Our military needs to break out the guillotine.

Rape in the U.S. military is an ongoing, systemic problem.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/bs-md-military-sexual-assault-male-20130313,0,6394967.story?page=1

Some have blamed this on gender integration, but that is wrong because (among other reasons) about half of the victims are men.

'"It is only natural for commanders to want to believe that a crime did not happen," he said. "Making it disappear entails less risk for their careers. And not pursuing prosecution is much less disruptive for their units."

After his commanders learned of the attack, he was misdiagnosed, he said, with personality disorder and given a general discharge instead of an honorable discharge.'

Let me attempt to explain how broken that is from a military perspective.  A commander is responsible for everything that happens under their command.  Everything.  No, seriously.  All of it.  There is no plausible deniability, because you should have known.  There is no "the person that works for me fucked this up." because it is your job to make sure that they don't.  As we said, "Authority can be delegated, but the responsibility remains yours."  If the training, the procedures, the culture, or the people under your command are not tuned to create success, then that is your personal failure.

The incident that most drove this home for me was the sinking of the Ehime Maru.  You can read about it here  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehime_Maru_and_USS_Greeneville_collision  but basically a U.S. submarine accidentally crashed into and sunk a Japanese civilian vessel, thereby killing some people, including students.  In the aftermath, my captain personally conducted training for our whole crew, and gave us a message that you won't read in that wiki article. (paraphrased from memory)

The Greenville sunk that Japanese ship because the captain had fostered an image of himself as infallible and not to be questioned.  Multiple people in Control [a location the ship is driven from] had concerns about how dense the civilians were in Control and that this was interfering with their jobs.  The Firecontrol Tech in sonar, Seacrest, had indication that the Ehime Maru was too close, but doubted himself because this contradicted the captain's assessment.  The captain had created a culture that was not conducive to the concerns of the crew being presented to the chain of command, and this set the command up for failure.  Those people died because that captain's crew was reluctant to tell him he had gotten something wrong.  And that... that is the captain's fault.  He is responsible for creating that culture.

And so, our captain said, I do not want you to be afraid to tell me when I'm getting something wrong.  If you think there is a problem, if you think there might be a problem, any one of you can say "Wait. Stop.  This doesn't seem right." and we'll stop, and we'll look at it, reassess, and move on from there.

Culture matters, and the command is responsible for the culture.  In this case, our military's culture is leaving rape victims to the wolves.  It's unacceptable.  It's bad for morale.  It's bad for recruitment.  It hurts readiness and unit cohesion.  It's absolutely wrong, and if covering up a rape isn't conduct un-fucking-becoming, I don't know what is.  Has no one stopped to wonder what else these commanders are willing to cover up?  How can you occupy a position that requires good judgment and high trust if you will not face the difficult problems?  A commander that covered up an operational incident would be Fucking Fired (different from regular fired), and this should be no different.  A military, particularly a volunteer military, cannot achieve excellence under these conditions.  These commanders, all of them, have a responsibility to create an environment which prevents rape, advocates for the victims, and delivers justice.

Heads need to roll, and it starts at the top.  President Obama, you are the Commander in Chief. This is your military.  Fix it.  Now.

Media: I want to be hearing as much about this as I did about Catholic priests.

Red Right Ankle

"This is the story of your red right ankle,
And how it came to meet your leg,
And how the muscle, bone, and sinews tangled,
And how the skin was softly shed.

And how it whispered,
'Oh, adhere to me!',
For we are bound by symmetry.
And whatever differences our lives have been,

We together make a limb."


And I have begun to love you as myself,

to give consideration jealously reserved.

And to wonder what witchcraft

has brought you past the briars and walls,

and disposed my armaments.

All my life I have mistaken,

these inward lies for honesty.

But the real truth flushes pink

with shame and uncertainty,

leaves me naked and seeking mercy.

Yours is the courage, lent to me,

that brings me back to this place again,

trembling, and resolved.

Vulnerability is the price we pay,

and the gift we receive,

and is precious as each.

Ours is a story

of broken toys in love.

Playing, mending, creaking.
I could not do this with someone else.

"Some had crumbled you straight to your knees
Did it cruel, did it tenderly
Some had crawled their way into your heart
To rend your ventricles apart."

