12 Year-Old Boy To Be Tried As Adult

On February 21, 2009 an 11 year-old boy took a shotgun, put it to the back of the head of his father's pregnant fiancée, and pulled the trigger killing her.

The details of the case are about as gruesome as they come. The child was apparently jealous of all the attention she was getting and the impending newborn would have likely only made the situation worse in his mind.

Since this happened in Pennsylvania the law makes it clear that he needs to be tried as an adult and the maximum sentence is life in prison without the possibility of parole.

This was being talked about on the radio pretty heavily yesterday and, frankly, I was disgusted by the callers calling in to share their viewpoints. The vast majority were in complete support of this with several calling for the child's death.

These callers seemed immune to any discourse feeling that such a crime deserves no leeway and that he's lucky Pennsylvania doesn't have the death penalty.

Much of the back-and-forth had to do with the crime itself, his intent and his actions before and after. What was entirely missing in every discussion I heard seemed to be the most basic of all points.

It doesn't matter to me if the act was murder. It doesn't matter to me whether the crime was premeditated or not. It doesn't matter to me that the victim was pregnant. It doesn't matter to me that the child packed up and went to school after the act.

The reality is that all of our laws are designed to be a deterrent against those who might break the law. The problem here is that an 11 year-old boy cannot possibly be accounted for in this assessment simply because no 11 year-old boy can be depended upon to understand the true value of life. It's one thing when a 20 year-old kills another person. The killer should absolutely know, by that point, what the value of life is and if they don't then something else is very wrong.

Expecting an 11 year-old--a child that hadn't even reached puberty yet--to understand the real sanctity of life and the value he was taking away is just not realistic. This child had no idea what it's like to have a child, to lose a child, to lose a parent, to experience romance, to know what life is all about. Yet it's this same child many are willing to lock up behind bars (or execute if they had the option) for many decades deserving anything that goes with the sentence.

Many callers pointed out that the child had been an experienced turkey hunter and thus he knew what taking a life meant. To me I see it just the opposite way. A child being raised to hunt and kill animals would be far more likely to become desensitized to the value of life.

I'm not suggesting that the child should be set free. Clearly this is a disturbed little boy and he needs to be put behind bars for quite some time. He needs serious mental analysis and attention and maybe it's a few decades or more before he does understand the impact of his actions and the value that he took away but that's better than simply throwing him into a cell to rot for 80 years for something he couldn't possibly understand the true meaning of.

A For Animosity

In appearance humble artist ace, cast alternatively as both ass and aggressor by the activities of fate. This appearance, no mere aspect of arrogance, is an aura of the accorded now abandoned, absent. However, this audacious augur of a bygone annoyance stands animated, and has agreed to assasinate these augean and acrid assailants, avant-garding abberation and allowing the aggressively abominable and avaricious arrogation of appetence. The only award is avengement; an animosity, held as ambrocation not in absurdity, for the appraisal and actuality of such shall one day absolve the attentive and the angelic. Assuredly this albumen of articulation ambles most abundant, so let me simply add that it’s my absolutely good honour to meet you and you may call me A.

I'm All 100% Behind Repealing Efforts

I've decide that Democrats should take the high ground on the health care reform bill and agree to repeal several elements of it.

The Dems should hold a major press conference and announce that they're dropping all of the following items from the bill to address the most grievous complaints of Americans:

1. The death panels just have to go. They're just too complicated and with Boomers making up a huge chunk of the population it's just too much damned work right now. We have bigger things to focus on though it could mean more jobs at the Gulag ovens.

2. Coverage for illegal aliens should be dropped immediately. Being on the run keeps these people fit enough so they really shouldn't need the coverage anyway.

3. The socialized aspects have to be dropped. All the bits about the government-owned doctors, hospitals and insurance plans must be stripped. You know as well as I do that the moment the government gets started hiring doctors that they'll get them all from Acorn and then you'll be asked to be part of a community organizing effort every time you get a cold.

4. The entire section about government-funded abortions has to go. You just know that if this section stays it'll lead to abortion parties and who wants to attend those? I've already been to enough parties that felt like an abortion. Actually going to a real one would just be too much. Plus I'd never know quite what to bring.

