The essence of compromise boils down to five words: “What’s in it for me?”
So with Bush facing a congressional war-funding bill with deadlines attached–benchmarks that he himself mentioned earlier this year, and is now being asked to hew to–congress is hoping that he will compromise on withdrawal dates rather than veto the entire bill.
What’s in it for him to do so?
Nothing.
I mean, yeah, sure, there’s the concept of honoring his own promises. Don’t make me laugh: It’s too early in the morning.
There’s the concept of attending to the clear mandate of the people. See the non-laughing request above.
Naturally some will look to Bush’s well-known intransigence, his inflexibility, his disregard for human lives (unless they’re not yet born: Then they’re sacred). In short, it’s easy to blame his various tragic personal shortcomings that have contributed to the morass that is the Iraq war.
But consider: On a political basis, which is all that matters to a politician, what happens if he does what the Democrats want?
Well, basically, presuming that the Democrats can avoid tripping over their own pants cuffs–never a sure thing, granted–he’ll be not only cementing their triumph of 2006, but handing them the White House in 2008.
Consider the bragging rights he’d be giving the Dem candidates: You put us in power in 2006 and we, the party of the people, managed to face down a stubborn, dictatorial President and got our boys home. A compromise hands the opposing party a WMD–a Weapon of Made Democrats. They will have it made in 2008, promising a return to peace and prosperity of the Clinton years.
Bush gains nothing from it. He believes he’ll appear weak. He will have embroiled us in this war and needed the Democrats to bìŧçh-šláp him into cooperation, causing him to wind up looking like a recalcitrant child who just got his party privileges revoked. And worst of all, he will have removed from GOP hands the only weapon they’ve got for 2008. Believe it or not, remarkably, a considerable portion of the voting public STILL believes that the GOP is better for America in matters of national security. If there’s no war to stoke, then the GOP has nothing–NOTHING–to run on for 2008. The GOP needs to be able to say, “We have kept this country safe, and although you may not like the war, well, we won’t like it either, but it’s a necessary evil in the war against terror.”
The GOP strategy has to be painting the Dems as being soft on terror (an upgrade from the classic “soft on crime” gambit that has worked for so long.) If Bush caves on the deadlines, then he removes that tool from the GOP tool box, because then he (and by extension the GOP) becomes soft on terror as well. The Dems will be able to say, “See? Even the President acknowledges that we were right,” and the Dems can’t be right, because if they become right, then they become President.
People think that Bush is concerned about his place in history, but I think of more immediate worry to him is the GOP place in the White House, the only branch that they still control. Despite the fact that we’re embroiled in a civil war, despite the fact that occupations do not, historically, tend to work, despite the fact that our soldiers are dying and dying and dying to no point or purpose, GOP political fortunes trump all other considerations. Bush cannot compromise, dare not compromise, because the GOP strategy is to paint Dems as weak. If he compromises, they become strong. Therefore, he cannot, because if he does, then the GOP chances are reduced to one desperate hope: That sometime in the next two years, there is another major terrorist strike on the US. The Empire State building is blown up, the Golden Gate bridge is annihilated. Something. Because should such a horrifying calamity occur, the GOP strategy is clear: “See? While we were in charge of Congress, everything was fine. Put the Democrats in charge, the terrorists become emboldened, and we’re attacked. Just imagine how much worse it will be if you put them in the White House.” Understand, I’m not saying the GOP would WANT us to be attacked. Even I don’t think they’re THAT barbaric. But it’s the only counter they’d then have to Democrat strength.
So what it comes down to is this: Bush won’t compromise, and I doubt the Democrats will be able to muster the votes to override a veto. Which means that the Pentagon will have to fight the war as best they can. There is a GOP upside, though: Every casualty that occurs from that point on will be painted as being the Dem’s fault–avoidable if only the Democrats had been willing to let Bush fight his war as he sees fit rather than undercutting and refusing to support our troops. If the GOP can spin it right–and I believe they can–then by 2008 they’ll have convinced the majority of the public that the Iraq war is the fault of the Democrats and thus retain the White House, maybe even win back the legislative branch. Seem unlikely? They managed to convince the majority of the public that Saddam was behind 9/11, didn’t they?
PAD
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Greed, indulgence, and/or the worship of wealth describe the modern Gatsbys (“Her voice was full of money”) of hip-hop and bling. Those motives as we know them don’t cover Bush’s motive to arbitrarily invade an oil-rich Muslim nation.
The simplist notion that covers all the bases is that Bush is a class darwinist, who only saw advantages to introducing democracy to Iraq, and couldn’t, can’t, will never comprehend that Iraq can’t alter it’s folk-identity any more than southern heritage could have the abandoned slavery of its time without civil war.
If people could change their identities arbitrarily as we expected the Iraqis to change theirs to adopt democracy, we’d have celebrities faking their own deaths to a degree it would support an industry devoted to tracking them down.
In other news, not only has O’Reilly completely lost his mind now, but here’s a declaration from Keith Olberman that had to have come out of a parallel universe.