Sometimes when I feel loved by you,

it is beautiful and unbearable all at once.

I slip away to cry tears of joy

splashed with agony,

or the other way.

It is recognition that I cannot bear for this to end

and that we are mortal, still.

It is knowing I am not worthy of you loving me,

and seeing you continue, undeterred.

It's feeling grateful and small,

or nourished,

or infinite.

It's the ultimate trust-fall,

and I believe in you.

I decided,

on a day that was yesterday and a lifetime ago,

that I would never be this vulnerable again.
But you've disarmed that lie, too.

I love you more than I was supposed to.

Points of no return are defined

by anxiety on one side

and liberation on the other.

Let us journey, then, you and I.
You are irreplaceable in my heart.

Gun owners and safety: we can do better.

I think that the "responsible" part of "responsible gun owners" is important.  I also think that those of us who are or have been part of our country's gun culture are aware that sometimes gun owners fall short.  I would like to suggest that we, the community of gun owners, have some self-policing to do.

Here are some mishaps from personal memory:

1) A reloader intentionally overcharged his ammo so much that the ejector rod had to be banged on a picnic table to remove the shells after firing.
2) A shooter at a range, holding an automatic pistol that was loaded but not chambered, pulled the slide back, observed the empty chamber, declared "Yep, it's empty!" and released the slide (thus chambering a round.)
3) Two hunters were sighting in their rifles at an outdoor range.  One fired the rifle while the other stood downrange, about 6-10 feet to the right of the target, and hollered back "a little to the left!", etc.
4) I picked my weapon up off of the nightstand, ejected the magazine and opened the slide to verify what I already knew with 100% certainty: that the chamber was empty.  A bullet tumbled out of the chamber.  I'm still not sure how it got there.  I couldn't have been more shocked if a tiny motorcycle had driven out of it.
5) A man in my childhood trailerpark neighborhood devised a scheme to garner sympathy from his wife.  He would put an empty gun to his head and pull the trigger in a feigned suicide attempt.  The gun was not empty.
6) A WWII vet believed in a "common sense" approach that defied gun safety standards: a gun that had been verified empty could be handled as though it were not a dangerous thing.
7) The grandchild of that vet, having been raised with his philosophy on guns, would later dryfire an empty revolver out of a 2nd story window towards a grocery store parking lot to check the direction of cylinder rotation.
8) A person who had never fired a gun before took, as their only training, the 8-hour concealed carry course offered in South Carolina.  Though eager to learn, this person was still not familiar with firearms at the end of the course, but was about to be licensed to carry one in public.
9) At about 15 or 16, I would fire a weapon while someone was downrange because no one explained the range rules to me and in my (poor) judgment, everyone was sufficiently clear of my target (45-60 degrees away) for it to be safe to shoot at.
10) A police officer, thinking to make it safe to leave my gun in my car with me while writing my ticket, took the magazine out of it, did not clear the chamber, and left the other 2 magazines sitting there in the holster with the gun.
11) I accidentally reloaded a round with primer but no powder.  It lodged in the barrel; fortunately I noticed.
12) I accidentally reloaded a round with double powder.  That was hard to not notice.

Some of these have a single, simple answer:  The gun is always loaded.  I don't wish to trivialize this with a bumper-sticker phrases, however.  What I am suggesting is that rather than a gun culture, what we need is a gun safety culture.  Human error will never be eliminated, which is why safe procedures must not rely on perfect operators.   That doesn't mean that we should be tolerant, as a community, of less than perfect adherence to safety standards.  I don't think that we have to be judgy about it, but I do think we need to work to improve this, ourselves, and each other.

Most of the above were just near-incidents; no one was hurt except in the unintentional suicide.  But we cannot rely on luck to get us through these mistakes.  This gun that I'm about to pick up... this is a thing that kills people.  In my opinion, safety starts with that thought, with that level of respect for what we're doing.

Rather than shrug off the... what was it, 8? people who were accidentally shot at gun shows on "Gun Appreciation Day", we should be embarrassed, as a community, that this sort of ineptitude is present in our ranks.  I submit to you that we should be pushing to raise that bar.  It can only come from us, because for people outside of our community, the answer is actually simple: "I can't have a gun accident because I don't have or want any guns."  It's an approach that works, but it's not an approach that works for gun owners.  Our answer requires education, training, and care.

