The awful truth - Page 2

'The Central Park Five' examines a shocking crime — and its troubling outcome

12.11.12 - 4:53 pm | Cheryl Eddy |

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One of the central Park Five defendants, in archival footage from the documentary

None of the NYC police or prosecutors involved in the case are interviewed in The Central Park Five. Two reasons: an ongoing civil rights lawsuit filed by the wrongfully convicted men (which now involves the filmmakers — in September, they were subpoenaed for footage of the accused discussing their confessions); and really, who wants to go on record admitting that they failed, and ruined multiple lives as a result? Unlike the WM3, the Central Park Five's "innocence never got the attention that their guilt did," historian Craig Steven Wilder points out. Academy Award nomination or not, The Central Park Five may help change that.

Like the injustice doc, another late 2012 trend is the presidential biopic. Weeks after the release of Lincoln, Hyde Park on Hudson arrives with a lighthearted (-ish) take on Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1939 meeting with King George VI (of stuttering fame) and Queen Elizabeth at FDR's rural New York estate. Casting Bill Murray as FDR is Hyde Park's main attraction, though Olivia Williams makes for a surprisingly effective Eleanor.

But the thrust of the film concerns FDR's relationship with his cousin, Daisy — played by Laura Linney, who's relegated to a series of dowdy outfits, pouting reaction shots, and far too many voice-overs. The affair has zero heat, and the film is disappointingly shallow — how many times can one be urged to giggle at someone saying "Hot dogs!" in an English accent? — not to mention a waste of a perfectly fine Bill Murray performance. As that sideburned Democrat bellows in Lincoln, "Howwww dare you!" *

THE CENTRAL PARK 5 opens Fri/14 in the Bay Area; HYDE PARK ON HUDSON opens Fri/14 in San Francisco.

Comments

You can NOT HARM the LIVING DEAD ... thank GOD for small favors.

Jason Grant Garza ... dear lilli ... in programming it is called read/write and verify ... second chances ... is that NOT what I did going back to DPH, the MINISTRY of SUNSHINE, Sheriff, SFPD? Did they NOT receive 2nd, third and MORE chances? Where is HERRERA after the signed confession or where is HERRERA after his city attorney gave INCORRECT HIPPA advise when I was seeking medical records and had to go to sunshine where the DPH expert was unaccountable and Mr. Wolfe to this day has NOT found a HIPPA expert? Where the MINISTRY of SUNSHINE misrepresents this case # 11081 as closed because I can now get my records without holding DPH and the city attorney liable for the delay and incorrect information ... this as glossed over so the same can be applied to the next VICTIM.

Hell, the MINISTRY couldn't even hold DPH accountable for NOT providing correct information as to who accredits them for "patient/medical care" ... they gave you what they have (DPH) even if it is incorrect and we can not make them produce something they do not have ... wow, some TRUTH at the MINISTRY ... so I did not get however the MINISTRY closed the case ... does it sound familiar? Like closed case at the FEDERAL COURT LEVEL, like closed case at SFGH, like closed case the city attorney's office, like closed case at state and federal escalation level and like closed case here where again I prove that telling the TRUTH ... NO ONE is interested.

I have given those with BLACK HEARTS multiple chances to do "RIGHT" in lieu of the apparent MORAL HAZARD ... shall I show you all the NON ATTEMPT ... go to youtube for recent manifestations ... all I know is that they will retire, live the good life, get medical care on the taxes I paid and IRONICALLY I will not and they naturally will be unaccountable as they have been so far. Please stay tuned ...

As far as doing well, I can NOT even get medical care, police services nor ADA help ... however, I am not the one WRONG or even NOT TRYING.

Thank you for your wishes ... and don't worry ... if others' IGNORANT comments affected me ... I would NOT have won the confession, stood up to the INCORRECT PROFESSIONALS and NOT continued.

