Uncategorized | The Bitchy Pundit - Part 14

Fighting Extremism With Extreme Measures

October 4, 2013 by Bitchy

I’ve been thinking about this insane government shutdown and all of its moving parts. Let’s be clear, there are a lot of moving parts, despite all of the memes boiling the situation down to one thought.

Yes, the GOP is essentially trying to subvert democracy and the democratic process by trying to blackmail the president into reversing everything the American people voted for. They want to disappear the Affordable Care Act, despite the fact that America collectively voted for it twice. They want to implement the draconian Ryan budget, despite the fact that America said, “NO!” to Paul Ryan and his budget. Something that very few people are talking about, is the fact that democrats are culpable in all of this. Obama established a pattern of behavior when he negotiated over the debt ceiling a couple of years ago, and congressional democrats didn’t help this time around by presenting a budget whose cuts exceed those in the Ryan budget. It’s a little difficult to place all of the blame on republicans for trotting out an insane tactic that has worked well for them in the past. There’s plenty of blame to go around here.

That said, the lion’s share of the blame here lies with a small group of whackadoos that represent roughly 1/4 of the house GOP; the tealiban. The insane ones who are so severely ideologically driven, that on any given day, they can’t see past today. They’re the nutters you’ve seen on TV for the past two days, who despite a giant mountain of evidence, are channeling a doped up Charlie Sheen and claiming they’re “WINNING!”

They are unfortunately being enabled by a pathetic John Boehner, who refuses to put a vote on a clean CR (continuing resolution) on the floor. A clean CR would pass, since there are enough republicans in the house who would vote with with democrats to pass it. Boehner is suffering from the same delusion that Obama suffers from; he thinks that he can get these people to like him and to work with him. He can’t. These people despise him and they always will, just like republicans despise Obama and always will. They’re just not into you, and they never will be. Trying to appease these morons won’t get Boehner any further than it got Obama, and attempting to do so will present a slew of new problems every single day.

But fear not, Bitchy has not one, but two solutions to end this. The first solution lies with Obama. This whole debt ceiling situation is about allowing the treasury to print up more bonds to sell in order to raise the cash to pay the debt. Most of you know this, but raising the debt ceiling doesn’t create more debt. It’s about giving the treasury the ability to pay for the existing debt. Don’t confuse the debt with the deficit. The debt refers to all of the money that we owe. It includes spending from a decade or two ago, and the interest on that spending. The deficit refers to the debt to revenue ratio for any given year. So raising the debt ceiling is about nothing more than selling more bonds. I think the president should just go ahead and instruct the treasury to print up more bonds to sell. Congress will likely challenge this in the courts, and it will invariably end up with the Supreme Court. I believe that a strong argument for ending the process of having to raise the debt ceiling can be made under the fourteenth amendment. Section four states;

The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.

In other words, once congress approves the spending that created the debt, that debt is no longer in question. I honestly believe that this is a winning argument that would put an end to this insanity forever without taking any constitutional power away from congress.

My other solution is going to sound batshit crazy, because it relies on congressional republicans taking action. There is a way for the less crazy republicans to end this shutdown and neuter the tealiban forever. If seventeen of them went to Boehner and let him know that they were going to switch parties, thereby turning the house over to the democrats, they could force Boehner to stand up to the extra, super turbocharged crazies. I’m pretty sure that Boehner would fold as soon as the words “Speaker Pelosi” made it into his little pea brain. If the threat doesn’t do it for him, they should switch parties just to end the shutdown. This would give Nancy Pelosi, as Speaker Of The House, the power to put a clean CR up for a vote. To my knowledge, there’s nothing to prevent congressional members from switching parties every day so they could always switch back as soon as that vote is taken.

I know how crazy this sounds, but it would solve a lot of problems for the GOP. They have to do something about the tealiban before that small minority blows up the whole party. Big thinkers in the GOP (I know, I know) should be able to see the long term gains in taking this kind of action. The tealiban has already cost the GOP both senate and congressional seats. They need to stop the bleeding now, before it snowballs. It will most definitely snowball since the nutters’ seats are completely safe due to the insane gerrymandering republicans did in 2010. So what’s basically happening, is that the nutters have all the job security in the world, and the less crazy are being forced to up the crazy or jeopardize their own seats. Something needs to be done to stop the bleeding, and republicans are the only ones that can do it.

Will republicans ever do this? Of course not. I haven’t completely lost my mind. It’s crazy, but it would work. Honestly, we’re in a place where the only way to fight extremism is with extreme measures like the ones I’ve suggested. I don’t see any way to stop the insanity for any length of time without extreme remedies being taken.

Stop, Frisk, And Fruitvale Station

September 5, 2013September 4, 2013 by Bitchy

I’ve been pretty active and vocal about my support of Bill de Blasio’s candidacy to become the next mayor of New York. My primary reason for supporting de Blasio is my desire to end stop and frisk, although I also agree with most of his platform.

Stop and frisk is something that I encounter every day, even though I’ve never stopped or frisked. I live in Harlem, and I work and play downtown. Trust me when I tell you that even though I’m usually on this small island, I feel like I routinely cross a border between different cities. Two cities that I’m actually very familiar with because I grew up in the bay area in California. I spent a lot of time in San Francisco. I also spent a fair amount of time in Oakland, going to concerts and having chicken and waffles on the way to Berkley.

