[asterisk-biz] Re: OT: Gore Still Ahead
Matthew Rubenstein
email at mattruby.com
Thu Oct 5 18:52:31 MST 2006
On Thu, 2006-10-05 at 19:53 -0400, C F wrote:
> On 10/5/06, Matthew Rubenstein <email at mattruby.com> wrote:
> > On Thu, 2006-10-05 at 12:02 -0500, James wrote:
> > > OK,
> > >
> > > Send your kid to public school.
> > > If he survives the random shootings and the drugs,
> >
> > Practically everyone survives public school without any shootings. The
> > drugs are even worse in private schools (I can attest), as can be the
> > violence (ditto). Home schooling can create kids with even worse
> > antisocial problems.
>
> I went to private school all my life, I have never seen what drugs
> looks like in real life (not even outside school), and yes I grew up
> in Brooklyn. I guess the private school you went to is worse than the
> public school system.
> I do agree though on the home schooling.
I went to private school in the 1980s in the richest zipcode in the USA
(2 miles outside NYC). Drugs everywhere. I also went to Andover, Bush
Jr's highschool: drugs anywhere. And I live in Brooklyn, which has had
so much drug use that it takes willful shelter to never see it (which is
available in some private schools). Avoiding all contact with drugs is
mainly dependent on one's parents, with which I'm sure we both agree.
> > > then you can send him to
> > > the District of Columbia to be an aid.
> > > There he can be influenced by powereful men (and women) to do some really
> > > neat things.
> >
> > That is clearly the problem. The power of politicians to escape
> > responsibility exactly when they must be *more* responsible than the
> > general public. The government as a whole is infected: cops can kill
> > someone without justification and just get fired, when anyone else would
> > go to jail. America has reversed our fundamental philosophy of
> > distrusting the government, running it so wrongdoers are more easily
> > caught, into creating a privileged class (which is increasingly
> > hereditary, in dynasties).
>
> Couldn't agree more with you on this, it's a problem with any type of
> government;
>
> "The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation
> with the average voter."
>
> ~ Winston Churchill
>
> "Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others
> that have been tried."
>
> ~ Winston Churchill
There we go, agreeing again.
> > > He can live in a city where violent crime is high and civilians can't buy a
> > > handgun to protect themselves.
> >
> > Or in the country where people shoot each other because they can get
> > away with it. NYC was much less safe when we could easily buy handguns.
> > The violent crime rates are usually higher where guns are easier to get.
> > More urban states are more or less in the middle, so clearly there's
> > another controlling factor than whether a target lives in a city or not.
>
> It is still very easy to get a handgun in the City, it's just very
> hard to hide it. The NYPD at the moment has more intelligence on the
> street than the CIA has about OBL. They are one of the most
> sophisticated intelligence agency that exists, except that it gathers
> intelligence only for street crimes and not for politics, or military.
> Their crime stats program doesn't allow for either a cop to get
> corrupted in a neighborhood, or for the crime to jump just in one
> place.
No, it's not easy. Believe me, my family has had handguns and other
guns for generations, often defending family businesses in bad areas of
NYC (Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx). I've known of people getting
illegal guns to buttress their paranoia through the decades. And it's
much harder now to get a gun in NYC. So much harder that most of them
come from other states, but still fewer come in.
If you're using cop corruption as a measure of how tight is NYPD intel,
then you should at least read the NY Post, though Google can help, too:
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22corrupt%20cops%22%20nyc%20-movie%
20-film . Much tighter, of course, is the "Blue Wall" that covers up cop
corruption. And then there's the stats that cover up NYC crime rates,
converting violent crimes to less enraging stats. And then there's the
crimes by cops who intimidate people into keeping their crimes in the
neighborhoods cops don't protect, so they don't get reported. Most of
the crime drop is the result of social services since the late 1960s
that have reduced the numbers of desperate people who do crime. But I
don't expect you believe that, because it shows how abortions, foster
care, violence education, job training, and other engagement of poor
people by government people can make everyone's lives better, without
using a gun to get there. AFAICT, we don't agree that much.
> > > While he is learing how to avoid being raped or mugged, he can dodge the
> > > terrorist plane crashings.
> >
> > I don't think a single incident has any statistical significance. I
> > don't think the 9/11/2001 planebombings indicate anything about what
> > it's like to live in a city, or have anything to do with any of this.
> > Except maybe a reflection of how you hate NYC, and find an excuse to say
> > those planebombings are "just another bad thing that happens in NYC". As
> > a New Yorker, I think that sucks.
> >
> >
> > > Responsibility starts at home, with the parents. Would you really want to
> > > send your child out to play on the "Hill"?
> > > Most aids come from affluent households with educated parents.
> > > I would guess that there's not a one of them that would have morgatged thier
> > > house and loand Foley the money for a year, but they freely hand over their
> > > children...
> >
> > The bigger point being made about Foley's child molesting is how it was
> > being covered up by his fellow Republicans. How are the kid's parents to
> > blame for that? Even if what the abused page's sponsoring Rep, Rodney
> > Alexander (R-LA), said was true, that the kid's parents, when
> > "informed", said they didn't want to make a big deal over it, that
> > doesn't excuse the rest of those Republicans from ignoring their
> > responsibility to protect the rest of the pages.
