to install metal detectors and staff them with a bunch of uniformed guards to prevent another occurrence.
But still, it's a headline, "Dog Doesn't Bite Man." The guy needs to come out and explain to uncomprehending reporters why he is not going to invest in ineffective security theater. I'll tell ya, we need more like this.
The standard thing these days is to freak out whenever something happens and create a bunch of rules and policies to make sure it never happens again. One attempted shoe bomber, and millions of travelers have to show their shoes to the security guys. Maybe billions by now. We have come to expect meaningless displays of security, signs that the authorities are monitoring everything we do so that somebody doesn't do something wrong. It does not reduce the chance of terrorism or random violence such as yesterday's shooting, but it appears to make some people feel better.
I hate to have to say it, but this took a lot of courage.
BALTIMORE - Don't look for Johns Hopkins Hospital to install metal detectors as a way to prevent guns from getting into the world-renowned medical facility.
As the hospital assesses how to prevent future murder-suicides in its facilities, the head of security says such a move would not be realistic because of the costs involved.
"We have over 80 doors, loading docks, emergency exits to these campus buildings," Vice President of Security Harry Koffenberger says.
Installing metal detectors would require an armed force, says Koffenberger, the Baltimore City Police veteran who's been the security chief at Johns Hopkins since 2006.
"We do search and wand with a magnatometer high-risk patients," Koffenberger says.
Like most hospitals, Hopkins does not search people for guns. The hospital on a weekly basis averages about 80,000 patients and visitors. Currently, visitors get wristbands. Metal detectors not likely at Johns Hopkins Hospital
Eighty thousand people a week, by my math that's more than four million people a year, year after year, and one guy shot somebody. It would be crazy to install metal detectors and staff them with a bunch of uniformed guards to prevent another occurrence.
But still, it's a headline, "Dog Doesn't Bite Man." The guy needs to come out and explain to uncomprehending reporters why he is not going to invest in ineffective security theater. I'll tell ya, we need more like this.
posted by JimK at 2:10 PM
19 Comments:
'Daily Show' host Jon Stewart announced Thursday that he'll lead a rally on Washington that aims to encourage angry citizens on both sides of the isle to take it down a notch, or in his words, "stop shouting, throwing and drawing Hitler mustaches on people other than Hitler."
The event has been dubbed the "Rally to Restore Sanity" and will be held on the National Mall on Oct. 30. "It's real," he told his maybe-thinking-he-was-joking audience. "We are gonna do this."
Progressive Congresspersons Raúl Grijalva, Alan Grayson and Mary Jo Kilroy sent a letter to Speaker Pelosi requesting that she schedule a vote on extending the Bush-era tax cuts to the middle class while sunsetting provisions that benefit the richest 2% of Americans.
Here's the letter:
Dear Madam Speaker:
Last decade, President Bush rammed through Congress a multi-billion dollar give-away for the wealthiest Americans on the backs of our nation's middle-class. In the process, the aforementioned Bush tax cuts eviscerated an unprecedented budget surplus and weakened our nation's fiscal health. As the Bush tax cuts are set to expire, we respectfully urge you to bring to the floor, before Congress adjourns in October, a vote on President Obama's recently proposed tax plan: permanent tax cuts for the middle-class while allowing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest two percent of Americans to expire, using any additional revenue to close our budget deficit.
We must show the American people that our Democratic Majority stands for them-- people who have worked hard, played by the rules and depend on these tax breaks to make ends meet. We also need to get serious about cutting our budget deficit by allowing the Bush tax cuts for the rich to expire.
Some have argued that the Bush tax cuts help to stimulate the economy, or that allowing these cuts to expire would hurt our nation's small businesses. This is flat out wrong. According to a recent report by the Center for American Progress, the economy boasted 132 million jobs in June 2001, the month that the first of the Bush tax cuts was signed into law. By June 2004, there were just 131.4 million jobs-- a decrease of 600,000 jobs. Furthermore, a recent report from the Tax Policy Center states that, "Roughly 97 percent of small businesses would not be affected at all by increases in the top two tax rates."
Rather, extending the Bush tax cuts will result in an $830 billion give-away for the nation's wealthiest Americans, significantly increasing government debt, the interest on which will be paid by our nation's middle-class for years to come. This astronomical sum could instead be used to close our budget deficit.
It is critical that we pass the Obama middle-class tax cuts-- not providing an even greater lift for the wealthiest Americans who don't need it.
Chris O'Donnell, Tea Party nominee for Senator from Delaware, addressed the Family Research Council's Values Voter Summit, last night in Washington and spoke about TTF:
"They're trying to say we're taking over this party or that campaign. They don't get it. We're not trying to take back our country. We ARE our country."