Oakland and San Francisco represent a perfect parallel to the two cities that are Manhattan. Everybody knows about Oakland and how incredibly volatile a place it is. Oakland is stuck in this endless loop of racial discord and violence, where it’s impossible to tell who “the good guys” are. We’ve all seen the videos of how the police treated the peaceful protestors of Occupy Wall Street. We also saw that the Occupy Oakland protestors were among the very few in the world who had some vandals among them. The racial tensions in Oakland are so bad that there are literally no “good guys” left.

The cops are no better than the “thugs”. This isn’t a situation that happened overnight. It’s a product of institutional racism and the anger over that racism. Oakland cops are vicious. I don’t mean hyperbolically vicious, I mean vicious. They’re not incidentally vicious, they’re institutionally vicious meaning it’s not a situation where there are a few bad apples. They’re trained to be vicious. They’re taught that young black men are the enemy, and that they need to always keep a close eye on the enemy. And that “close eye” they keep on the enemy makes everyone (but especially young black men) distrust and hate them. So we have a situation where the citizens and the cops have been, perhaps irrevocably, divided.When you treat a group of people like they’re not legitimate members of the community, they eventually “check out” of the community and they’re then blamed for not being part of the community. It’s an endless cycle that’s destructive to everyone involved.

And since the cops in Oakland routinely find the criminal activity they’re looking for, their training is validated. Young black men are bad. That experience on the job eventually seeps into one’s psyche and produces a genuinely racist police force. You eventually see all black men as criminals and they in turn, see the police as armed bullies. We all saw this dynamic play out at Fruitvale Station in 2009.

The same thing is starting to entrench itself in Manhattan. Our policemen have been trained to seek out young minority men for extra scrutiny for nearly 12 years now. That training is starting to seep into their psyche. I’m honestly starting to see something that I didn’t see ten years ago, when I moved here. Until about a month ago, a day never went by when I didn’t see someone being stopped. To be clear, I’ve literally never seen a white person stopped. I’ve also never seen someone stopped south of 96th Street. It’s always young men or boys of color, and it’s always in my neighborhood in Harlem. And in my neighborhood in Harlem, you never call the cops for anything because cops are not our friends. The situation wasn’t this bad when I moved up here 9 years ago. The tension is now palpable, and it’s getting worse. Last week, there was an incident involving two young Muslim girls. Here are details from ThinkProgress;

Last week, a family claimed New York Police Department discrimination against Muslims took a violent turn when police officers allegedly beat two sisters, ages 12 and 14, who were wearing hijabs, or headscarves. The girls, Lamis Chapman and Khalia Wilson, were playing in a park in Bronx, NY at around 9:30 pm. when officers told them the park was closed. As the officers followed the girls out, they reportedly threw Lamis and Khalia to the ground, held them in chokeholds, and ripped off their hijabs. And when their 15-year-old brother ran to help, he said the cops, “charged me, picked me up, and slammed me on the floor.”

“I kept saying, ‘I’m 14! What are you doing? We’re not bad kids,’” Khalia said later.

According to the NY Daily News, the entire confrontation was captured on video by a college student, Johnathan Harris, who says he was punched and pepper-sprayed by the cops. Harris said the officer told him “Come here, you little motherfucker. You like recording?”

The situation is escalating, and it needs to stop soon. You’ve jumped the shark when you can’t tell the difference between young girls and a threat to society. It can’t go on now that the whole world is aware of it. If it continues through this level of scrutiny and awareness, it will never end. And with no end in sight, I’m worried that we’re going to become Oakland. Five years ago, I would never have thought twice about walking the two blocks home from the subway after midnight. I’m not as comfortable now.

Stop and frisk is not making me safer. The truth is that there’s no evidence that it’s making anyone safer. Ray Kelly and Mike Bloomberg keep saying it’s making us safer, but they have yet to produce any evidence to support this claim. They keep pointing to lower crime rates in New York, and insist that we have stop and frisk to thank for this. But the fact of the matter is that crime rates in New York, and in the country at large were going down steadily for ten years before Kelly and Bloomberg. Until somebody shows me some concrete evidence that stop and frisk works, and that it’s not causing the racially charged time bomb I see every day, I’m done with it.

One of the moderators of the mayoral debate last night asked all of the candidates if they would reconsider their stances on stop and frisk (they all claim they’re against it as it stands, but some are more against it than others) if crime started to go up after they modified (or ended) the program. They all gave the wrong answer. They all answered “no”. That is categorically the wrong answer. If crime starts in increase, you have to look at every possible reason for that increase. That includes stop and frisk. I’m not completely tunnel visioned into believing that this program doesn’t work. I just don’t need to revisit my position that it needs to end, until I see some evidence that it helps in any way.

I honestly believe that electing either of the two candidates (Quinn and Thompson) that aren’t willing to articulate specific changes they would make to the program will have disastrous results for New York. I don’t want to see Manhattan turn into Oakland. And I honestly believe that making huge, demonstrable changes like firing Ray Kelly is the only way to avert that scenario.

Bill de Blasio is the only viable candidate who plans on doing exactly that. I am concerned for my safety, and I don’t believe that continuing stop and frisk is good for my own self interest.

The Efficacy of Mass Surveillance

August 2, 2013 by Bitchy

It’s been two and a half months since Edward Snowden made the American people, the world, and most importantly, the United States Congress aware of the mass surveillance programs that the NSA have been engaged in. Since then, we’ve heard 100% of the main stream media refer to Snowden as a traitor. We’ve heard the NSA and the white house vehemently defend this program, claiming that it has been vital to national security.