My wife and I watched Countdown last night when they showed the clip of O’Reilly and Rivera. I was just waiting for the two of them to start throwing fists; it was that entertaining.
Personally, I think O’Reilly and Rivera were both wrong on their stances, and I’m not sure Rivera really deserves “Best Person in the World”, but I think he got it for showing some stones to ‘Bill-O’.
But O’Reilly is certainly getting worse.
The Mayor of Salt Lake City was on recently, and that fellow calmly put O’Reilly in his place. Then just in the last week or two, O’Reilly accused a woman who served in the military for 30 years of undermining the war. She shot back asking him how much of his life he’d given to serving the country.
Posted by: Micha at April 7, 2007 09:29 AM
If he read it he didn’t review it. He only reviewed the intro page.
That’s true.
O’Reilly has been on a tear lately, claiming he’s putting “radicals” on the air to show his viewers how “extreme” they are. In reality, he puts them on and tries to bully them into admitting they hate America and when they don’t, he cuts their mikes. That’s what he did to the retired colonel.
His other thing lately has been trying to take whatever tragedy he find and try to tie to the illegal alien issue. Geraldo called him on it.
It takes a lot to make Geraldo Rivera look good and O’Reilly did it. Should the guy have been deported? Sure, but Geraldo was right in that the fact that the guy was illegal had nothing to do with him being a drunk driver.
O’Reilly is an idiot, but he’s about 1/4 right here.
http://www.wavy.com/Global/story.asp?S=6307948
“Suspect in accident that killed two teens convicted of DUI two months ago
An illegal alien charged in connection with an acdcident that claimed the lives of two teenage girls was convicted of DUI two months ago in Chesapeake.
The accident occurred late Friday night when Alfredo Ramos crashed into the back of a vehicle at a red light. The rear-ending killed teenagers Allison Kuhnhardt and Tessa Tranchant.
10 On Your Side has learned that 22-year-old Alfredo Ramos was convicted in February on DUI charges from November 13, 2006.
The arresting officer commented in his report that Ramos “almost ran him down”.
He was given a 90 day suspended sentence, fined $250, had his drivers’ license suspended, and he ordered to participate in ASAP, an alcohol awareness program.
Court documents also revealed that Ramos didn’ t actually have a valid driver’s license (he was caught with a fake one), had paid a Florida company $200 dollars for a “Mexican ID”, and he blew a .14 BAC – almost twice the legal limit.
Also, 10 On Your Side has learned that law-enforcement officials in Chesapeake never informed Immigration and Customs Enforcement about Ramos’ residence status in the U.S. This contrasts with Virginia Beach, whose authorities notified ICE immediately after Ramos was arrested.
Ramos, who speaks no English, remains in jail with no bond.”
Linking these girls deaths to his crusade is about on par with O’Reilly’s usual slimey standards. But he’s at least right that they shouldn’t have been killed by THIS drunk driver. His butt should have been dealt with before.
I’m not sure who is the most at fault in this though. Chesapeake should have called Immigration and Customs Enforcement when they tagged him the last time, but likely didn’t because that often does jack squat. We call them and get told to write down the guys information, pass it all along to them and they’ll send someone out to talk to the guy in a week or two.
Our immigration laws are great, but the enforcement sucks.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17985314/
AP analysis: Almost no illegal immigrants caught at border are prosecuted
That’s the funny thing about O’Reilly these days, he can make himself look like an idiot and turn people off even when he might have a valid point to make. His meltdown with Geraldo only underscores that point. He could have made a good point but chose to be the Big Giant Ego with screaming, finger waving and idiotic talking points.
These girls’ deaths were tragic. The fact that the guy who killed them should never have had the chance to do so is even more tragic. Something does need to be fixed in the system.
O’Reilly could have sounded rational with this one. He just doesn’t know how anymore. And now I hear that the father of one of the girls has made a not so nice statement about O’Reilly and his dragging the girls deaths into his ratings crusade. Good for the dad.
The girls’ families have already said that they want to do stuff about several of these issues. Let THEM do it or start it with some class and dignity rather then O’Reilly’s way of the mindless rant.
O’Reilly could have sounded rational with this one. He just doesn’t know how anymore. And now I hear that the father of one of the girls has made a not so nice statement about O’Reilly and his dragging the girls deaths into his ratings crusade.
O’Reilly is desperately trying to sound like a crusader for the people, especially after he a took a huge hit last year for saying that the kid who was kidnapped and held for several years by a pedophile “enjoyed” his captivity.
Let’s say this guy would have been deported. Odds are good he would have snuck right back across the border within days and driving drunk anyway. It would have made no difference.
As for O’Reilly sounding rational, he is way beyond that. He is, at his heart, a bully. His only debating technique is to tell his quests what he thinks they believe and then brownbeat them into admitting it. He’s gone completely around the bend.
I have a sister-in-law who works for Fox “News”. Here’s a direct quote from her about O’Reilly:
“I don’t talk to him. If I want to speak to a bitter, angry Irishman, I’ll visit one of my brothers.”