Her ally in the Tea Party, the female Ronald Reagan, Sarah Palin, unofficially kicked off her campaign for President with a speech in Iowa carried by cable news channels nationally.
Barack Obama announced he has finished work on a children's book he's writing.
New reports were released showing that poverty has grown substantially since Obama became president.
Another week where the smoke clears!
Now, this:
The latest findings, published this week in Science:
"(Sept. 17) -- The origins of HIV/AIDS can now be traced back at least 32,000 years to African monkeys infected with a precursor to the virus, scientists report. The mystery is how that precursor persisted for centuries and posed relatively little risk to humans before evolving into the virus that causes AIDS and now afflicts more than 33 million people worldwide."
Another group that doesn't get it.
Mystery solved:
AIDS lurked in the brushes until it got it's opportunity when the world's leading superpower began to tolerate the dangerously unhealthy activities of a fringe subset of the population.
In late 1970's, Tom Brokaw did a televsion documentary on the rampant gay culture of San Francisco where newly unrestrained homosexuals were engaging in random promiscuity with multiple partners, meeting new guys nightly in the city's bathhouses and taking their activities into the city parks.
The genie found a way out of the bottle.
The activities of homosexuals, unrestrained socially, gave the AIDS genie a foothold and a superhighway for tranmission into the population.
by now, it's become clear that Barack Obama has Muslim sympathies
perhaps he could make a contribution to the country, though, with a "Nixon in China" move
at the Values Voter Summit, Gary Bauer had a suggestion for him:
"Mr. President, it's time for the Islamic world to prove to the rest of the world that they understand human rights and that they understand religious freedom."
If Obama could use his Islamic roots to pressure the Islamic countries into tolerating Christian missionaries and churches and Bibles they way we tolerate Islamic recruiters and mosques and Korans, perhaps we could see the end of the war that Islamic fundamental fanaticism has declared on us.
"New reports were released showing that poverty has grown substantially since Obama became president."
Correction: New reports were released showing that poverty has grown substantially since Obama became president and the GOP decided to sabotage each and every effort to correct the problems the Bush Administration created. In fact, poverty began growing substantially the moment George W. Bush was elected president as documented on this graph of data collected by the Census Bureau (see http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/data/incpovhlth/2009/pov09fig04.pdf ). Poverty continues to rise as a result of Bush's mismanagement for 8 years combined with the GOP's refusal to be part of the solution since Obama won the Presidency. The GOP remains the problem today, insisting that deficit-deepening tax cuts for the rich be made permanent.
We need tax cuts for the middle class, not the richest Americans. The rich need to pay the same taxes they did under the Clinton administration when the economy was truly strong and the US budget climbed out of deficit levels to surplus.
Barack Obama is a baptized and confirmed Christian.
Your lies show what you value.
Gary Bauer:
His Republican candidacy for nomination in 1999-2000 was a miserable failure. Widespread allegations exist that Bauer had an affair with a sweet young 26 year old staffer, not exactly in keeping with the whole family values thing. Nine members of his staff resigned over this scandal. Bauer has also accepted over $100K from the Moonie cult, and in seeming reciprocity, the Family Research Council has placed multiple advertisements in the Moonie-owned Washington Times. He was also Director of Government Relations for the Direct Marketing Association from 1973 to 1980 -- yes, those sleazebags.
don't know who made those last few smart-aleck cracks but TTF has really gone off the deep end now:
"New reports were released showing that poverty has grown substantially since Obama became president and the GOP decided to sabotage each and every effort to correct the problems the Bush Administration created"
nobody's buying this latest bunch of malarkey from Democrats
Democrats control the House and Senate and the Oval Office
they have passed everything they wanted from "stimulus" plans to health care "reforms" to mind-boggling deficits to bank bailouts to cash to destroy used cars
Mr. Democrat, be a man and take responsibility for your failures
"We need tax cuts for the middle class, not the richest Americans."
that's interesting because Democrats aren't suggesting cutting taxes for the middle class and Republicans aren't suggesting a tax cut for any individuals, including the rich
Republicans want to keep individual tax rates what they are now and Democrats want to raise them on the wealthiest 20% of the population, who currently pay 70% of all income taxes while 40% of Americans pay no tax at all
Obama, alternatively, wants to cut taxes for businesses
"The rich need to pay the same taxes they did under the Clinton administration when the economy was truly strong and the US budget climbed out of deficit levels to surplus."
