Too Smart to Live; Too Dumb to Die

Let me see if I’ve got this right:

If a convicted baby rapist murderer is sentenced to the penalty of death for his crime, and he is slightly more intelligent than an imbecile, then it is not considered cruel and unusual punishment, and is therefore perfectly fitting and proper to snuff out his life. 

He’s too smart to live.

But if the same baby rapist murderer is slightly less or just about as intelligent as an ordinary imbecile, then it should be considered cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment of the Bill of Rights, and therefore not proper to put him to death. 

He’s too dumb to die.

That’s the bizarre conclusion and holding of a 5-4 majority of the nine Justices on the United States Supreme Court this week in the case of Hall v. Florida. Actually, they were merely reaffirming their earlier 2002 decision in a similar case that the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments forbid the execution of persons with intellectual disability.

In other words, if a baby rapist murderer scores higher on a standard IQ test than a common moron; he doesn’t deserve equal protection of the law, i.e. the same protections accorded to a dumber baby rapist murderer by the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, which forbid cruel and unusual punishment.

“No legitimate penological purpose is served by executing the intellectually disabled,” reasoned the majority. Furthermore, such individuals face “a special risk of wrongful execution,” said the Court.

But where in the United States Constitution does it say that dumb defendants must be considered differently than smart defendants when it comes to punishment for precisely the same criminal conduct?

No where!

If executing dumb people is cruel and unusual punishment violative of the Eighth Amendment, (and I think it surely is), why isn’t the same just as true for smarter people?

I think it is. Relative intelligence has nothing to do with it. 

The Court’s reasoning here is plainly manufactured out of thin air. If intellectually deficient defendants should not be put to death because it’s cruel and unusual punishment, it only stands to reason that intellectually sufficient defendants should also be spared the death penalty. After all, every defendant sentenced to death faces the real risk of wrongful execution.

There is no remedy for a wrongful execution. Death is final. But our Supreme Court has decided, quite arbitrarily I think, that some of us are just too smart to live and others too dumb to die.

Popeonomics

I like Pope Francis. He seems like a nice fellow. The man is genuinely concerned with poor people and injustice in this world. I applaud him for that. Better for him and the rest of us though that he sticks with his job as a man of God in the Vatican and keep his papal nose out of global economics.

That’s because he, like so many other statists, including all men of the cloth, knows virtually nothing about the science of economics. Why should he? After all, Popes and priests, preachers and clerics, aren’t really much concerned about the temporal realities of existence. They’re all wrapped up in their religious fantasies; what their imaginary God wants; the afterlife; and the promise of salvation for eternity.

So most of them, including Francis, honestly believe and candidly maintain that all the wealth of our temporary existence on Earth is God given and should therefore be distributed evenly. Why not, they reason? Wealth beyond what is necessary to scrape together a modest existence on Earth doesn’t matter when measured against an afterlife in which wealth is unnecessary for the infinity of eternity.

Now, if all that were true, I’d agree with him. But it isn’t true. It’s fantasy. It’s a deception in conscious minds. Wealth is not God given; it’s created by the activities of humans. We all have but one life to live and when our lives are over we’ll be dead for eternity, in which case wealth won’t matter either. It matters only during our lives.

Of course, no one, especially Pope Francis, will be changing their minds anytime soon because of the facts of reality and what I’ve just said. They’ll go right on with their fantasy about the efficacy of wealth distribution, social justice, and how to achieve salvation no matter what the evidence.

The Pope is calling for the governments of nations everywhere to redistribute wealth to the poor in a new spirit of generosity to help curb the “economy of exclusion” that he believes is taking hold today.

He doesn’t like the economics of capitalism because he thinks it excludes too much of humanity. So he wants the state to take by force the wealth from those who create it and distribute it to those who don’t. He wants the state to stifle liberty.

In his heart of hearts, Pope Francis is not just a man of God; he’s also a Marxist. But the problem with Marxists is that their fantasy has already been tried and failed over and over again since the dawn of civilizations.

