Happy Damn New Year!
Happy New Year! I’ve spent the day so far lazing around, eating leftover pizza and listening to music. And that’s about all I’m going to do, I think.
I’ll be back at work blogging tomorrow.
In the meantime, does anyone have any especially fond memories of Tom Martin and/or Steele from the past year?
Oh, and here’s a video from an Old School New Wave band called Polyphonic Size. It was 1983. They were from Belgium.
Posted on January 1, 2013, in off topic, open thread. Bookmark the permalink. 482 Comments.
Starla, how the hell would a fourteen-year-old CHILD get an abortion? A child from an abstinence-only family who (if she’d ever been told anything about it other than that it’s evil) would likely have no way of knowing where to start looking? And given how few abortion clinics there seem to be in so many US states, it might have been physically impossible for her to get to one. And all this without her parents knowing – even if she could get it done at all in that situation? Given the whole “abortion is KILLING BABIES” line, who’s to say that this poor kid even thought there’d be much difference between an abortion and infanticide? Come on, you’re putting adult reasoning on a child, a probably terrified, brainwashed child.
@kitteh
Depending on what state she is in ( i don’t know) you can get an abortion without parental consent. Also depending on where you are you could go to any docter and get an abortion pill. And if abortion is evil, I’m sure killing your live baby definitely is. And there isn’t to my knowledge an age limit for giving up a child for adoption. I don’t understand why everyone keeps telling me she’s 14, I know she’s 14. But if I’d been pregnant that young I don’t think killing my baby would’ve even crossed my mind (I also live in a bible belt, with no sex Ed whatsoever). It’s horrible that she grew up in that environment, but there were other decisions she could’ve made and I fail to see how murdering her child could have possibly looked like the best one. I’m sorry.
Starla, 14-year-olds’ brains are not cognitively or neurally adult yet. They can’t think or reason at an adult level.
You aren’t her, Starla. You don’t know her position except for the same things we have all mentioned. Doesn’t the fact that she did kill the baby suggest something about her mental state and fears? It might have been the ONLY way out she could see. She’d hardly be the first girl to have taken that way in desperation.
Florida — http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/18/cassidy-goodson-14-year-old-mom-kill-newborn_n_2154995.html
Their state laws on abortion — http://www.prochoiceamerica.org/government-and-you/state-governments/state-profiles/florida.html
So there’s your answer, Starla. That child could not have had an abortion without at least one parent’s approval.
I just checked and parental notification laws do apply to RU 486, but that’s assuming she even knew it exists.
And she’s facing life in prison, which has gotten the US a lot of flack — only the US and Somalia allow it.
Steele, who the hell is Erin Pizzey? I’d google the name, but I fear I’ll either find absolutely nothing or something that makes my eyeballs bleed. I’m sorry you’re reading The Fountainhead. No worries, it eventually comes to an end if you just keep pressing ahead.
Okay fair enough, but what do you think should happen then? She did kill a baby.
Having different sentencing for children and adults doesn’t preclude still punishing children who commit crimes, no?
@katz
No, it doesn’t. But what should happen? A lesser sentence? Probation? Slap on the wrist with court ordered psychological help? Even if being 14 means you can’t be tried as an adult, certainly it doesn’t mean it’s okay to kill someone if you are 14. I’m asking for opinions.
Who the hell is saying it is okay?
“… a better path would be to follow California and North Carolina and apply a mandatory minimum sentence of 25 years before parole eligibility.”
“Steele, who the hell is Erin Pizzey?” — she has a wiki page.
@starla, most women and girls in this situation find it so overwhelming that they shut down their conscious knowledge of the pregnancy. When they give birth they are so distressed they are almost in a fugue state( old terminology ), most jurisdiction will not hold them criminally responsible.
And, of course, fix sex ed.
Yoyo, idk DSM-V, but dissociative fugue is still in DSM-IV. http://behavenet.com/dissociative-disorders
Trying a 14 year old as an adult when it is pretty clear the kid is a kid makes little sense.
And if the issue is that the sentencing for a juvenile is too lenient for the worst crimes, then maybe that should be changed. Plus it feeds into the punishment first and only aspect that the US criminal justice system seems too be too enamored of.
Starla, you will probably find a whole range of opinions here about what should happen to her. I’m not really sure what you’re getting at, but it bothers me that you’re strawmanning peoples’ positions to imply that we think the fact she killed her kid is just hunky dory, nothing to see here folks, move along.
So basically Steele sat around and got sloshed on eggnog and read Rand. That’s pathetic.
I know he said he spent time with people who’s company he enjoys, but do they enjoy his company?
