in the barrel
speaking of shooting fish, (well, kinda--a friend of mine hooked his first tuna of the season today), let's take a look at today's lowell barrel:
i'll first start by asking how you might abbreviate a large number, say, 50,000, in a newspaper headline?
if you said "50k" i'm pretty sure you'd be among the vast majority. as in "chemist in lab handled 50k samples". (k, of course, being short for "kilo", which is the prefix in the metric system meaning "thousand", making the headline read in longhand, "chemist in lab handled 50 thousand samples", which makes pretty good abbreviated sense). the sun, curiously, godbless'em, used g, the abbreviation for "grand", or slang for "thousand dollars", instead, and opted for "chemist in lab handled 50g samples". i can accept the jump from "thousand dollars" to "thousand", i guess, but my brain, like many i'm sure, first wennt to "chemist in lab handled 50 grand samples", and then had to translate the slang to get to what they really mean. (after skipping the rhetorical question, "samples of $50,000?")
anyway, that's a nit, and not worth picking, so apologies for that.
but then i got to the op-ed page, and the editorial about "judge wolf's cruel and unusual ruling". for those under a rock these past few, judge wolf is the federal (more on that in a moment) judge, coincidentally appointed by ronald reagan, who ruled that a convicted murderer, robert/michelle kosilek, must be given an all-expenses-paid sex-change operation by the massachusetts state prison system, over the massachusetts state prison systems strident objections.
see, the facts are that the state of massachusetts knows what a farce this is, and what a travesty it would be to have $20,000 (or $20g in this case) wasted on elective surgery for a convicted murderer while innocent gender dysphoria sufferers, let alone folks without any medical care at all, go without. but it's a FEDERAL judge (see, NOT the state of massachusetts) who is ruling against the state, and it's a republican appointee at that.
but never mind the facts--the editorial reads "leave it to massachusetts to be the first state in the nation to come down on the side of a prisoner in this type of request".
HUH???
massachusetts is the party in the litigation fighting AGAINST coming down on the side of a prisoner in this type of request. it's a republican-appointed federal judge who is for coming down on the side of a prisoner in this type of request.
how is this possible to confuse???
to campy's credit, he is trying to say that we shouldn't be squandering public resources for private elective surgery, let alone for a convicted murderer. (where is the respect for cheryl mccaul who was murdered by this fiend, or for other non-murderous dysphoria sufferers, or for anyone in need in all this indeed). but, puh-leeeze. it's a complete and utter joke that prejudice and political bile be blathered so blatantly across an editorial page in complete ignorance of the facts.
but, hey, that's my local paper...
i'll first start by asking how you might abbreviate a large number, say, 50,000, in a newspaper headline?
if you said "50k" i'm pretty sure you'd be among the vast majority. as in "chemist in lab handled 50k samples". (k, of course, being short for "kilo", which is the prefix in the metric system meaning "thousand", making the headline read in longhand, "chemist in lab handled 50 thousand samples", which makes pretty good abbreviated sense). the sun, curiously, godbless'em, used g, the abbreviation for "grand", or slang for "thousand dollars", instead, and opted for "chemist in lab handled 50g samples". i can accept the jump from "thousand dollars" to "thousand", i guess, but my brain, like many i'm sure, first wennt to "chemist in lab handled 50 grand samples", and then had to translate the slang to get to what they really mean. (after skipping the rhetorical question, "samples of $50,000?")
anyway, that's a nit, and not worth picking, so apologies for that.
but then i got to the op-ed page, and the editorial about "judge wolf's cruel and unusual ruling". for those under a rock these past few, judge wolf is the federal (more on that in a moment) judge, coincidentally appointed by ronald reagan, who ruled that a convicted murderer, robert/michelle kosilek, must be given an all-expenses-paid sex-change operation by the massachusetts state prison system, over the massachusetts state prison systems strident objections.
see, the facts are that the state of massachusetts knows what a farce this is, and what a travesty it would be to have $20,000 (or $20g in this case) wasted on elective surgery for a convicted murderer while innocent gender dysphoria sufferers, let alone folks without any medical care at all, go without. but it's a FEDERAL judge (see, NOT the state of massachusetts) who is ruling against the state, and it's a republican appointee at that.
but never mind the facts--the editorial reads "leave it to massachusetts to be the first state in the nation to come down on the side of a prisoner in this type of request".
HUH???
massachusetts is the party in the litigation fighting AGAINST coming down on the side of a prisoner in this type of request. it's a republican-appointed federal judge who is for coming down on the side of a prisoner in this type of request.
how is this possible to confuse???
to campy's credit, he is trying to say that we shouldn't be squandering public resources for private elective surgery, let alone for a convicted murderer. (where is the respect for cheryl mccaul who was murdered by this fiend, or for other non-murderous dysphoria sufferers, or for anyone in need in all this indeed). but, puh-leeeze. it's a complete and utter joke that prejudice and political bile be blathered so blatantly across an editorial page in complete ignorance of the facts.
but, hey, that's my local paper...
posted by kad barma at 12:11 PM
1 Comments:
So I was going to do a blog post on this story, but now I don't have to. Notwithstanding Judge Wolf having been noominated by Preasident Reagan—we aren't California, where there is a tradition of confirming judges for additional terms by voting, and he is a Federal Judge anyway—he has done a pretty good job of standing up to the Department of Justice and its subordinate organization, the FBI, and bringing justice to our region. On balance, a winner.
This sex change operation is a bit of a puzzle. Yes, the convict has tried suicide and self-mutilation, which raises the question of if the prison system has been paying attention. And, the murder of "his" wfie shows that the convict has poor impulse control. This raises the whole issue of if just locking someone up for 20 or 30 or more years actually solves or resolves anything.
We have gone down the road of giving the convict the hormones to change the chemical situation within said person. This is just a request to complete the job, although where the convict will be houses at completion is an interesting question.
So, $20,000 for the operation vs the amount of money they (we) will need to spend to deal with this convict's attempts to do self-harm may be a wash.
The real question is, what do we owe convicts? They are in our custody and thus we assume responsibility for them. If we are not willing to pay for the surgery, we sure as heck need to set up a lot of mental health appointments.
On the surface a dumb decision, but down between the layers there may be more to this than meets the eye.
It has been a long time since Christine Jorgensen. Surely one of the maligned political Parties would approve of this.
Regards — Cliff
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