"Does anyone know where this POS lives?"
"The CEO of a luxury charter-jet company got a stunning break this week when prosecutors dropped animal-abuse charges against him despite sickening video showing him viciously beating his St. Bernard puppy. . .The video clearly shows high-flying exec Daniel Padilla, 38, in the elevator of his swanky Hell’s Kitchen high-rise home mercilessly punching and kicking the defenseless 8-month-old pup named Boston on Oct. 20, 2012, cops said." (exerpt from The New York Post, Page Six, Oct. 4, 2013)
connect to link for full story
http://nypost.com/2013/10/04/ceo-beats-dog-abuse-rap-despite-sick-video-and-confession/
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David Seelig Of coarse a black man doing this goes to jail. Plaxico Buress goes to jail for shooting himself; the white guys guilty of raping Rothlisberger and this POS go free.
Siobhan Weiss But, hey, there's no racism going on in the justice system! I wonder, who paid off who?
Etienne Navarre Why? Are you going to go something? Don't get yourself in trouble.
David Aronstam We need more people like Siobhan willing to get into trouble to achieve justice.
Siobhan Weiss I just think everyone should know who and where this guy is, so he can experience some consequences (not violence - simple shunning and public, group expression of outrage directed directly to him would be fine.)
David Seelig For the hatred Vick goes through this guy deserves the same; and do not forget Vick had an uncle who introduced him to dog fighting. What is this asshole"s reason?
Jonah Frank This guy just became the number one douche on my list. Where does one even begin when having to deal with a douche like this? If you used to be a pro skier how come you can't chase a lumbering puppy without tripping and breaking your pansy-ass candy wrist!?!? Asshat!
Evelyn Cleary Wow what a POS is right. Fuck it. I say Let's get him. He should be made to face the consequences of his heinous actions. What I'ld like to know is why that pansy-ass prosecutor dropped the charges with a confession and video of the crime. That screams of some shady shit corruption.
Jeff Thomas shame . . . . there is no hell
Linda Reynolds David Seelig, I still fail to see what difference it makes that Vick's uncle introduced him to dog fighting. So what? The fact that it is entrenched in the culture is all the more reason to pointedly prosecute any of those caught, to demonstrate the level of cruelty involved in dog fighting is absolutely unacceptable. I met a dog the other day who survived being used for bait for a dog fighting ring in Yonkers. Her sister and other dogs did not survive and this collie mix was covered in scars. Should the 19 young men arrested in the case get a break because their uncles, fathers brothers and friends "all did it"?
David Seelig Have a little empathy for someone raised badly.
Linda Reynolds Excuse me. I worked for a decade with NYC "at risk" youth. I have empathy for anybody who has had abuse-of any kind-or lived in adverse circumstances. But when the abused becomes the abuser, my empathy shifts. There is no excuse for cruelty. Period. There may be causes, reasons, and justification; there is no excuse. And quite frankly, of the thousands of young people I knew, the majority of them would not do what Vick did--did you read the transcripts? His behavior reeks of socio/psychopath behavior. And that is not always a result of past abuse. So do we just give a free pass to EVERYBODY that hurts others? I mean, is anybody responsible or to be held responsible for the pain they bring to the world?
Siobhan Weiss Also, as far as Vick goes, there are those who participate in this atrocity who are poor - it's for the money (and the fact that they are assholes.) Vick Cerainly was not hurting for money. He clearly engaged in it (I mean, really - How many dogs did he have involved in this???) Because he thought it was fun!
David Seelig Did he come from money? No. And unfotunely he kept the same group of friends around him he grew up with and did not know better. You know I grew up in a radical left culture and when both my parents died when I was 16, I had two friends of theirs that would throw me a meal; not enough. I ended up stealing to eat. So excuse me if I feel bad for someone who grew up badly. He did two years in jail. If he had not been famous it would have been less. He paid the price and now still goes around talking about what he did wrong. This pos got away with everything .
Yes I am a dog owner. You know Ms Reynolds what you do or did for a job I really do not care how a person lives there life day to day does. The man grew up badly. Sorry you do not understand what that can do to you.
. . . One more thing, where I come from, the Lower east Side in the early 60's, "social worker" was a four letter word. So many needed updating the very people they were supposed to help. I find it sad you do not understand the cycle of poverty and have no empathy for someone who goes on to abuse because they are a victim of this world . A middle to upper-class guy that has access to help maybe, not but a poor person, that's is another story.
Jeff Thomas . . which is exactly why I love FaceBook. David, your logic for universal compassion is compelling . . . you make it incredibly plausible to hold unlimited forgiveness toward the evil behavior of an individual on the basis of the environment which cultivated the reprehensible sadism for which we condemn them. Your benevolence is commendable yet your conclusions are vulnerable to the sentiments which navigate the logic you employ to support them.
If financial insecurity is the measure of plausible naivety, a condition of "justifiable excuse" by your reasoning, then it would be illogical to condemn the actions of the Hutu upon the Tutsis during the 1994 genocide in Rawanda. This tragedy claimed the lives of 850 thousand innocent individuals whose per capita worth was dwarfed by the financial "despondency" of those you defend.