Wealth taken by force from those who create it will simply go to a new class of takers who quickly squander it until there is no wealth left to take at which point the fantasy always collapses and reality reasserts itself. In the interim the poor stay poor and most people are poor. They stay poor because the takers won’t allow them the means and the liberty with which to create wealth.

When force is taken out of the equation and liberty is restored, new wealth is created by those who create wealth, and the very best system for them to create wealth happens to be free market capitalism which raises the standards of living for rich and poor alike.  

But Pope Francis and all the other statists of this world just don’t get it. All the evidence of history is right in front of their faces but they ignore it in favor of fantasy. And in Francis’ case that fantasy includes Popeonomics. 

Flagmania in Pennsylvania

American flag worshippers in Pennsylvania are in a state of furious apoplexy over a man among them who last week had the temerity to exercise his First Amendment freedom of speech right to desecrate their sacred symbol of government Authority! 

Joshuaa Brubaker spray painted a political message on his own flag and then hung it upside down outside his own private home. So the cops are charging him with a crime. Now he’s facing misdemeanor charges for desecration and insults to the American flag – the flag that belongs to him.

Apparently the police were alerted to the “crime” by a number of complaints, one from a military woman who "was very offended." "People have made too many sacrifices to protect the flag and to leave [sic] this happen in my community, I'm not happy with it," explained L.J. Berg, Allegheny Township assistant police chief. "I removed it from the building, folded it properly and seized it as evidence."

What Brubaker did was “inexcusable” declared the small town’s incarnation of Barney Fife as he took the man’s flag down. He’s not happy with it and neither are the rest of the town’s American flag worshipers so they’re going to have the guy prosecuted as a criminal.

Flag desecration and insulting the flag are considered “crimes” in Allegheny Township Pennsylvania, where no one, including the government authorities, has apparently ever even heard of the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights, much less the First Amendment Freedom of Speech Clause. At a minimum, they don’t understand the meaning of the American Flag symbol they’re worshipping.

This is a classic case of First Amendment protected political speech if there ever was one. The Pennsylvania flag desecration law that these morons are relying upon to prosecute Brubaker as a criminal is patently unconstitutional.

It is the irrational flag worshipers in this case who are un-American, not Joshuaa Brubaker. They’re the real criminals -- guilty of flagmania in Pennsylvania. 

The Political Science of Globahoaxing Climagenda

When a legitimate science becomes attached to a political agenda that’s when I become skeptical of the science -- because political science is not science. Science is about the study of the reality of existence. Science doesn’t mix well with the fanciful agendas of religion and politics.

Climatology is a legitimate science concerned with the study of facts about the Earth’s climate. There are a lot of facts about the nature of Earth’s climate which have yet to be revealed; therefore the science of climatology is by no means fully understood.

Theories abound, but no one fully understands the intricate mechanisms of climate changes constantly occurring during the billions of years that the Earth has existed. In that time, for instance, there have been numerous cycles of global warming periods followed by cooling periods all happening long before the existence of mankind.

But today we have a bunch of politicians, perhaps even a majority of them, supported by a gaggle of scientists who insist that they know for certain and beyond any doubt that climate changes are brought about by the nefarious activities of mankind, particularly the burning of fossil fuels, which they maintain is causing “global warming,” which in turn is harming the planet and threatening mankind.

It’s the same kind of hubris and stubborn irrational arrogance which leads some deluded humans even today to believe that the entire universe of galaxies, stars, planets and Earth was created by a man. A man (God) created it and now men are destroying it they think.

So the politicians and their supporters are demanding that mankind do something drastic about this manmade “problem.” They’re calling for sacrifices. Nothing new about that -- the primary agenda of religion and politics has always been about calling for sacrifices and this situation is no different.

Remember the so-called over population scare? Mankind was overpopulating the Earth which would lead to disaster? That “scientific” prediction, of course, has come to nothing.