Two months before some (there are still a lot of things we don’t know) of the details of the programs were released by Snowden, a now infamous Q&A by Ron Wyden of James Clapper (Director of Intelligence) happenes wherein Clapper claimed that the NSA did not wittingly collect data on US citizens.

Did you catch the frenetic head scratching by Clapper there? If you don’t recognize that as a tell, I’d love to play some high stakes poker with you.

On June 12, 2013 General Keith Alexander claimed (in a senate committee hearing) that these surveillance programs have thwarted dozens of terrorist plots. He didn’t offer up any specific examples, or much detail beyond claiming that dozens of plots were thwarted.

And then on June 18, 2013, Alexander upped “dozens” to fifty plots thwarted in twenty different countries. He still didn’t offer up any specifics. But don’t worry, the administration sent out some surrogates to serve us up some yummy bullshit on foiled plots that were quickly debunked here and here. So at this point, we’re a month into knowing that our government is watching all of our electronic communications, we have the Director Of Intelligence caught lying to the senate, we have no concrete proof of the efficacy of the program, we have the director of the NSA making increasingly growing claims about how well the programs work, and we have two lame attempts of “proof”.

And inexplicably, some Americans are buying this horseshit. I understand conservatives going along with this when it was Bush, because the psychology of the modern conservative is to follow an authoritarian. They need daddy to protect them from a very simple world in which only good and evil exists. But democrats? Aren’t you supposed to be critical thinkers, basing opinions on evidence and data?

Remember when Loretta Sanchez, a good little foot soldier for the democratic party, and specifically the Obama administration did this interview?

Did she seem shell shocked to you? She certainly did to me.

And yet, people are still defending the program, I mean Obama. This isn’t about the program, it’s about protecting your political “team” at all cost. Edward Snowden = evil traitor, Barack Obama = good daddy protecting you. Never mind the fact that Snowden’s leaks at the very least served to inform your representative about what the government is doing. No, he’s a traitor and these programs work.

Unfuckingbelievable.

A few weeks ago, we found out that all of the judges appointed to the FISA court, are appointed solely by John Roberts. I can see why this gives solace to republicans, but democrats who are still on board? Seriously? Soldier on, little lemming, soldier on.

Two days ago, NSA Deputy Director John Inglis testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee. He testified that at most, one plot might have been disrupted by mass phone surveillance, adding “There is an example that comes close to a ‘but for‘ example”. Did you catch all of the equivocating there? At most one plot. That means the number is either one or zero. “…close to a ‘but for‘”… This gives you confidence?

Soldier on, little lemmings, soldier on.

Believe me when I tell you that Inglis’ testimony was well crafted and finely tuned. There’s a reason why the NSA is back peddling from “fifty” plots foiled. I suspect that a lot more shit is about to hit the fan on these programs.

But don’t let the mounting evidence deter you. Soldier on, little lemming, soldier on.

What Now?

July 17, 2013 by Bitchy

Everyone is trying to figure out what to do to fix the egregious injustice done to the country (yes, it happened to all of us) in the Zimmerman verdict, myself included. There’s talk of pushing the DOJ into bringing a new case against Zimmerman. I understand that reaction, but I don’t think that’s the way to go.

I don’t think that DOJ has enough to successfully bring a hate crime case against Zimmerman. I know that a lot of people want to see sufficient evidence in his prior overtly racist comments, and his cousin who flat out says he hates black people, but I don’t see enough there to successfully prosecute a case. In my opinion, the worst thing that can happen to the state of racism in America would be for Zimmerman to be acquitted again. He would be seen as a “victim”, being hunted down by a justice system motivated by race. I don’t want to see that happen. Trying Zimmerman is not, in my opinion, the right way to go.

I hope that the Martin family decide to file a wrongful death civil suit against him, just to make sure that he never collects a dime of money from a book deal or speaking engagements, or whatever else he decided to do to earn some cash. But that’s as far as “punishing” Zimmerman can go. As much as I hate it, he got away with murder. We just need to accept that.

That said, don’t get me wrong, I’m not feeling hopeless. I do think that there are some things that we, the American people can do, and I have a few ideas. Step 1; donate to Marissa Alexander’s legal defense fund. Marissa Alexander is spending twenty years in jail for firing her gun at the wall next to her abusive ex-husband, who she had an order of protection against. There was a mountain of paperwork to back up her assertion that her husband abused her, and that she legitimately feared for her safety when he was near her. She was not allowed a “stand your ground” hearing, which would have averted the farce of a trial that ended in a jury deliberating for twelve minutes before convicting her. I’ve spent more than twelve minutes choosing which restaurant to eat dinner in. We can’t do anything for Trayvon, but we can get Marissa a rock star attorney to file her appeals. If there’s one thing we’ve learned in America, it’s that money buys you the verdict you want.

My second step is to make sure that all of the Trayvon Martins become national conversations and get their day in court. We need to be vigilant against corrupt police forces that sweep the murders of black men under the rug. Remember, George Zimmerman wasn’t charged for forty-four days. It wasn’t until we all got involved, that the justice system finally took action even though some of the investigators involved wanted to charge Zimmerman that first night. We can’t continue to accept racial disparity in how criminals are treated. Here, for instance, is a case we should all collectively focus in on now.

We need to shine a light on these cases, not just to right the wrongs in our justice system, but also to change our culture.