Starla: what everyone else, especially Katz said. Try her as a juvenile, which she is, and sentence her according to those guidelines.
There’s also a weird voting aspect to life sentences for minors: Your life is being thrown away by a system you had no hand in creating (and never will).
Katz: yeah, and if she were tried as a minor, she could at least possibly get some help. She needs it.
Starla, no one here thinks what she did is OK at all. Why do you think she should be tried as an adult?
Stella, in my first year of uni a girl in my hall had a baby in the bathroom. She had known, sort of, that she was pregnant; but as her family were strict mormons who would have exiled her from church and family if she admitted havinf sex she had repressed the entire thing. There was no ‘carrying the baby’ for nine months, there was nine months of denial, hiding, fear, isolation and shame. She would have killed her baby if she had been alone, because by that stage it isn’t a child – its something that if it can be gotten rid of, your entire world doesn’t fall apart and your family needs not know you’re going to hell.
I wasn’t trying to imply that everyone thought it was okay. I’m sorry if it sounded that way. I was saying “okay so don’t try her as an adult, but then what?” because she is 14. I know nobody thinks it’s okay. I was being sarcastic.
“So basically Steele sat around and got sloshed on eggnog and read Rand. That’s pathetic.”
Oh, I dunno. Reading Rand at any time is pathetic, yeah, but having a quiet Christmas/New Year’s isn’t. It’s the most stressful time of the year for me, all I want is for it to pass without noise (which I am extremely grateful to say it did).
Never tried eggnog so can’t say on that. :P
In terms of actual sentencing, it comes down to the purpose of punishing crimes, which is one reason why opinions are going to vary so much.
Generally I imagine life sentences are for people who are a serious, continued danger to others. So either repeat offenders who show every sign that they’re going to keep committing crimes whenever they are released, or people who did things so heinous (eg, mass murders) that it’s simply not worth chancing it.
This girl, however, is not really a danger to anyone else, and there’s no reason to believe that she’s going to keep getting pregnant and killing babies. If the goal is to keep it from happening again, education, counseling, and access to safe contraceptives (for both her and everyone else her age) seems like the best strategy.
Kitteh’s: I am the Queen of quiet “holidays.” No shade thrown on that.
Even for adults, there are distinctions in sentencing between premeditated murder and impulsive killings. You have to look at the totality of the circumstances.
Murderers actually have one of the lowest recidivism rates of all USian criminals. Something like 1-1.5% the last time I looked (in connection with arguing with someone about the death penalty). Countries that focus on rehabilitation and education of prisoners see much lower recidivism rates that countries that focus on punishment and deterrence.
Bad news: VAWA didn’t get reauthorized for this year because the House didn’t vote on the most recent iteration of it. The culprit: House Republicans’ obstructive ways and hidebound ideology stopped its passage back in April 2012, and then there were difficult efforts at a compromise or at badgering to vote on the original bill that didn’t pay off.
This kind of situation feels too typical these days…
(Side note: no recovery funding for Hurricane Sandy victims was voted on – despite a promise by the Republicans to vote on relief aid after the fiscal cliff bill was passed. East Coasters of any political persuasion, particularly Chris Christie and Republican representatives from NJ/NY, are livid.)
OMG, Rand. I was nearly run over this morning by a big, black SUV with the license plates FNTNHED.
Steele, was that you?
::high fives hellkell:: :)
cloudiah: that’s the distillation of everything wrong with Rand and her fanboys.
And I don’t think a life sentence is appropriate. But there is a dead child and I think she should be held accountable for it. And the reason I think she should be tried as an adult is because I can’t imagine ever trying to hurt a baby, let alone kill one. I can’t even begin to imagine the inhumanity or desperation required to do something like that, and I don’t know if the circumstances matter.
“And the reason I think she should be tried as an adult is because I can’t imagine ever trying to hurt a baby, let alone kill one.”
But because you, as an adult, cannot imagine harming a baby is not actually a reason for trying her as an adult. To me, that sentence demonstrates that you’re unable to put yourself into her shoes at all.
Starla: she will be held accountable, but there’s other ways of doing that. Calling her inhuman is a bit of a stretch. I think she was definitely desperate.
Starla: can you imagine killing an adult?
“I don’t think the circumstances matter” – are you saying there’s no difference between a desperate, frightened child doing this, and an adult committing premeditated murder, knowing what it means? How many kids at that age even understand death?
Starla:
First, if a 14-year-old counts as an adult in this context, where does it end? Should a toddler be sentenced as an adult if zie kills a baby? What if someone is delusional or was being coerced?
