fucking cops

As the well known conundrum goes “Which came first: the chicken or the egg?” It’s a question of the root causes of things—it’s the difference between the causes and the conclusion. And it’s the same conundrum that too often people ignore when examining racial improprieties in America. So the question is “Which came first:  high crime rates among minorities, or the suspicion of higher crime rates amongst minorities?” Let’s look at an example:

Say, in a hypothetical community there are a certain percentage of white people who are criminals. In the same community, there’s the same percentage of black people who are criminals. This community is policed by the same prejudiced cop.

If that police officer suspects that a higher rate of black people are criminals, he’ll looks harder to find criminals in people of that racial group, and therefore he’ll catches more criminals that are black than white.

The amount of crime that each racial group was doing is the same, but because of the prejudice of the criminal justice system, a statistic can be created that implied that black people have a greater chance of being criminals. People can now rationalize the tactic of racial profiling for law enforcement, and the pattern continues and worsens.

This is a very real pattern in American history. And, if you don’t believe that, just take a closer look at some statistics:

According to the federal Household Survey, “most current illicit drug users are white. There were an estimated 9.9 million whites (72 percent of all users), 2.0 million blacks (15 percent), and 1.4 million Hispanics (10 percent) who were current illicit drug users in 1998.” Meanwhile, blacks constitute 36.8% of those arrested for drug violations, over 42% of those in federal prisons for drug violations, and comprise almost 58% of those in state prisons for drug felonies.

These show an obvious difference in the percentage of whites who are prosecuted for their crimes and the percentage of blacks who are prosecuted for their crimes, and this difference clearly indicates a bias in the criminal justice system.

That’s bullshit isn’t it? This isn’t what a fair democracy stands by. This isn’t showing America’s respect for equality. Allowing this problem to continue is fixating on the conclusions but ignoring the causes. It’s concentrating on the chicken and ignoring the egg.

Sources:

1. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, National Household Survey on Drug Abuse: Summary Report 1998 (Rockville, MD: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 1999), p. 13; Bureau of Justice Statistics, Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics 1998 (Washington DC: US Department of Justice, August 1999), p. 343, Table 4.10, p. 435, Table 5.48, and p. 505, Table 6.52; Beck, Allen J., Ph.D. and Mumola, Christopher J., Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prisoners in 1998 (Washington DC: US Department of Justice, August 1999), p. 10, Table 16; Beck, Allen J., PhD, and Paige M. Harrison, US Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics (Washington, DC: US Dept. of Justice, August 2001), p. 11, Table 16.

2. Drug War Facts. 20 Oct. 2006. 4 Nov. 2006 .

What Doesn’t Kill You Brings You That Much Closer to Death

What Doesn’t Kill You Brings You That Much Closer to Death:

I am a hospital physician. My department schedules us to work a few weekends a year. Like other doctors, I’m occasionally assigned to split a pair of weekends with someone who makes religious observance on Saturdays, so that he can work two Sundays, burdening me with two weekends of obligation. Is it O.K. to make me accommodate someone else’s religious practices? Name Withheld

Maybe instead of complaining about how some Jew has Jewed you out of your Saturday afternoons normally spent ignoring your wife and shopping on the Hammacher and Schlemmer website for The World’s Best ball shaver, you should remember why you got into this business in the first place: all that fucking cash. Dude, how awesome is that?!

You could also get a hobby, like building your own synagogue and then burning it down in hateful protest.

He is a college graduate, a talented artist, and sculptor.

He saw Mars but he felt Neptune,
he had hoped to feel a certain strong emotion but this is all they had to say:
“I was the son of a man, and so we came together and we shook hands.”
“We shook hands.”
He often wondered what a million people would look like scattered randomly
across a moonless sky, and how unlikely it would be that they would all just say the
obvious thing:
“You may call me brother now.”
“Yes, brother, I know.”

He is forty two,
five-feet-eight-inches tall,
normally wears his curly hair long.
He has a ruddy complexion, broad shoulders and is barrel-chested,
is unusually strong.
He frequently wears a full beard and sometimes glasses.
He is a college graduate, a talented artist, and sculptor.
Now, Maps is a soft-spoken loner, who resents society and all organizations.
Maps fancies himself a ladies’ man.
He is an avid chess player, smokes cigarettes, and a pipe.
He is a beer drinker and loves to eat.
Maps is a man of widespread interests, who might very well be living abroad.

