Thursday, August 15, 2013

Going Off The Deep End To Balance Some Inequities?

More irreverence!

 

'Sox' it to 'em Barb/ George: http://www.youtube.com/embed/dx5ZE5nE9X8?rel=0
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New York Police not frisky anymore.

It is a normal human trait to form first impressions and when there is strong evidence the person you have identified fits a profile it is also human nature to act in a manner in accordance with that impression.

A liberal New York judge has now decided to protect people being stopped and frisked because it is against their constitutional right to be free of unreasonable search etc..  So she has decided to balance the equities in favor of those who might be prone to criminal acts, of which there is plenty of neighborhood evidence, and in doing so more deaths of innocents are likely to occur.

This is legal balancing of the equities and is based on the fact that PC'ism has seeped into virtually every aspect of our lives  Has it made us a safer more humane society?  Yes, in some instances.  We now have lowered curbs so it is easy for those incapacitated to cross streets etc.  Has it also resulted in dumbing down our society, wrecking education and some of our critical institutions? Yes, most assuredly.  Has it resulted in this president calling a  murder on an army base a work place incident?  Yes, it has, thereby depriving victims of compensation etc..

You decide are we better off in an overall sense or we have gone off the deep end in trying to rectify some wrongs. Have we stretched logic to a breaking point? (See 1 below.)
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Those who know me well know that I love the period from the late 1880's to the mid 1950's as being the one when America broke from the European Model in music,(Gershwin). literature (Dreiser, Hemingway etc.) and art (Ash Can School) and America stood out as a unique and emerging cultural force.

 Dr Astrith Balstan is an outstanding Israeli teacher and pianist and gives a wonderful description and rendition  of what George Gershwin was all about. One thing for sure George must have been ADD.

This is a must listen clip so sit back and enjoy and realize this is what makes Israel different from so many of the Arab and Muslim nations.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/w-nznS0FXKc?feature=player_detailpage
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'Rummy' right on! (See 2 below.)
Dick
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1)Pataki: Stop and Frisk Saved Thousands of Lives
By Wanda Carruthers



Former New York Gov. George Pataki Tuesday came out in defense of the stop and frisk policy of the New York Police Department, pointing to the lives that it's saved.

"The effect of the policy is thousands of lives that are saved, largely low-income, minority lives, because we have much lower rates of violent crime," the Republican said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."


On Monday, Federal Judge Shira A. Scheindlin ruled the stop and frisk tactics employed by police unconstitutional, calling it a policy that leads to "indirect racial profiling." 

The ruling came in response to lawsuits claiming the policy was biased against African-Americans and Hispanics. 

Pataki complained that the ruling would place "some Wall Street lawyer" in an overseer position to monitor the stop and frisk program who doesn't have the experience to substitute his judgment for a cop who's been walking a dangerous beat for 20 years. 

Reacting to claims that the stop and frisk program has only been used primarily in low-income and minority communities, Pataki agreed with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Policy Commissioner Ray Kelly that, "You go where the crime is if you want to stop the crime."

"It is, I think, a tribute to this mayor and police department that we are putting so much of our police emphasis in low-income neighborhoods, in high-crime neighborhoods," he added said.

Republican mayoral candidate Joe Llota also defended the law, saying, "Basically, this judge has put every great thing that's happened in New York City over the last 20 years at risk."

"Officers can still stop and frisk, but they're going to be handcuffed in how they do it," Llota said Tuesday on "Fox & Friends."

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2)Rumsfeld to Newsmax: Obama's Botched Handling of Egyptian Crisis Threatens Region
By Cathy Burke and Kathleen Walter

Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told Newsmax Wednesday that the Obama administration's botched handling of the situation in Egypt has now jeopardized the ability of the Egyptian military to keep order in the strife-torn nation.

As a result, the most populous country in the Middle East is now at risk of a civil war that could plunge the entire region into turmoil.

"The new secretary of state, Mr. Kerry, has been dealt a difficult hand," Rumsfeld, who served under Presidents Ford and George W. Bush, told Newsmax in an exclusive interview. He said the way the situation in the country has been handled by the Obama administration and, earlier, by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, "it seems to me was not terribly skillful."

On Wednesday, security forces stormed the Cairo protest camps of ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi's supporters in a long-anticipated assault that officials said led to nearly 280 deaths across Egypt.

In response to the violence, the army-backed interim government imposed a monthlong nationwide state of emergency and curfews in Cairo and 13 other provinces.

Authorities said 278 people were killed, including 43 policemen, with many of the deaths in Cairo but with the violence spreading from the capital and claiming lives across the country.

Rumsfeld said the administration misread the effect of early elections that voted in Morsi as president.

"The Muslim Brotherhood … is not secular as someone in the Obama administration has suggested, the director of national intelligence; it's not secular," Rumsfeld said. "It's Islamic and because they're the best organized and the toughest and the most ruthless, they won the election and control of the parliament and the effect has been that they've tried to impose a rule over the Egyptian people which is not what the people who have demonstrated in Tahrir Square wanted."

He also decried the deadly situation the Egyptian military must now manage, jeopardizing its "critical relationship" with the United States and its ability to remain an "anchor of stability in the country and in the region."

"The military has a tough relationship now to manage this situation because the country's in turmoil," Rumsfeld said. "The people that we've sent there to deal with the problem have not done a particularly skillful job in my view. It's unfortunate."

Still, Rumsfeld said it would be disastrous to cut off aid to a nation teetering on the brink of civil war.

"Egypt is an enormously important country," he said. "We can't determine the outcome there but we can play at the margins, so to speak, and we can be helpful and try to encourage a freer political system and a freer economic system and greater opportunity for the people there. Cutting off aid would be like severing our relationships with them and would be kind of a mindless act."

Rumsfeld said one only has to look at Syria to see what could ultimately happen in Egypt.

"There have been something between 80,000 and 100,000 people dead in Syria in opposition to the Assad regime," he said. "It's conceivable that could happen in Egypt," warning that the United States should not expect Egypt to mirror our own aspirations — and to not tie those aspirations to aid, saying it would be "an unrealistic, juvenile attitude."

Rumsfeld also blasted the Obama administration's head-in-the-sand anti-terrorism strategy, calling relations with terrorists "much more like the Cold War."

"The administration has been uniformly desirous of de-emphasizing the threat from Islamists and suggesting that it is something that they can prevail … with bullets and drone strikes, which is not the case," he said. "This is much more like the Cold War. It's going to last decades, not years, and it's going to take perseverance and persistence on the part of the United States and we have to be realistic. And the administration is not realistic about it. They're unwilling to even identify what the enemy is. They won't even use the word Islamist.

"They don't even acknowledge the fact that there are people being trained in a number of countries to go out and kill innocent men, women, and children who are American. And unless you're willing to do that, you're not likely to prevail over the long term."

Regarding Israel, Rumsfeld said our ally could do nothing but defend its people in the face of continuing threats from Iran.

"If you were an Israeli prime minister or ... you had a country that's very small with a population that's very small and you heard every week what the Iranians say about eradicating and incinerating and eliminating the state of Israel, and then you watch their progress toward a nuclear weapon, I don't see how leadership in that country has any choice other than to defend the people of Israel," he said.
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