Second, would you allow everyone’s sensibilities to carry the same weight as your own? Say I think, say, stealing is a really really terrible and inhuman thing. Does that mean minor thieves should be tried as adults?
Third, what would be your goal in sentencing this girl harshly? What are you trying to accomplish?
Starla, it’s starting to read like “I am so horrified that anyone could kill a baby, and you are not” – whether or not that’s your intention – and that therefore, the fact of this girl being a girl, not an adult, not someone with the brain development, cognitive abilities and ethical understanding one might reasonably expect, makes no difference. You seem to me to be closing your eyes to factors that are extremely important in how the case should be approached, because of a purely emotional response. And no, I am not saying “emotion bad, logic good!” like some sort of MRA douche. On the contrary, it’s like a complete inability to empathise with this girl at all. I might add that I don’t do a hell of a lot of empathising with murderers myself, if you’re thinking I’m a give-them-tea-and-cakes liberal caricature.
@kitteh
Well that’s my reason. I think killing children is evil.
Hmmm, which just proves my point. She’s a child herself and you are refusing to see that. This isn’t like some kid who broke into someone’s home and attacked them (a thirteen year old boy attacked a couple with a knife here recently – they are literally going to be scarred for life) after a series of violent attacks on others. That child needs to be in custody of some sort, and the term ‘evil’ is more applicable to him than to this girl, if it’s to be applied at all.
And the rest of us think killing children makes a nice hobby, like knitting or carving grains of rice into intricate sculptures? WTF, Starla?
Do you not see the “…And you don’t” implicit in this statement?
And are you going to answer my questions? (Apologies in advance if you ninja’d me.)
@kitteh
You are right and I’m not trying to make it sound like anyone thinks this is okay. And I can’t empathize with her. I admit it, and I dont see why anyone is trying to, but everyone has an opinion.
You don’t see why everyone is trying to. There, I think, lies the problem. You’re reducing this to black and white and turning this girl into some sort of Evil Monster.
@katz
I am sorry, this website for some reason always wants to scroll to the top on my iPhone so sometimes I miss comments.
And to answer your comments, I don’t think all minors should be judged harshly, she didn’t rob a store, she didn’t get caught smoking marijuana, she KILLED someone.
I’m thinking more about the dead baby than I am about her. And already admitted, I CANT empathize with her.
@kitteh
You are absolutely right.
OK, let’s play some thought games here. (And please preface these with “in a universe that meets all the conditions necessary for this to happen in the first place.”)
First: Two-year-old is used to being the center of attention. Parents bring home a baby that cries all the time and gets all the attention. So the toddler puts a pillow on top of the baby and sits on it until the baby stops crying.
Second: Villager in some dystopic dictatorship gets made an example of. Dictator orders him to kill a baby or else he and his whole village, baby included, will all be shot. So the villager does as he is told.
Third: A woman gives birth to a pair of twins. One is born with a malformed brain. The other has a heart defect that will surely kill it within a few days. The parents beg the doctor to give the second child a heart transplant from the first child. As the first child grows weaker and weaker, the doctor finally agrees.
All just as guilty as if they’d just randomly grabbed someone’s baby and killed it?
What if she had killed an adult? Would empathy show up then?
It seems like the warm fuzzies of “baby” have taken over.
That…doesn’t answer any of my questions. I shall repeat them:
1: What if she was even younger? Does it still apply if she’s a little toddler?
2: Why are you the judge of severity of crimes? What if I feel differently?
3: What does punishing her accomplish? Are you trying to keep her from doing it again? Make an example of her? Just make her unhappy?
This might be the most Internet Libertarian* way I can think of to describe hanging out with friends. Because, of course, Randians don’t have friends, they have individuals of mutually beneficial acquaintance!
… no, really, there’s a scene in The Fountainhead where Roark tells someone he’s hanging out with that if that guy fell off the boat and started drowning, Roark wouldn’t lift a finger to help him except for the fact that Roark enjoys his company. Our hero, ladies and gentleman!
Oh damn, I meant that asterisk to be followed with a footnote clarifying that this use of “libertarian” is here only intended to refer to right-wing assholes and not to impugn anyone who might identify as left libertarian. Oops.
Heheh “Internet Libertarian” says Randboy to me anyway, Gametime. They sound like they’ve all had empathy bypasses.
@katz
None of those even come close to the same thing. A two year old has no idea what kills something and that when something dies it can never come back. A 14 year old does.
In the second example, chances are the baby will die either way if the whole village is shot.
In the third (I’m assuming both babies will die, if nothing is done) I think that’s understandable.
Your going under the assumption that it upsets me because a baby died. That’s not it. At 14 years old you know what happens to something when you kill it.
