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  • Right Wing Lies (III)

    Right Wing Lies (III)

    Fox News says an ever-increasing number of people are losing their jobs. 15 million alone in a 3-month period in 2010!

    That’s patently absurd. But it’s cited to the Bureau of Labor Statistics so it must be true.

    They “corrected” their graph to read: “total unemployed.”


    Straight up, I guess ever since Obama started handing out all that “Obama money.” And you know it must be true because this time they actually spelled out “Bureau of Labor Statistics”! The only problem is that unemployment is notgoing up. It’s been steady at 15 million since August, 2009.

    And then look closer at their chart. Now there’s no law that says you have to write “not to scale” when your draw a graph that isn’t to scale. But common courtesy and a sense of decency would implore you to mention that fact. Otherwise, you know, people could draw the wrong conclusions. Hmmmmm…. Looks like they already decided and didn’t really report.

    The line they draw is straight up and steady. But the numbers aren’t. The first increase is two million. The second increase is 4.5 million. The last increase is 1.5 million. The actually numbers look like this:

    But what are you going to be believe? The truth or Fox’s lying eyes?

    [Taken from Media Matters, which has more details. And discovered through Jay Livingston’s always good Montclair SocioBlog (the best blog I bet you don’t read).]

  • A technicality?

    It’s not easy to separate emotion from constitutional issues. Ronell Wilson killed two NYPD detectives in 2003 and was found guilty and sentence to death by a federal jury. Good.

    Now, in 2010, an appeals court struck down the sentence (but not the conviction… the bastard did it).

    It’s easy for cops and conservatives to bitch about “liberal” courts letting cop killers go on a “technicality.” But the court is right.

    According to the Times, the “technicality” is that the prosecutors told the jury to consider Wilson’s demand for a trial and failure to plead guilty as evidence of lack of remorse. The prosecutors had “argued to the jury that his statement of remorse should be discredited because he failed to testify.”

    Like it or not (myself, I’m rather fond of the Bill of Rights), we all have the constitutional right to a jury trial–Amendment 6–and the right not to testify against ourselves–Amendment 5. Period.

    [Mind you, demanding your right to a jury trial isoften held against you. That’s why 90-some percent of convictions come from plea bargains — but that doesn’t make it right and that’s another story.]

    What kind of rights would these be if exercising these rights were held against you? What could be worse than a prosecutor implying, “Yes, the defendant had a right not to testify, and because he exercised that right, he should be put to death.”

    Call it a “technicality” if you want. I’d call it a fundamental right put in doubt by a serious and stupid error from prosecutors.

  • Gates Arrest was “Avoidable”

    Ya think?

    Here’s the final report by the Cambridge Review Committee. I haven’t read it yet, but this may be the key sentence: “But instead of de-escalting, both men continued to escalate the encounter.”

    And the key insight may be here: “To say that the arrest of Professor Gates was avoidable is not to say that it was unjustified from a legal standpoint…. [S]ome police actions that may be ‘within policy’ are not necessarily the best outcomes to a situation.”

    Like I said… ya think?

    Meanwhile, according to the Boston Herald, “Professor Gates’ Attorney Blasts New Report.”

    If you still care, you can all my posts related to Gates.

  • Checks and Balances

    Wouldn’t it be nice if the Senate said, “Liberal or conservative, we’re not going to approve any Supreme Court justice that won’t tell us his or her position on issues”?

    The Senate is not supposed to be a rubber stamp.

    The founding fathers had no stated opinions on many current issues. Semi-automatic handguns didn’t exist when they wrote the 2nd Amendment. Police didn’t exists. And on another subject I don’t think it’s a stretch to say the Founding Fathers did not write the Bill of Rights with for-profit corporations in mind.

    So can we move beyond the incorrect liberal/conservative activist/originalist lie? The Supreme Court is politics. Always has been. Always will be. Maybe it should be. But when the court passes “conservative” decisions related to corporate rights and gun control–when the court overturns local law and extends the reach of the constitution–that is by definition an activist court.

