You know that the morally depraved and violence inducing 'VIDEO GAMES' had a major event in LA last week?
I'm sure that's the reason for all this....
Or not. Anyway, hello again from across the pond.

Maybe its not me, but unless I have the tickets to some event I will not go and hang out around the stadium. Thats why the invented sports bars. Ok if you want to save money why not invite some friends over to your place and buys some cheap beers from the supermarket.

Weird things people do?!

'which is why I watched the Oscars at a friend's house instead of torching cars outside the Kodak theatre. '

:-D

"...It was hard not to feel unwanted. "If you don't have a ticket, go home" was the officers' message -- explicitly delivered and universally ignored."

Puke. Poor unwanted non-ticket holders. Does this dip-sh*t not understand how the world works?

A friend of mine teaches "at-risk" eighth-grade students. "At-risk" does not mean "special-ed" - there is nothing developmentally wrong with these students, they just come from chaotic homes.

She talked about the Hispanic students. From what she is seeing, many of these kids' parents didn't grow up in America, and English is not their first language. She frequently has to communicate with them through an interpreter. But she said they are the nicest people and really do care about their kids. It's just that frequently the father is working three jobs and the mother works full-time, which doesn't leave much time for giving individual attention to four or five children.

So I'm like, 'Then why have so many children? Why not stop after, say, two?' These parents may be loving and caring, but they are dumb as soap for foisting so much responsibility upon the teachers and staff at this school. Why is it okay to pop out a freaking litter of children and then dump the job of raising and educating them upon everyone else? My friend said, 'Well, you have that figured out because you are educated.' I'm sorry, but how much education does this take? No, I'm not going to be that forgiving. This is such a simple equation. You have an entire passel of children you never get to see! Why are there not some alarm bells ringing somewhere?

She went on to explain that culture and religion are at the root of a lot of it. (Okay, now we're getting somewhere. It's NOT a lack of education.) Catholic (breed-at-all-costs) upbringing plays a part in it. And these people just love kids - well, they love HAVING them anyway. They pity and are horrified by my "poor, sad" friend who has "no babies." Yet they are not horrified by the idea of neglecting their own children to work multiple jobs. How fucked up.

Yet, she went on to explain, at least these people do seem to love and care about their kids. Many of the blacks and some of the whites actually resent the existence of their own children. Sure enough, working their way through this school system is a family of nine black children with eight different fathers. All of their names are derived from some version of "Shaun." Shauniqua, D'Shaun, and so on, you get the picture. There are plenty of whites with the same deal going on, just without the weird naming convention.

What's the matter with these people? Even growing up in the middle of east bumfuck, it was blatantly obvious to me at a young age that having a bunch of kids was a sure-fire way to get broke and stay that way. It costs the taxpayers in the neighborhood of $125K to put a kid through K-12 education. Something tells me the mother of the "Shauns" is not contributing much toward the $1,125,000 it will take to put her massive brood through school. Why is it such an antiquated, old-fashioned notion that you only have the kids you can support? And then we wonder where these savages come from.

So, who promised the jumbotron they all showed up for?

I live in arizona and I could have watched the game on TV - when the fuck did FREE, color, real time, high resoluion moving picture become not good enough?

Oh, one other thing my friend commented on, regarding Hispanic cultures with their large numbers of kids. Many of them do not expect their kids to move out when they grow up. Their kids are expected to go out and get jobs and then bring money back to the family when they are out of high school.

I have no idea how well this is going to work, when the kids have grown up in American culture. I recall being ready to get a job and move out of my parents' house when I was 15. But then again, the job market might have some impact on that.

Amy if you want to use the gang violence as a continuation of your "Single moms are a bad way to raise kids" fine but the socialist pandering you are attacking isn't there. She never said nor suggested that any one should build a jumbo-tron. There was no mention of a tax payer covered jumbo-tron either. Saying X would be nice is not the same as saying tax payers must build X. It be nice if every time I give the wife flower it resulted in a blow job and a cookie. Not the same as the states need to get me a hooker and bag of Oreos. I agree with your general view on the topic but this is not a good example.

Another excuse for peoples' outrageous behavior.
Does a thug/criminal need an excuse to break the law?

Do they sell drugs and do drive-bys because they don't have jumbotrons?

No. They do it because they have shitbag parents that don't do give a shit about their behavior, they run wild, until they get caught committing a crime or are dead in the street. Then these parents want to wail like a child that doesn't get a candy bar at the checkout aisle.