Den,
“It would have made no difference.”
Maybe, maybe not. Trust me, I have gotten to the point where I hate dealing with INS because it is such a waste of time.
That’s problem one.
“Odds are good he would have snuck right back across the border within days and driving drunk anyway.”
And that’s problem two.
I’ve nabbed guys that come back tagged as previously deported through NCIC/VCIN lots of times. Now, sometimes, most times, it’s because they bought the same fake I.D. that was sold to about a thousand other guys, but sometimes it’s because they really were caught before. INS doesn’t do anything different there then they do with a first timer.
It should be tougher for someone to sneak over the boarder and it should be way more easy for cops on the street to deal with this. But it ain’t.
This is the one time that I can remember of late that O’Reilly actually had a good point to stand on, but he went and shot himself in the foot with his mouth. The talk I’ve seen on this is that O’Reilly is, as uasual, full of it. But this time, he’s not 100% full of it. He’s just 100% full of himself (and that other stuff) and acting like a bully and a fool.
He’s an idiot. But I’m seeing lots of people (not just here) not just pointing that out but seemingly taking the other side of the argument just because it’s dipwad saying stuff the way he usually says it.
He’s kind of right here, he just can’t act like a rational human being long enough to actually let people see that he might be right on this matter. He’s saying stuff in the wrong way, he’s using one issue in this way to hard and he’s ticking people off (like the girls’ families)that he should be showing more respect to right now, but it is some of the right stuff that he’s saying this time.
And we can go back to bashing Bush with the odd shot or two over this because it was him (and others)mucking about with Homeland Security funding, immigration reform (that the Dems are screwing up too) and the boardes for the last six years.
I haven’t been able to take O’ Reilly since the ’80’s when he was on A Current Affair. Whenever I hear his “Who’s looking out for you?” shtick I always ask “Who gave you the job?” But with this, he and Geraldo have done what they wanted, what they LOVE to do. They focused the attention away from the story and squarely on THEMSELVES. They made the story about THEM, not the girls, not the driver, not the families. It doesn’t matter HOW right he is on this. By losing it like that, any real message he had was lost in a rant. Like my friend told me once when I had MY Irish up, once you’ve lost it, you’ve lost it. It’s kinda like certain people that have been posting here over the last few months. Anything worthwhile that they have to say gets lost in the rest of what’s coming across.
Personally, I’d love to see O’ Reilly, Geraldo, and anybody else in their ilk off the air. Opinions aren’t news. Bullying isn’t news. “This is what you should think” isn’t news.
Okay, rant over.
“Anything worthwhile that they have to say gets lost in the rest of what’s coming across.”
Yeah, that’s kinda my problem with this. There is a point in this that is a good one and should not be overlooked because of this mess.
It’s kind of like the flap we went through with Frank Hargrove a few months ago during our General Assembly. A bill came up to make a formal, legal “we’re sorry” for slavery and to set up a few other things as well. A number of people were against it and made very good and very reasoned arguments against it.
Then Frank comes along and shoots everybody in the foot with his mouth by asking that if we did this would we then have to draft a bill to make the Jews apologize for killing Christ. He then told a Jewish lawmaker who objected to his comparison that the Jewish lawmaker just had thin skin.
Result?
The argument became about Hargrove and his mouth rather then the point. Even debate in the public square became a knee jerk reaction about what he said and how it was an insult to blacks and jews. People who would have supported his side went against him not based on the merits of their argument, but on what he said and how he said it when making his argument against it.Almost none of the debate after that in any media dealt with whether or not the bill actually had merit or whether or not the bill was even a good idea.
End result?
A version of the bill passed with Hargrove supporting it to make amends for his mouth. I’m kinda not wanting to see this issue clouded in the same manner.
I hate O’Rielly. I don’t ever want to be in the position of defending him in any way, but the point he started to make before going off the rails was a valid one and deserves to not be lost in the b******t that substitutes for intelligent discussion on his show.
Considering this Hargrove actually did compare something your state was guilty of to something Judaism itself is not guilty of — and no one of your state was a victim of — superficially, the bill sounds like proof of something Hargrove demonstrated Americans are prone to committing, and he ultimately could not stand by.
I see no disadvantage to a state acknowledging the precious feelings of those they’ve hurt.
…not proof of… proof against, as in a state denunciation of…
Posted by Jerry Chandler
Maybe, maybe not.
The important thing to look at here is that even if he’d been a citizen or a legal, it was his second offence (that we know of).
The real scandal, so far as i’m concerned, is the laxity with which we treat DUI offenders.
Tha bášŧárd who smashed my beautiful cousin’s face so badly that they counted something like thirty-eight facial fractures before they gave up counting was on at least his third DUI offence, and he wasn’t yet twenty-five.
Jerry, you’re a cop, right?
I don’t know about you, but more than one veteran cop i’ve known has said that there are times when he’s felt that the best thing for a DUI offender is a bullet in the ditch right there…
Geez, sorry to hear about your cousin.
