The Rapist Justice

I was raised with the same knowledge about our world that you were. It was warm in the summer, and cold in december. Every year in spring I get one less hour of sleep, and every year in fall, I can drink for one more hour at the bar. If my cat gets stuck in a tree, someone will help me get her down, and if I do something against the law, I'll pay for it. We are taught from day one that every crime has a punishment, and the worse the crime, the deeper the shit you'll be in. You never need to be taught which crimes are worse than others, thats something that for whatever reason we all seem to be able to agree on with relative consistency. Steal a chocolate bar, you won't be allowed in the store anymore. Walk off with $5,000 worth of crap from wal-mart and you might end up picking up trash for the government. Hit your little brother for turning off the tv, dad might hit you. Hit that clever prick at the bar for turning on your girlfriend, and he might hit you with an assault charge. Drive fast and you pay. Drive drunk and you have to stay home for six months. Lose control of yourself one day, and shoot three people in a mall, and your going to jail for a long time. Sexually assault a child 70 times over a six month period along with committing multiple assaults on five other children over the course of a few years?

Hows 6 years sound? We'll get you out on parole in 4, and within 6 years of your conviction you can be back on the streets in Edmonton, luring ten year old girls into your van with promises of ice cream and kittens.

When something like this happens, people are outraged. We want to know how in god names did this happen? How can we have a convicted sex offender on the streets in our neighborhood without us knowing? Right? But why aren't we asking the questions we should be asking? Why oh why is there a convicted sex offender walking around on the streets!? Im not a scientist, or a psychologist but I've heard it told to me dozens of times, sex offenders almost always re-offend. Its almost a dead lock that Rusty McDick, who spent his early twenties fecking up little girls and boys lives, will go right back to his sick and horrible hobbies once given a long enough leash.

I think about the pain of being hurt by someone you trust, or how awful it feels to be powerless to help yourself. Its impossible for me to understand the destruction and pain someone feels from the fallout of sexual abuse, but when I hear about these crimes I remember these feelings, and imagine them magnified dozens of times and it completely fills me with rage. Our justice system is in place to protect us from ourselves. It is built to make sure that stronger people can't hurt weaker people, and evil people can't inflict pain on innocent people. There is nothing more defenseless and innocent than a child. A child can be lured by pictures of kittens and ice cream into a strange mans van, and immediately her life can be changed for the worse. Forever.

You read about it happening all the time. Sex offender gets out of jail. Sex offender re-offends. Sex offender goes back to jail. Another little girl or boy gets to grow up with the memory of being raped by Family Friend A, or Pastor B, or whoever else. Why doesn't the punishment fit the crime? Why are we so slow to re-act to this horrible trend? If I shoot somebody in the street tomorrow I go to jail for life, and some innocent person's life is over. If I sexually assault 6 children, one of them 70 god damn fucking times, I go to jail for four fucking years, and then I can get back to business, assaulting more kids over the weekend. Its time for people to realize whats going on. The problem isn't that you weren't made aware of this sicko's presence in your community. The problem is he was allowed back into ANY community ANYWHERE. You sexually assault ANYBODY, and you should be spending the rest of your life in jail, and based on what I know about prisons that shouldn't be a very long life. Its time for society to stop protecting people at the expense of being able to protect ourselves. 

Its time for the justice system to revamp the way they deal with sex offenders. It's time they were dealt with the way experts in the field have been saying they should be dealt with for years. If they cannot be reabilitated, then they cannot ever be released back into society. What we have right now is a classic case of people in power not wanting to shut the door too far for fear of being unfair to one person, but by not punishing sex offenders appropriately, we are constantly punishing more and more innocent victims of the horrible disgusting crime. If someone commits a crime, we should err on the side of over punishing them, and why not? They are the god damn rapist, not us! Why the hell should we be worried about sending them away for too long, when the damage they have done to their victims is LIFELONG.

