I think you would be surprised at how many college educated white people think that they are colorblind and that race is no longer an issue.
It wasn't all that long ago that blacks were being lynched in this country and the economic and social scars are still ugly and raw. While whites tend to have equity, blacks tend to have debt. We can trace this straight back to the days when white men were whipping black people in the cotton fields and more recently to Jim Crow laws and housing discrimination. If our parents were prevented from living in any but the poorest parts of town and couldn't borrow a dime or make a decent wage we'd stand a much lower chance of getting an education and a much higher chance of criminality as well. The very idea that the average person can go from nothing to something is bullshit. It happens occasionally but for most people they'll be lucky to do slightly better than their parents. And what is slightly better than living in a housing projects with your grandma because your mother had a heart attack at 25 while smoking crack (ten year old neighbor of mine)? Renting an unsubsidized apartment? Actually graduating high school? Assitant manager at a retail store?
Remember, we can't solve the problems of our school system by "throwing money at them" so it's best to starve them to death according to the neo-cons so the schools that serve the worst off amongst us end up having the least money to help these children. All those private schools out there are sitting empty waiting for inner city kids with vouchers to come take a seat, right? Bullshit. It's a mess and the policies of the neo-cons make it worse. The under-served poor children of this country (disproportionally black) are the ones most likely to be lured into ciminality and thus it is more likely they will commit a murder. Note that in other civilized countries the murder rate tends to be much much lower and there is only one factor that correlates to this lower rate: the strength of the welfare state. The neo-cons have convinced us that welfare is evil but I personally think that a much lower crime rate is a pretty good trade-off for something that's never cost more than a few percent of our budget. War, on the other hand, is good according to the neo-cons and we sure do spend a lot on that, like over 70% of our budget. But liberals are bad so...
We can ignore race briefly in the question of the death penalty. How about the insane? Texas kills people that are so fucked up the only way they can get them straight enough to know they're being killed is to shoot them so full of thorazine that they drool. Texas also regularly kills people that are fantasticly retarded. Do we actually gain anything from this? Oh, that's right, Reagan eliminated our public mental health system so we have no place to treat these people other than prison or the execution chamber. Again, I think that's barbaric, but call me an evil liberal for wanting to help people rather than hurt them.
Even the person convicted of the most heinous of murders will not kill again if he/she is locked in a maximum security prison without chance of parole for the rest of his/her life. As one person stated in the report, the death penalty creates a whole new set of victims. In the interest of justice we must be very careful when killing a convict (unlike the way it's done in Iraq) to do our best to make sure we are killing the right person. This means the trial must be replayed over and over again and the victim's loved ones have to have the incident refreshed for them again and again in excruciating detail. And that is still no guarantee that we've gotten it right. The Innocence Project has freed 14 people that were sentenced to death since 1992. That seems to me to be about 14 too many wrongful convictions. How many innocent people with no DNA evidence have been killed in this country? How many is an acceptable number? I say there is no acceptable rate of error.
TankAzz, of course I came out swinging. I throw the ball out to the haters and they ducked. I'm really tired of people letting it pass when these neo-con dumbshits spout off without any kind of logic or reason. I think ZSpider trying to turn Meadows into some kind of troop hater really set me off. Stupid fucker. He knows she meant the legislators that approved the war. Not a single one of the Republicans has a child in the military though there are plenty of their children that are ripe for service. And only one Democrat has a child in the services so I'm not giving those that voted for war a break either, but rather than argue the point made, ZSpider tries to accuse the accuser. It's all lipservice to patriotism with no thought of collective or personal sacrifice or its effect on anyone else. Let the poor kids die so we can have cheap gasoline. They put a "Support Our Troops" sticker on their SUV so people will see it at the Walmart. He can afford the gasoline so he should be able to waste as much as he wants despite the fact we are at war. Until this fiasco we, as a people, have shared in the sacrifices with increased taxes to pay for the war, and rationing of materials and goods so they can be diverted to the war effort. But these people are happy to send someone else's kids off to die while they go shopping.
But ultimately what sticks in my craw is the utter lack of skill or thought these people "argue" with (and there are only three of them, not including the Pigster). Well, here was a chance for them to defend a basic tenant of the conservative platform and they hid. I would've been more than collegial if anyone had actually decided to take up the fight (I gave them a couple of days to come up with something). If you support something as heinous as the death penalty then you should be able to defend it. Belief is not enough. We're pissing away lives and treasure in this country and in senseless wars abroad and it's because the neo-cons are (were?) in control and their beliefs, not logic or reason, are how they steer their course. It's foolish and dangerous behavior to lead by faith alone.