Now the statists have identified a new “problem,” a “crisis” that can only be resolved by men making sacrifices. That is the political consensus nowadays. It’s become a nasty overbearing political agenda and the believers simply won’t tolerate any degree of skepticism.

President Barack Obama, for example, has declared repeatedly that urgent action is needed now to curb carbon emissions before climate change exacts an irreversible toll on the planet with extreme drought, storms and rising seas levels. "We've still got some climate deniers who shout loud, but they're wasting everybody's time on a settled debate,” says Obama. He blames every severe weather incident on “climate change” caused my mankind. He’s calling for sacrifices.

A scientific paper by Lennart Bengtsson, until now a very well respected research fellow and climatologist – a top scientist -- at Britain's University of Reading, was rejected earlier this year by a leading academic journal after a reviewer decided that it was "harmful" to the climate change agenda.

You see, the scientific community today is actively engaged in the muzzling of any dissent on the issue of “global warming” and causes of “climate change.” Bengtsson, for good scientific reasons, has become skeptical of the scientific “global warming” consensus – skeptical of the political science agenda – so the powers that be in the scientific community are trying to shut him up.

"They've threatened him. They've bullied him. They've pulled his papers. They're now going through everything they can to smear his reputation. And the ‘they’ I'm referring to is the global warming establishment," observes Marc Morano of the website ClimateDepot.com.

Bengtsson resigned from the advisory board of a climatology think tank after being subjected to “McCarthy-style pressure” from other academics, the Times of London reports. "It is an indication of how science is gradually being influenced by political views. The reality hasn't been keeping up with computer models," he explains. "If people are proposing to do major changes to the world's economic system we must have much more solid information."

In other words, all this “global warming climate change” hoopla supported by manipulated data is probably just another “political scientific” hoax. Any legitimate climate scientists today and there are many of them, who question the consensus, are demonized, their papers rejected, and their requests for funding denied. They’re accused as people who are trying to impede the saving of the planet.

The science is not settled. The debate is not over. Average global temperatures are not rising. Sea levels are not rising. Severe weather incidents today are no worse or numerous than before. We just as likely face a new ice age in the near future as we do global warming. No one really knows for sure.

But the statists still want the sacrifices.

How dare they try to stifle scientific debate?

How dare they plague us with their globahoaxing and climagenda?

Statism: No Limits

There are no limits with statism. There are still many places in this world where the state via its autocratic rulers can legally force the hapless subjects to do anything it wants them to do and there is no recourse. Liberty is just a word in the dictionary in those places. Freedom is out of the question.

Take North Korea, for example. There, the Dear Leader, has the power to simply order all the men within the boundaries of the state to get haircuts exactly like his, just because that’s what he wants, and he had better be obeyed or else. The story goes that he recently had his uncle thrown into a cage with a pack of ravenous dogs to be ripped apart and eaten alive. Statism has no limits in North Korea.

Before king John was persuaded to sign the Magna Carta, that great charter of liberties of England, at Runnymede, on the bank of the river Thames, near Windsor, in the year 1215, the English monarchs wielded similar unlimited powers over their subjects; literally the power of life and death. There were no limits to statism in England then.

The same has been largely true with kingdoms, empires, states and rulers all over the planet throughout recorded history. The holy Bible lists one statist ruler after another all having unlimited powers over human beings.

Today, even with the advent of republics, constitutions and representative democracies, we still too often find ourselves burdened under the heavy yolk of statism which seems to have no limits. Most Americans today, for example, will tell you that the majority rules; if the majority vote this way or that then everyone is bound to do as the law proscribes.

If, for instance, the majority votes against gay marriage, then gays ought not be allowed to marry. If Johnny refuses to stand for the Pledge, he should be punished. The government prays to and leads its subjects in prayer to the government God.

So even in the United States of America where we have a Constitution and a Bill of Rights meant to limit the powers of the state and its rulers, we still have mobs of statists who are willing to push them aside. They respect no limits to their statism.