Oh and just as an example ... go to the Office of Inspector General Website where my settlement/confession agreement is the ONLY one of its kind ... for it admits fault and guilt for when I sent them the paperwork (My federal court papers which won the settlement) I told them that this would not be a whitewash and if that was all they were interested in to pull my complaint. Where is HERRERA now? I can show you my notes in following up to his department's incorrect HIPPA advise to SOTF ... my notes of trying to escalate, them telling me it is closed and if I continue to call they would consider it harassing ... you mean holding them accountable so it does not happen to someone else or is the GAME to continue since there is NO ACCOUNTABILITY. I took them up on their offer to have me arrested if I was harassing and we can go before a JUDGE since if I was arrested I would get a lawyer as opposed to their failing methodology .... you can get a lawyer (yeah, good luck if you are poor ... shall I show you the list after the false arrest and denial of emergency services C02-3485PJH) ... yeah, like all the help I had with David Chiu (554-7450) and the civil gideon or his office referral to SF Bar Association ... I have all that failing paperwork ... ARREST ... then I get a LAWYER ... amazingly enough this offer was NOT taken up by the city attorney. I wonder WHY? What is the CONSEQUENCE ... another paycheck or another VICTIM?

"Telling the TRUTH during times of UNIVERSAL DECEIT is a REVOLUTIONARY Act." George Orwell

"Some pigs are MORE EQUAL than other PIGS." George Orwell (How appropriate)

"A Nation of FOOLS deserves what it gets."

Again, thank you lilli and know even if I am NOT doing physically well these HOLIDAYS ... I am doing ALL CORRECTLY for my HUMAN and IMMORTAL soul.

May you and yours have the BEST most wonderful Christmas ... again, thanks.

P.S. Lilli ... go to youtube (Jason Garza) to see the LAWBREAKING activity, the players and like the BOY SCOUTS ... the culture, the methodology and lastly the UNACCOUNTABILITY for the LAWBREAKERS, MEDICAL, COURTS, POLICE, etc.

Luckily, this is NOT my world and I go to a much much much better place and I will not SACRIFICE my soul as these well paid individuals did ... for them better to RULE in hell than serve in HEAVEN. I only serve for it is ONLY by HIS GRACE that I am worthy ... I'll let him JUDGE me before these incompetents.

Posted by Jason Grant Garza on Dec. 16, 2012 @ 9:25 am

You can NOT HARM the LIVING DEAD ... thank GOD for small favors.

As far as doing well, I can NOT even get medical care, police services nor ADA help ... however, I am not the one WRONG or even NOT TRYING.

Thank you for your wishes ... and don't worry ... if others' IGNORANT comments affected me ... I would NOT have won the confession, stood up to the INCORRECT PROFESSIONALS and NOT continued.

"Telling the TRUTH during times of UNIVERSAL DECEIT is a REVOLUTIONARY Act." George Orwell

"Some pigs are MORE EQUAL than other PIGS." George Orwell (How appropriate)

"A Nation of FOOLS deserves what it gets."

Again, thank you lilli and know even if I am NOT doing physically well these HOLIDAYS ... I am doing ALL CORRECTLY for my HUMAN and IMMORTAL soul.

May you and yours have the BEST most wonderful Christmas ... again, thanks.

Posted by Jason Grant Garza on Dec. 16, 2012 @ 9:25 am

Those of you who keep attacking Greg

for his position concerning Trisha Meili are ignoring and/or disregarding the fact that these five young men are innocent and were wrongly convicted.

The truth. You can't handle the truth.

Posted by Eddie on Dec. 15, 2012 @ 11:52 am

Eddie, then you missed the point being made.

Greg ONLY talked about these allegedly innocent kids who, in any event, admitted to other related crimes.

The beef with greg was him taking pot shots at the woman who was horrifically attacked. Most reasonable humans would always feel the most sympathy for the real victim here, but not Greg, apparently.

Throw in his support for terrorists and apparent hatred of America, and it's not a pretty sight.

Posted by Anonymous on Dec. 15, 2012 @ 3:22 pm

Terrorists?

Where did I ever express support for terrorists, or hatred of America? In America we're supposed to be a nation of laws, where people are innocent until proven guilty and corrupt cops and prosecutors who withhold crucial DNA evidence are punished as the criminals they are. Right??? Why are you on the side of the criminals? Anonymous, why do you hate America?

