Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Where tasty lettuce and good mustard aren’t elitist.

Han shot first.

There will be lawyers.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

The revolution will be supervised.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

The math demands it!

How do you get liars to care about the truth?

It’s been a really long fucking year.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Are you … from the future?

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

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Women's Rights Are Human Rights

Saturday Morning Open Thread: One Small Thing to Look Forward To

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Meanwhile, Fox News and its reporter Peter Doocy contine their campaign to kill as many Americans as possible…

… I, like Doocy, was intrigued by where this number came from Thursday. I, unlike Doocy apparently, actually did 30 seconds of research on it. That’s all the time it took to find the publicly available study — which even has the number Psaki cited in its title, “The Disinformation Dozen” — from the Center for Countering Digital Hate. The study was picked up by the likes of NPR and others in May.

Nor did anything in Psaki’s comments Thursday suggest that this was from some kind of government study or research project. But Doocy jumped from her factoid to not just assuming that it was, but also that this amounted to “spying” and that the “spying” was specifically done by the surgeon general’s office (perhaps because Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy appeared with Psaki on Thursday?)…

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You Don’t Fix a Broken System By Making It Worse For Everyone, You Fix It By Making It Better For Everyone

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Justice, Justice You Shall Pursue – Deuteronomy 16:18

In the wake of the sentencing of Derek Chauvin, a lot of people in a lot of places are expressing that they wish he’d gotten the maximum. That if he was black or brown or Muslim he wouldn’t have gotten less than the maximum. While I understand those sentiments, especially when framed within the real, true, and factually accurate context that Americans who are non-white and/or non-law enforcement get treated far more harshly by every part of criminal justice system.

However, the way to fix the system is not to push for someone like Derek Chauvin to be treated as badly as those who are non-white and/or non-law enforcement, but, rather, to push for everyone else to be treated better. America over polices itself. It over prosecutes itself. It over incarcerates itself. At every point of contact the system is far, far, far more punitive than it needs to be. Some of that has to do with the fact that there are really two histories of America’s policing and criminal justice systems. Some of that is because there’s profit to be wrung out of both of them. And both of them are inextricably linked.

I haven’t taught criminal justice in a long time, but at least through 2007 the standard texts for criminal justice, as well as for policing, start the history of what we would call formalized policing in the US in the 1840s in New York City. That department was quickly followed by ones in New Orleans, Cincinnati, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Milwaukee. The same texts date the first police union to the early 20th century as a result of the police strike in Boston in 1919. In between these they take a detour to London to describe Sir Robert Peel’s policing innovations.

All of this is true. It is factually accurate. It also misses the other, older history of policing in the US. The first actual formalized policing in the US was the fugitive slave patrols and the plantation police. The first slave patrol was formed in 1704 in Charleston, South Carolina. The first benevolent association for law enforcement was actually created in the mid 19th century in Charleston, South Carolina. This police union predates the one created in Boston by almost a hundred years. And the language used to describe these patrolmen’s and policemen’s duties, such as patrolling a beat, would be familiar to us today.

The purpose of all this American policing that we don’t normally call policing was about profit. Ensuring that the human property that was creating the profits for their owners didn’t do anything like run away to seek their freedom or revolt to do the same.

There are a lot of problems in how America undertakes policing, as well as the other parts of its criminal justice system. Police are all too often used to respond to things that really shouldn’t be policed, but because we’ve been defunding public mental health resources since the Reagan administration, who you gonna call? The cops. Because there isn’t anyone else to call. Similarly, state legislators and municipal officials create ever more criminal and civil infractions that the police are then expected to enforce and the prosecutors to prosecute. They do this because someone has identified a problem. And when every problem looks like a nail, you put it under the hammer. That’s not the fault of any specific police department or any specific police officer. It is a systemic problem.

This systemic problem is allowed to exist because it also generates revenue. If you can’t have any revenue from taxes, because taxes are un-American or Satanic or socialism or insert your boogeyman of choice here, then issuing lots of citations is a good way to make up some of the difference. The problem, of course, is if you make something illegal, eventually someone is going to try to enforce it. And, eventually, an enforcement action is going to go badly.

Don’t even get me started on how even the ever shrinking public prison system was both always rooted in profit and has been reimagined over and over and over again to ensure someone can make money off of it. The private, for profit prison industry should be abolished outright.

We over resource police and prosecutors and prisons and under resource public defenders, mental health professionals, social workers, teachers, schools, and community programs such as sports leagues and recreation centers.

We know that our criminal justice system does not create a deterrent, which is supposed to be one of the most significant points of the whole thing. The data on that has been clear for decades. Most police departments never even get close to a 50% clearance rates. The majority of them are lucky if they have a clearance rate above 30% for their serious crimes. Yet year after year, the system continues to just grind along in the names of crime prevention, law and order, deterrence, and public safety.

And all of it is a one way ratchet.

The solution to black and brown and some religious minority Americans being over policed, over prosecuted, over sentenced, over incarcerated, and over punished is not to do the same thing to the Derek Chauvins of America, no matter how satisfying that might feel. And no matter how that feels like it might be equal justice. The solution is to actually replace the ratchet and go in the other direction. We’ve spent decades, more accurately we’ve spent well over a century, trying it the way things are now and I don’t think anyone who is honest and informed actually believes it is working. Sentencing Derek Chauvin to the maximum thirty years instead of twenty-two and a half isn’t going to fix any of that.

Every aspect of our criminal justice and rule of law systems are in need of serious reform. In some cases they need more than reform, they need to be reimagined and reconceptualized and then reconstituted. The purpose of establishing systems and processes to seek justice should be to seek justice, not punishment and not profit. And justice should be tempered by mercy.