Being raised as good hearted patriots in 1930's Germany was no better excuse for the sadistic ethnic cleansing during the heyday of Nazi rule. Forgive my broad interpretation of your model, but I simply wish to describe the weakness in your defense by drawing your logic into its broadest, hyperbolic context.
I cannot excuse the sadism of these individuals who express contemptible authority over the weak and powerless when the first opportunity to express their revenge avails itself.
Your personal confession of theft is noble yet incongruent. There is a nonnegotiable threshold in civil society for physical and sadistic arrogance which separates the defendable from the unspeakable. This is a line which we who endure our freedom to engage as mature citizens of any community must submit or endure justifiable condemnation and detention.
Michael Vick and Daniel Padilla represent an entire community of inhuman monsters who exhausted the terms of pity when they chose to exercise their most depraved sadistic impulses.
David Seelig Michael Vick was a young man in his 20s how many people escape a bad culture unscathed. The fact that he has continued to lecture about what he did wrong long after his court obligations shows what he has become this other guy is much older. Sorry, but going so broad I guess you just want to hate. Have fun living like that.
Jeff Thomas Keep your focus Dave and we can get through this thing as friends. I admire your principles but appear to have upset you by questioning your authority. There is something terribly ironic in your passive contempt for my use of reason to establish some ground rules, to define some "load threshold" for your defense of these crimes. I have tried to maintain respect for your right to think as you will, but when you leave so large a hole in the fabric of your morality, assume I will walk right through it.
It is my sincere belief that you are shooting from the hip; that you have singled out one man from the pack to pardon. If I misrepresent your point, than at least admit your compassion must then by rights extend to every person, for every crime. But wait . . . there is a caveat; you then add:
- These crimes must be committed by an individual raised in a specific financial bracket
- These crimes must be committed by an individual who can show evidence of specific abuse
- These crimes must be committed by an individual who is no older than 29 years.
You like Michael Vick, I get it. Hell, you've even gotten me to want to know more about him.
But you haven't expressed any subsequent thought to his motives for redemption. He got caught. Ouch!
I will follow you toward forgiveness provided your logic holds against mine when we are not talking about a sadist who is trying desperately to protect a fabulously successful market brand.
If your heart allows you to hold two mutually exclusive principles as truth, then "have fun living like that." There's a whole big world out there ready to supply people who won't notice. But that doesn't mean we still can't be friends.
David Seelig I am working this weekend and traveling as I write this so more depth can not be there. But to split hairs on everything I say and look for absolutes, not quite right. A judge told me once every case is different and must be looked at on its own merits.
Jeff Thomas Dave, pretty wise to delete the first of your last two posts . . . but a simple edit might have sufficed. (generally regarded as a poor sentence choice to write: "I hate it when so-called progressives act like conservatives and practice hate.") . . . enough said on this.
Over-all the post contained much worth saving. I too believe in some form of idealism, albeit frustrated by many of the contradictions of the term. To be faithful to any ideal, one must yield to its inherent right to survive consistent examination or accept the verdict to retire. Change is the only predictable constant of Permanence.
Your steadfast position on impartial redemption for a heinous crime compelled me to test your metrics; to see if I understood how to incorporate your position into a manageable model for the victim(s). (remember them?)
You must understand that I, like you, am a work in progress; filled with all the contradictions presented by those pesky terms like "facts", "truth" and (I suppose) our new joint favorite, "Idealism."
These false Progressives who anger you appear to do so by misunderstanding the composition and mechanics of the same Ideal you have cultivated a much deeper relationship with. You have a notion, valid or not, that your concessions to the matter are above reproach, and herein lies the first alarm for any Idealist. Emmanuel Kant introduced the "Categorical Imperative" back in the mid eighteenth century. Crudely:
What is positively concluded for any subset is invalid should the same conditions prove unnatural for the whole.
[Think of the admirable post-Vietnam movement to "drop out" from developed civilization to live more spiritually whole off the wild land. I don't so much mock these "idealists" as rather caution against the popularity of such an "elitist" program should the population of "idealists" exhaust the very pristine resources they revere.]
Michael Vick's criminal activities are a matter for our collective conscience to discipline (read: the Courts, with all their transient imperfections) . . and his victim(s) alone to forgive. Pubic opinion might change the playing field inside the courts, yes, but it is little more than a thought experiment for you and I to debate Vick's entitlement to forgiveness.
I am convinced that his motives for redemption are insincere toward the victims;
inspired by a need toward damage control for a commercial brand-empire threatened to implode;
and perhaps worst of all, far beyond the financial capacity of most other, equivalent monsters to imitate.
Your position has so far failed to demonstrate it's freedom from specific contradictions which would fail the Categorical Imperative, a few of which I have already established in earlier essays. Give me a better cause to believe that your Idealism is truly bullet-proof and I will be both astonished and relieved.
And just to assure you that I'm not troubling anyone for the mere sport of it, here's a link to an essay I wrote back in '09 when the whole Vick/Philadelphia opportunity broke. David, I especially urge you to read this to better understand the depths of those you reflexively underestimate. It would be a far better world for all of us if we took such time to get beyond the "talking points" and truly examined the untidy regions of "pure idealism."
http://jeffreygiov.blogspot.com/2009/08/the-genie-and-michael-vick.html
