A data point to make HG Wells weep.

Sometime on Sun/Monday there was a break in and a bike of mine got swiped.   After doing the police report, I thought "I'll get over to the local schools and see if my bike is in the rack."

At the high school - 3 bikes, one with disk brakes (better than mine)   At the grade schools - not a single bike rack, let alone bikes.

Remind me how this transportation/energy thing will all work out fine?

Checking a bike rack?  No, no.  What you do these days is check eBay.  See if someone's selling your stolen property online.
Not a good time to be cruising around schools.
Not a good time to be cruising around schools.

I'm not registered as a Republican, so I'm safe.

Thnking about getting the dog to put in papers to run for office as a Republican however.  She likes pork and has been known to lick boys.

Perhaps I'm misreading his reference, but I don't think it was about Foley.

Rather in the last week or two, there have been 3 seperate gunman attacks on schools through out the US, and security has been stepped up in a number districts to be watchful of strange people hanging around schools.

Bingo!
I heard about the Amish attack.    The more paranoid people claim that attecks happen all the time, and are just never reported.

At one time I saw a bloody body in a fed building, men in body armor and guns standing all about, film crews for the local TV channels were there, yet not a peep from the media.   So I'm a little more willing to believe the position of attackes not reported, based on my own lying eyes.

Pheeeer of the Eeeeevil gunman and me being a threat implys the use of obeservation of the outside of the school AND people who cared enough to to be doing a job to call in my walking about on land my tax dollars pay for.    Rather over the top if one feels one has to call in someone walking around the back of a school or driving about a school.

I just would have wipped out the incident report number, explained why I was there, then bitched aobut the lack of bicycle racks.

Well now it turns out that even children violence - a result of decades of loss of social cohesion, proper education, individualism, egocentrism etc. will also be put in this ridiculous R-D frame. Of course if democrats win they will fix it overnight, right? Good luck then.
will also be put in this ridiculous R-D frame.

Has the hyprocracy of Mr. Foley hit a nerve with you?  Did you believe he cared?   Did you believe that he had the interest of childern at heart when he was drafting laws to 'protect the childern'?  

Pehaps you thought when Mr. Foley said "it's vile" you felt the older man in power - younger woman dynamic was vile, not the male-female dynamic.

"It's vile," said Rep. Mark Foley, R-West Palm Beach. "It's more sad than anything else, to see someone with such potential throw it all down the drain because of a sexual addiction."

http://www.sptimes.com/Worldandnation/91298/Congress_sees_through.html

For you to even CLAIM "ridiculous R-D frame." shows your filter on the world needs adjusting.   If I thought spending any more time on you would adjust your filter, I would bother.

In case it is not clear - you are the one that put a certain filter on the interpretation of the problem we are facing. If you don't find anything wrong with it, then so be it - it comes to a matter of taste in the end.

BTW and for the record I have always supported the Democrats and I don't see that changing.

If it gets "put in this ridiculous R-D frame" it is only following a well-established tradition.

When Susan Smith confessed to drowning her two children in a South Carolina lake, Congressman Newt Gingrich was quick to blame the Democrats. Campaigning Saturday, November 5, 1994 in his home state of Georgia he said:

"I think that the mother killing the two children in South Carolina vividly reminds every American how sick the society is getting and how much we have to have change. I think people want to change and the only way you get change is to vote Republican. That's the message for the last three days."

His statement was quickly picked up and repeatedly replayed by the national media. See here and here.

In May, 1955 on Meet the Press host Tim Russert asked Gingrich to defend his statements linking Susan Smiths's actions to the Democrats. Gingrich refused to back down. "Why do we have all these problems we didn't have in 1955?" he asked Russert. Gingrich then went on to blame America's post-1955 social decay on "a long pattern of counterculture belief . . . deep in the Democratic Party" that had "undervalued the family" and "consistently favored alternative life styles."

Full text link is here.

Somehow, the old adage about reaping what you sow keeps coming to mind.  

The date for the Meet The Press interview should have been "May, 1995". Old eyes don't preview as well as they should.
One type of stupidity does not justify another
The R-D frame:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mn7qCzV5sNM

Fox labeling Foley a Democrat
It appears briefly at the start of this YouTube video.

When was the last time you tried to ride a bike in modern traffic? It ain't fun. I wouldn't let my kids do it if I had any. (Not just for traffic -you know how nuts people are these days.)

Plus, most school zones extend far beyond the range at which even high schoolers can ride to and from the school. Do you want to ride 10 miles or more one way?

Last night.

I have 2 elem. schools, and a middle and high school within about a mile of my house. Actually the elem. and high school is within a half mile.

"When was the last time you tried to ride a bike in modern traffic?"

About 4 hours ago.

"I wouldn't let my kids do it if I had any. (Not just for traffic -you know how nuts people are these days.)"

They walk to the elementary school.  I plan to bike with them to middle school, since the school's on one of my two routes to work.  They'll probably bus to high school, though, unless TSHTF.  In that case, the city will put in the planned bike path after all, and they can bike to school on that (4 miles each way).

Traffic where you are must be better than here. I almost get run over in my neighborhood. There aren't any bike lanes anywhere, the nearest school is 10 miles one way, and you have to cross three major roads -including an interstate -to get there. And no, there aren't any provisions for bikes or pedestrians.
Why would anybody want to live in such a place?
If it's ten miles to the nearest school aren't you deep in a rural area where there is little or no traffic? How is it a "neighborhood" if the school is 10 miles off?
Well I don't know where Optimist lives. But I live in Raleigh NC & I feel his pain. No bike lanes, incomplete sidewalks, drivers like mad bulls, and kids assigned & re-assigned nearly continuously to schools far outside their own neighborhoods to alleviate crowding and promote ethnic balance.
My 12 year old daughter rides 2.5 km to School 3 days out of 5. There are many bike lanes in Melbourne and more being added all the time but I'm not couragous enough to ride 20 km to work.
Check Ebay, check Craigslist, and check at the local bike stores. If the bike winds up with a kid, most likely it's an inadvertent purchase from the fencer.

Kids these days.. so tame. Not like in my day./

New Haven Register  Sept.30,2006

   NAACP members are livid over a Yale Police
e-mail they claim unfairly pegs all black
youths on bicycles in the city as criminals.
  The e-mail was sent to the Yale community
by university Police Chief James A.Perrotti
last week after an alleged incident involving
youths on bicycles.....

peace

Eugene OR is one of the bike friendliest cities in the US. It is also one of the bike stealingest cities in the US. One bike shop owner told me that one time an entire bike rack, bikes and all, was stolen. Apparently the thieves backed up a truck, cut the bolts, loaded up and hauled away.

I'm sure thievery will proliferate if economic times get extremely rough.