In creating the world God combined the two attributes of justice and mercy: “Thus said the Holy One, blessed be His name! ‘If I create the world with the attribute of mercy, sin will be plentiful; and if I create it with the attribute of justice, how can the world exist? Therefore I will create it with both attributes, mercy and justice, and thus may it endure.'”. [Gen. R. 12:15]

Open thread!

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Wednesday Morning Open Thread: MMIW Day of Awareness

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Not exactly the usual optimistic early-morning topic, but…

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Monday Morning Open Thread: A New Week, A New Start

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Senior Military Leaders – Officers and Senior Enlisted – Have Decided To Very Publicly Smack Tucker Carlson Around

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Like every guy else on this site who has served in a uniform, as a DOD or Service civilian, or in the US intelligence community, we’ve all served with women. And not just in support positions regardless of what the official designators were. In the wars we’ve been fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan for the past 20 and 18 years respectively, no matter where we put the phase lines on the map, there were no defined lines that indicated where the fighting would and wouldn’t be. Women Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines, despite being designated in combat support roles for almost the entirety of these wars, often saw as much combat as their male counterparts. Every convoy of supplies, every Civil Affairs Team-Alpha mission, every Medical or Veterinary Operation could, at any moment, go from being a support or enabling mission to a combat one.

Similarly, women working within the US intelligence community, as well as in other agencies within the Interagency that deployed forward also often served in harm’s way. And lots of them – those working for the State Department, USAID, USDA, US Department of Energy, etc – went forward despite knowing they, like their male colleagues from these agencies, would NOT be authorized to be armed despite being deployed in a war zone! And yet they went. And the civil service women from the Interagency all went because they volunteered as part of what was referred to as the “civilian surge” to better enable and enhance the US military’s ability to successfully conduct Phase IV Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I fought hard to have two women on my small team of cultural analysts – one a former student I’d recruited and the other a former Army intelligence NCO. I got my former student and was glad to have one woman on the team*. Why? Because we were deployed in a high context communicating, near-far relationship, honor-shame society that was also Muslim. This meant that women, and being able to talk to them, to have them talk to us and tell us what they needed – as women in general and as mothers, teachers, doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc in specific – was largely impossible without a woman on the team!

I once did a ride along on a MedOps with one of our Civil Affairs Teams-Alpha (CAT-A) and my former student did not come along. And we didn’t have a female medic or interpreter with us either. It took over half the day before anyone without a Y chromosome would come talk to us. Eventually someone sent a five year old girl to ask for something figuring that that was somehow not improper. Once we were able to get her what she needed for her mother, that broke the ice and the Civil Affairs medic was suddenly swamped by women. The first thing that was decided at the post mission after action review was that from now on a female CA Soldier, a female medic, and a female interpreter would be on the list of required personnel for these missions.

In Afghanistan they actually built all women teams – known as Lioness Teams – to go do this type of work with Afghan women. There was some discussion of doing this within our brigade, leading to the cringeworthy suggestion that since we were the Iron Brigade they should be called the Iron Maidens, but it was ultimately decided to simply ensure women were on all the essential missions because we didn’t have any female personnel who had gone through the specialty Lioness Team training. Here’s the link to a great, though infuriatingly sad, documentary on the Lioness Teams done by Frontline at PBS.

So I’m very glad to see a number of senior military leaders – officers and senior enlisted – visibly and vocally push back against Carlson’s offensive stupidity. Here’s a sampling I came across without even looking. If the WordPress formatting isn’t showing you the full, embedded tweet with the video, just click on the links to see and hear for yourselves.

Command Sergeant Major Michael Grinston, the 16th Sergeant Major of the Army:

US Training and Doctrine Command Deputy Commanding General LTG Ted Martin:

US Space Command Senior Enlisted Advisor/Command NCO:

GEN Paul Funk, Jr; Commanding General Training and Doctrine Command (who has also been using his social media feed to retweet and amplify other’s similar statements):

Major General Pat Donahoe, Commanding General Maneuver Center of Excellent and Ft. Benning:

MG John R. Evans, Commanding General US Army Cadet Command:

MG Dennis LeMaster, Commanding General US Army Medical Center of Excellence:

 

Statement made by GEN James McConville, US Army Chief of Staff:

I found these without really looking and I’m sure there are more out there. The US military is not perfect when it comes to dealing with women who are Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, or Marines, but the responses of the senior leadership to Carlson’s stupid agitprop is encouraging and reassuring. I would also suggest that this open support is possible because of who is president. The senior uniformed leadership knows that if they publicly push back on Carlson’s stupidity that they won’t be called out on it by any of the political loyalty officers that Trump had appointed to senior positions in the White House, at the DOD, and at the Services.

Open thread!

* Of the women who served in the US Army Human Terrain System, two lost their lives during their deployments as a result of enemy action. Both of these were peers of mine – they were also the field social scientists, read research and analytical directors and technical leads, for their teams. Nicole Suveges was blown up in Sadr City in Iraq in late June 2008, we had been emailing just the day before about an HR issue of all things. Paula Lloyd, who I did not know, died in early January 2009. She had served through the rank of Staff Sergeant in the US Army before going on to get her advanced degrees. Paula was attacked in early November 2008 by an Afghan local who doused her with gasoline that had been concealed in a container used for cooking oil and lit on fire while accompanying and assisting an Army patrol in Afghanistan. She ultimately died of her burn wounds two months later.

My former student, one of the best ones I ever had, came through her deployment successfully.

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Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Doing the Work

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Monday Morning Open Thread: International Women’s Day

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And this is about the best thing I can say on that topic:

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