The nation of Spain is a representative democracy today but there are still no limits to statism in Spain. In fact, the Spanish parliament is considering a law requiring children to do their chores. If it passes, all children under 18 will be legally bound to do housework "in accordance with their age and regardless of their gender."

Can you imagine that? The statists want the law to make children do housework. It won’t be up to parents anymore; no, the state is going to get involved with forcing kids to do housework. Also under this law, the kids will legally have to "respect their teachers and fellow students," "participate in family life" and "respect their parents and siblings."

That’s right. The law givers in Spain are about to tell all the little kids what to think, who to respect, and how to participate in family life. If the little ones don’t take out the trash they’ll be breaking the law in the statist nation of Spain.

You see, with statism there are no limits. 

Worship the Authority

Worship the statist American government Authority or suffer the consequences. Worship the flag of the United States or be punished. Stand and worship the state along with the rest of the captive sheep or take abuse from your government agent overlords.

That’s the dilemma faced by all the child victims of America’s gulag system of compulsory education today. They must either conform to the cultural behavioral dictates of their public school education slave masters like good little American Nazi’s or pay with the price of losing their constitutional rights.

Mason Michalec, a Needville Texas High School sophomore found that out the hard way last week when he was punished by the school district education Authority;  suspended for refusing to stand with the rest of his classmates for the obligatory daily loyalty oath to the U.S. government, aka the Pledge of Allegiance.

Of course, this just proves once again that children forced into the public school compulsory education system in America enjoy no First Amendment rights; indeed no constitutional rights at all.

The boy explained that he refused to stand for the Pledge because of his opposition to government spying. "I’m really tired of our government taking advantage of us,” said the 15-year-old. "I don’t agree with the NSA spying on us. And I don’t agree with any of those Internet laws."

He’d been refusing to stand for most of the year, but finally ran into trouble when a different teacher noticed his silent protest. “This is my classroom. This is the principal’s request. You’re going to stand,” the new teacher demanded. "And I still didn’t stand and she said she was going to write me up."

After he served his punishment, the school principal warned him that he would face more suspensions if his protest continued. "I’m angry and frustrated and annoyed that they would try to write me up for something I have the right to do,"

Of course, many other statist state worshipers in the small town outside of Houston Texas think the school made the right decision. "The soldiers are out there, they’re doing their job and he should stand up," one Needville resident reasoned. "You’ve got a lot of things here that a lot of people don’t have, that’s respect, that’s freedom."

You see, that’s exactly how the vast majority of American statists today view freedom – being forced to worship the state is freedom as far as they are concerned, while exercising First Amendment rights is viewed as criminal behavior.  

So they demand of all of us:

Worship the Authority.

What does old war hero have to do with it?

Another victim of the American government’s War on Drugs bit the dust this week when a judge sentenced him to three years in a federal prison for the “crime” of smuggling more than a ton of cocaine into the U.S. on behalf of a Mexican drug cartel.

If three years doesn’t sound like a lot of time in stir for sneaking more than 2,000 pounds of blow across the border, you’re right. It’s actually a trifling sentence compared to what your average drug smuggler would get from the feds for the “crime” of bringing in just a single ounce of cocaine. Twenty years to life is not an unusual sentence in such circumstances.

You see, the federal persecutors in the War on Drugs equate the “crime” of trafficking in recreational substances like marijuana or cocaine right up there with murder, rape and armed robbery.  

“It’s not a victimless crime,” croaked the judge who handed down the sentence.  “This is a huge drug operation and Mr. Sharp (the defendant) was right in the middle of it.”

But just exactly who was the victim here? The judge didn’t say. Whether the amount of the drugs was large or small there was plainly no victim of Mr. Sharp’s “crime,” nor are there any victims of any similar “crimes.” No victim was identified. No victim testified in court about being victimized by Mr. Sharp. So in reality, Mr. Sharp is the only victim here.