The question is: How do we do it?  What can we do to improve the safety awareness of the entire gun community?

The comment range is hot; fire at will.

Guns

I'm in the throes of flu and blogging about one of the most contentious political issues in our country.  What could go wrong?

I'll start by giving people an idea of where I'm coming from, and then I want to make a proposal that I think would address a lot of concerns on both sides while also pissing everyone off.  I submit this more as a discussion point than as a proposal that I think would seriously be implemented in the near future.

First, some of my views and assumptions, as well as criticisms of some common talking points:

1) "2nd Amendment advocates who think they need guns to protect against a hypothetical tyranny are delusional."  I disagree.  All political power and law ultimately comes down to force or the threat of it.  An armed populace has more power, is harder to oppress.  I acknowledge that the group who believes this (including me) intersects with people who believe that Obama is a Kenyan Muslim Anti-Christ who wants to use the U.N. to implement a New World Order, but let's not generalize by the nuts.
2) "If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns."  I'm suggesting a ban in almost no cases, but I still want to say that this statement ignores that flooding a market with legal guns makes them readily available to an illegitimate market.  It's also an assertion that we're essentially incapable of affecting the availability of guns to criminals, and I don't think we're as impotent as all that.
3) "If liberals think we can't effectively control drugs, then why do they think we can succeed at controlling guns?"  A great question, one that I think has to do with a difference in who provides the demand for each.  I will assume that we are able to be at least somewhat effective (I mean, there are countries that have done this.  It can't be impossible.)
4) There is basically no evidence that gun control, education programs, or concealed carry laws have any discernible effect on gun violence.  http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10881  More data is required.
5) One of the concerns of 2nd Amendment advocates is that there should not be a registry of all of their guns, so that a tyrannical government could not go door to door and round them up.
6) The crime rate among concealed carry holders is low, and the rate of gun crime is lower yet.  This isn't too surprising since concealed carry means registering with the state and submitting fingerprints in most places.  I suggest extending this model.
7) Long rifles are sufficient to defend against a tyrannical government.  (Imagine occupying Iraq.  Now imagine 10x the people and 20x the geographical area to secure.)
8) Current concealed carry laws are a tapestry of varying regulations that is honestly very annoying if you're trying to legally bring a firearm with you on a road trip.  I have literally had to stop the car at a state line and transfer my weapon from one location to another to meet the law.  Not to mention all that research if you're crossing a lot of states.  Ugh.
9) Rifles are rarely used in crimes.  This may change as the availability shifts, but lack of concealability is a major issue.
10) Many gun deaths are associated with a gun that is owned by someone in the household (suicide, domestic violence.)  I leave it to individuals to opt in or out of this risk.
11) Handguns create the lion's share of the problem.
12) Gun violence is mostly an urban issue.

In a nutshell, I propose almost no restrictions on long-rifles (what we have now) plus anonymity, I propose a registry for basically everything else similar to existing concealed carry requirements, closing the private seller loophole, and a federal (states must recognize) concealed carry law with more stringent requirements than current concealed carry regs.  I rely on the assumptions that people who are registering their weapons will be infrequent offenders, that handguns will become less available to the black market over time, and that long-rifles are a poor tool for urban crime.  Gun security requirements might decrease domestic shootings some, but owning a firearm will continue to be a risk factor.