We really need a new version of Godwin's Law. "Terrorists" are the new "Nazis."

Posted by Greg on Dec. 15, 2012 @ 8:10 pm

Greg, you frequently claim other nations are "better" and

that you'd like to live elsewhere.

Nobody's stopping you if you hate America.

Posted by Anonymous on Dec. 16, 2012 @ 7:05 am

The new pattern for hating America is espousing American ideals.

If you hate American ideals, then you love America. It's very simple to understand; only difficult to believe.

Greg, for a while there we could have used a mini-Godwin's Law here to predict the time period between the initiation of some public policy debate and when allusions to support for "wife abusers" would begin.

Indeed the terrorism bogeyman is a favorite of the reactionaries and it is of little wonder why there is not such an axiomatic law related to it: the whole notion of Godwin's Law is to dismiss and preclude reference to Adolph Hitler and creeping facism. Can't talk about it? Must not exist.

Posted by lillipublicans on Dec. 16, 2012 @ 8:19 am

Greg routinely attacks cornerstone American virtues like

1) Working hard to build a business or wealth
2) A strong national defence
3) Support for free-market capitalism
4) The constitutional right to bear arms

He can only blame himself if readers infer anti-Americanism, and even more so when he eluogizes sclerotic bureaucratic Europe.

Posted by Anonymous on Dec. 16, 2012 @ 9:31 am

Where is "free market capitalism"

enshrined as an American virtue? Which article of the constitution?

If the free market is so important, why doesn't the state let the "invisible hand" of the free market allow the insolvent banking system to fail as pure capitalism would dictate? Instead, the Fed is pumping it up with the QE program which is inflating an equities bubble. Additionally, too big to fail has spread to too big to jail as HSBC won't face criminal charges when they knowingly laundered drug money profits.

And the entire defense industry depends on the government and tax revenues for its profitable survival. Where's the free market there?

Free market capitalism is ananthema to democracy. Real democracy requires economic as well as political democracy.

You are too brainwashed by pro-capitalist socialization and propaganda to see the world with open eyes.

I may not agree with everything Greg writes, but I admire his critical thinking and whatever efforts he might make to improve the society and political economy of the country in which he was born. We are all human beings, our citizenship is an accidental result of the birth lottery. Eventually, nationalism will become an historical relic. We will embrace our diversity and use it to improve our lives.

Posted by Eddie on Dec. 16, 2012 @ 10:14 am

Interesting take on nationalism, Eddie.

I see your point and would add that nationalism is directly akin to racism; and just as prone to be used to manipulate people to serve interests that are inimnical to their own.

That said, I don't think it is easy to simply abandon all observances of national boundaries without causing other unintended problems. If the degree to which the people in China were able to export their exponentially increasing population matched its growth, then they would have never had to have had a one-child policy.

Posted by lillipublicans on Dec. 16, 2012 @ 10:37 am

"The business of America is business"

The founding fathers may not have stated that, but it is an American value. The fact that ou hate competition because you don't do well in meritocracies is hardly anyone's fault but your own.

Posted by Anonymous on Dec. 16, 2012 @ 11:16 am

No, Warren G. Harding said that, you contemptible

f***head.

And by the way, 90 percent of Americans haven't been doing well over the last thirty years. So we must have a "meritocracy" in which almost everybody sucks. Is that it?

Posted by lillipublicans on Dec. 16, 2012 @ 11:34 am

I never stated who said that, Lilli, so seeking to discredit the

statement because I didn't attribute it is ineffective.

Most people I know are doing pretty well. If it seems to you that 90% of those you know are failing, maybe you should ask yourself why you only know losers.

Free-market capitalism is at the heart of the American ethos, which is why you find very few true socialists, even in a whack-job city like San Francisco.

Posted by Anonymous on Dec. 16, 2012 @ 11:55 am

The statement is discredited by its attribution. And you too.

Of course, in your normal habitat, Warren G. Harding is one of the best American presidents. Right?