My thing is that BOTH issues are a big problem. Should he have been given more jail time, had he been legally here, for DUI the first time? Yeah. Should he have still been here in the U.S. after being convicted of a crime and shown to be here illegally in February instead of having been turned over to Immigration and deported? No. Should it be as easy as it is to hop the boarder multiple times? No.
Are those issues equal? Most of the time no, but in this case, yes. He wouldn’t have been here to be driving drunk if the system wasn’t running some dámņ poorly.
I want to see the DUI laws made more strict and I want the courts to do a better job with them. I also want to see less pandering and more enforcement on immigration issues and more done to support local enforcement issues. They’re both strong issues with me.
“…he’s felt that the best thing for a DUI offender is a bullet in the ditch right there…”
A DUI case like this will make me feel like that, yeah. But most DUI stops I get are first time offenders and none of mine have been involved in hurting or killing someone by driving drunk. But normally? No, I don’t feel that way. I tend to have the Gandalf view of things. I’ll cop (pardon the term) to feeling that way about murderers, rapists and child molesters because they’ve all either ended or completely screwed up someone’s life. But most of the DUI offenders I’ve come across? Young(ish) idiots that, with luck, grow out of it without killing or hurting anybody. I’d love to see them pay heavier fines and do more jail time, but, if they haven’t hurt anyone else, that’s about it. It takes too long and is way harder then I ever thought it was to make a life. I’m in no hurry to try and end one or even hope that it’s ended.
My deepest sympathies for your cousin, Mike.
Jerry, I see your point about adequate enforcement. I was looking at this issue in the context of O’Reilly’s general behavior, which is to dictate to his guests what he thinks their views are, and then to bully them into admitting he’s right.
But I guess we can’t expect better from a channel like Fox “News”, in which Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Syria is equated with treason while the GOP Congressional trip to Syria isn’t even mentioned.
That’s a very casual attitude to take for 17,000 deaths and 500,000 injuries a year innocent people are subject to. 17,000 deaths is large enough for the US to invade 5 Iraqs. Where are the protests from the right-to-lifers?
Posted by: Jerry Chandler at April 9, 2007 02:44 AM
I’m in no hurry to try and end one or even hope that it’s ended.
Jerry, this reminds me of our recent telephone conversation. We were talking about the occupational hazards of being a cop, and you told me about an officer who shot and killed a suspect. He was completely justified in his actions but the emotional consequences caused him to leave the force nonetheless.
You said something that has continued to resonate in my mind since you first uttered it. I’m going to have to paraphrase it as I don’t remember your exact words, but you said something to the effect that the desire to kill another human being is contrary to the instincts of any sane individual.
To an extent, I have to disagree. The instinct to kill is part of the primitive “fight or flight” response all of us carry within. Murderers who are sane by clinical standards often find a way to rationalize their acts. Hëll, terrorists often CELEBRATE brazen acts of brutality.
But yeah, any decent individual with an ounce of compassion is going to feel excruciating guilt and remorse for committing such an act, even if it is justifiable. No one should want to kill and I cringe when I hear people flippantly suggest that we do so. While I wouldn’t cry if Osama bin Laden’s head became acquainted with a U.S. soldier’s bullet, were I the trigger-man I’d have mixed feelings about it.
In law school, we spent a good deal of time discussing the proximate cause of an event. Courts sometimes use a the shorthand “but for” test…”but for event X, the plaintiff would not have been injured.”
It’s not as simple a thing to do as you’d think it would be. Most events are the result of a confluence of events that lead to injury or death. But for the driver violating our immigration laws, he’d not have been driving on the stretch of road. But for his drinking that one extra drink that slowed his response time, he’d have been able to avoid the other car. But for the victim forgetting his lunch the first time he left for work, he’d have been 5 minutes further down the road.
In my opinion, a DUI accident is caused by one thing, and one thing only…the DUI person deciding to operate his vehicle after consuming booze. It’s not the fault of the person that serves him, or the beer maker, or the government that doesn’t catch him when he enters the country, or deport him when they catch him DUI the first time. At this time, if you’re over the age of 12 and you don’t know that drinking and driving is literally playing Russian Roullete with a car, not only with your own life, but with everyone else on the road/sidewalk/in their living room, you’re either not paying attention, or deliberately ignoring what’s going on around you. There’s no excuse for getting into a car after you’ve been drinking, and we should treat DUIs the same way we treat other reckless endagerment offenders. I’m thinking specifically of people that shoot off weapons in public. If they don’t hurt anyone, we go somewhat easy on them. At the very least, I think they lose their license to own a weapon, and probably have to forfiet the weapon. If they do injure or kill someone, punishmend should be much more severe.
Den: “I was looking at this issue in the context of O’Reilly’s general behavior, which is to dictate to his guests what he thinks their views are, and then to bully them into admitting he’s right.”
And I have absolutely no problem with that. I have NO problem with anybody pointing out when O’Reilly is acting like a bully, an idiot or a clown. I’ll even help out and add an example or fifty if you’re trying to build a case for that point and your brain is checking out on you that day.
