Mercy!

Whew! Thanks for the penetrating, incisive, fact-filled analysis. And I sure don’t see any need to keep things “balanced." I appreciate a carefully-crafted argument that can stand on its own.

I think voting in national elections should be compulsory in the United States. Minimum $25 fine for failing to do so. It’d be interesting to know how many of the opinionistas on this board cast ballots in every local, state and federal election.

The day that happened, I was listening to some Canadian program on NPR, and the interviewer phoned Mr. Vasquez. Instead of the usual 30 second sound clip, this woman talked to the guy for a least 10 minutes. What struck me was that he said he hadn’t realized what he had done for a few hours afterwards. The interviewer seemed to think like I did that he had misunderstood her question, but he kept saying the same thing. He had reacted on instinct, had given the baby mouth-to-mouth after he caught it, but claimed that it all only sank in later when he was watching himself on a surveillance camera video played on TV news. He was a pretty funny guy. When asked the standard, “do you feel like a hero?” he replied that yeah, he did - but totally not in a prideful way. He was happy to have been in the right place at the right time. Regarding his catcher's technique, he basically said that he had skills! And the mother asked him to become the baby’s godfather.

Thanks for a thoughtful reply. I fear a long-winded response coming on. I hope you’ll bear with me. I often try to do a little extra research before responding to certain types of articles. I did so in this case before replying yesterday. Bearing in mind that all these things are only alleged, and popular media often get details wrong, among the facts which concerned me and affected my assessment were: --While the bus driver was administering this ad hoc punishment, the adult aide was saying, “His mom's not going to like this." --The tape was removed before he got to his stop, and neither driver nor aide told the boy’s mother what they had done to him. --The child had duct tape residue on his face when he got off the bus. --The parents had never been contacted to discuss any behavioral problems in the months that their child had been riding the bus and attending kindergarten. --A school official said that the duct taping would be a “clear violation” of school district policy. --This is at least the sixth time in 14 months in which the safety or treatment of Pinellas County students has been called into question. Last year, two students were hit and killed by cars after bus drivers let them off on the wrong side of busy streets. --Nothing in this case points to this being some bad-ass, out of control juvenile delinquent - fighting, cussing or throwing junk out the bus windows. In a video clip, he presents as a precocious, normal-sized little five year old who is “accused” of talking too much on the bus. Even were he some maladapted miscreant, these adults didn’t follow any kind of standard procedure for dealing with him, especially in this day and age. I don’t know about this particular district, but most school bus drivers don’t have to have even a high school diploma. I don’t consider discipline in violation of school district policy, and (especially) non-standard discipline which is kept secret from parents to be in the realm of healthy adult behavior towards children in their care. Okay. That’s what I felt about that particular case. But my larger point was in trying to explain the conflict between allowing relative strangers access to your young child while still preparing that child for staying safe in a world where he or she can’t be expected to understand or resist boundary-crossing adult behavior. I’m not at all suggesting these people were child molesters. I’m simply saying that many of us have a jaundiced view about uncritical acceptance of what we know now about the conditions which have allowed child abuse to flourish in some institutional settings, and which have often involved people such as you term “a trusted adult in a position of authority.” You said, “Again, not all cases are equal, so you have to trust the hands of the people you leave your kids with.” With what we know now, I’m afraid I just can’t agree. I rue the fact that the time seems to have passed when the neighbors looked out for the conduct of everyone’s kids and tried to keep them on the straight and narrow. I know that the only thing that kept me from misbehaving in certain instances in public was the fear that nosy old missus so-and-so would squeal to my parents and get me in worse trouble. I can laugh at the chutzpah that got me paddled by the school principal (I surreptitiously pinned a note to her dress hem during an assembly calling her a “funny” name – just one of many cool things I’d pulled off) but it made me more circumspect in my behavior. Oh, if that were the worst of bad behaviors in schools today!

Well, I won’t get into an argument about corporal punishment with anyone. But I hope if you have any children, you’ll be the one doing the ass-kicking. On a more practical level, if you seriously believe the conduct in the news article is acceptable, how do you communicate to a very young child that some kinds of physical contact with adults are unacceptable, but that there are other types they should submit to even if they might feel frightened or humiliated by it? Yuck. No thanks.

I don't get the thread title. I tuned in thinking I was going to get a tale on how you lost your virginity. Oh well. A really tall glass of cold, just-squeezed orange juice is just sinful. I could drink it every day.