As for your facile dermination of this nation's "ethos," you might want to dial it back a bit. Most people see "free market capitalism" as a complete sham; it's not to say that there aren't entrepreneurs out there making good in a free-market kind of way; it is simply that, in general, markets are not free and when they are free, the population suffers. The bank bailouts were not free market, the housing bubble was.

And historically, this nation has a wide populist streak. That's why Americans of two centuries ago were known for calling each other "sir" with no regard to economic station. The impetus behind the Constitution itself was in large measure wealthy people's fears that popular democracy would result in many small estates being carved from their land.

Socialist political candidates had significant support right up until the problems with the Russian revolution became widely known. Upton Sinclair ran for governor of California under the Democratic Party banner, but had been a Socialist his whole life.

His gubernatorial platform consisted in part of commandeering fallow production capacity of unused farm land and factories and putting people to work in them using scrip as capital.

Sinclair -- the muckraking journalism whose most famous book took filth, worms, disease, and ground up labor activists out of people's hamburgers -- later commented about Socialism thusly:

"The American People will take Socialism, but they won't take the label. I certainly proved it in the case of EPIC. Running on the Socialist ticket I got 60,000 votes, and running on the slogan to
'End Poverty in California' I got 879,000. I think we simply have to recognize the fact that our enemies have succeeded in spreading the Big Lie. There is no use attacking it by a front attack, it is much better to out-flank them."

http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/23510.Upton_Sinclair

http: //www. spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAsocialismP.htm

Posted by lillipublicans on Dec. 16, 2012 @ 1:06 pm

When losing a debate, use at least 300 words in your reply

to obscure and obfuscate. Is that an American value too? The complete inability to admit you lose an argument? Or, in your case, every argument.

Harding wasn't as bad as people make out, if only because he didn't do too much, and that is often a virtue in a politician. I wish some of our would do a lotless.

Posted by Anonymous on Dec. 16, 2012 @ 3:45 pm

Anonymous, my poor little funnyface,

everyone here of any intellectual strength knows you to be exactly as you are: a simple fool.

Your pronouncements regarding historical facts or philosophical premises are viewed as no more informative than the gibbering of a undernourished and freezing dog; as senseless as the babbling of a brook.

"Obscure" *and* "obfuscate"? What is that except a pitiable attempt to seem more erudite than you are? You are a dimwit and your beliefs are the stupid and ultimately self-destructive delusions which naturally accrue to such a diminished intellect according to the ambitions of others. You are a peon.

Posted by lillipublicans on Dec. 16, 2012 @ 5:12 pm

Oh yeah, and the other "tell" when Lilli is losing yet another

debate?

Insult the other parties.

Posted by Anonymous on Dec. 16, 2012 @ 6:22 pm

And that's another thing. You always pretend to win "debates,"

but in fact you are never able to answer any points that are made beyond mischaracterizing them -- if you even do that much.

Rather than make the least bit of attempt at carrying on a proper debate, you instead simply flit from one bit of provably false right-wing pablum to the next in a constant and dizzying rotation pattern; like a scabrous rodent chasing his ulcered tail.

That you exhibit such phenomenal self-delusional capacity in your writing is highly suggestive that you are similarly out of touch with reality in regard to your life and your standing in the world; i.e. the mechanism -- or even veracity -- of your self-proclaimed "success."

Posted by lillipublicans on Dec. 16, 2012 @ 7:13 pm

Lilli has never WON an argument here

He's persistent though.

Posted by Lucretia Snapples on Dec. 16, 2012 @ 7:24 pm

Yes, dear.

Posted by lillipublicans on Dec. 16, 2012 @ 8:14 pm

Greg's anti-Americanism

For me is his (and most fringe left and righties) is the disdain for actual Americans. Americans are not smart enough to agree with him, just as they are not smart enough to agree with Bob Larson, Depak Chopra, Rush Limbaugh, etc... We can all talk about American ideals, but it sucks when those Americans are too stupid to agree with progressives and born again Christians.

And of course the nutty ravings of "they do it in Europe," seldom saying "they do it in Greece."