    The Constitution is and should be a living document. Of course justices have to interpret the Constitution. That is their job. I just want my side to win.

  • Brother, can you spare a dime?

    So I’m in the grocery store, buying a few things, and decide to use the self-serve lane for a change. I realize I have just $15.25 in cash. So I start scanning things… careful not to go over. Then I go over.

    An employee walks by and I tell the lady, a middle-aged black lady, that I need to take the last thing off (rubbing alcohol) because I don’t have enough money. Now this wasn’t the last of my items. There was a whole half hand-basket left behind: fresca, onions, pita bread. Meanwhile the “essentials” I could afford included pretzels, ketchup, vaseline, and beer. The lady says, “Be sure to take your receipt. I’ll tell you why.”

    I finishing paying the machine. I realize I can’t even do basic math right because I still have $2 left. The machine spits out a receipt. The lady takes my receipt, and writes a lot on it. She tells me to go up to the front desk. I tell her I will, thanks her, and apologize for my groceries left behind. She assures me it’s no problem.

    On the receipt, carefully written and circled, is the fact that I bought a four-pack of beer and the machine charged me bottle deposit on a six pack.

    I was owned 10 cents.

    So I went to the front desk, handed over my receipt, and was greeted with a puzzled glance. I explained I only bought a four-pack of beer and was charged deposit on a six-pack. I had a dime coming my way. But I got my dime. I would have been rude not to after all the lady had noted on my receipt.

    If I only cared about a dime! But I thought of Barbara Ehrenreich and Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. And I was very thankful to have a good job, and a wallet filled with cash left behind at home.

  • Granny Rap

    Plenty to do in Amsterdam… thanks to GVB, Amsterdam public transportation. But I’m really posting this because it’s starring… my mom! It’s also produced by my brother (and he’s the questionably hetero one in the video). This may be the slickest ad ever for public transportation (with the old Detroit People Mover song as a close second).

  • Heather MacDonald on NYPD Stop-and-Frisks

    Heather MacDonald has an op-ed in the New York Times. You know, on police issues we probably agree 75-80% of the time. And yet I’m always left frustrated and strangely disappointed by her writings. She’s too predictable. And her writing lacks depth as she simply sidesteps the main points of the opposition.

    I generally agreewith her, and yet still find myself unconvinced.

    When it comes to police matters, I also want to learn something I didn’t already know or think about something in a way I haven’t considered. No such luck.

  • LEAP vs. Prohibition

    LEAP has made a parody of the Mac vs. PC ads, but about the war on drugs.

  • Somebody Snitched

    And Ronnie “Skinny Suge” Thomas get sentenced to 20 years in the Federal Pen.

    Ronnie was the not-so-smooth talking star and co-producer of the 2004 “Stop Snitching” video which had its moment of fame when basketball player Carmelo Anthony was featured in the first DVD.

    From the Sun: “Eight other people associated with the videos have been prosecuted in federal court, including a cameraman and other prominent stars, most of whom are now in prison for 10 or more years on drug and gun convictions.”

  • Trial of Officer London

    I don’t really have a problem with the first two minutes. The suspect, Walter Harvin, was aggressive and uncooperative. Harvin pushes Officer London at 0:26 and has to go. I turns into a messy arrest, but that’s sometimes how it is.

    As much as I don’t like tasers… tasing this guy sure would have saved both officer and suspect a lot of trouble. Neither mace nor baton worked (though I can’t see the mace).

    Yet again, this shows the problem with expandable batons. They don’t really work. They cause pain but they don’t have stopping power. And they sure look bad when in use, wacking people again and again. The unpopular straight baton, which is much more like a small baseball bat, is a much better tool. It’s cheaper, too.

    But after minute three? After the cuffs are on? You can’t give a guy an ass whuppin’ because he’s yelling, “I’m going to kill you” and you think he deserves it. You can’t beat a guy till he shuts up.

    We’ll see what the jury says.

    [And the hits at minute 8, necessary at the time, should never have needed to happen because Harvin should not have been able to get up and charge the officer.]

    Here’s the story in the Timesand the Post.