It’s Day 4 of Black History Month and We Whites Are All Going to STFU and Listen.

I had something else lined up for you beautiful people today, but instead decided to post quotes from two stories in my news feed this morning. Note: there is nothing particularly special about these two stories. The contrasts they illustrate are common as dirt.

Let’s call it…A Tale of Two Citizens.

First, meet P. Moses.

Undated photo of Black Lives Matter Memphis founder and former Memphis mayoral candidate Pamela "P." Moses during her campaign (2021).Pamela “P.” Moses
Black Lives Matter Memphis founder and
former Memphis mayoral candidate during her campaign (2021).
(image: via prlog.org / uncredited)

via The Guardian (bold emphasis mine, except for headline):

The Black woman sentenced to six years in prison over a voting error

Pamela Moses was sentenced to six years in prison for trying to register despite a felony conviction but officials admitted making a series of mistakes

…

On Monday, Moses, who is Black, was sentenced to six years and one day in prison… Amy Weirich, the local prosecutor, has trumpeted both the conviction and the sentence in press releases.

…

[I]t is rare to see a prosecutor bring criminal charges against someone for election crimes, and … there has been growing awareness of racial disparities in punishments for election-related crimes. Black people such as Crystal Mason and Hervis Rogers have faced years in prison for making mistakes about their voting eligibility. White voters have received much lighter sentences for election-related crimes.

…

Behind the scenes, Tennessee officials conceded that they had made a series of mistakes concerning Moses’ voting eligibility.

,,,

Moses is currently in custody and an appeal is expected. But the case highlights the byzantine maze that people with felony convictions have to go through to figure out if they can vote. And it shows the harsh consequences prosecutors can bring if people with felony convictions make a mistake.

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Next, meet Officer Nicholas Gifford.

Photo of Officer Nicholas Gifford being interviewed by Internal Affairs investigator accompanied by his attorney, Phil Vogelsang. Officer Nicholas Gifford (top)
with his attorney, Phil Vogelsang, during interview with Internal Affairs investigator at Jacksonville, FL Sheriff’s office.
(image: Jacksonville Sherriff’s Office/public domain)

via First Coast News (bold emphasis mine, except for headline):

‘I’m drunk’ | Jacksonville SWAT officer who worked intoxicated will keep his job after city board reverses sheriff decision

The Jacksonville SWAT Officer, whose blood alcohol level was four times the legal limit, admitted working ‘impaired’ on multiple occasions.

A SWAT officer with the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office who admitted drinking a fifth of vodka just hours before driving his police car to a gun range for firearms training will keep his job, despite the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office’s decision to fire him.

…

Officer Nicholas Gifford was terminated by JSO in October after he showed up to the city’s gun range with a blood alcohol level four times the legal limit. But two months later, the city’s Civil Service Board ordered JSO to reinstate him, saying the firing was “manifestly unjust.”

…

Gifford’s intoxicated condition was initially discovered Oct. 13 by fellow officers who saw him “swerving back and forth” while driving his city-issued car to the JSO Firing Range, some 30 miles from his home. Gifford admitted to his inebriated state when the officers confiscated his gun belt.

“I’m drunk,” he told them, according to an Internal Affairs report.

A series of breathalyzer tests taken more than three hours later confirmed it. Gifford blew a .316 — four times the state’s legal limit of .08, and a patent violation of JSO’s policy threshold of .00.

…

He acknowledged having a serious drinking problem and reporting for work impaired previously, “probably five, 10 times.”

I’ma go out on a limb here and bet five, 10 million internet dollars that those numbers are undercounts by a factor of probably five, 10 times.

The eight-year officer was suspended immediately, and fired Nov. 5.

But on Dec. 16, he appealed his firing to the city’s Civil Service Board – a volunteer body tasked with reviewing discipline decisions challenged by city employees, and whose members are appointed by the mayor, JEA and the school board.

After hearing from both sides, the board concluded the decision to fire Gifford was “manifestly unjust” — a legal term defined as “shocking to the conscience.”

The Board voted to reinstate Gifford following 90-day suspension (retroactive to his dismissal date), with the condition that he undergo three random breathalyzer tests per work cycle for a year.

Manifestly unjust, indeed.

Under credit where credit is due, “the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office will be appealing the Civil Service Board’s decision.”

One theory: nearly everyone at the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office has long thought that Officer Nicholas Gifford is an a$$hole.

