Monday, July 6, 2009 by Dick.

The devil didn’t make him do it. His mother did.

Some things you just can’t make up. This one appeared in the local paper last week.

SOMEWHERE NEAR NORTH PUFFIN — A local man told the Sheriff that he used a water pistol to rob the Town Pharmacy because his mother told him to do it.

“Spoony McGowen” (not his real name), 35, is being held on $50,000 bail on charges of assault and robbery with a weapon and felony narcotics possession. The charges show he pointed a black water pistol at the pharmacist and forced him to load a white garbage bag (with red drawstrings) with morphine, OxyContin, and hydromorphone tablets.

The robber said he gave some of the pills to his getaway driver for borrowing his girlfriend’s car for the robbery and that the driver was supposed to split the pills with Mr. McGowen’s mother for her help. She has not been charged.

He could pay $25,000 in fines and spend 15 years in jail for the $566 robbery.

The street value of the OxyContin is more than $18,000.

Far be it from me to indict the school system but ya gotta think Mr. McGowen was poorly served. After all, he said he robbed the drug store because he had heard about all the stimulus money and “he was tired of being broke.”

Mr. McGowen was broke because he had no job.

He had no job not because he has an extensive criminal history but rather because he does not feel satisfied by his educational experience.

He does not feel satisfied by his educational experience because he quit school in 10th grade at age 19.

Apologists have proven that everything from political incorrectness to forces of nature are not our fault. It is our environment that teaches us how to behave. Or our genes. Or our jeans. At any rate, since we cannot control our environment (except how globally warm it gets) or our genes, we bear no responsibility for anything. It’s not our fault we had no ice or water on hand before a hurricane. It’s not our fault we didn’t recognize that our mortgage payments would be twice our incomes. It’s not our fault government-financed jobs programs haven’t put people to work.

And most important, Robbing a drug store with a water pistol wasn’t Mr. McGowen’s fault.

Mr. McGowen does deserve to go to jail, though. You simply can’t rob a drug store and throw your mother under the bus for it without suffering the consequences.

That said, we still have to revamp our schools. After all, Mr. McGowen is really really bad at his job of being a crook. A squirt gun? He must have learnt that in school, doncha think?

After all, It couldn’t have been his fault.

Posted in News, Society, Random Access | 1 Comment »

Saturday, July 4, 2009 by Dick.

Here’s a revolutionary idea.

Independence Day commemorates our declaration of independence from the King of England. The revolution officially began two days earlier when the Second Continental Congress approved the legal separation of the American colonies from Great Britain, a resolution proposed by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia in June. After voting for independence on June 2, Congress debated and revised the Declaration itself for two days and approved it on July 4.

In the centuries since, only the current Congress has moved with anywhere near the speed, since the current Congress has passed trillions of dollars of spending on millions of pages of bills in less than 100 days.

The Declaration of Independence fits on one page.

In Peoria just one hundred fifty-five years ago Rep. Abraham Lincoln said,

Nearly eighty years ago we began by declaring that all men are created equal; but now from that beginning we have run down to the other declaration, that for some men to enslave others is a “sacred right of self-government.” … Our republican robe is soiled and trailed in the dust. Let us repurify it. … Let us re-adopt the Declaration of Independence, and with it, the practices, and policy, which harmonize with it.

Lincoln spoke of the enslavement of persons. Today our republican robe is soiled and trailed in the dust by a government that would enslave We the People, taking more and more of our rights and our land and our life’s blood to its own purpose.

Two hundred thirty-one years ago today, General George Washington marked July 4 with a double ration of rum and an artillery salute for the soldiers who fought off the foreign monarchy that did enslave us. Now it is time to mark July 4 with a double ration of electoral salute to those who would be the modern monarchy of government.

Posted in Throw Da Bums Out, Politics & News, Big Thoughts, Random Access | 4 Comments »