In listening to juror B37 talk about the trial, it became obvious to me that she could not relate to a black teenager. She thought he was acting suspicious by “walking slowly” “late at night” (unless you’re a fucking farmer 7 pm is not late), “looking into houses” (based on nothing other than Zimmerman’s word, and who the hell doesn’t look into windows when they’re walking?). She seemed to give Zimmerman every benefit of the doubt, buying everything he said (even though his story changed dramatically), and believing everything his friends said. Who doesn’t assume that any defendant in a case like this isn’t highly motivated to twist events around in order to avoid years in prison? She ignored the fact that every single person who identified the calls for help on the 911 calls as being Zimmerman, went on to say preposterous things. For example, his coworker claimed she had no idea why George wasn’t at work after the incident. All she knew was that he was on FMLA. Are you fucking kidding me? You work in the only company in the world that has no rumor mill, and no access to local news? Or Zimmerman’s elderly friends who weren’t following the case at all. Your friend is on trial for murder and you’re not scouring the internet for information every day? Preposterous! She didn’t find Rachel Jeantel credible. Are you shitting me? I’ve never seen a more honest testimony from anyone in a trial, ever. So what accounts for this lack of common sense and disregard for plausibility?

Relatability. She related to all of Zimmerman’s friends so much so, that she didn’t see how preposterous their testimony was. She flat out told you she couldn’t relate to Rachel or Trayvon, referring to “their world”. Is that racist? I don’t know, you decide.

But I think it’s important to bring national attention to as many of these cases as possible. We need to give people enough exposure to “their world” (whatever “their” is for each individual) as possible, until they realize it’s “our world”. We need to change our culture. We need to start exposing even the most sheltered Americans to the reality of our country. We need to make people aware of the fact that their experiences aren’t all of the experiences in America. In short, we need to start busting bubbles all across the country until people like Rachel Jeantel and Trayvon Martin are no longer “others”, but “ours”.

I know that I sound like a sunny optimist, but I firmly believe that you change a culture by proactively changing it. When I say proactive, I mean vigilant. We need to be vigilant about changing things in America. We’re the only ones that can change it. We can tear down age old prejudices and social constructs. We can stop accepting the fact that different races and different classes in America have different justice systems. We can demand equal justice for all races. We can demand equal justice for all classes. It’s time to stop accepting that rich people get away with anything, and that poor people get less justice, and that’s just the way it is.

Enough! It is in our power to level the playing field. It’s time we stop being complacent and use our power.

I’m Not Black, So It’s Different

July 14, 2013 by Bitchy

Numb. For the past 12 hours, since the Zimmerman verdict came in, I’ve been completely numb. I don’t mean physically numb. I mean completely numb. I was literally unable to even form a thought, or process a feeling. My only thought was, “No”. That’s it. 12 hours of “no”. I didn’t call anyone, I didn’t open my computer, I didn’t want any input at all. I woke up this morning, still not wanting to read anything on social media, but needing some input.

Fortunately, iTunes downloaded what I needed; a special episode of one of my favorite podcast, This Week In Blackness. If you’ve never heard of it, you should really download a few episodes. It’s not what it sounds like. It’s exclusively not about “blackness”. It’s about inclusion more than anything else. I started listening a couple of years ago because I realized that, even a person who has never had a racist or non-inclusive thought in her head, I have no idea what it feels like to be black in America.

A little background on me; my parents moved us to California from Iran (where I was born) when I was about four years old. I never went to preschool. I went straight into kindergarten. After all of the placement tests before the school year happened, I was placed in a mixed kindergarten/first grade class. There were about a dozen of us five year olds in the class with about a dozen six year olds. We were separated into different sides of the room. The person that ended up becoming my best friend through elementary school was named Efua. She’s black. I didn’t realize she was black for (probably) five years. You would think the name would have tipped me off! I realized she was black when a kid from Japan transferred to our school. Everyone was fascinated with him. There wasn’t anything remotely racist about it. It was just childlike fascination with something different. But that was when I realized that society saw differences among humans. That’s when I realized there was a difference between Effie (that’s what we called her) and I. Our school was pretty diverse, and I never sensed or saw any racism at all until a couple of years after discovering what I thought was an innocuous difference. The hostage crisis was happening in Iran. For those of you who don’t remember, there were fifty-two Americans being held hostage in the US embassy in Iran for four hundred and forty-four days. There was one kid in my class who decided it was my fault, and felt it necessary to torment me every day. Even as a sixth grader, it didn’t bother me. I could see that he hated himself more than he hated me. Even though he had no effect on me emotionally, he imparted racism on me intellectually. Around that time, my father (who was Iranian) had a group of his friends and brother and sisters over for dinner. I’d never noticed it before that night, but these people were incredibly racist toward (mostly) black people. As I heard them speak, all I could think was, “you should know better”. I knew that if I had one racist asshole tormenting (trying to) me at school, that they were getting it every day, everywhere they went. I couldn’t understand the inability to connect what was being done to them with what they were saying about other people. Since then, I’ve seen many, many examples of minorities being racist toward other minorities. My understanding of how that happens hasn’t grown with more exposure to it. I simply don’t understand it.

Racism has never been emotional to me. It’s always been cerebral. Every time I see it, I explain it the way I did with that self loathing kid in the sixth grade. That’s not to say that I don’t see it. I see it more than most people.

