Death penalty

[Sandy G]

I always kinda thought there was something REALLY "Eeuuuwwww!!!" about dressing little bitty girls up in whore-regalia, make-up, etc, & making them parade around like little strumpets...There was a documentary on it awhile back on HBO, IIRC, & the mothers & daddies that get into this stuff are kinda exploiting their kids. Mainly it seemed to be the mamas who were really pushing it...Looked like only a very few of the kids actually enjoyed it. Most seemed bewildered or frightened. Let a KID be a KID, fer Chrisakes...

[Charles]

Originally Posted by Sandy G

I always kinda thought there was something REALLY "Eeuuuwwww!!!" about dressing little bitty girls up in whore-regalia, make-up, etc, & making them parade around like little strumpets...There was a documentary on it awhile back on HBO, IIRC, & the mothers & daddies that get into this stuff are kinda exploiting their kids. Mainly it seemed to be the mamas who were really pushing it...Looked like only a very few of the kids actually enjoyed it. Most seemed bewildered or frightened. Let a KID be a KID, fer Chrisakes...

I've always wondered about parents who would do this sort of thing to their children. Or the people who would sit and watch it.

I wouldn't do it, and I don't dress my dog up either.

Chas

[noonereal]

Originally Posted by Sandy G

I always kinda thought there was something REALLY "Eeuuuwwww!!!" about dressing little bitty girls up in whore-regalia, make-up, etc, & making them parade around like little strumpets...There was a documentary on it awhile back on HBO, IIRC, & the mothers & daddies that get into this stuff are kinda exploiting their kids. Mainly it seemed to be the mamas who were really pushing it...Looked like only a very few of the kids actually enjoyed it. Most seemed bewildered or frightened. Let a KID be a KID, fer Chrisakes...

+1



...

[BlueStreak]

Originally Posted by Sandy G

I always kinda thought there was something REALLY "Eeuuuwwww!!!" about dressing little bitty girls up in whore-regalia, make-up, etc, & making them parade around like little strumpets...There was a documentary on it awhile back on HBO, IIRC, & the mothers & daddies that get into this stuff are kinda exploiting their kids. Mainly it seemed to be the mamas who were really pushing it...Looked like only a very few of the kids actually enjoyed it. Most seemed bewildered or frightened. Let a KID be a KID, fer Chrisakes...

BRAVO, old Boy!!!

Dave

[BlueStreak]

Originally Posted by noonereal

Exactly. It makes me nuts when folks sit in front of the tube listening to the news and proclaim how drastically things have changed. Human behavior has been fairly consistent for 100,000 years. We are just more aware today.

Precisely.

A few years ago we had politicians decrying the crime rate (Trying to get votes.) because we had had something like six or seven murders in the area the previous year. The Hampton Roads area is comprised of seven cities and totals nearly 2.5 million people. In a city of 2.5 million, seven murders is not only a remarkably good statistic compared to the national average, it is phenominal. But, they (politicians and media) had people convinced it was a sign of the Apocolypse and afraid to leave their homes. I remember checking the crime stats in my home area, the Youngstown/Warren Ohio Metro area, and the rate for violent crimes was just over SIX TIMES the national average.
(And has been for a shockingly long time.)

Dave

[finnbow]

While I have no sympathy for the convicted murderer, rapist or child molester, I resent politicians who peddle the notion that if you are against the death penalty that you're soft on crime. Honestly, I don't think the death penalty serves a purpose other than to cater to the public's need for vengeance and to provide a means for politicians to assert their tough-on-crime bona fides. I believe it represents our national frustration about violent crime's persistence in our culture.

As for deterrence, study after study have shown that certainty of punishment is a deterrent, not severity. Namely, if you were certain to get a $10 fine every time you went 56 mph in a 55 zone, you wouldn't speed. OTOH, if the fine was $1000, but there was a 1 in a million chance of getting caught, you'd speed. If it were an effective deterrent, the US would have the lowest violent crime rate of any of the western industrialized democracies, not the highest.

If it could be administered fairly and acted as a deterrent, I'd support it whole-heartedly. Until then, we're kidding ourselves as to both its efficacy and morality.

[Boreas]

Originally Posted by Grumpy

I am sorry but the system is to too corrupt to be fixed.

Yes I feel ryan was wrong for stopping it.

(Somehow missed this response until today.)

Grumpy, if I understand you here you seem to be contradicting yourself. If the judicial system is too corrupt to be fixed then a penalty which can never be reversed once imposed must be done away with.

John

[Boreas]

Originally Posted by finnbow

If it were an effective deterrent, the US would have the lowest violent crime rate of any of the western industrialized democracies, not the highest.

And of all those western democracies we're the only one with the death penalty. As Finnbow and I have both said, the death penalty is really only about the most barbaric form of vengeance, not justice or prevention.

John