SFCityBear said:
Yogi Bear said:
helltopay1 said:
Personal judgement????In my day, there were no gangs, no homeless, no rampant drug use, no filthy streets, no spiraling home-price escalation, no hostility to businesses, so few illegals you could count them on one hand; you could walk around your neighborhood at midnight without fear of being accosted. public and private school education was top-notch . Religion was respected. Churches were full or nearly full every Sunday. nobody worried about free speech. people respected differences of opinion without shouting at them that they were racists, homophobes, sexists, etc. Teachers were respected and had the full backing of principals and school boards. Nobody sued the teacher because the teacher demanded respect, obedience and intellectual vigor. Bad apples were sent home and were not allowed back in the class unless the parents ( yes-----kids usually had two parents in this days) pleaded with the principal to give the wayward student one more chance. Fighting in class was automatic grounds for dismissal. yelling or fighting with the teacher was automatic grounds for dismissal. grade inflation had not yet been invented. Nobody automatically got a trophy just for showing up. trophies had to be earned. Baseball games were not terminated in the 5th inning because one team was at least 10 runs behind. In CYO basketball, no child was required to play at least one quarter. Playing was a privilege and you played because you deserved to play. parents were not allowed to browbeat coaches into giving their kid more vplaying time. Parents did even dream of doing this. Marriage was considered normal. Today, marriage is simply considered one more optional life-style choice. I have just begun to scratch the surface. Personal judgement?????Sad reality.
You sing the right-wing song well.
How bad do you feel about having voted for Trump?
I agree mostly with Helltopay. What he tried to say is not right-wing, it is reality-wing. He is just describing conditions as he sees them today as compared to when he was growing up. He did not take this discussion political, you did, by first dissing the rant as right-wing, and then trying to insult Helltopay by surmising he voted for Trump, and as we all know Trump is responsible for anything wrong in the world of the Leftist from the beginning of time to the end of days.
If you look at the mayors of America's big cities, the cities with the most crime, ALL of them are run by Democrat Mayors and the big ones are run by well-entrenched Democrat Party political machines that have been doing this for decades. If there are crime and other problems of decay in San Francisco, and if a political party has any blame in that, it would be the Democrats, because there are no Republicans in power in SF, only a handful who live here who mostly don't vote anymore. The Democratic Party machine has controlled San Francisco since 1964, which was when San Francisco last had a Republican Mayor, George Christopher. Today, the Republican Party does not exist in SF, and they run no candidates for office in SF. Elections here are contested between liberals, leftists, communists, and corrupt machine politicians, all of them Democrats. Mike Shaughnessy a Democrat machine guy was Sheriff here forever, and finally retired. A friend of mine's son, Paul, worked his whole career in the Sheriff's office, rose to #2 in the department, was running for the Sheriff's office with the support of the Deputy Sheriff's Association. He was running against an Iranian Leftist named Ross Mirkarimi, who had been term-limited out of the Board of Supervisors, and the polls showed Paul winning easily. The Democrat Party big shots didn't want Paul to win, they wanted the Leftist. So they recruited a retired Irish cop to run in a three-way race. He siphoned off enough votes from Paul to let the Leftist Mirkarimi win.
When I grew up in San Francisco, there were gangs, but they weren't very dangerous. I grew up in the Haight. I was in a gang. We stole stuff. Shoplifted, or stole soda pop off trucks. There was another gang that hung out at St Agnes Youth Center, run by a Filipino kid, and its members were guys who wore motorcycle boots, shades, and chains for belts, which they could use in fights. They fought a lot. They used to drink beer, get in cars and drive over to the Mission and call out some Hispanics and start a fist fight. Throw some punches and then drive off. In the last 20 years or so, the Mission became home to gangs dealing drugs and killing people. You could get killed if you wore blue clothing on the side of the street where red was the favorite color of the gang there. We've had gangs in and around Chinatown forever. They extort money from restaurant owners, mug people, and sometimes kill people. They used to deal all the illegal fireworks, and they bought and ferried a constant supply of girls from Asia to work as slaves in SF's massage parlors. All while local law enforcement turned a blind eye. Anyone who thinks San Francisco is some kind of liberal oasis with little crime doesn't live in a rough area, or doesn't go out at night much.
The big thing that has changed over the years is the lack of respect for parents, for elders, for teachers, for cops, for signs, and for laws of any kind. When is the last time you saw a driver stop at a stop sign? I can honestly say I haven't seen a driver pulled over by a cop in SF for a moving violation in at least 10-15 years. Pedestrians get killed at an alarming rated in San Franciso, many of them hit-and run. That is a new thing. Hit and run. Happens more than ever. A guy rear-ended me in the Tenderloin and totaled my car, and drove off. Unfortunately for him, his license plate fell off, and I took it to a police station, and they traced it for me. The guy's insurance paid for a new car for me, but I wasn't satisfied. I called the District Attorney, and he said he couldn't prosecute the guy, because there was no injury, only vehicle damage, which is a misdemeanor.
The other big thing that has changed is how easily we are offended, how quick we become hysterical or violent as individuals. Children, youths, and adults used to settle disagreements with words, with their fists or with strength. Now they too often settle things with a gun. You get offended, you go get a gun and shoot the other kid. End of problem.
At least most drivers slow down a little for stop signs. Bicyclists blow through them with impunity. Two years ago, two pedestrians were killed by bicyclists in separate accidents, and both of the cyclists were let off with a slap on the wrist. SF is run for bicyclists. A few years back, they formed a mob called "Critical Mass" to force the city to create more bike lanes. They rode downtown on Friday night rush hour to block streets and intimidate drivers into fights. The City caved, and now we have bike lanes everywhere. It is maybe a good thing, overall, but is typical Leftist. Taraval street has had a bike lane for maybe 10 years now, and I finally saw my first bicyclist using the lane. They pay no attention to stop signs, or the laws that prohibit them from riding on sidewalks, or on paths in Golden Gate Park. Now we have skateboards and scooters on sidewalks and paths, and they are motorized to boot.
In my day, we had homeless, but they were in a small defined area, on Howard between 3rd and 4th streets. They were called "bums," "winos," or if they hopped trains, "hobos." They were polite and begged for money. When the Moscone Center was built, they moved to 6th street and the Tenderloin. When the Hippies came and left, homeless inhabited Stanyan and Golden Gate Park. Now they are almost everywhere. When Newsom was mayor, he spent a billion on them. Now I think we spend $37,000 per homeless person. The homeless flock to SF and other California cities because of our generous social programs for them. The Left does not want to eradicate or solve the problem, because it create lots of government programs, departments, and jobs, reqiring more taxes, along with raising a lot of money for charities, who also increase their workforce and donations. It is an industry, and a growing one. The budget for street cleaning is $65 million, and they just added $13 million for cleaning up feces, and voila, a new industry created. Who dares to say Democrats don't create jobs?
As we continue to permit or cultivate the attitude that people can do whatever they want, no matter who they offend, no matter what law or rule they break, and continue to pass restrictive laws but don't enforce them, we will have more deterioration in our cities. So far the only solution for these Democrat city governments has been to keep the ball rolling until they come up with a redevelopment plan to demolish the inner city slums and replace them with modern buildings for businesses and expensive housing, which drives the homeless and the poor and the criminal elements out to another city where the cycle begins anew. As for Ducky and Caltagjohnson in Montreux, don't be sure some of this is not coming soon to a theatre near you.