I see the institutional racism that exists in this country every day. I work in Human Resources, with an emphasis on talent acquisition. I see the institutional racism every time I’m directed to increase diversity outreach. People fundamentally misunderstand the role of racism in corporate America. Take what I’m about to say as the anecdotal evidence that it is. White collar corporate America (which is where 95% of my experience is) is not inherently racist. I have often been given the directive make minority hires for positions, so companies (at least really big ones) are aiming for diversity. The issue I run into with these searches for diversity candidates is the lack of qualified candidates to fill them. The proportion of diversity college graduates with experience is not equal to the proportion of minorities in America. That’s just a fact. It’s getting a little bit better every year, but it’s still a problem. Two or three generations ago, black people simply didn’t have the opportunity to go to college. College is a generational thing. If your parents went to college, you’re almost certain to get a college degree so that first generation is the key to every generation that follows it. And that first generation approach college much differently than the third or fourth generation. That first generation isn’t aware of all of the different career possibilities. They’re not going for careers in publishing or mechanical engineering because those careers don’t exist in their universe. They’re choosing from a limited field of careers and getting general degrees like “business”. Third and fourth generation college graduates have more exposure, and are getting more specialized degrees and have their eye on a specific career. First generation college graduates have their eye on a degree. This is just the natural evolution of educating a population, and it’s not unique to minorities. The institutional racism exists in the fact that white people have had the privilege of being at it for much longer. And the institutional issues go far beyond time. I have a friend who is in the admissions department at a major university in California. She told me that when reviewing applicants, there’s a disparity in how they weigh GPAs from different high schools. A 4.2 GPA from a high school in south central is equal to a 3.7 GPA from a school in Beverly Hills. Why? Because high schools are better in Beverly Hills. So if you work your ass off in south central, you still haven’t received the same education as someone who merely did well in Beverly Hills. The problem is systemic.

But I massively digressed. I started listening to This Week in Blackness because I realized that for all of my liberal, intellectual ideas about race, I had no fucking idea what it felt like to be black in America. To be clear, I never thought that black people and white, or even non-white, non-black people have the same experiences. I live in Harlem now, and I’ve always lived in very racially diverse places. I see the cultural differences all the time.

We really aren’t all living in the same culture. I saw it when the OJ Simpson verdict was delivered. We fundamentally had different opinions as to his guilt. My black friends literally all thought he was innocent. My black friends, who I shared moral values and intellectual parity with all came to a different conclusion than I did. I saw it when Barack Obama was running for president. When those primaries came down to Barack and Hillary, all of my black friends supported Hillary for far longer than my white friends did. All of the signs in store windows in Harlem supported Hillary until a couple of weeks before super Tuesday. After it was all over and Barack was president, I asked my black friends why they held out for so long. Their answers were all the same. They simply didn’t dare hope that a black man could be elected president. It was inconceivable to them. There was a giant chasm between liberal non-black America and black America. I saw it when the Zimmerman trial started. Not before it started, we were all on the same page then; Zimmerman needed to be arrested. But once the trial started, I as well as all of my non-black friends (virtual and physical) were positive we were going to hear a guilty verdict. The black community was (correctly) convinced the opposite was true. They couldn’t conceive a guilty verdict.

Why? Because being black in America is very different than than being non-black or (especially) being black friendly. They expected what they live every day. I’m not going to pretend to be able to describe what black people live every day. That would be both arrogant, and far above my pay grade. But I know it’s different.

To me, and to all non-black liberals, this trial was about justice for a child who was murdered. It wasn’t about a black child who was murdered. To the black community, this was about the safety of their children, brothers, nephews, and cousins. Safety when doing normal things that none of the rest of us have ever thought about, like walking fucking home. This trial was about how many more generations “the talk” has to happen for. “The talk” is something I was never aware of for most of my adult life, and yet in the black community, it’s as normal as drinking water.

We don’t live in the same America. And we weren’t all experiencing the same trial. Anybody who thinks this trial wasn’t about race is simply ignorant about where they live. I don’t mean ignorant in the derogatory way we use that word. I mean ignorant in the sense of being woefully unaware and uninformed. Something I freely admit to still suffering from. I will always possess the ignorance that comes with not living a person’s or a community’s experience, regardless of how hard I try.

Please listen to this episode of This Week In Blackness. If you’re not black, you will understand what you can’t understand about this murder. If you’re black, I’m guessing you will hear your feelings echoed back to you.

The meaning of this verdict is much bigger than an injustice. It’s about all of the injustices toward a community for hundreds of years. I don’t feel rage, which is what I expected to feel if this happened. I feel profound sadness for the Martin family yes, but for our country at large. We have a long, long way to go to fix this. Each step forward is slow, and comes with several steps back.

We did take a step forward in this case. This was the first time the nation engaged in the murder of a black person. Until now, it’s always been about pretty white girls or cute white kids. So the fact that the whole country even knows Trayvon Martin’s name is progress. But we’ve also taken several steps back. This acquittal has every mother of a black son terrified for their child. Terrified because their children aren’t safe doing what we all feel perfectly safe doing.

Trayvon Martin was walking home from the store. That’s all he was fucking doing. I posted the picture of his body after he was murdered on my Facebook page because I wanted everyone to see that he looked like any normal child. Nothing about his rolled up skinny jeans, normal sized hoodie, kicks, and ankle socks were threatening. Nothing. And he looked like a child. Don’t let anybody tell you that he didn’t. He was murdered because he was black. Period. Look at the picture again and be honest about what you see.

This was entirely about race. Do not let anyone tell you otherwise. We need to start having honest discussions about race every day. Not confrontational discussions, based on our own anecdotal lives, but bigger conversations. And we need to be honest about our own ignorance. The ignorance that we all have about being another color in America.

Rage over this case is pointless. I’m actually surprised at myself for not feeling any, but I don’t. This is much bigger than rage.