What I was reacting to from here and elsewhere was the somewhat knee jerk response being displayed by some to condemn O’Reilly for his stupidity and wrap that actually issue in with his antics. I would never have said one word about it if most the people I had been seeing, hearing and reading were just saying, “O’Reilly is a low class bully and an idiot.” But a lot of people seemed to be taking the other side of the argument just because O’Reilly took the opposite position and saying that O’Reilly was an idiot, He was a bully, he was wrong and the immigration issue had NOTHING to do with this.
I think it does and I would hate to see a valid point lost in the “O’Reilly’s a jáçkášš” pile-on. It’s not an issue that is usually equal to DUI issues in most peoples books nor in mine, but the circumstances here make it, for me, equal to or greater then the DUI issue. Had the driver been a legal citizen, we would be arguing the point that he should have still been serving time from his February conviction or not. Virginia law allows enough discretion by a judge that this would be a completely valid argument and good points, believe it or not, can be made on both sides. However, since it was uncovered back during his last conviction that this guy was here illegally, we shouldn’t even be discussing this because his butt should have been South bound and gone (loaded up and trucking?) and in no position to get drunk that night and kill those two girls to begin with.
Bill Myers: “The instinct to kill is part of the primitive “fight or flight” response all of us carry within.” & “No one should want to kill and I cringe when I hear people flippantly suggest that we do so. While I wouldn’t cry if Osama bin Laden’s head became acquainted with a U.S. soldier’s bullet, were I the trigger-man I’d have mixed feelings about it.”
Yeah, it is a part of our instinctual nature, but we overcome lots of stuff that is a part of that. Not everybody mind you, but many. We’re raised to be better then our instincts would have us be.
Plus, I’m not sure the actual desire to kill is a strong a part of the “fight or flight” response as is the desire to hurt someone enough to safely engage in flight or to cause them to hightail it. There are lots of animals that, when cornered, will rip you a new one just long enough to get an opening to escape. Even when death is involved, it’s usually because a claw or a fang hit something vital. The cornered animal often times doesn’t hang around to enjoy the fruits of its kill as it’s too busy doing warp 1 in some other direction.
I think the “kill” impulse in “fight or flight” that some have is more from teaching and environment then instinct. You have five year olds in the Middle East that are looking forward to the day that they can strap on a bomb, kill a bunch of people and join an older sibling in Paradise. I can introduce you to ten year old inner city kids that don’t think that they’ll live to see twenty-five because they’ve grown up in an environment of violence and have been taught that it’s kill or be killed in their neighborhood areas. But I can also show you ten year old kids who can’t imagine any reason where they would think killing someone is justified, but have no problem giving a bully a split lip and a black eye.
Most people who live in, what we term, “civilized societies” are raise to believe that murder is absolutely wrong and many are also taught that killing another person is something that we should never celebrate even when it is a necessity. Those teachings becomes a part of your core self. If a hard thing to betray something that is that much a part of you. Add in the religious factor that some have against killing and you have a powerful struggle.
Even trained soldiers have to fight hard with that struggle early on. One guy I know who was involve in a shooting kept in touch with the counselor the department hooked him up with and became friends with him. I’ve met the guy and we’ve had some pretty interesting talks. Before becoming a civilian who works with police officers, he was in the military and did the same job with soldiers. According to him, even trained and experienced military snipers sometimes have the odd crack up because, even knowing that their job may be saving a huge number of lives on both sides, they still realize somewhere that they’re doing something that is against a strong core belief that they were raised with.
Remember when I mentioned that there’s a problem that some officers have after a shooting where they can’t look their own reflection in the eyes for days or weeks? He said the first time that he had ever come across that was with a military sniper that he was counseling.
If you’re raised to be a civilized member of a civilized society, then you’re going to have issues with killing. Even if it’s necessary, you’re going to have to fight to overcome it. The scary thing for some of us that do jobs that may one day put us in the position to engage in that struggle? You don’t truly know, no matter how tough you talk, which side you’ll come down on until you have to do it and you don’t know if you’ll end up hesitating too long even if you come down on the “kill the other guy” side of the struggle. Definitely not something some of us or our loved ones really like to think about all that often.
Bobb Alfred: “…or deport him when they catch him DUI the first time.”
See, I’m going to agree with everything you said except that. Deport him in February and he’s not here to kill someone by DUI in April. Even if there had been a different offense back in November and no DUI or deaths now, I would still be ticked that an area’s entire legal system failed to even bother reporting to the proper Federal authorities that they had arrested and convicted an illegal immigrant for committing a crime.
They fell down on the job here. It’s unfortunately becoming a common thing in some areas. This particular case is just getting more attention then the others because of the DUI deaths.
By all means, lobby your local lawmakers for stricter DUI laws and penalties. That’s by far and away the issue that impacts more lives to a greater degree right now. Just don’t completely dismiss the failings in our immigration enforcement in this particular case.