So just after laying all this out to the conservatives the messenger can say, "Okay, now I want all of you to bow your head and pray for these four miracles." At the count of 10 you'll hear a loud "Amen" and then the messenger can say, "Halleluja! Your prayers have been answered."

While they're still riding that high we tell the lot of them that that's all they have to do in 2012 to get their candidate elected President.

12 Hour Memory Lapses

So last night I'm watching TV and I decide to check all three cable news networks to see what each one is saying about the health care reform situation. Of course the most fun was watching Fox News. At the time I checked in Glenn Beck was on and I'm more assured at every viewing and hearing that this guy is off his rocker entirely.

I will say this directly. If you listen to or watch this guy and he makes sense to you then you've got some major issues.

Last night for 10 minutes he went on a rant about how the left resorted to outlandish rhetoric by calling the House vote historic and using a picture of Nancy Pelosi with some antique gavel to go with the sentiment. He kept showing the picture and going off on everyone calling this situation historic. Is it historic? Maybe. Maybe not. We're all pretty used to everything be ramped up in moments of elation especially when it comes to politics and the press.

To drive home exactly what I'm talking about Beck takes this argument of ridiculous rhetoric and then one-ups it by then saying it is historic in the same way Pearl Harbor was historic and the Hindenburg was historic and Neville Chamberlain meeting Adolf Hitler and saying Hitler was an okay guy was historic. Way to make your point Glen.

So then on the drive into work this morning I hear Beck on his radio show talking about the bill again. He's flipping out and says this balanced and totally non-rhetorical comment, "Don't they get that now Cass Sunstein is the most dangerous person in America?"

The most dangerous person in America? Wow. Is this guy on the loose? Is he an arms dealer? Oh, wait, he's just a professor who is now the administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Who woulda guessed? Everyone knows how dangerous those bastards are. Every single war we've ever waged is a direct result of the will of the administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.... in Glen Beck's nightmares.

So in this man's mind it's unacceptable rhetoric to call the passage of this bill historic but totally okay to call someone virtually no one has heard of from an office even less people have heard of the most dangerous person in America? Okay Glen.

Wow. The Sun Came Up.

I got up this morning which, generally, wouldn't be a big deal except that Representative John Boehner said that if this health care thing got passed it would mean Armageddon (along with twice saying it's an apocalypse). As I noted previously a large number of so-called experts told every conservative that would listen that health care reform was dead as a door nail.

I noticed a post this morning that outlined some other examples:

Boehner said on March 17, "You know, I've been telling my staff nine months, 'They can't pass this bill.' And finally my staff wrestled me to the ground last fall and said, 'Mr. Boehner, we have to quit saying this because they're gonna pass this bill.' And I looked at my staff and I said, 'Alright, I'll try to throttle it back a little bit. But it'll be over my dead body.'"

Last year David Gregory on Meet The Press asked Boehner, "So you think the plan is dead?" Boehner responded, "I think it is."

Boehner is one of those guys I wouldn't trust if he told me the sun came up. I'd go look out a window first. They don't come much smarmier than this.

I absolutely loved the response of conservative David Frum, one of George W. Bush's former speech writers:

Conservatives and Republicans today suffered their most crushing legislative defeat since the 1960s.

It’s hard to exaggerate the magnitude of the disaster. Conservatives may cheer themselves that they’ll compensate for today’s expected vote with a big win in the November 2010 elections. [...]

No illusions please: This bill will not be repealed. Even if Republicans scored a 1994 style landslide in November, how many votes could we muster to re-open the “doughnut hole” and charge seniors more for prescription drugs? How many votes to re-allow insurers to rescind policies when they discover a pre-existing condition? How many votes to banish 25 year olds from their parents’ insurance coverage? And even if the votes were there – would President Obama sign such a repeal?

We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat. [...]

So today’s defeat for free-market economics and Republican values is a huge win for the conservative entertainment industry. Their listeners and viewers will now be even more enraged, even more frustrated, even more disappointed in everybody except the responsibility-free talkers on television and radio. For them, it’s mission accomplished. For the cause they purport to represent, it’s Waterloo all right: ours.

My question is a simple one now. Wouldn't the country have been far better off if Republicans in Congress actually got involved in the process instead of just attempting to be the party of "no"? Wouldn't we have been better off if they'd have been genuine in their efforts to work in a real bipartisan manner? As hard as this fight was Democrats would have jumped at the chance to put forth a solution that would have had a much easier path to success than what this turned out to be.

When you stand there holding your breath against something you don't like instead of acting like an adult and dealing with it you have to be prepared for the consequences when you're forced to give in and take a breath. The result being that there's no one to blame for your total lack of progress but yourself.

Unemployment Pit Redux

At the beginning of the month I posted a minority viewpoint regarding my support for wacky Senator Jim Bunning and his protest against extending unemployment benefits yet again.

I heard from several people about my opinion and it included lots of "not me" comments. I do understand the perspective having been down that path before.

Just yesterday Marnee Klein sent me a link to a column in the New York Times that speaks volumes about the concern. The interesting part about this is that Marnee was one of the people who seemed to take the other viewpoint initially and sent me a piece also in the New York Times from my favorite economist: Paul Krugman. In that piece Krugman was making the case that extending unemployment didn't matter. I found it refreshing that someone would actually take the time to send me links about both sides of any issue. Of course we all know Marnee is one of the good people.

Anyway, this new piece drives my point home by showing a study done of unemployment recipients in Pittsburgh a number of years ago. It clearly showed that, just as I had surmised, magically people "found" work (be it a new job or returning to their old one) on the very week their unemployment benefits ran out. How many people did this apply to? 30% of those collecting. Think about that. When you see the numbers the point is crystal clear. In the weeks leading up to the end date of benefits very few found new jobs and then, suddenly, 30% find work. The week after benefits ran out 12% more found work.

Again, I'm sympathetic to the situation and times are pretty unique right now but I don't see where the answer is to just keep paying everyone not to work. Part of our system is that sometimes one has to hit an ugly wall (which I've done) and sometimes the results aren't pleasant. Remember that during the Great Depression entire families had to move in together into small dwellings where it was commonplace to live with your uncle, aunt, cousins, grandparents and a couple friends. Anyone who's ever looked at the Census data from that era will know what I'm talking about.

So while I sympathize I also think reality bears some adherence here. If we're being honest we have to admit that continually extending benefits has no merit as a solution to the current problem.

Alice In Wonderland. Viewers In Coma.

This past week I got around to seeing Tim Burton's incarnation of Alice In Wonderland. As a child I'd read the stories and found them a bit lacking. Maybe it was the female heroine. Maybe it was the goofy characters but I mainly felt they just weren't very interesting stories. More to the point I always wondered if they weren't the work of a very disturbed mind or possibly one in the depths of a serious drug-induced trip. Wonderland is, after all, a pretty twisted and evil place that no child would ever want to seriously visit.

I should say right off that I'm a Burton fan. Most of what he's given us I find incredibly fascinating and extremely entertaining. I look forward to his re-imagining of most anything. Given my flat support for Alice in book form I was curious to see what he would turn this all into.

The open moments had my complete attention as the look of the film is vintage Burton. He has a way of delivering visuals that seem as if they come with an extra sense of real flavor. It's as if you can taste and smell everything here.

If that's all there was to movie-making this would be up for an Oscar, and may still be for some visual award, but we do demand a story to go with it and here Alice fails miserably. Burton has presented us with a story that has taken both the original tale and its sequel and forced them together into one convoluted mess. In then end it barely resembles either story and, in fact, fails to measure up to either.

Most annoyingly the film not only plods along with a dull story but then devolves into a completely unnecessary action sequence that absolutely no one doubts the outcome of. It also felt as if the writer ran out of ideas and decided to borrow a laundry list of ideas from The Wizard Of Oz. Been there. Done that.

When the film ended people quietly got up and left without anyone really saying a word. Not a good sign. I find it also quite telling that here we have Johnny Depp in an entirely forgettable role. It's not that his Mad Hatter was bad. It's just that his talents are entirely wasted here. That's even more of a problem when you consider how much they expected Depp to carry this film. You know this to be true by just looking at the movie poster. Instead of Alice we get a shot of The Mad Hatter as if this weren't called Alice In Wonderland.

The rest of the cast was equally a bit wasted or ineffectual. Crispin Glover's character is simply annoying. Anne Hathaway's character should be interesting but is distractingly negative.

It won't be the worst film of the year and it's worth seeing for the visuals (on cable). I also wouldn't bring young children to see it as it's loaded with rather violent and haunting sequences that really shouldn't be taken in by kids.

Just A Reminder

I wanted to remind all of you out there that support the conservative punditry that should healthcare reform pass today then it would be in direct contradiction to what nearly all the various conservative outlets and pundits claimed.

Time and again from all corners of conservatism I've heard nearly every pundit declare healthcare reform dead.

Fox News commentator and Weekly Standard columnist Fred Barnes said in print, "The Health Care Bill Is Dead--And other repercussions of Scott Brown's victory in Massachusetts."

Senator Mitch McConnell in an interview with Greta Van Susteren said, "I think Brown's election means the end of the health care proposal as currently constituted....I think that's over."

Congressman Mike Pence just this week on Fox said, "I don't think they can pass the bill.....

Ann Coulter stated in an interview at CPAC, "It is over, they are humoring the base. As Rahm Emanuel called them, they are effing retards, and they are humoring the effing retards right now. So, no, they are not bringing up the health care again, it is dead, dead, dead. Thank you, Massachusetts voters."

I've heard all the radio hosts and many of their varied guest make the same exact claim in an attempt to show that their message has resonated and worked.

The point is that, as is so often the case with these people, they were wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. The bill may not pass but it's certainly far from the dead carcass they were all proclaiming.

If anyone else in your life were as wrong as these "experts" have been on nearly every issue you'd have long ago stopped listening to them. Instead you listen for a simple reason--these sources long ago figured out that if they just tell you want you want to hear you'll lap it up willingly and never question the messenger regardless of how many times he proclaims the sky is falling.

And guess what? Nearly everything you've heard about this bill is just as accurate as all of their other prophecies. If the bill passes let's wait a year and see how much this changes your every day life. My guess is that 90% of you won't even be aware of a difference. Yet if the punditry is to be believed then by that point we should be well on the way to being forced to call each other comrade.

Only In The Mind Of The Deranged

A funny thing happened while I was catching a bit of Glenn Beck's Fox News show last night. As usual Beck was going on about the horrifying, permanently damaging, mind-altering nefarious plots of the evil Left Empire.

However, on this night it was a bit different. The imagery was more haunting. The verbiage was more cutting and the rhetoric was nearly inconceivable.

The audience was told about how liberals preferred Hitler, had secretly desired communism and welcomed Stalin with open arms and bent knees. (Remember the viewpoint that says the one who first invokes Hitler is the one to lose the debate.) The piece is so full of garbage that it's hard to focus on any one pile of refuse. For example, take his comment that it wasn't until Harry Truman took office that the situation with the Soviets started to sour. Anyone that knows anything about the era knows that Churchill and Roosevelt had massive issues with Stalin long before Truman took the reigns.

Anyway, all of this was bad enough but then I proceeded to see something I didn't think even Beck could contemplate: He launched into a segment about the apparently woefully misunderstood Senator Joe McCarthy and how this guy was a hero fighting the good fight and he'd have succeeded except that the satanic left had identified him as their chief opponent in their plot to brainwash us all and so they set out to strike him down at all costs.

This, I must say, is revisionist history of the highest order. Beck reduced McCarthy's witch-hunting that both directly and indirectly destroyed countless lives down to a single sentence: "McCarthy was eventually censured by the Senate in 1954." Of course he fails to point out that half the Republicans in the Senate supported the resolution.

This guy is certifiable at this point. His remaining advertisers (now down to innumerable gold schemers and gold diggers) need to jump ship before they end up with even less credibility than Beck. Conservative commentary often will point to those who deny the Holocaust as a sign of clear insanity. They wonder how such an altered reality can be possible. This is exactly how such things happen. An entire segment of our community will listen to this tripe and take it at face value because one of their own said it.

One of the most famous quotes about McCarthy was presented by famed journalist Edward R. Murrow who said, "His primary achievement has been in confusing the public mind, as between the internal and the external threats of Communism. We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men."

"We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. The actions of the junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad, and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn't create this situation of fear; he merely exploited it and rather successfully."

Now think of that as if it were being said of Beck and replace communism with liberalism. This man is a blight on this country. What he's espousing is the worst form of propaganda and it's high time we held him accountable for it.

Rove Is Charlatan

Karl Rove is affectionately and pointedly referred to as "The Architect" whenever he appears on Fox News and most other outlets (though he rarely leaves the safety of Fox).

The continual fawning over this guy that's done by virtually anyone on Fox is a complete joke. Nothing about this man is balanced. He's treated as if he's a completely non-partisan by-stander to all things politics when every single comment out of his mouth is calculated for maximum political effect. I have no doubt that every pundit on Fox and conservative radio knows it and plays to it purposely.

Rove has said that the divide between President Obama and congressional Republicans is "a shocking failure." He went on to say that this is Obama's fault as he campaigned as a centrist but then moved hard to the left once he got into office. When asked if President Bush did the same thing in 2000 (campaigned as a centrist but then moved to the right) Rove disagrees.

How anyone who was there can state that with a straight face is only a mystery to those not paying attention. Then Governor Bush ran as, in his own words, "a uniter". He made a huge deal out of his "proven ability" to work with both sides of the aisle and bring everyone together for a common good. Instead, once in office none of that materialized. It ushered in the beginning of the greatest political divide we've ever seen. To suggest that what President Obama is experiencing is wholly of his own making exposes Rove as the charlatan that he is and always has been on these issues.

I listen to him give interviews on conservative talk shows and callers chime in afterwards at how fair he is and how non-partisan his views are. Only a zealot could listen to this guy and qualify his comments as non-partisan.

Rove has lied repeatedly about past events and continues to do so at every turn. Just recently he was on with Matt Lauer denying that he had anything to do with the Valerie Plame situation and never provided her name to anyone. Scott McClellan, Bush's then Press Secretary went before the press on three occasions at the time to deny Rove had anything to do with it after receiving assurances directly from he and President Bush that Rove had nothing to do with it. Lauer asked Rove if he owed McClellan an apology and Rove said absolutely not. That's interesting and telling because McClellan points out that Rove not only apologized to him for this in person but then later did so in front of the entire senior staff and later still sent a hand-written note apologizing once again.

What does it say about someone that apologizes privately to someone three times about something but then, when it matters most, refuses to do so on the record?

Exposing The Ghost Writer

My best friend suggested we see something other than the big movie of the week and so we headed off to see The Ghost Writer. The reviews were all pretty glowing and it sounded like a curiously delicious film.

The Ghost Writer stars Ewan McGregor as a successful (but unknown) ghost writer who's given a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to complete the memoirs of a recent British Prime Minister (played perfectly by Pierce Brosnan). Of course the opportunity comes with a number of concerns. Chief among them is that the previous ghost writer appears to have suddenly killed himself under extremely questionable circumstances.

The film is loaded with brilliant performers and performances including a few "is that really?" ones. The first is a key executive at the publishing house played by a freshly-bald Jim Belushi. We also get to see Timothy Hutton playing the lawyer for the Prime Minister even though we only see him sparingly. Another wonderful, albeit brief, performance is given by the always-reliable Tom Wilkinson during a scene that's mentally haunting from start to finish. We even get a great scene with the amazing Eli Wallach that had me thinking, "I thought he died years ago."

The meatiest moments take place between McGregor and the women surrounding the Prime Minister. These include Olivia Williams playing his apparently long-suffering wife and, in the biggest shocker of all, Kim Cattrall playing the PM's assistant and, with heavy suggestion, a past/possibly-current lover.

