Posted on 09/27/2007 5:26:57 PM PDT by cjmae
A lib buddy of mine called me and told me to turn on MTV. John Edwards was taking questions from young students. I wasn't but half way paying attention when I heard a young lady ask him something about his solution for inner city crime. Edwards said something like we can't build enough prisons to hold all of the criminals or eventualy there will be no black people left because they would either be in jail or dead. I'm paraphrasing of course and I don't want to start something that's not accurate but if that is what he said that has got to be either one of the most racist or stupidest things I've ever heard a politician say. Did anyone else hear it?
Who’s Imus?
WOW — thanks for the link to this, Arrowhead and for the post WUAV!! What a maroon! LOL
Pinging a few friends....
BTTT
Why is Silky Pont standing on the Imperial Japanese flag?
“Teach.....your children well......”
bump for home viewing
I wonder if The View will mention this.
A telling window on the liberal mindset.
The original video link was the wrong one: had to do stricty with “europeanized” school curricula, as opposed to “diverse” ones. More BS. However, hearing now this “controversial” answer to the question, I think you’re all barking up the wrong tree. While it may be true that a Conservative candidate would be taken to task for
uttering the same words , Edwards’s words, in or out of context, were only making the self-evident point that if “society” keeps “incarcerating and incarcerating” black youth, sooner or later they’ll all be in jail. NO KIDDING. BY DEFINITION THEY’LL ALL BE IN JAIL. Maybe it was the carelessness of saying “all”, I don’t know, but for anyone who wants to nail John Edwards on something, it’s not this statement. This is an innocuous statement by itself. The more conservatives harp on these out of context words, the worse they look-—the more they look like Democrats./
Done!
John Edwards is a commie cretin!!
The question dealt with how he was going to eliminate kids being involved with inter-city violence.
Race or gender was not part of the question.
The first part of his answer was your typical liberal excuse, blame Bush. First and foremost, it and everything else, is Bush’s fault. (No, I am not a BushBot. But, I am getting tired of hearing this lame excuse.)
The second part of his answer dealt with incarceration. Why do we do that? Because that person was convicted of a crime. But, he didn’t stop there. He mentioned race (black) and gender (male) as not only who, but people with those credentials were the only ones that were being arrested and put in jail. And if we continue to arrest and incarcerate them “...we are not going to have a young African American male population, they are all going to be in prison, or dead.”
This is the context.
So, what is out of context?
1. That Mr. Edwards used racial profiling to answer the question? (Only young black males are committing crimes?)
2. Mr. Edwards feels that young black males are being victimized because they are the only ones being incarcerated for the crimes they commit? (Pandering Alert?)
3. It is all George Bush’s fault for failed policies on education, universal health care and the judicial system for sentencing for drugs. Because, “..if you are African American living in the inter-city, you are more likely to be charged with a crime...”
No. Because someone broke the law. Not because they are black, white, brown or yellow. They broke the law. The question was what he was going to do about inter-city kids partaking in violence.
If anything was taken out of context, it was the question itself.
TRANSLATED:
Question: What would you do to help eliminate inner city kids partake in violence?
Answer: Thats a good question, the answer is a little long, so bare with me, because I dont think theres a silver bullet for this, um we start with the President of the United States, saying to America, We cannot build enough prisons to solve this problem. And the idea that we can just keep incarcerating, keep incarcerating, pretty soon were not gonna have, a young African-American male population in America, theyre all gonna be in prison .or dead. One of the two uh .and so I think there are a lot of things that we need to do.
First, we need to have an education system thats fair, for people who live in the inner city, because right now we have two school public systems in America. One for fluent suburban neighborhoods and one for the inner city and another .and the same for poor rural areas and thats not right, so .a lot of things
We should have universal, ah, early childhood education. We should give, incentive pay for good teachers who go into the inner city and teach, uh improving the schools .ok
Universal Health Care, which I spoke about just a few minutes ago, says that everyone gets quality health care from the time their born, so they dont have to worry about that.
We have to change our Citizen Laws in America, theyre not fair. Because theres a, for example, theres a huge disparity between the sentencing uh for crack and powder cocaine. Well, inner city youth are much more likely to be involved with crack cocaine. The result is, they get much harsher sentences. If you are, living in the inner city and African-American, you are more likely to get charged with a crime, you are more likely to be convicted of that crime and more likely to get a harsher punishment for that crime. That is the world of our judicial system today. And then on top of that, on top of that, when you go, if it is a non-violent offense, if you go to jail for six months or a year or two years, whatever the sentence turns out to be, when you get back out, the great likelihood, is youre gonna turn right back to the place that got you in trouble to start with and theres nothing to help. So instead of building more prisons, what America should be doing is creating a structure that allows young people who have a brush with law, who get in some trouble, to be able to turn their lives around and become productive again, and that means a lot of different things. In some cases, it might mean drug counseling and drug rehabilitation. Our probation system doesnt work. Our probation officers are responsible for anywhere from 700 to 1,000 people, that means their paying no attention individually to these people. We need to make sure if they come out of jail, or out of prison, out of incarceration, if they need more education, they get it, if they need more job training, they get it.
And what Ive been told, over and over, from young men whove had a brush with the law, whove been to jail, they come back out, they apply for work and they say you got it, you just answered the question. They will be, employers will be nice to them, theyll meet with them, theyll interview them, and they just never hear back from them again, they dont get the job. And I think America should actually be reaching out, to try to get employment for young people who are trying to turn their lives around.
So, get away from the idea that imprisonment is gonna solve all these problems, that building prisons is gonna solve these problems and actually create an opportunity for these young folks.
JOHN EDWARDS IS A MORON!!
John apparently thinks that not only are there 2 America’s, but there are 2 school systems for those Americas as well.
What a dolt he is.
Everything Edwards said was par for the course for any and every Democratic candidate: it’s all there , from the obligatory “bash Bush” angle ( of course, they are all running against the legacy of 7 years of Bush, so any rhetorical example will do for the purposes), to the assumption that we are ONLY talking about “African-American” males ( consider, he may have been led there automatically because his questioner was a young Black woman, and she obviously had a “target group” in mind,) to all the usual pandering, to the implicit assumption that all African American males are prone to crime anyway,and “there won’t be any left” if the answer is seen as “incarceration”. THIS particular assumption IS in fact the most cynical, because , at one and the same time he distorts Bush’s statement, yet proves his point, and also reveals himself as being too stupid to understand that Bush said incarceration and the building of prisons is NOT the answer.
BTW, it’s inner-city violence, not inter-city violence.
Though I kind of like that as a concept.
Good points-—but see my #189 and 195 in answer to WakeUpandVote, and anyone else who thinks these Edwards remarks are newsworthy, in the “can you believe he said that” vein. Edwards would never make the points you made, though, because his whole orientation is intellectual dishonesty, like the way he intentionally distorted and took out of context Bush’s remarks on building prisons.
‘They’re very crafty-—he “touched on” Bush’s remarks so you don’t really know what he will make of them, but in no time he “counters” them and puts them in a contrary light where it seems like Bush is participating in the “dialectic” Edwards has initiated. I think it’s a reflex with them, something they don’t even have to think about doing.
Great.. now I have a Mortal Kombat style image in my head:
New York vs Newark.. round one.. FIGHT!
(Next up... Walden NY vs Port Jervis NY..)
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