I apologize for the rambling and for any typos in this post. This was a stream of consciousness that I just wrote and posted.

Enough With The Riot Talk!

July 12, 2013 by Bitchy

I’m hearing some talk about riots breaking out of Zimmerman is found not guilty. Enough! This is crazy talk, and it’s monumentally racist. How douchey do you have to believe that people are going to riot over a verdict?

The time to riot ended when Zimmerman was charged. The injustice ended with his arrest. People generally don’t riot in the absence of an egregious injustice. When Zimmerman was finally arrested, an egregious injustice was averted.

Americans cope with bad verdicts all the time. There’s no reason to believe we won’t do it again, in the unlikely event that Zimmerman walks. How big of an ass are you, if you believe that black people can’t cope with a bad verdict?

I’m more worried about those who are bracing themselves for riots. They’re the real assholes among us.

Is It Really All About Who Was Pleading On The Tape?

July 8, 2013 by Bitchy

Today was the first full day for the defense in the Zimmerman trial, and it was all about the audio of the 911 call. The defense called 5 witnesses (all friends of Zimmerman’s) to say that it was definitely him (Zimmerman) pleading for help in the 911 call. They were positive it was Zimmerman, beyond a shadow of a doubt. Remember, when Zimmerman was played the tape, he told the investigator (who insisted it was Zimmerman who was pleading), “That doesn’t even sound like me”. So the defense is telling us that Zimmerman’s friends are more able to recognize Zimmerman’s voice than Zimmerman is. Cause, you know, it’s hard to recognize how your voice sounds on a recording. Okay, that’s plausible.

Additionally, they called two of the investigators to testify that Trayvon’s father said that it was not Trayvon’s voice on the tape. Then they called Trayvon’s father to the stand. He testified that after listening to the tape twenty (or so) times, he became convinced that it was Trayvon pleading for help. The defense then called Bill Ray Lee Jr. (the police chief who resigned). His testimony also centered around the tape, and how it was played for the Martin family for the purpose of identifying the voice pleading on the tape. Apparently, the tape was played for the whole family while they were all in the same room with each other. Lee testified that his recommendation was to play the tape for each family member individually in order to avoid a “group think” situation.

So again, the defense is telling us that Tracy Martin (Trayvon’s father) was correct when he initially said that it wasn’t his son pleading for help on the tape. I don’t believe they can reasonably get the jury to believe all of these things;

Tracy Martin was correct when he initially heard the tape and said that it wasn’t Trayvon pleading for help on the tape.
Tracy Martin was wrong, after hearing the tape several more times, and claimed that it was Trayvon on the tape.
Zimmerman was wrong when he heard the tape and said, “That doesn’t even sound like me”.
Zimmerman’s friends were all correct when they testified that it’s definitely Zimmerman pleading for help on the tape.

I just don’t think that an objective jury can believe all of these things, especially since all of the “certainty” about who that was on the tape, happened over time.

In my opinion, the defense just made the tape irrelevant. There are simply too many conflicting opinions around whose voice that is on the tape. I don’t believe that they can get a jury to believe that Zimmerman’s friends know his voice better than he himself does. And I don’t believe they can get the jury to settle on which of Tracy Martin’s opinions on the tape is correct. The opinion you believe is more indicative of what you want to believe, than it is of what’s plausible.

In short, I think they succeeded in negating the focal point of their defense.

The Biggest Loser

July 5, 2013 by Bitchy

That’s basically George Zimmerman’s defense. His defense team is telling you that he got the shit beaten out of him by a kid who he outweighed by almost sixty pounds. They’re of course, trying to downplay the fact that he was studying mixed martial arts, and that his gun always has a bullet in the chamber. But what they’re telling you is that the armed martial arts expert got beat by the kid he was hunting down, so he had to shoot the kid because all of the advantages he had weren’t enough to overcome the fact that he’s a giant loser.

I don’t know what the main stream media is watching, but I’m watching a pretty effective prosecution of a murderer. I see the prosecution tearing Zimmerman’s lies apart one by one.

-Trayvon did not jump out at him from out of the nonexistent bushes.

-The medical examiner testified that Zimmerman’s injuries are not consistent with his story.

-Trayvon did not have any of Zimmerman’s DNA under his fingernails, so if he was pounding Zimmerman’s head against the pavement, he was very tidy about it.

-It was not George Zimmerman crying for help on the 911 tape. The jury heard a recording of Chris Serino (the lead investigator) questioning Zimmerman. In that tape, Serino played the 911 recording with the screaming in the background. Serino tells Zimmerman that it’s him(Zimmerman) pleading on the tape. Zimmerman says, “That doesn’t even sound like me”. The investigator is trying to help the loser to set up a self defense story, and Zimmerman was too big a loser to understand what was happening.

-George Zimmerman was intimately familiar with how stand ground defenses work, despite his lies on the Hannity show. The prosecution had his teacher testify that Zimmerman not only knew about how a stand your ground defense would work, but he got an A in the class.

And then there’s Rachel Gentile. Say what you want about her, you can’t say that she’s a liar. “Creepy ass cracker” tells you that she’s not a liar and that she wasn’t coached. For all the mocking and finger pointing of racism, I think those three words actually helped the prosecution. They showed that she didn’t have an agenda, and that she wasn’t revising history to help Trayvon. She proved that Trayvon was not following Zimmerman. He was ambushed by a loser who wanted to feel like a winner for once in his life.