He Who Must Not Be Mentioned raises what may seem to the uninformed a valid point. I’m going to half break one of my own rules and address the point for the benefit of others, but I will not engage in a debate with him our address any further posts on the subject by him. I do see where a clarification could benefit the overall discussion of how DUI drivers are treated by the cops and by the courts though.
Some people do tend to see the attitude towards DUI drivers that I and a number of my fellow officers have as a odd. That would seem the case even more so since we’re discussing DUI related deaths here. But it’s not really that odd if you have some experience.
Most people only hear about DUI incidents when they’re on the news due to deaths or when they hear about a family member or friend who has been hurt by a DUI driver. A fair number of DUI arrests don’t involve that level of drunkenness.
I’ve gotten DUI arrests involving both drugs and alcohol because I stopped someone for something as minor as right turn on red at a posted no turn on red or driving at 10PM with no headlights on. So have a lot of guys I know. They weren’t speeding, they weren’t weaving and they weren’t driving on the wrong side of the street. We make the stop with the intention of writing a minor ticket or simply advising someone, we get a whiff of alcoholic beverage, the driver might even pass the sobriety test but ends up blowing the legal limit on a PBT, driver goes to the breath tech and blows the legal limit and the you have a new DUI statistic.
They’re not stumbling drunk, they might not have a single offense of any kind on their record and a lot of them that I get or I am the back up officer for are young guys and gals who are still in their first year or two of becoming legally able to drink. They’re experimenting with a new freedom. Yeah, it’s not the safest freedom to experiment with, but I’ve know lots of people who have experimented with that freedom who outgrew it in a year or two without ever being a staggering drunk or harming a single person.
And it’s easy to be a legal DUI in a lot of stated without being obviously drunk thanks to .08 limits.
Lots of states are getting tougher on DUI laws and penalties and I have no problem with that. I have absolutely no problem with jamming up some guy who’s in his thirties, forties or fifties and still “experimenting” with just how drunk he can get himself and still drive. I have no pity whatsoever for seeing someone go to jail for the rest of their lives for getting behind the wheel so drunk that they can’t se straight and end up injuring or killing someone else. But I do have a little room in conscience to allow for the inexperience of youth or people who cross the legal limit without being able to tell that they have. That’s why I don’t automatically get the gut reaction that Mike Weber mentioned every time someone mentions the letters D, U, and I together in one shot. It’s also why a lot of cops I know despise DUI drivers that get drunk to the level that dipwad did when he almost ran over that officer or when he killed those girls, but still see the need for some level of restraint in treating every DUI exactly the same as every other DUI. They’re not always all equal.
Sue me, I’m a cop with somewhat liberal leanings. It’s what’ll make me a nice guy when I pull any of you chumps over. Drive safely, have a nice day.
Jerry’s experiences highlight an interesting point. Our DUI laws are shaped by the most egregious offenders…those that result in injury or fatality accidents. Because that cose is so high, we put a high penalty on the condition. driving while under the influence…and set generic limits.
But here’s the thing. While .08% is the limit in many states now, that’s not some magic number where suddenly every person is blind, stinking drunk. Booze affects each person differently. Weight, height, what you ate for dinner, how much rest you’ve had, etc., all factor into how much the booze affects you. So from the standpoint of trying to protect others, it’s somewhat a mis-applied standard. I think you could find some people drive no less safe at .08% than they do at .00%. And I’m sure there are plenty of people who are more reckless and dangerous driving sober than some folks driving at .08%+.
Given this, I think there’s a reason why “no harm, no/low foul” gets applied in court.
As for proximate cause as Jerry responds, there’s legal proximate cause, and then there’s real proximate cause. Certainly, if the fellow had been deported after the first incident, he’s not involved in the second. So the failings of the system do contribute to the event, although not in any way a court would recognize.
Jerry, you make valid points about the issue of how our attitudes towards killing are formed.
It’s easy to watch cop shows on T.V. where the lead character shoots a guy almost every dámņëd week and think that it’s easy. But the bottom line is it’s not for most of us. Not even for police or soldiers who are trained to commit the act should it become necessary. As I said, should a U.S. bullet find it’s way into Osama’s skull, I wouldn’t shed a tear. Yet I’ve only fired one gun in my life — it was a low-powered rifle and I shot an old garbage can under the supervision of my grandfather — and never at another human being. I’d hate to be the person who’d have to bear the weight of that awful act, even if it was necessary, justifiable, and resulted in a greater good.
On a personal note, Jerry, I will reiterate what I said during our conversation: should the need arise, I hope and pray that your training kicks in and you do what you have to do. I’d rather have to support an emotionally distraught friend than to mourn his passing.
Also, don’t eat so many donuts. That’s another thing that cops do to put their lives in danger. Let’s be careful out there.
Bill Myers: “The instinct to kill is part of the primitive “fight or flight” response all of us carry within.” & “No one should want to kill and I cringe when I hear people flippantly suggest that we do so. While I wouldn’t cry if Osama bin Laden’s head became acquainted with a U.S. soldier’s bullet, were I the trigger-man I’d have mixed feelings about it.”