A)  All sales, private or otherwise, must obtain a background check for the buyer through someone licensed to do that.
B) For long-rifle sales (not of concealable length, semi-automatic, capacity of 10-rounds or less), these queries shall be anonymized and no record kept of who the weapon was sold to after transferring possession.  This is to partially relieve registry concerns.  Requirements are 18+, basic background check, 3-day waiting.
C) For handguns and semi-automatic rifles (including "assault" and without restrictions to magazine capacity) 21+, background check, basic gun safety course certification, detailed registration (see below).
D) What I mean by detailed registration is:
      a.) Name, address, fingerprints, dna sample, a ballistic profile if that is a useful thing (I have no idea, I may have watched too much CSI here.), serial number of the weapon.
      b.) If the weapon is lost or stolen it must be reported within a reasonable timeframe, and there is a small to moderate civil fine regardless.  False reports carry criminal liability.  Knowingly failing to report carries criminal liability.
      c.) Reasonable precautions must be taken to guard the weapon against unauthorized users.  Failure to do so can result in modest criminal sanctions against the registered owner if the gun is used in a crime.  (But not if reasonable precautions have been taken, and also not if the weapon was reported lost/stolen before it was used in a crime.)
      d.) Household members can be authorized as a user if they meet the requirements to own such a weapon themselves.  Responsibility for safe-keeping of the weapon in this case is shared but not diminished, but a crime committed by an authorized user does not impart criminal liability onto anyone else.  An exception is also made for gun sharing during hunting, sportsmanship, at the shooting range, etc.
      e.) Sale of the weapon requires a change of registration and for the buyer to meet all requirements.
E) Optional anonymous buyback for anyone who does wish to register a weapon.
F) Automatic/burst weapons are banned.  (Like, actually banned, not "effectively banned.")  Mandatory buyback compensates the owner for the fair market cost of the gun (these weapons are very expensive.)  Nobody uses spray-N-pray, anyway.
G) Federal Concealed Carry Permit.  25+, evaluation for stability, detailed registration as above plus a more extensive course, one that would take a pure novice into competency with a weapon.  The course will be good for any weapon and the license will be "shall issue" and respected in all 50-states.
H) Firearms Trust.  A situation may arise where a person owns a weapon, perhaps through inheritance, that they are not qualified to possess. Such weapons may be placed into a trust for safe keeping, and the owner may sell or will or assign the weapon to someone else normally, or just keep it in trust until they are qualified to possess it.  Automatic weapons may be held in such trusts (if the owner is hopeful that the law will one day change, for example.)
I) Antiques and permanently disabled weapons are subject to basically no restrictions (or whatever it is exactly that we have now.)
J) Provisions for legal transport shall be made for people without concealed carry permits who are traveling to engage in hunting, sportsmanship, etc.
K)  No carry in public of any kind, with the exceptions of J), without the Federal Permit.

I have chosen Wisely

Literally.

Aly & I are getting married in a week and I, Lance Armstrong, am going to become Lance Wisely.

There are a number of reasons for this.  (Seven, apparently.)

1) Changing my name represents transformation to me.  Armstrong and Wisely already have their own connotations as a word or word group, but my family name also carries meaning to me from my personal experiences.  Much of that is negative - my father in particular emphasized physical strength and intimidation, was full of bluster, sexism, racism, and a deep lack of concern for anyone but himself and those he considered to be, at that particular moment, extensions of himself.

I do not wish to be him, and to me, becoming Lance Wisely carries that meaning, as well as the lifelong quest for knowledge and wisdom that I'm happy to be defined by.  Wisely embodies who I want to be, and Armstrong doesn't.

2) I'm a little tired of having a famous name.  It does make self-promotion a little easier, so it's not all bad.  Everyone does make the same 3 or 4 clever jokes at the checkout counter, though.  It was cute for about 5 years.

3) Aly left this choice to me.  She was willing to change her name if that was what I wanted, and largely indifferent to which choice I made.  In fact, if she had a preference, I'm not sure what it was, and I've asked several times.

This disarms a lot of things in my brain that would normally interfere with a decision like this.  Competitiveness, control issues, masculine identity, and so on.  Not framing the conversation as a conflict is a big part of creating a space where I'm emotionally capable of making choices that aren't reflexive.

4) Related to #3, my culture disapproves of this sort of thing.  When someone tells me what to do, my reflexive response is:

Fuck you, culture!  Honeybadger doesn't give a shit!  (It isn't an accident that I work for myself.)

5) Less reflexively, there's a gender norm here that is worth breaking.  Women sometimes change their names, and sometimes don't, and sometimes hyphenate or something.  Men generally don't change their names; it's still a little taboo.  That is going to start conversations, and those conversations are going to be about gender roles.  Most of them are going to start with some version of an attack on my masculinity, and present an opportunity for me to challenge those assumptions.