Cattrall's performance is shocking for a few reasons. Chief among them is that after years of being type-cast as Samantha in Sex and the City we're used to seeing her as a vivacious and timeless sexpot. Here she's so normal and almost plain that it took more than a few scenes to realize it was even her. We also get to see that she has immense talent that's been wasted with the Samantha character. I must say I was shocked to see her looking this normal and, frankly, old. However, I must also say that after I got over the initial shock her strikingly good looks even at her age managed to shine through without the need for all the flair.

The main story opens up into a full-blown thriller by the end of the movie but be very prepared to wait for it. 90 minutes into the movie we were asking ourselves if the film had any point at all. I was fearing yet another bland movie filled with great acting. Those always leave me feeling cold and bored. Suffice to say that the last 40 minutes makes it all worth it.

Most obviously much effort appears to have gone into making this feel like a biopic. We're given the impression that Brosnan's character is a paper-thin representation of real ex-British PM Tony Blair replete with all the same issues. He's being hounded as a possible war criminal for supporting illegal torture of terrorists during his tenure and his opponents hate him for his rubber-stamp approval of anything that came out of Washington during his term. Sound familiar?

In the end it all just works and the pay-off is a powerful one that will keep you thinking about it for quite some time afterwards. Could it happen? Did it happen? Will it happen? This movie will get you wondering.

Just When You Think You've Heard It All....

So I'm reading the news and I come across the story of Chelsea King, a 17 year-old high school student who disappeared Thursday in San Diego. Police there say they found evidence linking a previous sex offender, John Gardner, to the crime though they didn't say what that evidence was. Gardner was previously jailed for molesting a 13 year-old girl in May of 2000.

This is the part I couldn't believe: Apparently Gardener lured the 13 year-old to his home with an offer to watch the 1998 movie Patch Adams.

If you're not familiar with the film it stars Robin Williams playing the real Patch Adams. The film focuses on Adams' medical schooling and his various antics and novel approach to practicing medicine. The story includes the sexual molestation and killing of Adams' girlfriend by a disturbed patient of Adams.

What sort of monster not only does this sort of thing but has the gall to top it all off by wooing their victim with a film of such poignant irony?

Here's hoping that his latest victim is found alive though it certainly doesn't seem all that likely.

Neverending Unemployment?

Several media outlets are up in arms over Senator Jim Bunning's tactics in the Senate today blocking voting on a bill that would extend eligibility for "enhanced" unemployment benefits for another 30 days. The bill would also subsidize health insurance for many laid-off workers.

Understand that I believe in social programs. I like being an idealist and think that if we do live in the greatest country and richest country in the world (as we keep being told we do and are) then I also believe it behooves us to be number one in compassion and empathy when it comes to those of us who have fallen on hard times--many without any wrongdoing on their part. I personally believe Social Security as a concept is one of the most magnanimous gestures a people can impart on others.

I will never argue that such systems have been a shining example of how best to manage such endeavors. However, the unemployment situation is quite a quandary and it's one I'm not sure I can support as is.

I've always been entrepreneurial in my life. Most of my vocational life has been spent working for myself or for other entrepreneurs as a key component. It's been risky and I've found myself out of work more often than most. However, I also often didn't collect unemployment when I was within my rights to do so. I didn't feel the need to burden a system unnecessarily.

This past year I was laid off from work after an accident with a drunk driver left me unable to travel. In this case I could have used unemployment and went to collect. Due to some odd way in which they calculate your eligibility I was told I couldn't collect until July of this year (something to do with part of my income being 1099 work).

Meanwhile I know several people who've been collecting unemployment now for more than two straight years. A couple of them aren't even bothering to look for work. I'm not sure I see the benefit of this benefit any longer. We can't just keep giving people money simply because they don't have a job. It's just not sustainable but many in Congress on both sides seem blinded to this reality. None of them want to have to go to the polls having been responsible for stopping the checks of countless of their constituents.

So while the press is embarking on an all-out attack on Senator Bunning--a Senator I have lots of disagreement with--I think I have to support him on this one. We simply cannot afford to keep doling out checks to everyone indefinitely.