“I’m thinking more about the dead baby than I am about her. And already admitted, I CANT empathize with her.”
…a dead baby that never would’ve existed if we taught proper sex ed…
“It seems like the warm fuzzies of “baby” have taken over.” — THIS
Really though, I’m more concerned with why this happened and how to prevent it — proper sex ed, easier abortion access, not treating teen sex as horribly slutty and sinful, advertising RU 486 as a thing that exists.
Also, this was bugging my mother — seems like no one’s asking who the father is. Which is interesting, considering that most teen pregnancies have adult baby daddies.
Starla:
Oh, so apparently circumstances do matter. And apparently there’s a threshold somewhere between two and 14. Where is it? Five? Eight? Twelve?
“At 14 years old you know what happens to something when you kill it.”
How do you know she does? And why are you refusing to see that at 14, and in the sort of fear she evidently felt, you do not act rationally?
You’re basically saying she should be treated like someone ten or twenty years older than her who made a choice in cold blood without any perceived threat hanging over her head.
This conversation is a real banging-head-against-wall one.
Okay, so what if the whole village except the baby will be shot?
What if only one person will be shot? Two? Five? What if it’s just the guy himself who will be shot if he doesn’t kill the baby?
You are really bad at thought experiments.
People kill people every day. It’s terrible. We can’t throw them all into prison forever*; we have to actually look at the individual cases and make the most ethical decisions about what to do.
And sometimes there are extenuating circumstances, that you have to take into account:
(a) age
(b) mental capacity
(c) duress
(d) self defense
(e) likelihood of re-offending
(f) other extenuating circumstances (e.g. man who kills wife who is dying of pancreatic cancer because he can’t bear to see her in pain any more vs. woman who kills husband for the insurance money)
And, as I’ve said, murders are among the least likely to re-commit the crime, and therefore some of the best candidates for rehabilitation.
Someone who can’t consider all of those factors, and also be capable of empathy towards the accused — not necessarily sympathy, but just understanding what they were going through — should never serve on a jury, ever.
*Well, technically we could if we built lots more prisons and dedicated even more of our budgets to running them. That’s just not a world I want to live in.
I’ll ask, who was the father? And is anyone looking for the guy who knocked-up a 14-year-old who, it would appear, wasn’t ready to deal with sex, pregnancy and the social stigma she’d have to face whether the baby lived or not.
@katz
I learned about death when I was 6, dog got hit by a car.
And I’m sure you have a different opinion on how she should be judged, I never said you couldn’t express it.
@ all
You win, okay? I don’t know everything, at first all I knew was that she killed her baby. I knew nothing of her community or anything except what argenti said about her being in an abstinence only sex Ed class. I can see how it wouldn’t have happened if it were different.
Starla, would it kill you to actually answer a question you are asked? Because I’m getting really sick of your “Well, you can think anything you want, but I think killing babies is wrong” routine.
Everyone else, want to place a wager on how soon Starla will tell us she’s crying and to stop being all mean to her?
Give it half an hour?
Starla, will you quit projecting yourself as the template for all children? I’m really jack of this “well I did X, therefore everyone does or sholuld” with its heavy implication of “anyone who didn’t is evil/abnormal” bullshit.
Starla: yes, we’re assuming that what upsets you is a baby dying, because that’s what you said.
Argenti: yeah, I’d like to know where the father is too in all of this.
@katz I did answer your questions, your posting knew ones faster than I can respond. As for everyone not to be mean to me, I deserve it, I got emotional and said something stupid…repeatedly. Ive come to like it here and I don’t want to start any more problems.
*should
Katz: two comments from now, pass the Kleenex.
So since Starla learned about death when she was 6, that’s the cutoff. Someone who is 5 years old and kills a person gets treated with leniency, but if you’re 6 it’s off with your head/you’re serving time as an adult.
Sigh. I’m not even trying to “win” this discussion; I just want her to think about what she’s saying.
No. You. Did. Not! I reposted the same three questions because you didn’t answer ANY of them! You didn’t even pretend to answer most of them! Here, I will provide you a helpful link to my previous comment. Please answer those questions.
@Starla
And I feel that I am just really learning about death at 30, now that my beloved grandmother has died. My estranged father died when I was 9. I knew what death was, but I also really didn’t.
Some gal: my condolences on the loss of your grandmother.
Starla: you really mean to say you knew all about death at six? Have you pored over any ancient manuscripts lately?
Snark aside, even though I knew about death from a pretty young age, it’s still relatively theoretical until you’ve gained some life experience. If you really want a grip on it, almost die yourself.