Depression, Smear Campaigns and the Self-Degrading Value of Your Vote

http://www.ktla.com/landing_topstories/?Six-People-Found-Dead-Inside-Home-in-Gat=1&blockID=84898&feedID=1198

Earlier today six people where found dead inside their Los Angeles area home. In an exclusive gated community, a man, his wife, mother-in-law, two children aged 7 and 12 and a teenager where shot to death. The bodies were found in seperate rooms, and police believe they were killed around 6pm on Saturday night. It is believed that the family had run into financial problems, and keeping up with the rent on the house combined with other costs (which I'm sure were substantial... people don't usually live in gated communities and send their kids to public school while driving rusty tercels), finally caused the man to snap. It's a vicious crime, horribly sad, and it makes me want to ask why to so many things. Why kill your kids? Why your wife and mother-in-law? Why yourself? What kind of debt can you incur personally that is worth the lives of your loved ones and yourself? And why or how did you incur the debt? The issues that need to be talked about in the American presidential campaign are all evident in this story. Financial woes, mental health, struggling families, economic downturn and the expectations of your friends and family to continue to live beyond your personal means are the result of constant and blatant neglect by the American government to lead their people and adapt to a changing world.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/

Meanwhile John McCain has turned up the volume on his smear campaign against Democratic nominee Barack Obama, by questioning Obama's honesty and associations. John's statements were close behind VP Nominee Palins comments which questioned his patriotism and his association with an organization that used violence in protest to the vietnam war. Barack had held a campaign fundraiser in the mans (whose name is William Ayers) living room when he first ran for office in the early 90's. The violent acts Mr. Ayers is connected to happened in the 70's, when Barack was about as old as the kids found dead in their home above. The American Economy is in shambles, people are losing their jobs daily, their sanity and their lives, and the people who vote south of the border need to stay focused on whats important. The more people let John and his Rottweiler take attention away from the issues, the less they stand to know about the candidates come election day. If people expect to be able to hold their presidents accountable every four years, they need to force them to make commitments as to what they ARE going to do instead of wasting time talking about what their opponent used to do.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/10/06/recession.html

Canada's future is darkening daily also. As we head toward a recession that every day looks and sounds worse we need to focus our attention on our own Political landscape. The conservative government has released ad after ad bluring the issues we need to hear about by smearing Dion's track record and idea's for the future. Instead of putting together constructive thoughts and making commitments regarding their actions once elected they continue to either trash their opponents or become completely invisible all together. No one in the current regime wants to talk about the obviously immenent economic slowdown. There is virtually no Conservative platform for us to evaluate.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/calgary/story/2008/09/25/richardson-resign.html

I personally live in Calgary Center, where Lee Richardson is the incumbent and almost guaranteed shoo-in, and do you think I have received any information on him? We have completely nullified our right to be represented in Ottawa by never thinking twice about who we vote for, and what they stand for.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/calgary/story/2008/09/16/anders-election-bigfoot.html
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2001/06/07/mandela_mp010607.html
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/edmonton/story/2006/06/15/ed-robanders-20060615.html

The residents south and west of me consitently elect a racist biggot named Rob Anders, who can't even tell the difference between a terrorist and a living hero in Nelson Mandela. After Anders, who was then a member of the defunct Alliance Party, finished slamming South Africa's first black president who was instrumental in dismantling apartheid, he took up (allegedly, fine) using government property to repay loans and filing false travel claims. And every four years he quietly collects thousands of votes from constituents who either don't know any better, or don't care what kind of worthless animal 'represents' them.

And Lee, isn't any better. After making comments that he meant 100% (I don't care if he 'retracted' them, he didn't make them under durress, he didn't have a gun to his head until after he said them... it's the retraction that, given a free pass he would have kept to himself) regarding 'people from other societies' being the people commiting crimes, he should have been chased out of Ottawa. Our willingness to allow him to represent us should have been immediately rethought and he should have been so embarrassed by his stupidity that he ended up resigning shamefully. Instead, the party pats him on the back for being so sensitive in his apology, and he goes back to leading polls by thousands of votes.

People everywhere need to snap out of it, and start to take notice of whats going on around them. Who is representing you? What are they doing to enrich your life and the lives of those around you? How are they protecting you from recession, depression, crime, illness and yourself. If they are asking you to vote for them, are they telling you why they deserve it? Or are they just wandering around, blabbing about how bad the other guy is, occassionally tripping over themselves and making you look like an idiot for electing them over and over.

http://www.voteforenvironment.ca/