Amy the Jumbo-trons (yes two) in Gillette Stadium were paid for with private funds and are used for advertising. The same way your TV is paid for. So the idea of suggesting that a company puts up a new advertising venue and occasionally put the big game on with advertising isn't really socialist or free loading. New York city there are multiple billboards that are just that jumbo-trons. So it's not like there isn't obvious non-freebie precedent for it.

You were not affected and so long as you as the tax payer is not forced to cover it I don't see the gripe. Though the last line of the article certainly gives credence to your interpenetration of her views. If she wants this to happen have the LA Times pay for it and then charge admission.

I think we are painting the latino culture far too broadly and conflating immigrants with 2+ gen people. That being said, it's the later gens that lose the work ethic, and really get involved with what gangs do for them... why work when crime pays better? True gangbangers are pretty hard to humiliate, since they just come back to cause trouble when they get out. They are all about revenge. I've always been a believer in hard labor for them, but nobody wants to do that these days. I think the people who caused trouble in LA would do so regardless... we have college kids that do the same in Boulder after college football games. Those are college kids that are more educated and more likely to have 2 parents.

I think this sort of herd/mob mentality has much less to do with gangs and much more to do with anonymity, and no conceptual interests outside their own. Given the similarity of the two groups actions but their dissimilar backgrounds? I don't think we can blame this particular thing on lack of fathers...

You were not affected and so long as you as the tax payer is not forced to cover it I don't see the gripe.

I live in the city where these buttholes did their smashing, burning, destroying and cab-torching. I'm affected.

so long as you as the tax payer is not forced to cover it I don't see the gripe

The "gripe" is this woman's excuse-making for a pack of violent, uncivilized morons.

I live in the city where these buttholes did their smashing, burning, destroying and cab-torching. I'm affected.

I was quoting Amy and that was about the lack of public Jumbo-tron and not the rioting.

 The "gripe" is this woman's excuse-making for a pack of violent, uncivilized morons.

Which would be nice except for the fact that she isn't.

She describes the "marauding mobs" as "a bunch of losers"

 If you read the first two paragraphs her view on the rioters would be clear. She may or maynot be asking for a tax payer funded jumbotron but she sure as hell is not defending the looting and riots. She's suportiung the cops who had to hold the small bunch of miscreants in check.

Back in the last century, the thugs who used a high school party as an excuse to completely trash my house all hailed from upper-middle-class white homes, with a dad in the office and a mom in the kitchen baking cookies.

I think SwissArmyD nailed it on the head: it's a mob mentality fueled by anonymity and no interests outside their own. aka douchebaggery.

The subtext is there. Here's an excerpt:

"Keep moving, keep moving." The command came over the loudspeaker as a phalanx of officers advanced, moving us off the paseo and onto crowded Figueroa Street. They pulled metal gates across the entrance to the complex to keep us out.

I felt the mood subtly shift, from high-spirited to apprehensive. I heard it in the grumbling of fans, saw it in the young mother who scooped up her kids and scurried off, recognized it in the twinge of fear I felt.

A surge of adrenaline made me wonder: When does lively become rowdy and a crowd become a mob?

She says that when the cops made the fans feel unwanted, she felt the mood shift, and heard the grumbling, and wondered when a crowd becomes a mob. She's subtly placing the blame on the unwelcoming of the fans. If only they had been made to feel welcome, they would have remained a lively crowd not a rowdy mob.

It doesn't do much good to tell what life is like here in Mexico, where some of these Hispanics come from, because we have several extremely verbose people who always know more about anything and everything.

But, it does seem strange that they are having big families there. Here in Mexico, family size is dropping rapidly. One of my favorite families has 5 kids, and their ages indicate Mom has it under control at that level.

But, three is much more common. In fact, the women around me have tended to have had three kids really fast, and now the youngest tends to be 6 or 7 which certainly implies b/c in a community which is primarily Catholic. As in the US, Catholic women apparently tend to use b/c about as much as non-Catholic.

As I think about it, I can only come up with one large family in this section of town, and I am not sure how many they have. And, I see lots of families go by, because everyone has to use our private road to get downtown.

The issue of not being around the kids much does bring up the possibility of a cultural ignorance. Here, kids tend to be disciplined and cared for by the nearest adults. If mom and dad are gone to work, someone subs. Maybe they moan, "Not again!" but they sub.

Even y'all who think you pretty much know everything about everything would learn fast if you moved to a different culture, that what you know where you live now becomes useless in a different culture.

