Midweek Meh-ness [DOT 12/7/23]

12/7/23 MegMegMcGee 26

Hope everyone is having a good week so far!

NATO meeting:
Zelensky slams NATO for omitting a timeline for Ukraine to join
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/07/11/zelensky-nato-ukraine-membership-timeline/

Side note:

That’s allowed?

Democratic Georgia State Rep Defects to GOP After School Voucher Vote
https://www.thedailybeast.com/democratic-georgia-state-rep-defects-to-gop-after-school-voucher-vote

Stonks!

Dow closes 300 points higher Tuesday as key consumer inflation report looms: Live updates
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/10/stock-market-today-live-updates.html

Sprots!

What’s next for Northwestern football, fired coach Pat Fitzgerald?
https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/37995129/next-pat-fitzgerald-northwestern-football-hazing-fired

This made me laugh harder than it should have:

Bears!

Have a great day!

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26 Comments

    • It seems very strange to me that someone who participated in horrific, brutal murders should ever get parole. I’m not sure what the point is. I can’t believe it’s that much more cost effective, and I don’t think a 70-year-old is going to rejoin society effectively. I’m just not sure why they wouldn’t just leave her in prison.

      • My guess is that she would be in some kind of halfway house rather than just kicked to the curb. Assuming she hasn’t been getting it in prison she needs some intensive therapy. One of the biggest problems I have with our prison system is that it’s all about the punishment and has nothing to do with any kind of rehabilitation.

      • I’m conflicted. It was a horrible crime by itself and connected to a series of other terrible crimes. I think it comes down to what we want from incarceration. Ideally it would be a combination of punishment and rehabilitation. She’s proven herself to be a model prisoner and after 50 years in prison I think both have been accomplished. Has justice been served? I don’t really know. The families of the victims don’t believe it has. And do we want justice or vengeance?  🤷🏻‍♀️ I’d like to get @LemmyKilmister‘s take on it given his experience with the system.

        • I think she’s released because she’s a white woman. I don’t think a man or a person of color would have been released.

          That being said, she’s been going through psych evals for 40 years and apparently accepts her responsibility for what she did. I can see why she meets the standard for parole in her case.

        • How much time you got?

          The problem with philosophies of punishment is that they are all inherently flawed.  “Punishment” in the sense of behavioral psychology is not all that effective in changing behavior.  Retribution, on the other hand, only cares about balancing the scales and doesn’t care whether you change your behavior.  But since we generally don’t do the literal eye-for-an-eye thing, we’re left with taking months or years of your life for various actions. It’s apples to oranges to Camaros to dishwashers.  Are the scales balanced?  I guess the Parole Board thinks so, but don’t forget she’s still under supervision.

          “Rehabilitation” is flawed because of the prefix.  A good chunk of the people we have in jail have never been habilitated in the first place.  That takes a lot longer than re-teaching you something you already knew.  She was a young, troubled, vulnerable 19-year-old kid when she hooked up with Manson.  That’s a fair mitigating circumstance if you’re considering showing her some mercy.  But she’s going to need a lot of guidance and support in that habilitation stuff.

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