Clinton ran deficits in his first two years until Republicans took over Congress
Clinton's budget after that would have still shown a surplus even if the tax rates were what they are now
the surplus was due to tightening welfare, as Clinton was forced to do by Newt Gignrich, and military cuts, made possible by Ronald Reagan's victory in the Cold War
Clinton's surpluses represented the government taking massive sums out circulation by taking more money from individuals than was needed to fund governmental operations
nothing to brag about
it's history, my friends
"Barack Obama is a baptized and confirmed Christian.
Your lies show what you value."
never said anything about that
I said he has Muslim sympathies
"Gary Bauer:
His Republican candidacy for nomination in 1999-2000 was a miserable failure. Widespread allegations exist that Bauer had an affair with a sweet young 26 year old staffer, not exactly in keeping with the whole family values thing. Nine members of his staff resigned over this scandal. Bauer has also accepted over $100K from the Moonie cult, and in seeming reciprocity, the Family Research Council has placed multiple advertisements in the Moonie-owned Washington Times. He was also Director of Government Relations for the Direct Marketing Association from 1973 to 1980 -- yes, those sleazebags."
so typical of TTF
Bauer suggests that Obama find ways to encourage human rights and religious freedom in the Muslim world, and their only response is a spurious personal attack
Americans agree with Bauer on this
as do most citizens of the world
""They're trying to say we're taking over this party or that campaign. They don't get it. We're not trying to take back our country. We ARE our country.""
We ARE ALL our country, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, atheists, shamans, witches, straight, gay, lesbian, transgender, intersex.
Tea baggers need to remember they are not the only people who ARE this country.
what an ironic comment coming from a TTF liberal
Tea Party principles favor limited governement and greater liberty, which would allow all these groups to pursue their agendas without Big Brother getting involved
it's Obama-ites that try to suppress dissent
the Tea Party welcomes conversation
change is coming
the time is short for incumbents
"Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'."
If the tea party favors liberty, why do 5 tea party US Senate candidates all want to abolish abortion and go so far as to force even young girls who are raped or victims of incest to bear any products of those crimes?
That is not liberty my friend.
Far from it.
Christine O'Donnell's views on masturbation rub people the wrong way: http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/09/odonnells-greatest-hits.php
Have a nice day,
Cynthia
"If the tea party favors liberty, why do 5 tea party US Senate candidates all want to abolish abortion"
because they all support laws against the taking of innocent life
if you're so concerned about young girls, why don't you care about those that haven't been born yet
Since when are those who are not here yet more important or valuable than those who are already here?
Why do you value a potential life more than the life of a 12 year old incestuous rape victim?
well, if a life is threatened, there is obviously a call to make
everyone recognizes that but, more often, your line of thought is used to justify abortion as birth control
many used to fall for the "health of the mother" rationale and then anti-life supporters would start saying mental "stress" was a health issue
"well, if a life is threatened, there is obviously a call to make"
And just whose call is it to make? The female who is facing the pregnancy that is the result of the crime committed against her, that's who.
If the five GOTP Senate candidates have their way, there will be no ability for anyone to make such a call. Each female who end up pregnant, no matter if consensual or the result of a crime perpetrated against her, will be forced -- against her will if necessary -- to go full term.
If these 5 radical anti-abortion GOTP candidates have their way, we'd be no different that China with its forced abortion policy in that the Government would be making personal decisions for each woman, regardless of her own wishes.
Those hypoctites: Tea Baggers and Right to Lifers - the twentieth century version of the "Know Nothing" Party of the 1850.
By what logic compels you to want the government "off of our backs", "stop intruding into our personal lives" and then advocate the intrusion of the government into the very most private part of a woman's life.
I suppose you can rationalize that thinking if you happen to subscribe to the notion that, after all, women really are inferior and need to have superior males (of the Tea Bagger ilk in politics and the Pope in that church) make any and all decisions that affect a woman's life.
Barf on all that!
actually, you venal a-hole, the only decision that pro-lifers believe the government should be involved in are those involving the life of another
protecting the weak (unborn children) from the strong is an irreducible function of government
btw, if legalized abortion is required because of a Constitutional right to privacy, why is it OK for the government to tell me what drugs I can put in my mouth or when I have to use a seat belt?
or is it only women who are guaranteed the right to do what they want with their bodies?
"Anonymous"
"...you venal a-hole" Wow...you have surpassed your previous "intelligent" remarks with that one...and in the process, have exposed your greatest weakness...the inability to make a cogent, civil comment. And your sexism is even more painfully clear.
I assume you have steadfastly supported our withdrawal from the military fiascos we have been engaged in since the advent of the previous President...on the grounds that innocent lives were lost.
You, dear "Anonymous" speak with forked tongue.
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