Jerry Chandler: “Yeah, it is a part of our instinctual nature, but we overcome lots of stuff that is a part of that. Not everybody mind you, but many. We’re raised to be better then our instincts would have us be.
Plus, I’m not sure the actual desire to kill is a strong a part of the “fight or flight” response as is the desire to hurt someone enough to safely engage in flight or to cause them to hightail it. There are lots of animals that, when cornered, will rip you a new one just long enough to get an opening to escape. Even when death is involved, it’s usually because a claw or a fang hit something vital. The cornered animal often times doesn’t hang around to enjoy the fruits of its kill as it’s too busy doing warp 1 in some other direction.”
Both instinct and reason, nature and nurture can result in violence. We seem to have violent instincts and compassionate ones, and education can teach us to suppress violent instincts or rationalize violence. I suppose ultimatly it’s a matter of balance.
That still sounds like 5 invasions of Iraq for the 17,000 DUI-related deaths each year to zero invasions of Iraq for illegal immigration.
Jerry Chandler wrote “According to him, even trained and experienced military snipers sometimes have the odd crack up because, even knowing that their job may be saving a huge number of lives on both sides, they still realize somewhere that they’re doing something that is against a strong core belief that they were raised with.”
In the TV series Bones, FBI agent Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz) is an ex-sniper who seeks to put away bad guys in part as a means of “atoning” for the lives he took (he’s also a devout Catholic). In one episode, he described how he killed a warlord of some sort, while the warlord was enjoying some family event at his home. To most of the world, that warlord was a very bad man who probably wouldn’t be missed; but to his young son, he was the loving father who’d just been murdered before his eyes.
If I recall correctly, Booth said he took the shot at that time because he had no other choice. However, he remains, if not haunted, at least disturbed by the child’s reaction; and by the knowledge that he’d shattered that child’s world.
I’ve no doubt that Booth has more than a few real world counterparts.
Bill Myers wrote: “No one should want to kill and I cringe when I hear people flippantly suggest that we do so.”
I know what you mean, but I wonder to what degree people who make such “flippant” suggestions are just blowing off steam or expressing their own frustrations. When I read about some things people have done, part of me wants to kill them, then bring them back to life and kill them again. Would I ever take matters into my own hands if given the opportunity? I hope not, but if something happened to someone important to me, I just might.
Scary thought, but maybe the fact that I hope I wouldn’t act on it means I wouldn’t. You know, kinda like the argument that if you wonder if you’re crazy it means you’re not, because really crazy people don’t wonder about it.
One of the advantages of being a writer is that I can- and do- have characters carry out acts of revenge that I wouldn’t or couldn’t perform. I can also follow the consequences of those actions by fictional characters under more comfortable circumstances than I’d probably be in if I carried out those acts myself.
I’m sure everyone has harbored thoughts of taking matters into their own hands at one time or another, either because someone hurt or killed a loved one, or because someone did something that just struck one of those universal nerves. When I was a boy, I remember standing in my back yard and daydreaming about single-handedly defeating the Oakland County child killer, and doing so in the name of one of his victims. The thing is, I didn’t know any of the kids he killed; yet I remember being furious about it. Maybe because I was in that same age group. Maybe because I saw him as a bully who took things to lethal levels, and I don’t like bullies.
More recently, you may remember the news reports about the man who threw the dog out of a car onto a freeway. I don’t know any of the players involved, but because I had a dog (who died of natural causes) and like dogs, part of me wanted to throw that man onto a freeway.
Yet would killing someone for revenge be satisfactory in the long run? I don’t think so. It won’t undo what that person did, and since we can’t kill people then bring them back to life to kill them again, we’re prevented from feeding the desire for revenge even further. That, in turn, leads to increased frustration.
And I can’t imagine that increased frustration leading to any good outcome.
Rick
P.S. On the flip side of the taking violent action coin, I’m reminded of an outcome from the death of one of my brother’s friends back in December 1988. Jim and some friends were driving back from Canada and got into an argument with the occupants of another car. Both cars got off the freeway and pulled into a parking lot. A short fight broke out and that seemed to be it. Then Jim slipped on the ice and one of the guys from the other car kicked him in the head.
Jim died at age 19, and the other guy, then 21, served a prison term of between 5 and 15 years.
My brother had another friend who tended to get into a lot of fights. Apparently Jim’s death served as a wake-up call. I remember my brother saying at the funeral (or soon afterward), “____ will never fight again.”
I’ve long since lost track of that other friend, so I don’t know whether he has continued to refrain from fighting, but at that time I think he saw Jim’s death as a “that could’ve been me” moment.
Bobb,
Yeah, that’s the thing with me. I found once a long time ago while helping out with a demo that I could blow the old, higher legal limit without anybody around me knowing I was “drunk” in the least. I could even pass 99% of the roadside tests at that level. It was only the very minor things that, in driving terms, would have been any clue for a trained officer to pick up on.
As a result of that, I’m sure that I likely broke the law at least a couple of times. Having learned that, I changed a couple of my own rules when out. At long events with a set end time, I drink no more then two drinks per hour and I swtch to soda or tea one to two hours before I leave a place. If I won’t be there more then two hours, I don’t drink.