6) It's the more interesting choice.  What will happen if she changes her name to Armstrong?  Nothing, mostly.  That's what lots of people do; it's expected.  What will happen if I change my name to Wisely?  Shit, man, I'm not sure.  That's kinda uncharted.  At minimum I'll have those gender conversations, as well as a bit more insight into what it has been like for women to change their names.  It's something that has provoked a lot of soul searching - your name is your identity, after all.

7) I want to be an example of freedom from these expectations to my children.  You can't tell kids that gender norms are bullshit when you're happily living them.  I don't care what my children do or don't do with their names if they marry, but I do want them to feel comfortable discussing all of the possibilities with their spouse.  Are we going to have individual names or a family name?  What would that family name be?

It's a small piece of what real equality sounds like.

The change is going to be inconvenient in a lot of ways - so many accounts and contacts to change names with. Plus, I own a business!  The complications should be temporary, though, and these other aspects will be present for a lifetime.  Fortunately NC is one of a handful of states that will let a man change his name in a steamlined fashion when getting married.  I'm already wishing "streamlined" meant "with a magic wand."

My favorite thing about Christianity

Is kindness towards imperfection.  The concepts of forgiveness, and redemption.  The act of extending  social graces to people who are hostile, or who otherwise transgress community values.  The belief in the ability of each of us to be better people and better members of the community when loved and supported.

I really like that.  I don't know what fraction of Christians actually practice this, but I feel like this value is more present in that community than in others that I have experienced.

I don't believe that its always appropriate to love your enemies or turn your cheek.  A person must use some judgment in determining how to respond to an opponent.  Anger, ridicule, and even violence can be context appropriate responses.  Those things are not off the table, but we seem to have forgotten that compassion is an available and attractive option.  Also, escalation is easy.  De-escalation, not so much.

Humanizing people is always worth doing, regardless.  I can humanize Osama Bin Laden, but I still believe killing him was the best available course of action.  Even in the case of someone that you might be inclined to denounce as evil, humanization is valuable.  It's humbling, for starters.  Even the Nazis were regular people.  Had families and spent time with their children.  Liked dogs.  Experienced fear, and wanted to build a better world.  These people were not "other", they were not intrinsically, necessarily immoral, as a group.  They did not think of themselves as villains.  They were as human as you, and when you absorb that it becomes a cautionary tale against what we are capable of doing to others when we believe that we are in the right.

In less extreme cases, our enemies may morph into mere opponents.  Our opponents may further transform into people we disagree with only on specific issues.  There is so much complexity in the world, in a culture, in each human being.  We are not cardboard cutouts, or caricatures, or archetypes.  We are not straw-people.


Many of our contentious interactions are religious or political.  We're talking to Christians and Muslims and Atheists.  We're talking to Republicans and Democrats and a whole spectrum of people who are disgusted with both.  We're talking to people who are "anti-choice" or "anti-life", to "feminazis" and "rape-culture apologists".  Probably we're just talking at them.  I am not suggesting false balance here, nor condemning moral outrage or confrontation.  I am saying that one or several problematic positions do not define a whole person, even if those positions are thoroughly awful, and that the possibility for redemption is always there.*

We are not able to dialogue with straw-people, because the scarecrow doesn't have a brain (no wonder he disagrees with me!)  To have cooperation there must be a good-faith conversation with real people.  We must acknowledge that we might be wrong, or that they might be wrong and still not be Hitler.  We might both be wrong, or we may be disagreeing about a topic on which objective truth is difficult to access.  Too often single points of disagreement lead to the stance that an opponent's entire character must be flawed.  Cardboard cutouts are only useful at the shooting range.

A diplomat was asked: "Do you trust Iran?"
"I trust Iran to act in their own self-interest.", he replied.

This was not a slight, but a powerful statement about the nature of diplomacy.  If we can find common interests, then we can find grounds for cooperation, even if you don't like me.  Even competing companies, who supposedly treat their adversaries with gladiatorial ruthlessness, engage in coopetition.  This is possible because it is in the best interest of both to do so, because many games are not zero-sum even among clear competitors.  I have deep problems with the right-wing evangelical juggernaut that is Focus on the Family, but they and I both believe that reducing the backlog of children waiting for adoption is a worthwhile thing to do.  We have common ground, and could potentially cooperate on that specific endeavor.