As an aside, I want to say something about the way the public is treating Rachel Gentile. I don’t believe she’s being mocked because she’s black. I believe she’s being mocked because she’s uneducated. We have a popular reality show based on mocking poor, uneducated white people. This isn’t racism. It’s classism. We are a society that loves to shit on the poor. And instead of discussing how it’s possible for someone to go into their senior year of high school without being able to read cursive, we mock.

I don’t believe that the “I’m the biggest loser” defense is going to work. I’m sorry, but I just don’t see it happening.

I get the sense that the prosecution is close to wrapping up its case. I can’t imagine that the defense lawyers are going to allow their loser of a client to take the stand. Without Zimmerman taking the stand, the defense is going to wrap up their case in a matter of days.

Don’t let the media tell you that Zimmerman’s team is winning. They’re not. I absolutely believe that the prosecution has effectively dismantled Zimmerman’s story piece by piece.

In my opinion, the only truthful thing coming out of Zimmerman or his defense team, is that Zimmerman is the biggest of losers.

DNA, Fingerprints…What’s The Diff?

June 4, 2013 by Bitchy

The Supreme Court yesterday ruled that police can take a DNA sample from a suspect who has been arrested without first getting a warrant. In the majority opinion, the court claims that there’s no difference between collecting fingerprints and collecting DNA. That is patently wrong on eighteen different levels.

First of all, as Scalia pointed out in the dissenting opinion, this shits all over the 4th amendment. Police need a warrant to search a person’s home for evidence. That means that they need to go to a court to demonstrate that they have sufficient evidence against a suspect in the first place, to justify entering the home for the collection of more evidence. In other words, the police can’t enter your home to get some evidence without first establishing that they already have a reasonable suspicion that you’re a viable suspect.

In this case of Alonzo King, the police arrested him on the suspicion of committing an assault (he did confess). They ostensibly had the evidence to make that arrest. I can’t find any evidence that there was a DNA sample at the scene of that crime that required a comparison sample. The police then collected a DNA sample from him, just because. Now keep in mind that they didn’t get a warrant to collect that DNA, and he wasn’t yet convicted of doing a fucking thing, and the collection of the sample had nothing to do with making the assault charge stronger. They just gratuitously took his DNA, thereby crapping on the 4th amendment.

After they collected King’s DNA, they entered it into a national DNA database (CODIS) and discovered that it matched a DNA sample collected at the scene of a rape committed six years earlier. He was subsequently convicted of that rape, based solely on the DNA match. That conviction was correctly overturned because of the warrantless DNA collection. Keep in mind that the police had no other evidence connecting King to the rape, and therefore had no probable cause to compare his DNA to the DNA collected at the crime scene.

In my opinion, there should be evidence presented to a court to demonstrate that there is probable cause to collect DNA, and there should be great care and consideration given before a DNA sample is allowed to be collected. I certainly don’t think that a DNA sample should be collected just because. And I definitely don’t believe that a DNA sample should be taken, simply because someone is arrested. Keep in mind that arrested isn’t guilty, or even eventually convicted.

There are two things about the mass collection of DNA that should scare the shit out of everyone.

The first concern is with the police themselves. They are increasingly becoming incapable of doing effective police work. Instead of establishing ties and developing relationships with the communities they serve, they are turning into ineffective bullies. They’ve replaced learning my name and touching base with me every so often with stopping and frisking my black neighbor for no reason other than we live in Harlem. They shut down whole cities in pursuit of one person, rather than relying on the tens of thousands of eyes in that city to help them. They sit in “command centers” watching thousands of hours of video of tourists taking pictures of Times Square, instead of talking to people. They have become lazy (NYPD made that allegation against their own officers during the stop and frisk trial two weeks ago) thugs who don’t even know how to gather intelligence anymore. Instead of assuming that we’re all law abiding citizens who want safe streets, they assume that we’re all guilty of something. They surveil, and stop and frisk all of us just to catch the small percentage of us that are doing the slightest thing wrong. And it isn’t working. Remember, the police didn’t catch the would-be Times Square bomber. A responsible citizen reported seeing something suspicious. All of the cameras and the intimidation isn’t working. And when an organization views an entire community with suspicion, putting more information in their hands is a very bad idea. They’re not going to use these tools to protect you because they believe that you’re guilty of something. This is just going to make them dumber, lazier, more thuggish, and less effective.

And yes I know that in this case, they caught a rapist that they wouldn’t have caught otherwise. To that I say, if you’re okay with this, you’re replacing one menace with another. They should have been able to catch the rapist with police work. And I’m not willing to put more power in the hands of an organization that; a) isn’t competent enough to catch a rapist any other way b) sees us all as criminals. I’m not willing to empower one evil to extinguish another. You’re not eliminating danger that way. You’re just shifting that danger around.

The scariest part of this lies in how DNA is nothing like fingerprinting. Your fingerprint belongs to you and only you. If it’s found somewhere, that means that you were there. Your DNA belongs to your entire family. Your DNA will contain markers shared by your parents, siblings, children, grandparents, and grandchildren. That’s some scary shit.

Let’s say that my sister is arrested for peacefully protesting something (if I had a sister, I would want her to be an activist!) She is then arrested, and will be released a few hours later. During the booking process, her DNA is collected. A few years later, a bodega in my neighborhood is robbed and someone is shot. Since this bodega is in my neighborhood, I often go there to buy a newspaper. During the course of the investigation, DNA samples are collected. My DNA, which is on some newspapers in the bodega then shows up as having the right number of markers to tie me to my sister. The police then come barreling down my door. Do you see where this can go horribly wrong? The faster law enforcement can get DNA samples from some of us, the faster they will have DNA on all of us.

