Aug 22, 2017
There's A Difference
Vox:
If you kill someone, whether the criminal justice system throws you in prison may come down to your race.
That’s the takeaway from a recent report by Daniel Lathrop and Anna Flagg at the Marshall Project. They looked at federal data to analyze the circumstances in which a homicide was deemed “justifiable” by police. Their findings were astounding:
The racial disparity held up after controlling for different circumstances. When they adjusted for how well the killer and victim knew each other and how the victim was killed, white-on-black-men homicides were two to 10 times as likely to be called “justifiable.” And when controlling for age in addition to those other factors, white-on-black-men homicides remained 4.7 times as likely to be called “justifiable” as other cases. The disparity also seemed to hold up across the country, according to the report.
If you kill someone, whether the criminal justice system throws you in prison may come down to your race.
That’s the takeaway from a recent report by Daniel Lathrop and Anna Flagg at the Marshall Project. They looked at federal data to analyze the circumstances in which a homicide was deemed “justifiable” by police. Their findings were astounding:
In almost 17 percent of cases when a black man was killed by a non-Hispanic white civilian over the last three decades, the killing was categorized as justifiable, which is the term used when a police officer or a civilian kills someone committing a crime or in self-defense. Overall, the police classify fewer than 2 percent of homicides committed by civilians as justifiable. …In comparison, when Hispanics killed black men, about 5.5 percent of cases were called justifiable. When whites killed Hispanics, it was 3.1 percent. When blacks killed whites, the figure was just 0.8 percent. When black males were killed by other blacks, the figure was about 2 percent, the same as the overall rate.
The racial disparity held up after controlling for different circumstances. When they adjusted for how well the killer and victim knew each other and how the victim was killed, white-on-black-men homicides were two to 10 times as likely to be called “justifiable.” And when controlling for age in addition to those other factors, white-on-black-men homicides remained 4.7 times as likely to be called “justifiable” as other cases. The disparity also seemed to hold up across the country, according to the report.
This might be a good time to remind ourselves that research like this is not being supported properly by a government that insists on hiding the truth - or worse, denying the truth.
Gun violence studies have all but disappeared at CDC, almost exclusively because "conservatives" have written prohibitions against it into the legislation funding that agency.
We've seen the same kind of thing at FDA and NIH, and now federal funding to study and report the health effects of coal mining is being eliminated.
Good luck trying to make good decisions without good evidence.
Brain Wave Deficit
Another entitled-feeling over-privileged tin-eared dolt responding defensively to criticism:
Coupla counter-questions here, ma'am:
1) You don't really think you're supporting the system all by yourself, right?
2) How much more than anybody else are you benefiting from that system?
Fuck me - ignorant rich people. It's like they have no idea how these things actually work.
Today's Tweet
IN CASE YOU MISSED THE TOTAL ECLIPSE 🌕🌖🌗🌘🌑🌒🌓🌔🌕 pic.twitter.com/B0iMl3P4N9— Teenager Notes (@teenagernotes) August 21, 2017
Aug 21, 2017
20/20 Retrospective
The New Yorker, David Remnick
Donald Trump’s ascent was hardly the first sign that Americans had not uniformly regarded Obama’s election as an inspiring chapter in the country’s fitful progress toward equality. Newt Gingrich, the former Speaker of the House, had branded him the “food-stamp President.” In the right-wing and white-nationalist media, Obama was, variously, a socialist, a Muslim, the Antichrist, a “liberal fascist,” who was assembling his own Hitler Youth. A high-speed train from Las Vegas to Anaheim that was part of the economic-stimulus package was a secret effort to connect the brothels of Nevada to the innocents at Disneyland. He was, by nature, suspect. “You just look at the body language, and there’s something going on,” Trump said, last summer. In the meantime, beginning on the day of Obama’s first inaugural, the Secret Service fielded an unprecedented number of threats against the President’s person.
And so, speeding toward yet another airport last November, Obama seemed like a weary man who harbored a burning seed of apprehension. “We’ve seen this coming,” he said. “Donald Trump is not an outlier; he is a culmination, a logical conclusion of the rhetoric and tactics of the Republican Party for the past ten, fifteen, twenty years. What surprised me was the degree to which those tactics and rhetoric completely jumped the rails.”