I think it's hyperbole to suggest that creating a wider sense of community is necessary.  We can, and do, get along without it.  We will probably survive as groups even if things come to bloodshed, and some of us don't survive as individuals.  I do think that a wider sense of community is necessary to human flourishing, however.  We have a choice here.  It isn't between annihilation and utopia,  but  between a spectrum of possible conflict and a spectrum of possible cooperation.  One of these choices is clearly better than the other.  We virtually all want to be good, and do good, and experience good things.  People simply disagree on what that means, and how best to get there.  There may be limits to the common ground we can find without compromising personal principles, but a quick survey of the landscape tells me that our conversations are stopping far short of those borders.

Sometimes its just a question of what we choose to emphasize.

*Psychopaths are a special case, and one that I'm ignoring here.

Election Economics: We've got our minds on our money, and our money on our minds.

We're all thinking about the economy, why it sucks, and what to do about it.  Here's some data for you:

First, debt. Nancy Pelosi was rated Pants on Fire (No!  Bad Senator!  Bad!) for her graph of who increased the debt by how much.  She fixed the most glaring issue and came up with this one, which still had to be fixed further because it was based on only part of Obama's current administration.  The numbers for everyone but Obama are correct, and I've fixed the Obama numbers, so this graph is right now.

I took the current debt ($16B) and the CBO projections for debt at the end of 2012 under a hypothetical Obama administration, and came up with 55% (dark blue, present increase) and 74% (light blue, increase by 2012) , respectively.  Couple of things to keep in mind:
1) These numbers are percentage increases, and the percentages are of a larger number as we move from left to right on the graph.  1% is more (a lot more) during the Obama administration than it is during Reagan's.
2) These numbers are not shown as a % of GDP
3) With an increase from about $10.6T to about $16T, the swelling of federal debt under Obama has been truly massive.  This is partly his own relatively modest spending increases, partly previous spending committments from W. Bush, and partly reduced federal revenues from the economic downswing and tax breaks.


Here's the net loss/gain of jobs by month (large version here)

That's certainly an improvement from when Obama took office.  There's another view of similar information here.

Now let's look at GDP:

The notch of that "V" is 2009.  GDP is back up and higher than ever.

The Dow Jones has not returned to its historic high, but it's doing quite well:

And corporate profits are at a record high:



And tax rates are lower than they have been in recent history.  So all of those job creators are actually doing really well.  Improvement in jobs tends to come late in a recovery though, and this recovery has been a slow one.  We're the bright blue line labeled as the 2007 recession.

This recession was also particularly deep (I believe the Obama presidency starts at the 12 month mark on this graph, right when employment was in the middle of a swan dive.)

That said, we stopped our economy from hemoraghing jobs faster in the U.S. than some other economies:

The stimulus package in particular is credited with adding somewhere in the ballpark of 1.8 million jobs, depending on who you ask.  See that red line heading back up a full 2 years before the blue one?  As bad as we've had it, things could have been a lot worse.

If you believe in supply-side economics then all of those job creators riding our record GDP, strong stock market, record profits, and low tax rates should turn into a fountain of jobs any day now.  I'm not holding my breath.

We've stopped the bleeding, and things are improving, slowly.  If you're rich you're doing pretty well.  If not, we still haven't made up for the massive unemployment spike from the 08-09 nosedive, and household income is still down by something like $4k/year.

I actually feel pretty good about what Obama has done with what he was given.  Romney appears to be proposing more of the same "let's cut taxes for the rich and wait for the jobs-fairy" plan that has been the GOP party line for some time now.  You know, the same one that Bush used.  I'm not buying it anymore, and I'm not sure why anyone else is.

Henry Blodget lays out the difference between the Obama approach and the Romney approach going forward.  They both have their merits, but my preference is clear.  Private economic activity is still weak, and excessive austerity measures would, in the short term, take the recovery backwards some.  Do you see that downward blip at year 8 on the gray line (Great Depression) above?  That's austerity measures in 1937.  I would not like to see one of those blips on our chart.  Obama's plan perhaps does not go far enough to address our debt issues, and that is worth considering, but let's get this jobs economy rolling again before we get too crazy with the hatchet.