Instead of mine. In fact the idea that my phone irks you thrills me. I bet you're one of those fat assed mall rhinos who can't get out of the way too. God how I hate those selfish bastards and wish they would die. See? It's easy to be an irrational nitpicking shithead. Imagine how all of you look to the rest of us.

Do any of you actually go outside your row houses in the tony section of San Fran? Been to Times Square in the 80's and 90's? And please, the first one of you who claims they lived in the street there and happy hippy unicorns gave away money and free pot, you're lying. NYC was falling down around our ears and for all his other failings, the one thing we needed then was a fascist. Koch's last term and all of Dinkins was a train wreck.

Year Murders

1987 2016

1988 2244

1989 2246

1990 2605

1991 2571

1992 2379

1993 2420 Rudy elected Mayor of NYC

1994 2016

1995 1550

1996 1353

1997 1093

1998 924

1999 903

2000 952

2001 960 End of Rudy's term

Some of you need to shut the fuck up once in a while.

Better we had the charm of all the killings and bridges falling down and subways that stopped working and the endless fires in south Bronx and the city services that stopped functioning or nearly 400,000 people on the city's own payroll that multiple audits couldn't accurately determine what they did or the loss of 1000 small businesses a month and 30,000 people white flighting it to the burbs every month.

Yeah too bad we couldn't keep that Darfur on the Hudson going. It would have sooo kewl to vacation in a third world country right here at home.

Better we should know who they are then we can decide better how to deal with them. If you think allowing them licenses is going to motivate MORE of them to come here you're wrong.

This is what presidents with unpopular policies do. Stop taking it personally.

And if Iraq is any benchmark then there have been zero conventional wars since 1991. Which leads me to believe that while noble and probably worthwhile the whole notion of what a legal war is, and how it's prosecuted is meaningless. Moreover it really only applies to a small community of modern western nations who ever bothered to give 'rules of war' lip service. Do you think in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Subsaharan Africa, Tibet, the Caucuses, the middle east, North Africa they or WE care who does what to whom or who gets butchered? Because no one cares. There is no such thing as a warcrime in Congo. At best, in the few places the west bothers to get involved in, like Sierre Leone, we hold trials for a few toppled leaders and hope someone gets exiled.

But the idea that all those other places are prosecuting wars according to some convention is laughable. In fact, you're the very people who assert that a tyrannical dictator like Saddam is a requirement to regional stability and no one has any problem with how that happens. And really, how DO you think that happens? So you have a few choices. You can not bother to be worried how those angry foreigners manage their states, and honestly you don't want to know. Or you can criticize them all and prosecute them all with more than the obligatory memos from AI. Or you say that the west really is different and better and can't be involved in ANY way with countries that are not like them and don't uphold the same values. Or you can run around wreaking democracy and freedom everywhere in the hope that everywhere else turns out for the better.

The Manhattan bridge was closed, condemned actually. The subways stopped running. Transit cops stopped arresting anyone who didn't commit an assault or rape or pushed someone onto the tracks. Hundreds of small to midsized businesses a WEEK were leaving NYC. The financial services sector lost 50,000 jobs alone.

I mean that level of falling down. If you don't think 2500 murders a year is a 'problem', I mean outside of the episodes of 'The Wire' you watch then you and I live on different planets. I only hope you too get to live in a place like that with thousands of murders, crackheads on every corner, 20,000 mentally ill people loose on the streets, municipal strikes every other week, a middle class in open revolt or flight.

Seriously. I really do. And then I want you to fix it with hugs and food co-ops and blogging and drum circles and all the other feel good post modern multicultural hippy shit you love. Because it won't work your way and trust me darling, the Cities are the last hope of the DNC. Without Cities there are no Blue States. So you better not write them off in the name of whatever mamby pampy crap you love to imagine.

That's the problem with you losers. You'll never save yourselves, you'll never make the hard choices. You're above it all. And then when someone else has to step in to clean up the shit and wipe it from your white spats you spit on them and call them fascists.