Rapists and Thugs: The Collapse of Rule of Law

Two cultural phenomenan are threatening America today.  Both came to the forefront in what turned out to be relatively minor stories reported in the news. The first is related to the bus beatings in Florida a month or two ago.  Three black teens beat up a white boy on a bus as the driver followed school procedures and called the police rather than intervening himself.  These teens just about killed this boy, who was injured and has since transferred to another school.  The teens were sentenced to....get this....probation and anger management courses.  You've got to be kidding me.  In addition, there will be random drug testing and for sixty days they will have to wear an ankle monitor.   Oh ya...they are not allowed to contact the victim. 

I don't know what happened here.  If the race components were reversed these kids would be charged as adults and be saddled with a Federal hate crime rap.  This kind of punishment is inappropriate and insulting to the victim and the rest of us.  These kids were dealing drugs in a school.  They should expelled and sentenced minimally to a juvenile facility until they are twenty-one, both for the sake of the victim and their own good.  Maybe they might get an education.  I suspect that there may have been a problem with the testimony of the victim and a reluctance to go forward out of fear.  Who knows?  The coverage, however, was minimal even on Fox News...and that's too bad.  No wonder the Zimmerman's of the world feel they have to be out on the streets.

The next outrage took place in Billings, Montana, where a 49 year old teacher was charged with raping his 14 year old student who later committed suicide.   He pled guilty and was sentenced to...are you ready...30 days in jail with credit for time served.  The judge, in his comments attending the sentencing, referenced the young girl's sexual demeanor...she was old for her age. 

This wasn't a "rape" rape.  It may very well have been consensual with the statutory rape statutes coming into effect.  The victim, however, was troubled.  The teacher used his counseling role to nudge the young lady into bed with him.  The reports did not say whether Montana has a mandatory sentencing statute applied to teachers who have sex with their students.  Prosecutors are upset and are frantically looking for some way to appeal the decision, but are coming up empty.  The judge has since "apologized" in one of the more bizarre videos I have seen as of late. 

The collapse of rule of law, political correctness, and the growing tolerance for abhorrent behavior in our country is growing.  It contributes to the disgust of Americans as the government ramps up its surveillance of all Americans while letting the bad guys get away with just about anything.   

And you wonder why our country is going down the toilet!!!

Egypt Burning

I wrote several weeks ago that Egypt is the front line in the war against Islamists.  This past week as the tension and violence in Cairo has escalated I have watched in complete disbelief the liberal whiners on the major networks worried about the rights of the Muslim Brotherhood. Let’s be clear. There are NO good guys in this situation.  There are only bad guys.  Our choice is between the lesser of two evils.  In Egypt, the bigger evil is the Muslim Brotherhood.

Across the entire Mideast, there are only two countries relatively stable: Israel and Jordan.  Israel is the only functioning democracy.  Other than Israel, America has NO reliable friends in the Mideast; not Saudi Arabia; not Turkey; not Iraq.  It is a dysfunctional part of the world that holds the seeds of destruction to the western democracies much more than the Soviet Union ever did.

These folks are religious fanatics who subjugate women, kill homosexuals, and practice Sharia law which cuts off people’s hands, pokes out their eyes, and beheads them in the public square.  Their goal is an Islamist world.  They burn down churches.  Persecute Jews and Christians.  Imprison people for life for carrying a Bible.  These folks are evil….and they sense America is weak and on the run.

The only source of stability in northern Africa right now is the Egyptian Army, which receives 1/10^th of its funding from the United States.   The balance comes from Saudi Arabia.  The Egyptian Army is fighting for the future of a secularized, moderate Egypt who recognizes Israel and acts accordingly.   While they are brutal and dictatorial, they are not willing to sacrifice Egypt to the theocrats who want an Islamic state.  The Egyptian Army more than anyone else on this planet understands the threat of human degradation by the Islamists.  The whining press may be willing to walk away from it.  Obama may be willing to walk away from it.  But the Egyptian army is not.  They have to live there and are fighting for their lives.

