What “so few”? Tons of us have said that it’s a retarded system. The only reason most of the discussion is about whether the FD are Bad Bad Men is because **gonzo **is a fucking moron.
Sure and you lowlife retards agree with Glen Beck and your land of truth, Fox Gnus. They think like your enlightened Libertarians, fuck your neighbor attitude. Fox is where you will find your peeps.
The firemen , I am sure, suffered for the sins of the politicians who made the choice. You guys could not understand how a person would suffer watching a home burn down and animals die. You would toast marshmallows and soak your BVDs in glee. Damn he didn’t pay 75 bucks. I was there and could have ended it and saved the animals. But he did not pay 75 bucks. He offered to pay it and more to save the home. If they took the money and saved the animals and home, what would the lesson be? Simple for me, hard for you. They would see that it cost him a hell of a lot more to save the home after not paying 75. It would sure as hell not result in a bunch of people not paying at all. People , apparently not you guys though, would see paying 75 would be a wiser choice. More would pay rather than risk a few thousand bucks. So it was never about money. It was about a mayor being a complete asshole .
No, not the mayor, just you.
:smack:
So, because we don’t agree with you, we must therefore be the same as some other people you don’t agree with? Everyone you argue with just blends into a big amorphous blob who uses words you don’t understand, don’t they? Such are the perils of being dumb, I suppose.
Fox Gnus? Fox Gnus? Seriously? What the fuck does that even mean? Can I start calling you **Fonznotax **and pretend it’s a remotely coherent insult?
It means we both love Fox News. By misspelling it, he has taken them to task and thus, by association, us.
Are we getting fire roasted [del]kittens[/del] jalapenos on the pizza?
'Cause if there aren’t any fire roasted [del]puppies[/del] [del]kittens[/del] jalapenos I ain’t paying!
CMC fnord!
At this point it’s long past clear, it won’t take longer than we thought, it’ll take forever.
Another non-conservative chipping in to confirm that Gonzomax is an idiot, the Cranicks are idiots, anyone else who does not pay the required fee on time and in advance is an idiot, and the actual system itself, which does not rely on a volunteer fire dept or a fire dept paid for by taxes, is idiotic.
I can not put Fox and News together. They have nothing in common. But the association is clear and should be obvious. That is where selfish people without empathy get what they believe is news. It is where you should get yours.
I would think that being so stupid you’d be a much happier person, not worrying so much about life’s cares, people taking care of you. The angry mentally retarded are so rare, thanks for reminding us that you aren’t all the same.
+1. And I despise Fox Gnus…oops, I mean Fox News (actually, that is hard to say together).
Except for the local morning news. The traffic chick is hot and the weather guy is the only local with a personality (those are the only parts I really care about). The female lead is a douche however, and the male lead is a piece of cardboard.
But in this thread you surely are. A bunch of cold hearted people talking yourself into a lynch mob because Cranick made a mistake. I get it. he is not as good as you people are and his errors deserve the ultimate punishment. He is a low life that deserves nothing, no sympathy, no empathy .
But I feel badly for him, his family and his animals. Live with it. Because you can enjoy the pain and misery of another does not mean everybody can.
Lynch mob? Ultimate punishment? You know he just lost his stuff, right? (And possibly his animals, which I still doubt existed and even if they did which it sounds like he could have saved if he had actually cared about them during the fire.)
Do you sob this much when someone gets into a car accident without insurance? “Guys, he didn’t want to pay for it! That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t feel terrible for him when he has to pay the full cost of repairs for himself!! ::single tear slides down cheek::”
There is a long list of mistakes here:
The community, for not funding a fire department.
Cranick, for not opting into the alternative.
The Fire Dept., for allowing an opt-in system instead of just refusing to serve the area.
Cranick’s grandson, for being an idiot about fire.
Cranick’s entire family, for not getting the pets outside.
Then we come to the Fire Department who had to weigh two choices:
- Deal with Cranick’s fire, thereby risking their life for zero compensation and potentially taking down their entire out-market service.
- Let the house burn.
I don’t envy their choice, but since I was not on the ground nor was I dealing with Cranick and his fellow free-riders I won’t second guess them. Cranick, on the other hand, has become the example of what happens when you try to be a free-rider and you get caught. His greatest contribution to society might be as the example of what happens when you make poor decisions.
So if your, uninsured, fifteen year old spawn, imitating the latest Jackass movie, causes himself grievous injury the doctor at the hospital should decide, “Shit he caused it with his own stupidity - no health care or pain meds for him!” Or would you expect him to do what doctors are sworn to do, deliver care, treat pain, etc?
Isn’t it about putting the people you’ve paid to deliver compassionate care, (doctors, nurses, ETM’s, firefighters), into a position that seems unthinkable. Aren’t they supposed to be separated from judgment? After all, cops, EMT’s, doctors don’t decide your worthiness, they just deliver care.
But don’t worry. The guy he hit…he is paying more already for uninsured motorists, because that is how a society of caring individuals takes care of its own.
My understanding is that the firefighters ascertained that there were no lives at stake. Your compassionate care threshold is met.
And if there was someone in danger in the house, the firemen would have worked to save them. But there wasn’t, so they didn’t. Would you expect the emergency room docs to perform elective cosmetic surgery on a patient because he showed up at the ER?
So, why didn’t you?
gonzomax, I don’t mind you indiscriminately accusing the people who disagree with you of harboring despicable philosophies or motives (“they must be gloating in Crannick’s misfortune and sadistically revelling in the painful death of dumb animals!”), because, frankly, reason and civil discourse have little to offer your point of view, argumentatively speaking.
Try this: say openly that while being an outlaw naturally excludes one from the law’s protection as well as its restrictions, and refusal to participate in an agreement logically excludes one from the agreement’s benefits as well as its costs, that you wish the fire department had tried to put out the fire because a civil society extends the best protection it can even to the rogues and misfits who, spurred by no pathology save greed and solipcism, detract from civil society even as they demand its protection. That’s an argument we liberals might not agree 100% with (and someone as liberal as me just might), but wouldn’t gag on, so to speak. While you’re at it, admit that a trailer fire is often a lost cause no matter what, because that’s the truth, and that there’s every reason to believe that the residents’ own failure to save their animals and other property (maybe coupled with the fact that they burned it all up their ownselves) is more culpable for their loss than the department’s tactics, because that’s the truth too.
Finally, try this: the idea that individuals should contribute collectively to a civil society’s effort to solve communal problems that do not affect everyone is a liberal one, the proposition that we should strive to limit the number and kind of problems we approach this way is conservative, and the proposition that the individual should have no truck with such cooperative solutions except on an ad-hoc, short-term basis is extreme libertarian. The stance that one can be an extreme libertarian when thinking of others, claim liberal largesse for oneself when in need, and say that those who don’t think this way are evil conservatives, is not liberal, conservative, or libertarian. It ain’t even political: it’s just childish, hypocritical slush that is being condemned by anyone with a conscience.
I’ve known and liked animals, and I’ve known and liked and been related to firefighters. For you to continue to insist on risking the latter to save the former on behalf of someone who seems to have valued neither isn’t morality, it’s the opposite.