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Foosters

Burnt Ends
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Everything posted by Foosters

  1. Could never finish the play like little bro
  2. What will this do to the Mediterranean? Should I encourage my daughter to purchase land in Tunisia?
  3. Why aren't we putting the daughter on blast? She's an adult.
  4. Oh yeah, RFK Jr., JFK Jr. . . . whatever it takes
  5. Same. I also do it so perhaps I will be spared when the revolution hits
  6. I actually know a couple - mid 50's, very Catholic - who are moving from a 1.5m home in Sierra Madre, CA to Arkansas. The final straw? The LA Dodgers welcoming The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence to Pride-themed game.
  7. ATX --> Reno Reno - drive - Lake Tahoe. Just spent a week swimming in the crystal-clear, cool, mountain water. Its good for your soul.
  8. Hmm, very concerning. Perhaps Team Desantis could include more Nazi imagery into their campaigns to placate them?
  9. Hey @Poe It Up, how should a president Desantis police advertising campaigns on a federal level? Are you in support of a new federal agency that could review companies' material before being published? Or should the president just have unilateral authority to punish companies when their speech offends the position? Curious to get some thoughts from an anti- first amendment perspective.
  10. I think Sack and I probably know the same guy. The guy I know pulled his kid out of River Oaks Baptist and sent them a long letter trying to shame them. He then passed this letter around to friends, which was of course distributed to a lot more people. He obviously thought that the letter made him look good, but it was mainly shared so that people could laugh at him behind his back. Guy is a UT grad born and raised River Oaks/West U, and has the writing skills of a 9th grade Larry Sellers.
  11. Shit, has anyone even asked the climate scientists if they watched Fantasia?
  12. I don't have a problem with city's using their powers of enforcement - including the criminal code - to deter and stop drug dealing and other criminal activity. But as you know, we spent an entire decade going HARD after drug dealers and the accompanying crime, and it never really seemed to make a dent. It didn't drive drugs and drug use to other cities. It just created a revolving door to the jails and prisons. Is the only difference now that because of the housing crisis these sales, use, and accompanying crime are taking place on Main street instead of flop houses on the east side of town? Honest question. I 100% agree. It hurts to walk through Downtown LA every day and walk by people having active mental health crises. Its sad that I don't feel comfortable taking my child, my wife, and, shit, sometimes myself to various parts of the city due to the crisis. I'm moving more towards loosening the requirements for involuntary commitment, with accompanying due process safeguards, but I still don't think the criminal justice system is the answer. If a municipality allows one of its citizens to matriculate through k-12 with untreated mental illness, when DCFS (overburdened and underfunded) overlooks years of abuse and neglect, when the education of that citizen solely consists of sticking that person in the back of a 38 person classroom with no individual instruction or attention and passes them on year to year, and when that person needs to make $50k+ a year in order to not sleep on the street; then I would argue that municipality is not serious about protecting the quality of life of its residents. And, waiting until those years of untreated abuse, neglect, and lack of medical care erupt into a violent episode is a predictable result that should surprise no one. That said, we both know that systemic changes on multiple fronts is a pipe dream, so perhaps the only answer truly is significantly increasing the punishments so that these crimes result in years in prison as opposed to weeks or months in county jails. Obviously I don't think that's the answer, but given enough time, it will be the answer we eventually settle on, because when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
  13. You keep saying "released to the streets." You know that even the most zealous prosecutions end up with defendants back on the streets at some point. Years ago, the Santa Monica City attorney made it their mission to eradicate homelessness and the accompanying blight. The SM CAs vigorously prosecuted the homeless under an illegal camping statute. A lot of them ended up taking the cases all the way to trial because they City Attorney's office wasn't interested in any offers that didn't include jail time. So, dozens of trials and hundreds of jurors later, the issue didn't change. Why? Because even throwing the book at them results in them being "released to the streets" at a later date. It's just a slower revolving door. The problem - as it always has been - is we are trying to use the criminal justice system to address: wealth inequality, mental health treatment, substance abuse treatment, and a severe housing crisis. So weird that it's not working to fix the issue. Oh well, better pump more money into law enforcement. Absent making being homeless a felony with years of prison time, prosecuting the homeless doesn't solve the issue. Should our laws regarding involuntary commitment change? Perhaps. Should we pump millions into MH care and treatment to identify and treat those prior to them ending up on the streets, half-clothed, screaming at the clouds? Probably. Should we have discussions about whether it's healthy to have housing be a primary vehicle for investment? I think so. The point being, it's going to take a lot more than just sending the brute squad out to clear the forest. None of that is to say that a city doesn't have an interest in prosecuting crimes committed while someone is homeless, but that also doesn't fix the issue. So there's a dirty, unclothed man yelling at people on a sidewalk. Obviously that's alarming and scary. If I'm a business owner, that's going to piss me off. If I live down the street from him, that's going to piss me off too. But what should the police do? Arrest him for disturbing the peace? Arrest him for vagrancy? Either way - even under the most draconian system - that guy's going to be back out within 30 days, likely after spending that time in a dirty, dangerous, cage without any MH resources. Who gets to deal with the consequences when he gets out? Why, you and I. One final note, do you know what the 3 largest mental health facilities in the US are? I.e. what facilities have the most number of diagnosed mentally ill patients? LA County jail, Cook County Jail, and Rikers Island.
  14. Haven't had a moment to breathe at work today. I'm jumping in on page 148. I assume by the time I get to 151 I will be in a much better mood and it wont just be 3 pages of bickering Edit:
  15. I feel like their fan base is in the same place we were in 2011. Really fun to watch, ngl
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