It is easy for us to sit here in the United States and pontificate on democracy.  We did that once before, in Vietnam, and got our butts kicked by a piddley ass third world country. Imagine life in a re-established caliphate.  Imagine Iran with nuclear bombs.  Imagine the Islamists controlling the Suez Canal.  Imagine the coming war when an Islamist Egypt facilitates the destruction of Israel by other Mideast states.  Imagine the dead Americans as we go to war for a third time in the Mideast.  It is not a pretty picture.

Foreign policy is tough.  Mideast foreign policy is next to impossible.  But the Obama administration is hanging out to dry the good people of Egypt who want rights we take for granted here not smothered by a bunch of Islamist extremist whack jobs.  Can anyone be so inept? 

America, and liberal Americans, need to wake up to the fact that you can’t play nice with folks who want to kill you.  There is no bridge to be built with zealots. No matter what you do they will still want to kill you. These are violent people who are burning churches and killing Christians and Jews.  We better hope that the Egyptian Army prevails.  If Egypt falls to the radical Muslim Brotherhood, there will be hell to pay in ways we can't imagine.  It will make both Iraq wars and the Afghan war look like Sunday playtime. 

Better the Egyptian army fights these people than us. 

How To Bankrupt a Newspaper

( UPDATE: After this article was written, the Washington Post announced it has been sold to Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com.  Purchase price: $ 250 million....CASH.  Mr. Bezos has previously stated that in twenty years there would be no more print newspapers.  Although a publicly traded company with substantial shareholders like Berkshire Hathaway, the Graham family has controlled the paper since purchased in bankruptcy in 1933.)

Everyone knows the definition of stupidity: trying the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.  I think that sums up the news media.  Beitbart  reported today that the New York Times is selling the Boston Globe to the owner of the Boston Red Sox for $70 million.  Sounds good but for the fact the Times paid $1.1 billion for it in 1993…that makes for a 93% loss (not taking into account inflation which would make it worse)…and the NTY has to keep the pension liabilities estimated over $100 million.  What is utterly amazing is the Times in 2011 turned down an offer to sell the Globe to the owner of the Orange County Register for $300 million plus assumption of the pension liabilities.

It warms the cockles of my heart to watch this debacle involving two of the most liberal and elitist newspapers in the country.  What a bunch of idiots.  Even better, when the Times announced it was going to sell the Globe, Rupert Murdoch (yes..that’s the Fox News Rupert Murdoch) was giving serious consideration to buying it.  Oh the humanity…the liberal press harangued how they would never let that happen.  The staff of the Globe said they would quit in en masse; which makes one query as to the Orange County Register offer in 2011!  The OC Register is one of the most conservative papers in the country.    Mmmmmm.

Ostensibly the reason the Times turned down the Register offer was because it did not contain sufficient up-front cash.  There may be some truth to that.  On the other hand, political correctness may have reached a pinnacle.   The New York Times, you see, is a publicly traded company.  If I were the shareholders, I would be viewing the entire series of transactions with a skeptical eye, perhaps CBS!!

Even AlGore put business first.  He sold his green television network to the oil sheiks.  Maybe we’ll have a few more carbon emissions…but who cares.  AlGore pocketed a cool $100 mil.   And that really warms the cockles of my heart!

Here is how it works.  Liberal media does badly.  Conservative media does well.  Liberal television news networks, including CNN, languish in the Fox News dust.  Liberal magazines go under.  Liberal radio flops.   And liberal newspapers don’t sell…not even to liberals who tend to get their news from an assortment of liberal blogs.  Why needs to pay for the Times?

Barack Obama is not the source of our country’s ills.  It is the elite media who have been his lap dogs, not holding him to account.  In the worst economy in 60 years…there are no homeless.  Nobody is going hungry.  There is no crime in Chicago or Detroit.  There is peace and love in the world.  America has more respect among the family of nations than ever.  Everybody is making lots of money.  The poor are getting richer and rich are getting poorer.  Education is abounding.  What national debt? And what problems we have left are the fault of Rush Limbaugh. 

It is comical, if it weren’t so sad.   I am optimistic about the future of America because I faith in our people.  I am also optimistic about the press.  If the New York Times is any indication as to how the liberal media does business, they will be bankrupt by the end of the Obama administration, and then maybe we can get back to normal; that is if we are not bankrupt ourselves!!