I wonder, and it is a question, not a statement, maybe they haven't realized in the US your kids are on their own when you leave them at home. Sounds strange, but I guarantee you that we all can be really stupid in a new culture, which is why historically, rich people did not consider their kids educated until they had lived in another culture for a year or more.

The only other thing I can say is most who move to the US, but especially illegals, tend to be the lower levels, just as most Europeans who migrated to the US during heavy migration periods tended to be the losers of their societies. That is cruel, but it is the truth.

"Many of them do not expect their kids to move out when they grow up. Their kids are expected to go out and get jobs and then bring money back to the family when they are out of high school."

This is very true PJ. Unfortunately Hispanic families place no importance on education, including my own. Also bringing back money to the family is very important, it wasnt in my case because my stepfather found the idea of anyone bringing in money beside himself repulsive.

As to why Hispanics have so many kids...two points. It's no longer fashionable to have alot of kids in actual latin american countries. Unfortunately I think people are having less children but more daddyless children, people in all groups.

As to why they have so many..these people come from rural communities. My Mexican grandma had 13 because it's what people did in those times in that area. Yes I look down at them for having so many children but I do understand that most people dont think about things, at all ever. . The force has gone in this country where its rarely acceptable to have alot of children but it is certainly acceptable to have children without fathers.

... is certainly acceptable to have children without fathers.

Ugh. Not a good experiment.

Yet thinking is the only ace evolution has dealt us - biologically it's our only means of survival.

I do appreciate the insights - thanks!

Ppen - I'm not Latina but spent a lot of years living and traveling all over Latin America, where time and again I saw families sacrificing to send their children to private schools. In the middle and upper classes, I didn't know anyone whose parents didn't push for university. My Hispanic friends here in the states are as educated as I am (or more so). And not all but plenty of the Mexican parents at the tiny Title 1 school my little girl attends are as active on campus as anyone.

I know this isn't always the case, but it's not always not the case.

For the record, the women in the Mexican villages where I spent a lot of time might have acted deferential to your face, Irlandes, but back in the kitchen, trust me there was a whole lot of laughing chatter going on at your expense.

"Unfortunately Hispanic families place no importance on education, including my own."

I have to call a bullshit flag there. Plenty of hispanics do, plenty don't. Just like with whites. My DH is hispanic, and one if his sisters really pushes her kids in school (she's unmarried and poor, but all kids have the same involved dad that lives with them) and the other SIL is married and poor, and doens't care at all about their school. That seems to hold true to all I see here in TX. Granted, if the parents don't speak english, it's hard for them to really push the english education.

I think the main problem here is the welfare system and the massive illegal immigration. The existence of the welfare system allows people who are already disinclined to be self-suffient from becoming self-sufficient before having children; the system also decreases the effectiveness of what was once the primary functions of the family--developing norms of behavior in children that were necessary to those children becoming independent adults who would contribute something to the family and to the larger society.

As far as illegal immigration goes, there are simply too many illegals coming in which makes assimilation ineffective. When you get a certain number of illegals coming in they start to form their own insulated communities and avoid integrating themselves into the larger society; reduce the number of illegals and get a handle on the immigration problem and you will see less family breakdown and dysfunction in the Hispanic community.

Amy- As SwissArmyD pointed out, you're correlating two very different things here. I have no doubt that unstable family dynamics are a leading cause of gang membership and violence, but you can't really blame mob mentality on single motherhood. There are tons of recurring instances throughout history that have no correlation with economic or familial status, and similar riots have happened at my (largely white and upper-middle-class) university after we've beaten our basketball rivals.

"As far as illegal immigration goes, there are simply too many illegals coming in which makes assimilation ineffective"

That's a bunch of bullshit. I'm against illegal immigration because it's close to slave labor and taxpayers get to pay in social services what businesses should be accountable for. But immigrants are really good at assimilating in this country, really really good. If you want to hear true horror stories take a look at Asia or Europe. Americans dont know how good they have it with their immigrants. Which pisses me off.

As for everyone coming down on me whether Hispanics value education. Yes, in Latin American countries most children whose parents can afford it go to private schools. My family sent me to a private Catholic school. But I wasnt talking about them (And anyways how many scientists are coming out of these countries? And how many universities are seen as the bastion of education?) But do Hispanics value education here? I dont think the numbers speak positively compared to Asians or Whites.

I think university degrees are a bunch of bullshit anyways but I'm just sayin'.

Amy-I agree completely. But the riots at my university (or the trashing of a house at a high school party, as in biscuit's example), weren't caused by single motherhood. Mob mentality and gang violence are two different things.