Posted by matlock on Dec. 16, 2012 @ 1:33 pm

Criticism doesn't amount to "hate"

Anonymous,
It hurts me that *my* country, the country that I live in, is #1 in all the wrong ways. We're #1 in military spending, #1 in incarceration rate, and among developed nations, we have the worst democracy, worst health care, lowest life expectancy, worst transportation system, smallest middle class and lowest rate of mobility between classes.

We're an incredibly rich country. Richer than any other. We should have the BEST health care, best education, best transportation, best democracy, highest living standards, and the most freedom.

But we don't. We're at the bottom in all the places we should be at the top, and at the top in all the places we should be at the bottom. And it hurts that it's my country. I care because I live here. If it was some other country, I wouldn't care so much. Moving somewhere else is not an option for me right now, and it's not up to you anyway to tell me I should leave. So as long as I continue to live here, I'll continue speaking out and working for change on the social and economic justice issues that I care about. That's what a true patriot does.

Posted by Greg on Dec. 16, 2012 @ 9:10 am

But we DO have the best he etc.althcare, education

It's just that to fully enjoy that you need to get educationed, work hard and build prosperity.

If instead you're an entitlement brat then you won't get the ebst out of what the US offers, and would be happier in Europe where the substantial welfare system ensures that even slackers can choose unemployment as a valid lifestyle option.

And the US has more individual freedoms than most, if not all, the nations of Europe. We are way ahead in free speech, ability to bear arms, presumption of innocence and access to jury trials.

Posted by Anonymous on Dec. 16, 2012 @ 9:34 am

When did the word education

become a verb? The best education? The best healthcare?

The author of this comment must belong to the ostrich branch of the association of societal awareness.

The type of people idealized by Anonymous--educated, hard working--are struggling more than ever to survive in our increasingly unequal society.

Does anyone else notice the irony of a statement about "presumption of innocence" in a comment page about five innocent young men who were wrongly convicted and served long prison terms? Especially from a person who insists they are guilty even after evidence has exonerated them.

They are black, were in the park that night, ergo, they were guilty. That's not the US or world I want, but I still have hope that people of goodwill can work together to improve it.

Posted by Eddie on Dec. 16, 2012 @ 9:52 am

No irony as long as you understand that presumption of innocence

is to be distributed along race lines; i.e. white people presumed innocent and others presumed guilty.

(I also wonder what country doesn't hold itself prideful of its ability to defend itself. Are there historically nation states which prided themselves on the ability to attack and subjugate other lands? Hmmm....)

Again Eddie, while I applaud your and others' efforts here, there is no doubt in my mind that you are sparring with someone with no intellectual integrity whatsoever. This person is perhaps some exceedingly rare type of sadistic psychopath -- one who harbors a profound aversion to gore; that would explain why they come here to do whatever harm they can without bloodshed.

I'd like to think that I'm not sounding like a broken record with that theme and irritating those whose inputs I generally admire -- and it is indeed a great service to dissect the right wing cant word by word -- I just believe it is at the same time useful to also describe the underlying dynamic behind all such debates. There is no there there.

Posted by lillipublicans on Dec. 16, 2012 @ 10:24 am

The rate of black-on-white crime is over 40 times the rate of

white-on-black crime.

So statistically you'd expect more blacks, per capita, to be arrested and convicted of crimes. And therefore more occasions when that turns out to have been sub-optimal with 20/20 hundsight.

Posted by Anonymous on Dec. 16, 2012 @ 11:18 am

The simple troll cannot justify the above-made claim, but even

if numbers could be produced that might seemingly satisfy a need for such proof, they would certainly prove to be misapplied; as by a fraudulent use of the term "rate."

But of course Anonymous is a despisable racist, otherwise the concept of black people being falsely convicted of crimes would be simply "wrong" instead of the contrivedly bland "sub-optimal."

Posted by lillipublicans on Dec. 16, 2012 @ 11:28 am

Perhaps you have more up-to-date figures than me but the

last time I looked this up, black-on-white crime was 40 times white-on-black crime. However that was down from a peak of 60 times so it is at least possible that it is now below 40 times.

It's still an outrageous ratio, however.

