Ferguson foolery

I hate to admit that I feel little sympathy for the kid who got shot in Ferguson nor for the police officer.  Who knows what the true story is and a grand jury should sort it out.  But surely the businessmen of the city got a raw deal.

            You pour your heart and soul into a business and it is hard enough to make it work in the market.  4 out of 5 small businesses fail in the first two years.  Those guys in Ferguson probably had their houses mortgaged, no pension, and worked hundred hour weeks like I used to.  In the end, a bunch of hooligans destroyed their American Dream.  And what did they do to deserve this? Listen to the pundit theoreticians on TV who say, “Well, there’s no excuse for looting…”  No excuse?  It is criminal.  It is despicable, as in the root word ‘despise’.  And in the end, what do those idiots who looted have to show for it?  Their town will be a disaster zone for years to come.  Some say that Newark and Detroit never recovered from the riots there in the 60’s—fifty years ago!  Not one in ten thousand people you would ask could remember what righteous cause started those riots.

            Meanwhile the pious screwballs who run government and civic leaders who are a joke, are saying that they must rebuild.  Hunh?  That’s like telling a raped woman that at least she didn’t get pregnant and here’s a new dress to wear.  They may rebuild but if I were in business there, I would be haunted by serious considerations about leaving and going somewhere else.  “Well, I appreciate the efforts you make to rebuild my business, but from now on our main store will be in St. Charles.  Even if I were an unaffected plumber with only tools in the back of my truck, I would think, “Gosh, I have to travel ten miles in city traffic to find the plumbing supply house now.  I could just as well work out of the suburbs and still come into town to do some work.”  The few businesses who stay behind and fix things up will be able to charge more and will need to charge more to offset their sky-high insurance rates.  The ultimate bozos are the citizens of Ferguson. 

            So what should the folks in Ferguson have done?  This too will sound weird but in the days of militias who protected their community things would have looked different.  They would  have rushed to their closets and grabbed shotguns and rifles, headed to the nearest merchant under duress and volunteered for night watch duty.  Looters tend to think twice when a business has 4 armed men in the doorway who are more than willing to shoot if they try to loot.  Just throw that darned rock at my window; toss that Molotov cocktail and see what you get in return. 

            I heard the arrest count a couple of nights.  78 arrested and 3 were from Ferguson.  120 arrested and 4 from Ferguson.  That means that the community organizers and outside agitators were the culprits.  So who are the protesters  after midnight?  Walter Williams wrote about how it is the tragedy of fatherless youth.  Typical Williams, he has facts and statistics to prove this as the cause. I have easier proof that it was out of town agitators.  During the riots, some rioters threw rocks at the St. Louis Cardinal gift shop at the stadium.  Police quickly arrested the perps.  Salient fact: the Redbirds are unequivocally the town heroes.  No person from St. Louis would dream of bashing the beloved Cardinals.  Unless the perps were from, say, Philly or Chicago.

            So what should Ferguson do?  I suggest, not entirely tongue in cheek, that we preserve the business district as-is and don’t rebuild it.  Just make it a National Monument to human foolery where for generations unborn we can remind ourselves of the results of shooting in the foot and destroying the American Dream out of spite and an entitlement mentality.  Meanwhile the residents can start a new shopping center somewhere else and bring in new businessmen and repent.  Which should give the media something to chew on.

The flag is already there

So Obama finally did something in the Middle East.  He cancelled a shipment of Hellfire missles to Israel, citing tension between USA and Israel. 

“Obama has quibbled with Israel over the defensive operation in Gaza, making various attempts to press Israel into accepting a truce with the adamant terrorist organization of Hamas. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu reportedly responded to the pressure by telling the administration "not to ever second guess me again," after Hamas committed one of its many ceasefire violations. According to US officials cited in the Wall Street Journal report, the Wednesday night phone call between Obama and Netanyahu was "particularly combative."—Drudge Report, today.

Nothing new.  Let me tell about something I didn’t know about until it came to light from Michael Youssef, a specialist in Egyptian politics and Middle Eastern affairs, and a US general interviewed by Mike Rosen.  See if you missed these interesting events which our news media has not foundto unimportant. 

When Egypt overthrew Mubarack then had an election, a popular Sufi Muslim general won the election by 3%.  Morsi of the the Muslim Brotherhood came in second.  But Obama demanded that the Egyptians install Morsi and his ‘party’ even though they lost.  (The equivalent of Russia demanding that USA install Nixon as President rather than Kennedy or Mondale instead of Reagan)  Egypt complied and of course the Egyptians revolted again.  What made them revolt?  There were 18,000 Christians murdered by the government during the year of Morsi.  Secular Muslims, who view the 15% Christian minority with some contempt nonetheless didn’t want a country where people just disappear.  Muslim Brotherhood, contrary to US media explanations is no political party, but rather an umbrella organization for over 70 terrorist outfits.  The Egyptians overthrew Morsi, and just this week disenfranchised the Brotherhood from holding any offices again or organizing as any kind of shell political party.  The Sufi general got 80% of the vote.  So what did Obama do?  He canceled US-Egyptian aid in a fit of anger.  Apparently he liked the Brotherhood. 

