Author Archives: Sam Ross Jr.

It’s all about race these days, and we’re not talking NASCAR, Indycar, or any other form of motorized competition.

Everything, it seems, must be viewed through a racial lens, as in skin color.

Sexual orientation is coming on strong in virtue signalling and forced perspective, but race still is the prime consideration.

Watch some TV shows, or the omnipresent commercials that split those shows into tiny segments. The ads must have over-representation of blacks, Hispanics and even Asians compared to their numbers in the general population.

An acceptable substitute, on occasion, is an overabundance of women, or obviously gay folk – as in two guys holding hands or two women caressing each other.

A spinoff is the proliferation of the mixed race couple in ads, an outsized trend apparent even to Clueless Joe Biden judging by his June 2021 speech in which he said, “eight to five — two to three out of five (commercials) have mixed-race couples in them. That’s not by accident.”

Biden thought this was a good thing, indicating improvement in racial relations. Come on, man. These are actors, not real-life couples.

The Clueless One is right in one respect, it isn’t by accident. It’s advertisers pandering to those who would make racial representation the litmus test of whether an ad, or product, is acceptable or not.

Perhaps you have heard that Philadelphia will face Kansas City in the Super Bowl, Kansas City having gotten there with a huge helping hand from the zebras.

A prominent theme you will hear between now and the game is that this is the first Super Bowl with two black starting quarterbacks.

Like Barack Obama, KC quarterback Patrick Mahomes has a black father and a white mother, but for purposes of racial demagoguery, he’s black.

When a mass shooting occurred in California recently, targeting Asians, Lamestream media was quick to run with the hate crime angle, figuring it was the stereotypical angry white male.

But no, the alleged shooter was either Vietnamese or Chinese. Accounts vary. All agree, he was Asian.

And still newspapers in California, and likely elsewhere, continue to try to paint this as a racially motivated attack on Asians.

It’s no different regarding Memphis, where an arrest turned into a beatdown of the suspect by police and that suspect’s eventual death. Murder charges have been filed against police officers.

The suspect was black. So, too, were the five police officers who were charged.

Despite this, a Washington Post story decrying racism basically said “so what?” that the cops were black.

At least one of those crazed pundits from a leftist cable news outlet maintains those black police officers were motivated by racism.

This is the narrative, that the nation is a boiling pot of racism and likely always will be. Don’t let any facts to the contrary change that narrative.

No fact-checking here. And it emboldens those who would continue to inundate us with claims of racism, even when such claims are patently ridiculous.

Yes, there is racism in this country. But not to the degree it is portrayed.

More to the point, the situation never can improve as long as race is elevated to the prime consideration in evaluating and coloring the perception of each and every one of life’s occurrences.

Cheers for the advancements in the medical world, as evidenced by my brother’s relatively pain-free present state.

Said brother had his gall bladder removed Saturday by the laparoscopic technique, which simply put means four small incisions to insert a video camera and small robotic instruments to do the actual cutting and removing of the diseased and inflamed organ, along with any gall stones.

I happened to be present when a day before the surgery a doctor was giving my brother the standard background and what-can-go-wrong talk to get permission to do the deed. At that time, it was presumed the laparoscopic approach could be used, but if not, then there would be the more traditional abdominal incision made to provide access.

Even at that, he stressed it would not be that invasive. The doctor held his hands maybe four inches apart to indicate the size of the cut.

At this point I told him that was amazing, since my gall bladder surgery, admittedly performed in the relatively distant medical past, had produced a much bigger cut. He seemed to be incredulous, so I raised my shirt to show him the scar, which I have since measured at 10.5 inches, give or take.

Must have been done by a resident, he said dismissively, indicating perhaps I had not been worked on by a skilled surgeon. Or maybe there were complications?

No and no. My surgeon, since retired, was highly regarded at the time. His daughter apparently now does this sort of thing. She had spoken with my brother, but she was unavailable Saturday due to it being a weekend.

I pointed out to this doctor who my surgeon had been and he did some quick verbal backtracking.

Some background on my case is in order. Back then I’d been going to the hospital with chest pain that felt like I’d been harpooned. This was in the early 1990s and I was in my mid-30s. The presumption was heart trouble.

I even had catheterizations and balloon angioplasties done. But my Pittsburgh heart specialist at the time said although I had a congenital narrowing of a major blood vessel in my heart, through the years I’d formed a natural bypass due to the collateral blood passageways becoming enlarged. I had some arterial plaque, but nothing to account for my symptoms.

Eventually, I kept having these painful incidents and it was diagnosed as gall bladder trouble. Given the option to have it removed, I jumped at the chance.

Ironically, the laparoscopic methodology was on the near horizon locally, but no one mentioned that.

Instead, I was cut stem to stern and let me assure you, it was not pleasant. All the talk of core muscle training for athletes rings true because my core muscles were compromised and you use them for just about any movement.

The bonus was I was unable to work for six weeks or so. The time off – with pay – gave me great insight to the attraction of not working. I had not been idle for that long in the work place since age 17, when I began part-time work at the Post Office that became full-time temporary during summer months.

I soon transitioned to my first full-time newspaper job and kept right on working.

It was during that time off following surgery that I resolved to save, invest, and retire early. I hit that goal at 53 and a half years of age.

You might say my gall bladder surgery was a mixed blessing, ending my pain and acquainting me with the attraction of not working.

Since this was not a factor for my brother, I’m glad he got to have his gall bladder problem addressed the comparatively easy way.

Just as cars, appliances, computers, cell phones and all else have come a long way in the past 30 years, so, too, has this surgical procedure. And that’s the good news.

There is a significant chunk of the population, the thinking part, that is beginning to see COVID as a convenient Deus Ex Machina for elites seeking to control the rest of us.

In short, the term Deus Ex Machina stems from ancient theater, when supposed Gods were lowered to the stage, or raised, via mechanical devices. The description has been broadened to describe times when unsolvable conflicts or points of tension magically are resolved by the unlikely appearance of characters, devices or actions.

The progressive left was having trouble getting the rest of us to follow blindly their socialist dictates. Then came COVID and even some of the more individualistic types became bleating sheep following orders, no matter how absurd they might have been.

Freedom was relegated to being no more than an outdated concept.

Economies and travel were shut down. Families were ordered not to congregate. Churches were shut. Businesses sat idle, but workers got paid to stay home – an important component of the plan.

And masks had to be worn, no matter the evidence that they did little they were claimed to do. Same with vaccines, which went from purportedly guaranteeing the recipient would not be stricken with COVID, to being maybe if you add a booster shot or two, to OK, you still will get COVID, but the symptoms will not be as bad.

We eagerly await the mea culpa on all the adverse side effects of the vaccine that are cropping up and now are being reported upon by some independent members of the scientific community.

This sort of public blind obedience to leftist agendas has been preached for decades to our school children, with that indoctrination having ramped up since COVID. Coincidence? I think not.

The emboldened left has seized on COVID as a great enabler. You can find videos of Hanoi Jane Fonda doing a television interview in which she proclaimed COVID to be “God’s gift to the left.”

She seemed to be talking about the pandemic awakening people to societal wrongs. It’s hard to tell because Fonda’s sanity ship seems to have sailed.

But she is correct that many in the left do view COVID as something of a gift, not necessarily from God since so many on the left are not the most religious sorts.

If you think this opportunistic use of COVID isn’t working, think again. People have been more than happy to abdicate control of their lives to the government, or just others in general.

The New York Times last week ran some sort of crazy opinion piece from a woman missing her time spent in China when the government told her how to raise her children. Co-parenting with a tyrannical Chinese regime was a good thing in her warped sense of reality.

People unable to display critical reasoning, to make decisions for themselves, is something widely evident on social media.

I do not have a Facebook account, but I log on using a family member’s account to check marketplace for cars. I have bought three there for myself so far.

But the postings are absurd any time a few flakes of snow fall. One group my son belongs to is overrun with requests for road conditions and whether the timid soul should attempt to get from Point A to Point B. Someone just tell me what I should do!

Predictably, there are some who find this somewhat pathetic and post as much. They are in the minority, however.

It can be argued that social media in general is nothing more than a dumbing-down process, distracting the sheep from significant issues and instead producing a bunch of navel-gazing ovines who are much easier to be herded in the preferred direction of the political left.

There are reports of people rebelling against ridiculous mask mandates, just as there is a severe backlash of county sheriffs refusing to enforce unconstitutional gun laws that socialist governors and state legislators have chosen to enact.

But it’s not enough to demonstrate hope that the majority of the population will refuse to be treated like sheep and fleeced accordingly.

Perhaps the Clueless Joe Biden regime should send some jawbones to Ukraine instead of high-tech tanks, the better to defeat the Russians.

Clueless Joe clearly believes in the power of the jawbone, in the metaphorical sense. He yammers away to pillory his enemies, most recently taking Chevron to task for having the temerity to return profits to shareholders through stock buybacks.

Clueless Joe has emptied our strategic petroleum reserve trying to tamp down the price of oil and, by extension, gasoline prices. Now, because oil prices are rising again due to China reopening its economy by abandoning idiotic zero COVID policies, Clueless Joe is out of bullets (again metaphorically, but as our military soon may be literally after all the Ukraine aid).

So, populist Joe, the guy who can’t keep track of all the classified documents he’s misplaced through the years, is taking to the bully pulpit to get the nation inflamed about a company actually making money and sharing the wealth with stock owners.

It must really wound Clueless Joe and his witless Green pals that they can’t kill coal or oil and gas industries, as he so proudly has promised he would.

Unlike the Biblical tale of Samson, who is said to have slain a thousand or so Philistines using as his weapon the jawbone of an ass, Clueless Joe’s jawboning is all talk.

Jawboning is, however, an appropriate metaphor since the Democratic symbol is the donkey, AKA, an ass.

The Clueless Biden regime is desperate to turn the conversation to something other than his ongoing classified information problem, or our porous southern border.

On that second point, the Biden regime insists there is no problem, despite copious evidence to the contrary.

Now Biden, who at the height of the gasoline price rise claimed it was not a problem, or if it was a problem, it was Trump’s fault, blames oil companies.

The Biden regime’s answer to our nation’s energy problems is to put out talking points about eliminating natural gas stoves. They encourage us to buy electric vehicles to cut down on oil and gasoline use, failing to explain how our failing electrical grid could handle a ramp up in EV usage and necessary recharging.

Clueless Joe and his lackeys are pitching smoke and mirrors over substance.

They have nothing concrete – other than Joe’s classified problem – and so they seek to muddy the picture with various tangential crusades.

Protect corrupt Ukraine at all costs. Resource companies are evil personified. And, of course, mean-spirited Republicans are going to eliminate Social Security and Medicare because they won’t give the Clueless One a blank check to plunge this nation yet more trillions of dollars into debt.

The sad news is, Clueless Joe’s tactics might work because the average American voter is a bit of a fool, totally absorbed in self-interest.

You give them a free lunch and they whine it isn’t a free dinner.

They envy success, but aren’t willing to put in any real effort to achieve it.

For them, Clueless Joe pointing out any success stories are merely oppression of the morons is music to their ears.

In this case, Clueless Joe is using his jawboning to preach to asses.

Classified document possessors would do well to co-opt the hashtag MeToo label.

First, it was Donald Trump, arguing about his right to possess classified documents and enduring an FBI raid at his Florida estate that, on a personnel scale, dwarfed the number of combatants sent to take down Bin Laden.

Then it was Clueless Joe Biden, whose lackeys dribbled out, months after the fact, admissions that the Clueless One had classified documents at one house.

And in a garage. And in an office. And . . .

“No regrets” said Clueless Joe with his usual arrogance, based on no real accomplishment.

Now Mike Pence, vice president under Trump, has entered the classified confessional and cried out Me, Too!

Someone ought to tell these guys holding classified documents outside legal limits is not cause for bragging.

