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It was the California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation that refused the surgery to the inmates.  When the inmates fought the policy in court, as Attorney General of California, it was Harris’s job to represent the Department.  Yes, she did it, but it wasn’t something she decided on her own to do.  (Also, not for nothing, the inmates won the case.)

Her characterization of the episode:   “On that issue I will tell you I vehemently disagree and in fact worked behind the scenes to ensure that the Department of Corrections would allow transitioning inmates to receive the medical attention that they required, they needed and deserved,” Harris said.

A policy now exists for inmates to receive transition-related care in California prisons (although apparently the DoC isn’t doing a great job of holding up its end of the bargain*--quelle surprise).  

(*For the record, Harris finished her time as AG and became a Senator shortly after this agreement was reached, so it’s someone else’s job now to enforce it.) 

The thing to keep in mind here is that, as Attorney General, Kamala Harris couldn’t wave her hand and have everything in the entire California Department of Justice go exactly as she wanted it--and she won’t be able to as Vice President, either.  We currently have a president who thinks that’s how it works, and we’re damned lucky he’s wrong.  

She had (and will have to) work with large number of people who hold different views.  (Another article I read said that the California Department of Justice, which she ran as AG, employs about 4,800 people--that’s a lot of different views.)  If she had refused to back the Department of Corrections in their case, she would have alienated people whose cooperation she needed to be able to rely on.  (If she even had the option of not backing them and staying AG--I’m not sure how it works, exactly.)  Even people who agreed with her about the specific matter might have disapproved of her hanging her subordinates out to dry.  (Another thing our current president does constantly--notice how Harris isn’t saying that the person in her office who actually wrote these briefs is a bad guy that she barely knew.)

So here’s what actually happened when Kamala Harris “fought against transwomen in prison seeking gender affirmation surgery”:

The Department of Corrections had a policy denying gender-affirmation surgery to inmates.  

Two inmates fought that policy in court.

Harris defended that policy in court (or, more accurately, was the supervisor of the person who did so--but the legal documents went out under her signature, and she takes responsibility for their content).

Harris also worked to change the policy.  

If you’ve had a job, you’ve probably been in the position of having to carry out a policy that you don’t agree with.  Your choices are to quit your job in protest or stay and argue that the policy should change.  If you pick option B, you still have to follow the policy while you’re working to change it--again, just about the only person in the world who doesn’t know this is Donald J. Trump, because he’s never had a real job where he answered to anybody.  

The law, especially in a democracy, is a slow and frustrating thing. Lawyers are sometimes put in positions where they are presenting arguments for something they may disagree with.

The reason why a lawyer would agree to do this often comes down to the political theory that we must rigorously and honestly test ideas, and that requires cogent emphatic arguments from both sides.

It’s easy to say in this case that the correct result should be obvious, But we can’t just design a system that says “oh but you can skip the full legal process for stuff that is clearly right/wrong”

BECAUSE THEN THE PEOPLE WHO DISAGREE WITH YOU TAKE THAT IDEA AND USE IT TO PUT YOU AND YOUR FRIENDS IN JAIL OR EXECUTE YOU.

So yes, we apply this really onerous process to things that seem really obvious because we must apply the same standard to everything.

Okay.

Remember Kim Davis, that (now former) county clerk in Kentucky who, in 2015, refused to issue same-sex marriage licenses because of her religious beliefs?

But ignoring the law, pretending you're not bound by it, yeah, that's what entitled, privileged people do. People who think the law doesn't apply to them.

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some info, crowdstrike is essentially an antivirus software for enterprises. which means normal laypeople cant really get it, they're for businesses and organisations and important stuff.

so, on a friday evening (it of course wasnt friday everywhere but it was friday evening in oceania which is where it first started causing damage due to europe and na being asleep), crowdstrike pushed out an update to their windows users that caused a bug.

before i get into what the bug is, know that friday evening is the worst possible time to do this because people are going home. the weekend is starting. offices dont have people in them. this is just one of many perfectly placed failures in the rube goldburg machine of crowdstrike. there's a reason friday is called 'dont push to live friday' or more to the point 'dont fuck it up friday'

so, at 3pm at friday, an update comes rolling into crowdstrike users which is automatically implemented. this update immediately causes the computer to blue screen of death. very very bad. but it's not simply a 'you need to restart' crash, because the computer then gets stuck into a boot loop.

this is the worst possible thing because, in a boot loop state, a computer is never really able to get to a point where it can do anything. like download a fix. so there is nothing crowdstrike can do to remedy this death update anymore. it is now left to the end users.

it was pretty quickly identified what the problem was. you had to boot it in safe mode, and a very small file needed to be deleted. or you could just rename crowdstrike to something else so windows never attempts to use it.

it's a fairly easy fix in the grand scheme of things, but the issue is that it is effecting enterprises. which can have a looooot of computers. in many different locations. so an IT person would need to manually fix hundreds of computers, sometimes in whole other cities and perhaps even other countries if theyre big enough.

another fuck up crowdstrike did was they did not stagger the update, so they could catch any mistakes before they wrecked havoc. (and also how how HOW do you not catch this before deploying it. this isn't a code oopsie this is a complete failure of quality ensurance that probably permeates the whole company to not realise their update was an instant kill). they rolled it out to everyone of their clients in the world at the same time.

and this seems pretty hilarious on the surface. i was havin a good chuckle as eftpos went down in the store i was working at, chaos was definitely ensuring lmao. im in aus, and banking was literally down nationwide.

but then you start hearing about the entire country's planes being grounded because the airport's computers are bricked. and hospitals having no computers anymore. emergency call centres crashing. and you realised that, wow. crowdstrike just killed people probably. this is literally the worst thing possible for a company like this to do.

crowdstrike was kinda on the come up too, they were starting to become a big name in the tech world as a new face. but that has definitely vanished now. to fuck up at this many places, is almost extremely impressive. its hard to even think of a comparable fuckup.

Once again: