Posted on 07/19/2007 10:02:43 PM PDT by goldstategop
In the old days, it seems to me, people went in far more for predicting the future. Whether it was Da Vinci’s foreseeing flying machines, Jules Verne’s envisioning
Imagine if a modern-day Rip Van Winkle suddenly woke up after an extended snooze, and everywhere he turned, he’d be confronted with the frivolous, the inane and the downright goofy. It’s not just the fact that such complete ninnies as Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears, are serving as role models for young girls or that people as obnoxious and as contemptuous of America as Rosie O’Donnell, Michael Moore and Jimmy Carter, serve as cultural icons for millions of adults.
Consider the world of professional sports. During World War II, such baseball super stars as Ted Williams, Bob Feller and Stan Musial, lost years off their careers and never once bellyached. These days, pitchers get pulled out of a ballgame and feel entitled to throw tantrums in the dugout.
In the past, homerun sluggers such as Babe Ruth might go out to play ball suffering from hangovers, but it would never have entered their heads to use performance-enhancing chemicals. And if they had, the fans -- including those in their home parks -- would have booed them off the field. What’s more, baseball commissioners like Kenesaw Mountain Landis and Bart Giamatti would have kept them off.
Perhaps the biggest change of all is the way we view our enemies, foreign and domestic. When we were engaged in an epic life and death struggle with the Axis during the 1940s, FDR didn’t feel the need to keep reminding us that Germany, Italy and Japan, were filled with basically decent, peaceful people, the way that President Bush keeps trying to convince us is the case with Islamics.
Even a mere quarter century ago, I would never have believed that so much time and money would be spent trying to accommodate millions of Mexicans who have absolutely no right being here. If you had dared suggest that a sizeable number of American governors, congressmen and senators would put their careers on the line in order to guarantee education, health care, welfare and even citizenship, for millions of sneaks, you’d have found yourself being carted off in a straightjacket.
As bizarre as this approach to illegal aliens is, it’s nowhere near as nutty as what’s happening in our penal system. I mean, I may resent those millions of Mexicans taking cuts, but I know very well that most of them are pretty much like we are. Some are good, some are not so good. But where our prison population is concerned, that’s not the case. When you realize how difficult it is to catch and convict the bad guys, and how many of them plea bargain their crimes down to misdemeanors, and how many more are released because of prison over-crowding, the ones actually serving extended sentences are the worst of the very rotten.
Yet, it seems as if every day, I’m reading about some creep waging battle against logic, decency and commonsense. The latest example is 57-year-old Robert Kosilek. When he was 41, he murdered his wife by wrapping a wire around her neck and strangling her. Even the jurors in Massachusetts, a state so weird that it sees nothing peculiar about constantly re-electing a pair of chowderheads like Kennedy and Kerry to the U.S. Senate, got it right. They sentenced him to life in prison.
Well, now it appears that Mr. Kosilek, who has already changed his name to Michelle, is no longer satisfied with merely getting room and board at the taxpayers’ expense, and is demanding that the state ante up for a sex change operation!
A state judge had already ruled that the prisoner was entitled to treatment for a condition called “gender identity disorder” and ruled that Massachusetts had to pay for his female hormone treatments and laser hair removal, but Kosilek is now demanding surgery. He contends that the Corrections Department is violating his civil rights and subjecting him to cruel and unusual punishment by refusing to provide him the treatment to which he feels he’s entitled.
It’s his claim that he suffers from constant depression, anxiety and a high level of stress. A psychiatrist has testified that Kosilek is likely to commit suicide if he doesn’t get the operation. Well, that would certainly be one possible solution.
Another, I think, would be to release him from prison, provided that Ted Kennedy offered to drive him home.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
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