More extreme example: My cousin.
My cousin is about a year plus younger then me. I flat out know that he drove a few times when he shouldn’t have back when he was twenty-one and twenty-two. He grew up in a house where dad believed that coffee or driving with the window down in the Winter would “do the trick” for you and he had that belief for a while. He never wrecked, he never dinged another car in a parking lot and he never hurt a single person. He also learned better own his own, grew out of it and knocked the stupid stuff off. Now he’s one of the more upstanding and (other then music related file sharing) law abiding people in his community.
And I know huge number of guys who you could tell the same basic stories about.
I would hate to think that our lives or other’s could get completely flushed over youth and stupidity that didn’t hurt anyone. Why destroy someone for what was, in context, a minor mistake?
Other end of the spectrum: My Uncle.
I’ve got an uncle who’s the major black sheep of the family. He’s closing in on his fifties, he uses and abuses the trust or help offered by others (including family), he’s messed with drugs and alcohol his entire teen and adult life, he has no desire to clean his act up, he’s wrecked at least two cars that I know of while drunk and if I ever saw him again, I’d turn him in myself. I’d love to see him, and other people like him, do major jail time because they’re the ones who are going to end up killing themselves and/or someone else.
And there is part of the problem with some aspects of the DUI law debates. I’m not the guy who makes the news, my cousin isn’t the guy who makes the news and, very likely, some of you never made the news. The guys like my uncle and dipwad are the ones who ultimately make the news when they kill someone. It’s the families of the departed who are on the news and in their local legislative bodies petitioning for stronger laws, bigger penalties and way more jail time for offenders.
And I agree with them to a point. I just don’t agree with mandatory minimums or taking some discretion out of the hands of a judge. Problem with that is that you then sometimes end up with a second time offender who kills someone. I think it’s one of the reasons that I’m happy where I’m at in the scheme of things. I only enforce the law, I don’t have to agonize over what’s the best, most fair way to make the law.
Great, now you guys have got me thinking about the WKRP episode where they did the DUI demonstration and the cop got pìššëd because Johnny’s reflexes got better with every drink.
Dr. Johnny Fever is a god. We should all be worshipping him.
Why Bush won’t compromise?
Because he’s a liar and a schemer being propped up by liars and schemers.
Bush has been saying that the Democrats are going to create a problem with their “playing “politics” with the funding bill where the troops will suffer for it. It’ll all be the Dems’ fault.
Now, we’ve all argued that all the issues Bush has raised have actually already been done to the troops, multiple times, under Bush and a rubber stamping Republican Congress. He’s already extended their tours, sent them to combat without proper training, sent them to battle without adequate or proper equipment, etc. Well, two things have come up in the last week.
The first was the flap over the Guard Units that Bush wants sent back to Iraq so bad that he wants to cut the time in between their tours of duty. Now, this flap hit the news after the showdown with the Dems started and I’m sure Bush and Cheney had planned to play that to the hilt in speeches, addresses and interviews this weekend. I’m sure that they were going to play the card of their having been forced to do this draconian thing because of the Dems playing politics with the troops’ funding.
Then today happened.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates held a press conference. In it, I think he let slip a truth that caused Bush and Cheney to burst a few blood vessels. As I’m sure you all know by now, Gates laid out a plan to extend tours and thus keep the soldiers from the families for longer periods of time. More tools for Rove, Bush and Cheney to play with.
And then it happened.
Gates clarified one of his statements by pointing out that the problems creating the need to do this were identified prior to the surge and the process of dealing with them was begun then. Roll that around in your head for a moment. Gates let slip that this was in the planning stage before we were even having a Surge debate, let alone the funding debate.
Lets see… Bush is claiming that extended tours, longer periods away from family, lack of proper training and equipment are all harmful to the troops and that those are all the things that the Dems will do to the troops unless they roll over and play dead for him. And one of his own administration officials just today admitted that Bush has been planning to do all those things to the troops himself since before the first day of this funding debate.
Why am I not surprised by this? Why am I not surprised by the depths that this man will go to in his lies and political blundering?
Sadly, I also won’t be surprised by the Dems complete lack of ability to point this out and use it against Bush. Here’s a gift from the gods handed right to them and I doubt that they’ll know what to do with it.
What would I do? I’d play clips of Bush talking about all these harmful things that will happen to the troops and then clips of Gates outlining the Administration’s plan and how long it’s been in the works. I’d play clips of Bush and then play clips of the Guard units being told that Bush wants to cut their required down time to ribbons and send them back into combat. I’d play clips of Bush blaming the Dems and the budget bill for all the troops woes and then point out how disingenuous it is to lie to the American people by planning to do something and then to condemn those actions while trying to push the blame and consequences on others in order to reclaim power for your party.
The Dems? They’ll just fumble the ball right back into Bush’s hands.
Why Bush won’t compromise?
Because he knows that the other side is too busy being its own biggest stumbling block to have to bother with doing so.