Putting more data in the hands of an organization that views you as the enemy is dangerous. Remember, David Petraeus’ affair was exposed because an FBI agent with an agenda had access to his emails. What do you think is going to happen when people have access to everyone’s DNA. As we saw with Patraeus, no one is above the negative ramifications of rampant data collection.

So no SCOTUS, collecting DNA is nothing like collecting a fucking fingerprint. And frankly, I can’t believe there are five people stupid enough to make that assertion on the highest court in the land.

What About The Children?

June 2, 2013 by Bitchy

Pew Research put out a report a couple of days ago that (you should have seen this coming, since it’s “research”) has some right wingers in a tizzy. The research, called Breadwinner Moms finds that women are now the primary or sole breadwinner in 40% of American households. I wasn’t even remotely shocked when I read this report because I fucking live in America. I have plenty of friends who earn more money than their husbands, or who are single moms. I do not live in a 1960s bubble where Mad Men is a reflection of the times, rather than a look back to days of old where the Fox News family seem to live.

Watch Lou Dobbs, Juan Williams, and Erick Erickson lose their shit over modernity;

Let’s go through the batshit crazy in this video point by point.

Juan Williams (the “liberal”) makes the point that men have been harder hit by the recession than women. Why is that, Juan? Could it be that professions like construction work, coal mining, and other industries that are male dominated have taken the biggest beating in the past twenty years? Then he refers to “something going terribly wrong in American society, and it’s hurting our children”. Why, Juan? Why are the children affected by which parent the breadwinner is?

And then Lou Dobbs gratuitously mentions the number of abortions that have taken place since Roe v Wade, as if those children having been born would have resulted in fewer female breadwinners? What the fuck?

And then we get to the grand poobah of douchebaggery Erick Erickson, who absurdly claims that people who are fine with female breadwinners are “anti-science” because nature shows us that males are born to dominate. Hey asshat, have you ever heard the term “queen bee”? I won’t go through the list of species in which females dominate because you can Google that for yourselves, and because that’s not my point. My point is that it doesn’t get any more anti-science than making bogus claims about nature, just to bolster more bogus views. He goes on to ramble about “complementary” relationships between men and women, assuming that men and women can only complement each other as long as the male is dominant. Wow! How much Xanax does your wife have to take, just to get our of bed every day? Erickson then goes on to twist some of the data in the report. He claims that “3/4 of the people surveyed recognize that having moms as the primary breadwinner is bad for kids and bad for marriage”. What the report actually says is that 74% of adults say the increasing number of women working has made it harder for parents to raise children, and that 50% say that it has made marriages harder to succeed. I will get to Erickson’s monumental douchebaggery later. For now, I want to finish unpacking this video.

Juan Williams jumps in to add, “…it is tearing up minority communities even worse than white communities in this country”. I’m sorry, Juan I’m not getting your point here. Are you blaming minority women for being more careless with their families than white women? Do you think that maybe minority women need to work more because of the increased unemployment rate among minorities? Could that be the cause?

In my view, the feminist movement wasn’t about putting women in the workforce. It was about giving women the same options that men have. Unfortunately, right after the feminist movement got some serious traction, those options immediately became limited. Why? Because somewhere in the 80s, families could no longer make it on a single income. I believe that lots of women were forced to work because their husband’s salary was not sufficient to support the family, which is why Erick Erickson is a giant douchebag.

You can’t light your hair on fire over the increasing presence of women in the workforce, while supporting policies that bring wages down. You can’t be for busting unions and for stay-at-home moms. You can’t support Paul Ryan’s bill to eliminate overtime pay and expect those worker’s families to make it on a single income. In short, you can’t support GOP wage suppression policies while demanding that women stay home and raise the kids.

So apparently Erickson got enough shit for his comments, that he had to write a post to clarify his comments so that he would sound less misogynistic. Here’s what he said;

Prior to having kids, Christy and I both worked. Once we had our first child and I was making a full time go of RedState, Christy had to work if we were to have insurance. Frankly, we could not make ends meet on my salary alone and, even after the cost of day care, had to have the remainder of Christy’s salary to help make ends meet. We still struggled.

Hold on Erick, did you just make a case for health insurance reform? And did you just say that you lived my point about families not being able to make ends meet on a single income? I will never understand people who go through the difficulty of a situation and continue to advocate against remedies to those difficulties. This man is an asshole, who goes through life learning nothing. He goes on to say;

At one point I had to contemplate being a single dad, but thank God I did not have to be. When we made the decision that Christy would stay home with the kids…

I’m sorry, did you just liken your wife going to work every day with single fatherhood? Are you fucking kidding me with this shit?

And then he goes on to say;

What should be insulting to single moms is for society to tell them they can do it all and, in fact, will subsidize their doing it all. I know a number of wonderful, nurturing single mothers. They do as best they can. Most of them have wonderful children. But not one of them prefers to be a single mother.

Then why the fuck are they doing it, Erick? Could it be that financial pressures are a big factor in marriages falling apart? Do you think that Boeing opening a plant in South Carolina (a nonunion state) and paying those airline mechanics half of what they pay the union workers in Washington may be putting some pressure on the families? Asshole!

You can’t make a career out of beating up on workers and then beat them up for the consequences of those policies. Something has to give here. You can either have a society that implements the tools necessary for a single breadwinner household or you can embrace the effects of not doing so, but you can’t do both because that just makes you a bloviating asshole.