> >
> > It's hard to blame most parents for trusting that their kids won't be
> > sexually abused by letting them work for Congressmembers. Until now.
> > Which is some of the extreme damage done to our country by Foley and his
> > coverup conspiracy.
> >
> >
> > > Foley screwed up and I think the latest remarks about alcoholism and being
> > > molested as a child are copouts.
> >
> > That's clear to us individuals watching closely, but already yesterday
> > I heard a 5-second radio news bulletin that mentioned Foley as a child
> > molesting Congressman, contextualized with "Foley claims he was abused
> > as a child by a clergyman". Millions of people are hearing this story
> > peripherally to their real lives, boiled down to those two details.
> > Foley deliberately threw that out there to define himself as "the
> > molested Congressman" rather than "the molester Congressman". What a
> > scumbag. And if others in his coverup conspiracy planned that media spin
> > with him, they should burn, too.
> >
> >
> > > Yes, it is time to clean house. Five year term limits for a couple of
> > > generations will do more to cure these problems than any arguments about
> > > Republicans or Democrats.
> >
> > I don't think that term limits do nearly as much as reporting
> > politicians' records to voters. When incumbents are found manipulating
> > the electoral process, that is a reason for term limits. But when their
> > party is conspiring to cover up their lawbreaking, their exploitation of
> > children in the government's care, then term limits mean nothing. Unless
> > you mean forced turnover of a party's majority, which is clearly
> > antidemocratic, though perhaps consistently republican (small letters
> > intended). The real reform is to outlaw parties as illegal conspiracies,
> > which they of course always are, even when they're not conspiring to
> > protect child molesters. Maybe just outlaw exclusive party membership,
> > but then criminal conspirators will game that system.
> >
> > I say we start by throwing out the party which has specifically proven
> > it is covers up child molestation by its members. Republicans were
> > getting thrown out anyway - it's a gift to them that they can blame
> > Foley for "losing Congress", rather than everything else people are
> > holding against them this year.
> >
> >
> > > James Taylor
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > ----- Original Message -----
> > > From: "Jay R. Ashworth" <jra at baylink.com>
> > > To: <email at mattruby.com>; "Commercial and Business-Oriented Asterisk
> > > Discussion" <asterisk-biz at lists.digium.com>
> > > Sent: Thursday, October 05, 2006 10:04 AM
> > > Subject: Re: [asterisk-biz] Re: OT: Gore Still Ahead
> > >
> > >
> > > > On Thu, Oct 05, 2006 at 12:03:28AM -0400, Matthew Rubenstein wrote:
> > > >> Are you looking for ways to excuse the child molesting Foley did just
> > > >> because he continued carrying on after the boys were legally men?
> > > >
> > > > Let's be *perfectly clear* here, shall we?
> > > >
> > > > "Talking dirty" to them does not constitute "child molestation" under
> > > > any construction of anyone's law that I'm aware of.
> > > >
> > > > And 16 isn't exactly a child, either.
> > > >
> > > >> What kind of depraved child molester protector are you? Other than
> > > >> "Republican" - that much is so obvious that it's redundant. Now tell us
> > > >> that I shouldn't go so hard on Foley, because it's not his fault that
> > > >> god made him gay.
> > > >
> > > > You can go as hard on Foley as you like. I hope he takes the whole,
> > > > sordid, hypocritical Republican establishment down with him. just lets
> > > > be hard on him for the right reasons: he owed a duty to his
> > > > constituency not to get embroiled in a scandal, and he owed a duty to
> > > > those pages *specifically*, because he was or had been in a position of
> > > > direct power and control over them. He failed in those duties.
> > > >
> > > > Would this have been less likely to have happened had he been out about
> > > > his preference? (For men, I mean, not for boys.) Yeah, probably.
> > > >
> > > > Is it society's fault that he felt he needed to be even partially in
> > > > the closet? Yes?
> > > >
> > > > Am *I* gay? No.
> > > >
> > > > Do I want people to confuse me for Donald Rumsfeld? Not even on your
> > > > birthday. :-)
> > > >
> > > > You can tell the repubs apart from the dems because, by and large, the
> > > > dems utilise the tools of rational argument, and are calm and cool, and
> > > > the repubs appeal to emotion, fear, and (dare we say this) terror.
> > > >
> > > > Not all of either side, certainly, but a statistically significant
> > > > majority.
> > > >
> > > > Alas, demagoguery works better with the electorate than pedagogy.
> > > >
> > > > Cheers,
> > > > -- jra
> > > > --
> > > > Jay R. Ashworth
> > > > jra at baylink.com
> > > > Designer Baylink RFC
> > > > 2100
> > > > Ashworth & Associates The Things I Think '87
> > > > e24
> > > > St Petersburg FL USA http://baylink.pitas.com +1 727 647
> > > > 1274
> > > >
> > > > "That's women for you; you divorce them, and 10 years later,
> > > > they stop having sex with you." -- Jennifer Crusie; _Fast_Women_
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> > --
> >
> > (C) Matthew Rubenstein
> >
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--
(C) Matthew Rubenstein
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