Posted by Anonymous on Dec. 16, 2012 @ 11:52 am

If you include the crime of predatory lending,

then the ratios would be reversed.

Posted by Eddie on Dec. 18, 2012 @ 5:36 pm

What about the equal crime of clueless borrowing e.g.

borrowing ten times your annual income?

Posted by Guest on Dec. 18, 2012 @ 5:43 pm

Look up "adjective" versus "adverb" I guess the "best" education

in the world can't save everyone.

For every "innocent" guy who goes to prison "wrongfully", probably 99 guilty men go free. that's how the system works. If you don't like it, move to a bastion of liberty and justice like Cuba, Iran or North Korea.

Posted by Anonymous on Dec. 16, 2012 @ 11:15 am

I'm not educationed enough

to understand your post.

I never complain about my position in your so-called "meritocracy." Rather, I appreciate the advantages that my birth lottery provided me. Human characterstics of cooperation, empathy, solidarity and consideration are foreign concepts to you and your ilk.

Whatever success you may have had in this system must not have come from your intelligence because you don't exhibit any here. More likely, your success derives from obedience, obsequiesness and maybe, the most common, inheritance.

Eventually, the "losers" whom you disparage, but on whose exploited labor you thrive, will fight back against their oppression. As economic conditions deteriorate, the state relies on increasingly coercive forms of social control. When those forms fail because the hired guns paid to carry them out refuse or switch sides, then the party will be over for the parasitic economic class to which you aspire.

I'm off now to learn the conjugation of the verb "to educate" so I can compete in your Panglossian "meritocrocy" until that time comes.

Posted by Eddie on Dec. 16, 2012 @ 12:37 pm

Eddie, here's a happy little soundtrack for your above post.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyyKBPzQdCs

Posted by lillipublicans on Dec. 16, 2012 @ 1:11 pm

Don't hold your breathe waiting for Americans "workers" to

revolt against those on top. Americans are probably the laziest, most compliant and least likely people to protest or rebel in the west.

While the French strike and the British protest, the average American would rather watch TV. I'm afraid Eddie's vision of a communist-style revolution in the US is a non-starter - the rebels are all watching "American Idol" and drinking 64 oz Slurpies.

You picked the very worst nation to be a rigid, dogma-infested socialist. Have fun.

Posted by Anonymous on Dec. 16, 2012 @ 3:01 pm

For someone so proud of America

and "American virtues," you sure have a lot of scorn for Americans. Weird. Maybe it's a class thing.

Posted by Eddie on Dec. 16, 2012 @ 9:47 pm

Oddly

Anon doesn't claim the American worker while the left does. Anon is making a pretty obvious statement of fact. The left talks about the lumpen masses whom they claim to speak for while they say the same things as Anon just did.

The left says the peasants are too stupid and lazy to revolt, for them it's a matter of deep thinking, for example Michael Moore... Michael Moore(or most any left winger) says Americans are stupid and the self identified smartee left agrees.

American workers are not going to rise up and riot, the left are going to talk about how dumb they all are, while claiming to speak for them.

Anon is making a statement of fact. The lefts feelings of superiority mixed with their bitter powerlessness infuriate them, the masses who they expect to side with them are just too stupid and often times are too "bigoted" and religious in the wrong way.

Posted by matlock on Dec. 16, 2012 @ 10:51 pm

Yes, Matlock, that's the supreme irony here

The left threatens society with revolution and yet admits the workers are lazy, stupid sheep who are incapable of independent thought or of rising up with any effectiveness.

In fact, the left appeals so little to the workers that the blue collar voters mostly support the so-called "party of the rich and privileged" - the GOP.

It takes a special kind of stupid to get the working classed to rejact a supposed pro-labor and pro-equality party but somehow the Dem's and those to the left of them have managed it.

Posted by Anonymous on Dec. 17, 2012 @ 6:56 am

You won't find me

spouting off such classist rhetoric. At least you have confirmed your contempt for workers as "lazy and stupid sheep." Is there an IQ test required before someone enters a boat in the rising tide? Or can they ride along if they paddle the boat while you lounge on the upper levels? No wonder you didn't list community spirit as an "American virtue."