"My job is to repeat things until they are true." --George W. Bush
Death Penalty
alan, you are pulling me in hard, but I promised myself to post less this year. I am sorry for not holding up my side of this fun game, which it is to me. I love to argue with the libs who spout "their" talking points, all the while chastising the other view point for the same. the death penalty, which I am against, is not going to go away soon. in my opinioon, a person can not be pro choice for abortion, but then against the death penalty. either all life is sacred, and worth saving, or else humans get to decide what form of life is throwaway. and of course that makes me the moral superior human being, as I am pro choice and pro death penalty. 
(at least this week)
I'm done..I promise.
(at least this week)
I'm done..I promise.
Positive vibes brah...positive vibes.
Why should anyone bother to argue with you, AE? We can just sit here and watch you completely discredit your own argument with your very public meltdown. Even in this forum I don't believe I've ever watched anyone spew so much shit in such a short period of time. Only a crazy man will be swayed by the ravings of a lunatic.
Please expound upon what exactly I've said that wasn't fact or well founded personal opinion. You can't offer one counter argument to any facts presented, can you? Not one. You call what I've said "shit" and "crazy" because I've represented the neo-cons correctly and you know it. Feel free to explain why I'm wrong. Call me names while you do it but don't just call me names. Show any level of understanding and knowledge about the world. I've given you several pages to rebut. Just throwing out insults is throwing poop. Stupid poop throwers.
[size=75]You are as bad as Alan, and even he hits the mark sometimes. -charlie
"Not all conservatives are stupid, but most stupid people are conservative." - John Stuart Mill[/size]
"Not all conservatives are stupid, but most stupid people are conservative." - John Stuart Mill[/size]
This isn't true at all, and hasn't been true maybe ever. Now if you mean actively deployed... well no, that isn't true either.Alan Evil wrote:
Not a single one of the Republicans has a child in the military though there are plenty of their children that are ripe for service. And only one Democrat has a child in the services ....
I have a problem with a bunch of lily white pansies like Cheney, who discovered a deferment under every rock in the pasture, being such a goon with other people like he's playing Risk. Funny how he finds himself in this humanitarian epic when Gen. Powell had to rap his knuckles for suggesting nukes for Gulf War 1. He's a putz. It's less honest than Clinton's anti-war protests.
Maybe you were thinking of M.M.'s questioning congressmen as to whether their children were in the armed services. The ones he questioned (filmed) didn't. That's never been a litmus for supporting war.
There's no official tally on who's who regarding lawmaker's families.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib ... uncan.html
I guess the derail is from neocons? Oh well. The point is, weed out the
false stuff.
"The nuckle dragging south will keep murdering niggers until the rest of us make them stop."
Does "the rest of us" include the citizens of Colorado, Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana, Illinois, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexido, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.? All are listed as death penalty states, and none are in what I would call the South.
Does "the rest of us" include the citizens of Colorado, Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana, Illinois, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexido, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.? All are listed as death penalty states, and none are in what I would call the South.
Last edited by L K Day on Sun Jan 07, 2007 6:54 am, edited 4 times in total.
"I used the "n" word because that's the way most white people in the South think of blacks."
Really now? You need to hang with a better class of people. You couldn't choke the "n" word out of most of the Southerners I have known. Our mothers taught us better than to be bigotted idiots. Sure I've known racists in the South, just as I've known Northern racists but most Southerners I know are decent people in every respect and abhor racism.
Really now? You need to hang with a better class of people. You couldn't choke the "n" word out of most of the Southerners I have known. Our mothers taught us better than to be bigotted idiots. Sure I've known racists in the South, just as I've known Northern racists but most Southerners I know are decent people in every respect and abhor racism.
"In Savannah, Georgia I heard some dumb-ass cracker say 'God I hate a nigger' at least once a month."
Of the hundres of people you interact with every month, one reveals himself to be an out-and-out racist. This leads you to believe that most Southerners are bigots. You need to brush up on the ol' arithmetic, pal.
Of the hundres of people you interact with every month, one reveals himself to be an out-and-out racist. This leads you to believe that most Southerners are bigots. You need to brush up on the ol' arithmetic, pal.