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Day 1 of Black History Month 2022 (Lori Teresa Yearwood) is here.
Day 2 of Black History Month 2022 (Mallence Bart-Williams) is here.
Day 3 of Black History Month 2022 (Emmett Till) is here.

White supremacists and white nationalists are having a bad day.

Wahington Post banner logo

Spencer, Kessler, Cantwell and other white supremacists found liable in deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville

The jury did not reach a verdict on two federal conspiracy charges, but did find that every defendant was liable for civil conspiracy under Virginia law. The jury then awarded $500,000 in punitive damages against all 12 individual defendants, and $1 million against five white nationalist organizations on that conspiracy count. Other damages followed on further counts.

Read More (Washington Post)

Good.

Of course, due to some inexplicable random glitch The System™ did not work as intended, as it did in the Rittenhouse case. That’s why we have appeals courts, I suppose.

Still, I just wanted to spread a little sunshine. You all know me – I’m all Suzie Sunshine up in here!

dancing snoopy

 

Hey, can we get some of that up in here?

[CONTENT NOTE: sexual harassment, sexual assault, rape and rape culture.)

You know, I have not been able to write about Afghanistan, and this is mainly because I have not been able to think coherently about Afghanistan.* See, I get flooded with All the Feelz, and flashbacks to the war crimes of the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Rice regime, CIA black sites, serious debates at the highest levels of government and across mainstream media platforms about the pros, cons, legality and morality of torture FFS, and every single evil spawned from U.S. conservative war lovers** since the events of 9/11, which were traumatic enough for me thankyouverymuch, and right up to and including the suicide bombing at a Kabul airport gate today.

Nevertheless, I was struck by a sentence in this morning’s New York Times email briefing:

[Read more…]

I write letters to my Senators.

I’ve mentioned before that I’m a fan of the activist group Roots Action: one of their particular charms in my opinion is that their email campaign messaging is very good, and they allow users to tweak it and add to it, or even overwrite it entirely, before forwarding it on to one’s congresscritters. As you might imagine, sometimes that opportunity is too tempting for me to pass up.

Today via email, the good people at Roots Action offered up just such a tasty treat: an entirely editable missive to both my senators demanding they vote against President Biden’s nominee for U.S. ambassador to Japan, that ratfucker Rahm Emanuel. It also urges them to announce their intent to do so publicly.

Here is the email with some background; unfortunately it does not come close to cataloging all the things I despise about this nominee. But then, ain’t nobody got that kind of time on their hands.

Roots Action logo

[Read more…]

Sunday funnies.

 

Top: photo of GOP activist Deanna Lorraine, with quote beneath "God Does Not Want Us Wearing Masks... If you have a mask on, it means you actually don't trust God. You don't have faith." Beneath, a cleseup photo of the face of Patrick Stewart/"Captain Picard" squinting with confusion, with overlaid large block letter text, "BUT YOU'RE THE SAME PEOPLE WHO NEED A RIFLE TO PICK UP GROCERIES"

Ya gotta laugh. Or, you know, cry. Either way, there is something very, very wrong and/or hilarious about the conservative mind.

 

Reddit post by u/henke: "Last week one of my art teachers suggested I 'dial down the feminism.' Today I showed him my newest piece: (image of a stainless steel panel labeled Dial Down the Feminism' with a single round tuning knob. To the left it reads 'COMPLICIT IN MY OWN DEHUMANIZATION' and to the right it reads "RAGING FEMINISM."

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

-Iris Vander Pluym, Art Critic.

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Tweet by @amy_istrying: "I'm disgusted every time someone does a gender reveal and it's a gender I already know about, what kind of reveal is that"

❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

EXACTLY, Amy. I’m pretty sure that people who do gender reveals are conservative, at least with respect to sex role stereotypes. And those kinds of ideas never seem to travel alone. In other words: eew!

I think if I’d ever had a kid, I might have done a gender reveal just to fuck with the conservatives in my family. I’d make a multi-layer red velvet cake, with each layer consisting of a few different colors of batter roughly swirled together, just like I did for my sister’s birthday that one time. (If I can find a pic I’ll post it later.)

When I’d cut into it, every slice would have a rainbow of colors in it, at which point I’d announce “It’s a gender! Or maybe agender! Who the fuck cares and what the fuck is wrong with you people?”

[CUE: music, disco lighting and ecologically-friendly rainbow confetti.