Posted by Eddie on Dec. 17, 2012 @ 7:23 am

But I'm not the one claiming Americans will revolt.

That's you.

I'm just pointing out why it will never happen.

Posted by Guest on Dec. 17, 2012 @ 1:26 pm

Thanks for the linked Phil Ochs song.

I like this one better: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u52Oz-54VYw.

Or a more updated version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WK0bTm4uduM.

I hope you got to see the recent documentary: Phil Ochs: There But For Fortune

Posted by Eddie on Dec. 16, 2012 @ 5:41 pm

Jello Biafra doing "Love Me, I'm A Liberal" -- outstanding.

Thank you for that. I still haven't seen the movie but do have the LP which has that photo of Ochs reclining against a brick wall strewn with torn campaign signs on it's cover.

Posted by lillipublicans on Dec. 16, 2012 @ 6:30 pm

That's awesome!

I've been looking for the updated version of "Love Me I'm A Liberal" forever! They should do an even more updated version... "I cheered when Obama was chosen, my hope in the system restored..."

Sigh. Phil Ochs is timeless. The names just change but history repeats itself.

Posted by Greg on Dec. 16, 2012 @ 7:20 pm

Greg, maybe you should write it.

You seem to have a good start there.

Posted by Eddie on Dec. 16, 2012 @ 8:35 pm

My prosperity doesn't depend on the labor of anyone but myself.

Plenty of people who aren't educated succeed. If you fail it is more a failure of application and attitude, than luck or genes. We're not victims of the birth lottery - only animals are. We control our destiny, although many choose to fatalistically deem themselves losers.

The very fact th9at you see success as "parasitic" and failure as somehow worthy both ensures and encapsulates your mediocrity in the great game of economics.

Posted by Anonymous on Dec. 16, 2012 @ 2:57 pm

I'm plenty educated.

You are just too dense to understand that I was mocking your poor use of the English language--educationed? I apologize if English is not your first language; otherwise, you have no excuse.

If you actually believe that your prosperity depends only on your labor or that accident of birth does not play a huge role in someone's economic place or eventual outcome, then you have drunk a full dose of the rigid Randian dogma kool-aid.

Have a wonderful day tomorrow as you grow and harvest your own food, make your own clothes, build your own roads and mode of transport. More likely, you'll be collecting economic rents from someone else's labor as you day trade or speculate in property or kiss up to someone richer than you so that you can earn a living.

Posted by Eddie on Dec. 16, 2012 @ 5:59 pm

And you're so pure and unadulterated/

Working as what, exactly?

you just sound like a whiney bitter low-level employee to me.

Posted by Anonymous on Dec. 16, 2012 @ 6:20 pm

I'll never claim to be pure and unadulterated.

I realize that I benefit from other people's labor. I just try my best to minimize my negative impacts and work as best as I can with others to improve things. I am mindful of my imperfections and my limitations and pride myself on not trying to get over on anyone.

Of course, to you, anyone who discredits your entitled world view will sound whiney and bitter, but I assure you that my partner, friends and acquaintances believe that I am neither.

It is quite startling how many of your comments attempt to judge people by their position in the societal hierarchy. I've been low level, medium level, top level and no level. What does it matter?

Posted by Eddie on Dec. 16, 2012 @ 8:31 pm

You were "top level"? Really? Do describe what you

mean by that. Because I've never met a successful person who believes they achieved that by exploiting others. They may admit they had some luck along the way, but never that they achieved prosperity thru something evil or exploitative.

Or did you just eman you were the head waiter?

Posted by Anonymous on Dec. 17, 2012 @ 6:52 am

Amusing to consider how much foreign mucus Anonymous consumes

each time dining out.

Posted by lillipublicans on Dec. 17, 2012 @ 7:37 am

Anonymous' contributions here

confirm the common observation that "free market capitalism" thrives on the worst qualities of the human character, like greed and selfishness. Is "assholeism" a word?

Posted by Eddie on Dec. 17, 2012 @ 9:06 am