I confess… I have a gravatar now so I just wanted to see how this would work. Here’s me digging for something to write about off the cuff…
Well, more shootings here again today.
http://www.rnews.com/Story_2004.cfm?ID=55660&rnews_story_type=18I’m not sure if we need a guy randomly hugging everyone in the city like in that Dave Mathews video or if the cure is some guy like Charles Bronson lurking in the shadows taking out the thugs.
I doubt seriously either would help and I’m willing (at face value anyway) to put more stock into the new “zero tolerance” policy the city cops are using. However, you gotta watch it with things like that. Civil Liberties start to get tred on a bit and… well it’s just a slippery slope is all I’m getting at.
Anyone else think Zero Tolerance is the stupidest name ever? What, did we tolerate crime before? Eh, he just robbed somebody… the guy’s probably got some drugs to buy and he needed the money.
The sad thing is, even with all this it still doesn’t seem to be curbing the violence.
http://www.13wham.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=2672200d-c13c-4716-844f-1e80053d5c72&rss=102(Armed forces patrolling the streets under strict rules and arresting anyone who looks suspicious isn’t stopping the violence? Sound a little like any other place you know that rhymes with IRAQ?)
The constant shootings made me think back to watching “Bowling for Columbine,” which I’ll have to see about renting or buying or whatever. Micheal Moore has these comparisons to Canada that made it sound like paradise to me. (below is a page with some statistics)
I heard some more talk from a few lefties about people moving up north if the 2008 elections don’t swing in a favorable result.
First of all, I had a great time the last time I was in Toronto. They have a better vibe for music there. People have a different kind of appreciation of art there - more European. Everyone seemed easier going too. Lots of different people all mixing it up together as well… not so divided like us.
Next, I’m a fan of Hockey. I’m pissed that with all the Football it’s nearly impossible to catch a Hockey game. I usually hate sports but there’s something about Hockey that I dig.
I love Neil Young, Hayden, The Band, and I’m sure numerous other Canadian musicians that did the Americana sound better then Americans.
I’ve got a fondness for trains, flannel, maple syrup, pine trees & forests & lakes and all that untouched wilderness stuff…
Needless to mention free universal health-care! How about a relaxed attitude towards marijuana? (Now if I could just convince the wife to relax a bit about it too…)
All in all, I bet I could get along just fine in Canada.
… that is, as long as nobody tried to rape me. (See statistics or that’s going to sound odd.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Canada
Couple of things: one, thanks for grabbing the Gravatar, but it appears as though you might have associated it with the wrong email account. It needs to be the same email account you used to register on this site. As a test, try commenting on one of my posts and see if your Gravatar shows up then. Any questions, let me know.
Second, linking! In your editor, if you look, you will see an icon that looks like a link in a chain. Select the text you want to create a link on, then paste your link into the window that opens. That way, you won’t have long links that break up the flow of your article.
As for “Zero Tolerance,” well, Duffy knows better and has said so publicly prior to getting elected. But when you’re an elected official and people are looking for you to do something about crime, you tend to take the most obvious, rather than the most effective (which is usually hard to explain). Crime in the inner city is never going to change until you do something to fundamentally change life for the people who live there. Having more cops, who are already seen as combative in the first place, patrolling the neighborhood only leads to further isolation.
So, jobs programs, better education in schools, rigorous enforcement of lead abatement legislation (lead poisons kid’s brains, leads to learning disabilities even in small quantities, and hence leads to the unemployable young adults who so often commit crime), and money, money, money. That’s the only thing that’s going to come close to solving the problem.