He felt lost but he felt pretty intensely good,
and he woke up screaming having dreamed of a color he had never seen before:
“I went to bed and to sleep, it was so unexpected, it really was frightening, and I saw
pretty much
the same thing embedded in my pillow.”
He had no trouble recognizing patterns in the most delicate arrays of tangled lines,
but he had a strange fixation on partaking in nefarious things:
“Stealing, lying, cheating, gambling, fornicate…”

He saw red, but he thought five.
He was pleased to find his road trip was enhanced by number-color synesthesia:
“My trusty Rosinante bounds along the road very well, leaving the friendly aroma of donuts and
chicken tenders hanging in the desert air.”

He willed away the miles while quixotically attempting to reclaim his inner child,
he was embrangled and enmeshed in something far too loud to comprehend:
“I want all of the American people to understand that it is
understandable that the American
people cannot possibly understand.”

Try, try again, until you fail and find Jesus

If there’s one thing we can all learn about life, is that if first you don’t succeed, try, try again. But if you try again and you fail, turn to your religion of choice. Because if you’re bad enough at your profession, make believe God wants you to function as his prophet or servant, or whatever. And that’s exactly what unknown Baldwin, Stephen, is doing now — turning his non-existent career into Jesus Slavedom. Check out this prime interview Stephen Baldwin had with Radar online, sharing his intimate thoughts on Tom Cruise, Democrats, and ‘fun’.

You know exactly what he’s thinking:

Radar: Because you’re born-again.
SB: Just because I’m born-again doesn’t mean I have to have the Ten Commandments memorized. See, that’s the bad rap the born-again thing has gotten. What being born-again means for me is that I’m having so much fun in this interview that we’re not going to go out and get an 8-ball of blow tonight and go crazy. That’s what born again means to me: Inasmuch as I’d like to do that, gosh, I’ll just go home and read some scripture with the wife.

Radar: The 8-ball sounds like fun, though.
SB: Of course it does!

Aka blow blow blow I still want some blow can I have some blow where can I get some blow (for jesus?)

And how much he’d like to give Tom Cruise a spicy Jesus tuna roll (isn’t that a handjob from a Catholic priest???)

Radar: Interesting. What’s your take on Tom Cruise, who’s also gotten some flak for his faith.
SB: Let me just start a little trouble here. On the Hollywood list of people I pray for often, Tom Cruise is probably No. 1. All I have to say to Tom is, God bless ya, I hope you’re having fun. But I’d love through Radar magazine to throw a gauntlet down to Mr. Cruise. I’d love to break bread with him and pray with him, and I’d love for the Holy Spirit of God to reveal the truth to him. That would be an awesome thing. I remember Tom back in the day. I did Born on the Fourth of July with him. And he’s a very different guy now.

Radar: In what way?
SB: That regular Joe quality seems to have been lost. When you buy enough of your own hype, then it’s not who you are anymore. It becomes about how you’re perceived. I’d rather be young little sweet little Jesus Freak Stevie B any day of the week. Seriously though, can you put us together? Can we get a little sushi together? I’d like to give him a spicy Jesus roll.

Jesus smells so good when you don’t have a career anymore.

The Lost Year in Iraq

From a wonderful program by PBS Frontline entitled ‘The Lost Year in Iraq’ (and you can watch the whole thing online).

The most intriguing but nauseating segment comes in Part 3 entitled Within hours, Bremer gets some pointed lessons on what he’s facing. But he decides on quick, decisive action and orders de-Baathification. The segment deals with the policies of the CPA under Bremer, including hiring practices with interviews asking opinions on Roe vs. Wade, who you voted for, and what religion you were. People were hired for who they were (conservative and Republican) instead of their abilities or experience. Nothing highlights this better than the first hand observation from Col. Hammes of whom he had to deal with in his efforts to reconstruct Iraq:

At the ministry of interior, there was a new staff person handling planning for the prisons and police.

Col. Thomas Hammes, Counterinsurgency Advisor for the CPA:

“But the plans counterpart who I had to work with in the Minister of Interior was a 25 year old; it’s his first job after college. So I ask him ‘That’s pretty interesting, how big a plan cell do you have?’ He says ‘I have four guys’, I say ‘That’s pretty small’. He says ‘Yah but we’re really tight because we’re frat brothers’. I never in my life thought I would encounter frat brothers and strategic planners in the same sentence.”

The person who was handling THE POLICE AND PRISONS immediately following the invasion of Iraq was a 25 year old frat boy who was handling it with his four frat brothers. I REPEAT, POLICE AND PRISONS IN IRAQ AFTER THE INVASION WAS HANDLED BY 5 FRAT GUYS. Sycophantic, inexperienced, and worst of all, inept: the hallmarks of the Bush administration and what America has endured for 6 years.