Unlike every other Prez since Nixon, Obama went to war on the sly.  In Libya he got an ambassador and 3 others killed.  What was that ambassador doing that was so important that we kept him in a dangerous location at Benghazi?  Running guns to the rebels in Syria, using them from Libya in the aftermath of Qaddafi.  Finally he refused to get involved in Syria, though he was equipping a group called ISIS that formerly called itself Al Aqeda in Iraq.  ISIS knows how to operate American arms now.  That’s why there is that picture of an ISIS guy hot-rodding a US tank captured in Mosul.  But when ISIS turned really, really violent as they conquered northern Iraq, Obama began to diss them.  Reports are that there were 90,000 Yazidis and Christians in Mosul.  Essentially none remain.  Perhaps half have been murdered.  Which all goes to prove that when you do nothing in the face of evil, you become like the Germans who stood by passively while the Nazis rounded up Jews.  You didn’t create the holocaust, but you let it create itself. 

So now we have a terrific mess on our hands.  There are well over 100 suspected Americans who have joined ISIS and will come back to terrorize USA as homegrown terrorists once their part of the war ends.  They have already caught one guy who foolishly tweeted his intents as he came back and authorities intercepted him at LaGuardia Airport. No more missles for Israel was the news today. And there is that UTube video of an ISIS guy bragging about how they will soon come to plant the flag in our White House.  Heck, I think it is already there.

Neglect?

So what would you say about a parent who lets her child go to the park every day where neighbors watch her child and there is supervised breakfasts and lunch?  What would you say about parents who let a kid roam over pastures and creeks for hours at age 8 with only a dog for supervisor?  What would you say about parents who let an 11-year old ride 180 miles through the wilderness and camp at night with no map or guidance whatsoever.

            The first case is Debra Harrel who let her daughter go the park in Augusta.  The South Carolina child custody folks charged her with felony neglect carrying a lengthy prison term, despite the protest of the neighbors who say that many kids are left to play in a group by parents who can’t afford child care. 

            The second case is my parents who often let me explore the pasture and creek below the farmstead.  With nothing more than a stick for protection and a big dog who was my best friend, I encountered rattlers and poison ivy and bulls.  Did I survive?  Yes, and learned a great deal for the experience.  I didn’t fall in the pond, either because my mother admonished me, “You don’t have to jump in the water to know you’ll get wet.”  And when me and the dog found a recluse steer, we drove him home just for fun, prompting my granddad to say, “been looking for that onery sucker.” I first discovered that chesnut trees have a blight and will not grow to maturity, that thistles bite back and if you pick up a rock, always turn it over toward you so if there is a snake underneath, he’ll be on the far side of the rock.  Were my parents neglectful?  No one in the 50’s thought so.  All farm kids had this upbringing.  Of course we turned out self-reliant, resourceful and confident which the liberals detest.

            The third case is that of Joe Miller.  In 1879, at the age of 11, his father put him on a horse and sent him from Pond Creek to Miami in the Indian Territory.  The 180 mile ride took 3 days.  He had to avoid outlaws and cross major rivers.  Why was he sent on this mission?  Because George Washington Miller, the trail boss whose life inspired Mr. Favor in the Rawhide TV series, had heard that the Ponca Indian tribe was being given a choice of two reservation sites, one near Pond Creek, one near what would become Ponca City. Miller was friends with the tribal elders, thought they had been mistreated, wanted them to choose the Ponca City area as better for their needs, and dispatched his boy to tell them about the two tracts.  Little Joe stood in front of the chief and clan leaders answering questions about the prevalence of wild plums, turkeys, grass types and rivers.  The tribe’s leaders were so confident of the kid’s answers that they agreed the Ponca area was best where they could put tribal headquarters on the hill between Salt Fork and Arkansas rivers. 

            I catch myself asking if anyone in the South Carolina bureaucracy could answer Joe Miller’s interrogators.  Indeed would they predict a good outcome for Joe as an adult, given what obviously is child neglect and endangerment by 2014 standards.  Probably not.  But Joe grew up to be head of the largest ranch in America, the 101 Ranch, and honorary chief of the Ponca Tribe.  Did I mention, he risked partnership with some inexperienced oilman named EW Marland who discovered the first acclaimed geologic oil find? Or that his ranch in conjunction with Oklahoma A&M perfected the first hybrid seed corn?  Or that in memory of his dad and their old time cattle drive friends, he created an honorary organization and hall of fame for those who drove 10 million head of cattle over trails from Texas to Kansas from 1870-1885.  Or that he organized the world’s largest Wild West show in 1905?

            Which brings me to another interesting thought.  Bloody Kansas in the 1880s had 89 murders and the 1885 population was roughly 225,000.  Compare that ten year murder rate to a single year in Chicago which has about ten times the population.  Answer is 500+ murders.  And these are caused primarily by gangs.  Maybe we should ask what constitutes reasonable parenting.