Wow. You guys are pretty tough. Or maybe I missed the green. Gee, do you think they checked first to see if that kindergartner had any allergies or asthma? I kinda doubt it has ever been normal for a driver to discipline a 5 year old without a parent’s knowledge by duct taping his mouth shut on the school bus. Yikes! And yes, I actually caught the paddle from the principal in my day. But I sure as hell wasn’t 5 years old. And even then, they probably had to contact my parents first.

Well that pretty well sums it up, I reckon. End of discussion. It’s pretty hard to talk about a subject like this when all you say is I refuse to believe that which is accepted by recognized medical authorities or state law and only go by my own feelings. By the way, your 45 year old could marry a 16 year old in Illinois. In other states, he could marry a girl younger than 16.

It could well be lethal injection time for you, if you've been following the logic in some of these threads. Uh-oh.

Can you provide any facts from any recognized source to back up your “complete disagreement.” Let’s start with the basics first. What do you disagree with in the statement below?

You believe that no one in this country should have sex until they are 18 years old? The age of consent should be 18 in all states? And could you state what you mean by becoming "poundcake" as an appropriate punishment? The specific words for the specific acts.

Give me a little while. Jesus on my team is going to be a laugh riot. Mercy!

Cause that would be, like, really offensive? Yeah. Too bad, the "other side" doesn't have a vulgarity regulator. Well, of course they do. They just choose not to employ it cause they don't have to here. And, ya know, considering that females other than other posters and maybe, say, Rosa Parks, are usually referred to around here only as body parts (and that's when guys are being nice!) ..... Well, Penis-in-Chief just seems like poetic justice to me. Move over Cheney, the real Dick is in the (White) House.

May I interrupt to point out that the 34 year old sex offender in this particular case was not a pedophile according to all the evidence available in the news articles? My understanding is that there is a very big difference between adults who fixate on and abuse prepubescent children and those who abuse adolescents. The former have an extremely poor prognosis, while the latter may have a far better chance for a meaningful cure.

I believe that’s a false dichotomy. And it wasn’t what I was saying at all. Making one big thread in no way addressed a basic lack of civility with constant vulgarity for vulgarity’s sake. But at any rate, in this instance I was referring to the die motherf***er thread which was closed, and then seemed to be starting right back up again here. Trying to get into the spirit of things, I've been thinking about how I could join in the name calling in a limited fashion without going overboard. I'm thinking of referring to President Bush as Penis (I got the idea from the thread title calling the governor of Illinois a dick). Or maybe Penis-in-Chief. I feel it allows me to participate in the nastiness in a limited way, while still maintaining some decorum. What do you think? It just doesn't seem fair that one side should have all the fun. And don't be laughing your ass off; you'll need it some day.

Not to belabor the point. Okay, I’m belaboring the point. When I said “I don’t know about First Rule, but I understand your point” I meant that I understood the principle but wished she didn’t use that term, as in First Law of Thermodynamics or Newton’s Second Law of Whatever. You know, I didn't want to spell that out since I was already being niggling enough with the procreation/reproduction thing…………………………………. Wait, aren't we talking behind Soxy's back here?

As long as the site revels in this sort of thing, I don’t understand why it isn’t possible to have everyone who’s contribution to this topic consists of repeating in post after post - f***, and s***, and scumbag and die motherf***er Tookie and let’s kill everyone - quarantined in one thread to talk amongst themselves. That way it won’t pollute every thread. Fair enough?

Wow! Are they Christians? Or maybe it’s the Anti-Christ at work. It’s hard to believe that the neighbors haven’t had arson discussions amongst themselves. It reminds me a little of the scene on the mountaintop in Close Encounters of the Third Kind where they’re doing call and response with the mother ship. G-A-F-F-C.

Crikey! Sorry. I was just being a smart mouth. I didn’t realize anyone actually thought these “we want to know what you think - click here” things were the same as Pew or Gallup polls. Here:

Could you also cut and paste the fine print that must be there somewhere at the end saying something to the effect that "this 'poll' has no scientific validity whatsoever"? :banghead

Well, I don’t know about “First Rule,” but I understand your point. However, I would take exception to your use of the very loaded word, procreation, which is usually used in a humanities context, and often signifies those very specific human begetting activities. I think the more neutral word, reproduction, is more appropriate as it is commonly understood to encompass both asexual and sexual methods of organismal replication. JMHO.