Buying, selling, transporting and using recreational drugs are deemed “crimes” in the never ending American War on Drugs, not because there are any victims, which is the situation with real crimes, but solely because the government Authority has decided to prosecute the conduct as “crimes.”

It decides what drugs are “legal” and which are not, and the existence or not of a victim does not even enter the analysis. Here the judge simply imagined victims out of nothing in order to justify the defendant’s punishment.

It’s the same with prostitution, gambling and all other factually victimless crimes. The government has to manufacture from nothing the fanciful existence of victims in order to justify prosecuting the conduct as crimes.

So, in my opinion, Mr. Sharp should have received no sentence at all, nor should anyone else deemed “guilty” of the “crime” of which he was convicted in court. But why did he receive three years in prison for his “crime” while the average drug mule Joe in the same situation will get twenty years or more?

Mr. Sharp is 90 years old, that’s why. Mr. Sharp received a bronze star for valor in World War II, that’s why. He’s a war hero, that’s why. He and his lawyer pleaded with the court for mercy upon those facts alone, arguing that it would be “cruel and thoughtless” to send him to prison for those reasons.

“Mr. Sharp is part of a great generation… before we were even born, he was on top of mountains fighting Nazis. That’s not how we honor our heroes whether they’ve fallen from grace or not,” declared the lawyer.

In other words, it’s perfectly OK to lock up others for the same “crime” and throw away the key, but if the accused is a 90-year-old war hero, why then it’s cruel and thoughtless. That’s justice in the War on Drugs. There are many victims in the War on Drugs. Even 90-year–old war hero’s can become victims in the War on Drugs.

But what does old war hero have to do with it? 

Our Municipal Father in Heaven: Epilogue

There are times when I hate to be right and this is one of those times. I’m sadly disappointed today but not at all surprised. Predicting that a majority of the religionist justices on the United States Supreme Court would once again drive a judicial stake through the heart of the First Amendment Establishment Clause was a lot like predicting that there will be daylight tomorrow afternoon in Washington D.C.

It was inevitable.

On August 21, 2013, in my Post, “Our Municipal Father in Heaven,” I predicted that the five Catholic Justices would find another dubious excuse to uphold the constitutionality of a Christian government God in the United States of America; just like they did with the national Motto: “In God We Trust,” and just like they did with the phrase: “Under God,” in the pledge of allegiance.

Later, on November 9, 2013 in “Our Municipal Father in Heaven, Part 2,” after reading the transcript of oral arguments in the case of Town of Greece v. Galloway, I reiterated my prediction that those same five religionist justices would affix their official stamp of approval  on the practice of government sponsored sectarian Christian prayers at municipal functions.

Today they have left no doubt that, in spite of the First Amendment Establishment Clause, the United States of America has an official government God, and government officials at all levels, from federal, state to local, may continue to lead, and encourage their captive subjects, whether religious or not, to stand up, bow their heads and participate in official prayers to the Christian government God – our municipal father in heaven.

Their reasoning: the practice of government sponsored prayer has been going on at all levels of government for a long time now – it’s historical – it’s traditional – no one is physically forced to participate -- so it’s only right then to allow it to continue.

In short, if constitutional violations are longstanding, historical and traditional in nature, as has been the case many times in the history of our imperfect nation, this Court is probably going to allow them to continue, especially if they agree philosophically with the tradition.

What’s next on the Supreme Court religious agenda?

Public school officially sponsored prayers will probably be next. After all, they’re historical; traditional; no child will be physically forced to participate, and the five Catholic Justices clearly agree philosophically with the tradition, having all been brought up with it themselves as kids.

They believe in our municipal father in heaven, our government God, and they’ll have absolutely no qualms about shoving their deity in every American citizen’s face whether we like it or not.  

American Racist Witch Hunting

I’m glad that the despicable practice of human slavery was finally abolished in the United States of America by 1865. That happened nearly 150 years ago. I’m glad that the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified then to finally and unequivocally mandate equal protection of the law to all persons as was originally alluded to by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence.