For half a century, in fact, the leaders of the G.O.P. have fanned the lingering embers of racial resentment in the United States. Through shrewd political calculation and rhetoric, from Richard Nixon’s “Southern strategy” to the latest charges of voter fraud in majority-African-American districts, doing so has paid off at the ballot box. “There were no governing principles,” Obama said. “There was no one to say, ‘No, this is going too far, this isn’t what we stand for.’ ”
Woulda been nice if the Press Poodles had made slightly more of a point about how Repubs had "fanned the lingering embers" over the last 50 fucking years.
It almost amazes me that everybody suddenly sees what's been going on.
As always, driftglass finds a good example of how Poodles do their little poodling thing:
Aug 20, 2017
Today's Both Sides Bullshit
These two things are not the same.
On the subject of "sometimes there's only one side": That's a nice-sounding slogan, but when I drill into it, I see False Equivalence again.
So yes, there are two sides. One side is the decent human being side. The other side is the unrepentant unremitting unreasonable asshole side.
Both sides vote. One side votes (mostly) for Republicans.
And we should be talking about all the times we heard politicians of a certain stripe spending breath and energy yammering on about how we can't appease these rotten guys - Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, Radovan Karadzic, Manuel Noriega - that if we don't shut them down (by force if needed), they'll be emboldened; they'll go further; and we'll pay a much higher price trying to stop them later.
Where the fuck are you this time, Republicans? Oh right, I almost forgot - they are you and you are them. There's not a dime's worth of difference between you and the knuckle-draggers you've been courting for 40 years with all that coded language. That's the GOP now. That's who you are, and I guess I should try not to be surprised by any of this.
Stop cowering, get back up on your hind legs and help us do something about it.
Aug 19, 2017
You Can Call It A Polecat
...but it's never gonna be nuthin' but a fuckin' skunk.
Nice try on that rebranding thing, fellas, but this
Nice try on that rebranding thing, fellas, but this
...is still this
Free Speech
Freedom ain't free. And the cost can be pretty heavy.
We always have to be a little careful in how we react to people expressing views we disagree with.
That said, it's important to remember Popper's Paradox:
We were alerted that white supremacist Chris Cantwell was on OkCupid. Within 10 minutes we banned him for life.— OkCupid (@okcupid) August 17, 2017
We always have to be a little careful in how we react to people expressing views we disagree with.
That said, it's important to remember Popper's Paradox:
Arnold
.@Schwarzenegger has a blunt message for Nazis. pic.twitter.com/HAbnejahtl— ATTN: (@attn) August 17, 2017
Aug 18, 2017
Hey Hey - Goo-ood Bye
“No matter what happens, Steve is a honey badger,” said this person, who like others interviewed spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation. “Steve’s in a good place. He doesn’t care. He’s going to support the president and push the agenda, whether he’s on the inside or the outside.”
Bannon doesn't care.
First off, he knows he's insulated. He doesn't have to worry about the effects of shitty draconian policies on regular people cuz he's not regular people.
Guys at Bannon's level pretty much think they own the government anyway (or at least they think they should - 'course we haven't exactly been giving them whole big bunches of reasons to think otherwise). And there's always the probability that he just enjoys having the power, and the time, to dabble.
Wanting to prevent ridiculously rich and craven people from "governing" at their leisurely whim was kinda the whole point of 'The United States of America' in first place, wasn't it?
So lemme see - what might keep these assholes kinda reined in so they'd hafta spend more time minding their own goddamned business and less time fucking with the rest of us?
Anybody wanna talk Tax Reform? Be ready - cuz that's coming soon, but for now:
The Un-Poodling Of The Press
And thus it starts. Some of the Press Poodles have finally had enough, and they're actually calling some the liars on their lies - sometimes live, in real time, on the air.
Don Lemon smacks Jack Kingston:
Jake Tapper points out some of 45*'s malarkey:
And I'm hoping to be a little hopeful that maybe kinda sorta we're seeing the Poodles pushing back against the False Equivalence bullshit - bullshit, btw, that they've been pimping right along with assholes like 45* and his asshole acolytes like Jack Kingston.
Obviously, they're not there yet, but I'll give the 4th Estate a baby bulldog today instead of the usual rainbow poodle.
Way to go, guys.
We are trying to be not so fucked(?)
He Has No Soul
"He is the malevolent fury..."
Lawrence O'Donnell with Bill Moyers
Lawrence O'Donnell with Bill Moyers
And here are some of the art pieces Lawrence referred to:
hat tip = Walker Thornton
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