It’s wonderful that the Ku Klux Klan has been virtually wiped out in America; that Jim Crow laws are gone; that the U.S. Supreme Court decided Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, declaring segregated public schools unconstitutional; and that the Civil Rights movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King culminated in passage of the federal Civil Rights laws by the mid 1960’s.

Institutionalized racial exploitation and discrimination has left an ugly permanent indelible stain upon the fabric of the nation for which we as Americans should all be ashamed.  Righting those wrongs for the benefit of present and future generations has been a long time in coming. The wrongs of the past can never be made right.

The fact though is that no one alive today is responsible whether legally or morally for what happened more than 150 years ago. Very few people living among us today participated in any legally institutionalized racial exploitation and discrimination. Those days are over for good.

But something just as despicable and ugly in going on in America these days which troubles me greatly. Just like the Senator McCarthy inspired communist witch hunts in the 1950’s many Americans today are engaging in the wholly irrational activity of racist witch hunting. Some see a racist behind every bush and these morons are eager to scream for blood when they think they’ve found one.

Of course there are certainly vestiges of personal racism in the minds of some folks. Racism, however, is a matter of degree.

On the one hand we still have an extremely tiny minority of people who actually harbor violent, venomous and irrational hatred for others simply because of the color of their skin. Those kinds of racists are often dangerous criminals and deserve to be dealt with and punished by society accordingly.

On the other end of the spectrum are those who simply can’t seem to eliminate all of the common age old racial stereotypes from their consciousness. That often causes them to innocently make irrational judgments or say things which might seem bigoted and shameful but are clearly not motivated by any amount of hatred, personal animosity or violence.

I would not call this latter type of person a racist. It’s not fair. If they are racists then we must logically conclude then that just about everyone at some time or another is a racist. We would have to conclude that George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and yes, even Abraham Lincoln were racists.  Every one of the founding fathers and every great historical American figure that we admire today were racists by that definition of racist.

The folks who demand racial preferences based upon race are racists. The ones who today are screaming for the blood of people they deem to be racists -- the ones who see racists behind every bush -- are themselves racists by that broad definition of the term racist. Everywhere they look they see racists, even when they look in the mirror.

Poor Cliven Bundy, the Nevada rancher involved with the federal government standoff over grazing rights for his cattle has been savagely vilified as a racist by the American racist witch hunting mob for simply using the term “Negro” when referring to blacks. That man doesn’t hate blacks. He’s not a racist.

Need I remind anyone that the great Dr. Martin Luther King used the term “Negro” all the time. I doubt if he ever said “African American” once in his entire life. I guess that means that Dr. King was a racist by today’s ridiculous cultural standards. I’ll wager money that the term “African American” will one day have users of it branded as racists.

What the hell is an African American anyway? Is a white skinned person born in South Africa and naturalized as an American citizen an African American? No he is certainly not. Why; because he’s not black, that’s why. The white guy is an American but the black guy is an African American. It’s ridiculous.

What the hell is a “Native American” anyway? I was born in America. Doesn’t that make me a Native American? I think it does. I’m a Native American. I’m not a European American. I’ve never even been to Europe. I’m an American just like any black person born in America is an American. It insults those people to call them African Americans.

And now the savage pack of American racist witch hunters have viciously descended upon 80-year-old Los Angles NBA Clippers owner Donald Sterling for saying in a private conversation taped without his knowledge -- in private mind you -- that he was disappointed with his former mistress for consorting openly with “black people.” For this unforgivable transgression, Adam Silver, the NBA commissioner, has banned him from the NBA for life.

The whole nation wants his blood. But this guy doesn’t hate black people. He pays black people millions of dollars to play basketball on his team. He invites black people to his daughter’s wedding. He’s just burdened with a few negative stereotypes about blacks. He may be bigoted to some extent but he’s no racist. He probably doesn’t have a violent thought in his mind about blacks.

The people who want his blood are the ones who are un-American.

They’re guilty of American racist witch hunting.