It’s almost as though they just want the attention. As my cousin is fond of saying: “Beat me, bore me, but never ignore me.”

You are forgiven for wondering just who might be next to have their underlings confess that they, too, found classified documents among stacks of old newspapers and magazines – or wherever the next caches of purloined documents might be found.

There certainly are candidates to show up with classified material.

Start with any of those high level Ukrainian government officials who have resigned amidst allegations of widespread corruption.

You remember all those billions we’ve been sending to Ukraine, with minimal control of how the money is being spent? Well, now it seems it was going for expensive cars, mansions and luxury vacations for these governmental elites.

Bad look, especially when the war now seems to be going badly, with soldiers and citizens alike lamenting their deprived status. Yet, all the while, these governmental types have been living the A-list lifestyle.

Maybe some classified documents were among the money they purloined?

Closer to home, the scandal-plagued FBI has a fresh candidate to have classified information found in his home, car, storage unit or briefcase.

That would be former special agent Charles McGonigal, who was involved in the Trump Russiagate hoax, but now is charged with taking money – wait for it – from a Russian oligarch, that term an update on the robber baron label formerly applied to exploitative U.S. business leaders.

If, as alleged, McGonigal was taking money from the people he was supposed to be investigating, surely it might be possible some of the classified documents he handled for the FBI stuck to his sticky fingers.

We can hardly wait to awake tomorrow and see what fresh prominent name is revealed as having his or her hand caught in the classified cookie jar.

Victories inspired by emotion are a staple of sports lore.

The Win One For The Gipper speech by Notre Dame coach Knute Rockne in 1928, burned into the historic record by numerous written and movie recountings, likely is the most well-known example. The underdog Irish, inspired by the tale of Gipp on his death bed in 1920 wishing for an against-the-odds win in his name, rallied in the second half after Rockne’s talk to beat favored Army.

Yes, back in 1928 Army was a national power in college football.

But football doesn’t have a monopoly on such things. Recall stories of Herb Brooks and his motivational speech to his underdog U.S. hockey team in the 1980 Olympics (also recounted on film), or Willis Reed hobbling onto the court for Game 7 of the NBA Finals in 1970 despite a leg injury and inspiring his New York Knicks to a championship win over the Los Angeles Lakers.

I recall the time another sportswriter and I decided to take a betting stab at the USC-Cal game in 1977. Back then USC was college football royalty and Cal just tried to be competitive.

We went with USC and gave the points, only to be stunned when Cal beat the No. 10 Trojans. It turns out this was the Joe Roth Memorial Game, a tribute to the former Cal quarterback who had died with cancer in February 1977 after having played the previous season knowing he had terminal melanoma.

Score one for emotion.

But, for all those memorable times when emotion fueled teams and individuals to heights thought unlikely if not impossible, there are many more times when it all failed to produce the Hollywood ending.

I thought of this today as the Buffalo Bills lost badly to the Cincinnati Bengals in a snowy NFL playoff game played in Buffalo. It was these very same two teams who were playing a regular-season game a few weeks back when Bills player Damar Hamlin nearly died due to a cardiac event following a big hit. The game never finished.

Hamlin survived and likely will make a full recovery. His story has captivated the sporting world and how many times since the incident we have heard the Bills were going to win for Hamlin.

Hamlin was in a luxury suite at the stadium Sunday, and his presence was featured on the broadcast. Reportedly there was a pregame visit by Hamlin to the Bills locker room.

And yet the Bills lost in rather one-sided fashion. Inspiration was not evident.

The 1978 World Series comes to mind as another prominent example of emotion coming up short. Long-time Los Angeles Dodgers player and assistant coach Jim “Junior” Gilliam had died just before the World Series due to a brain hemorrhage.

Patches bearing Gilliam’s number 19 were on the Dodgers uniforms and after wins in the first two games, the dedication of the Series victory to Gilliam was being spoken of prominently.

The New York Yankees then won the next four games in succession and the Gilliam angle couldn’t change that.

Emotion and momentum are important to sports. But so is talent.

This recalls the corruption of a Bible verse, the spin on this having been attributed to various sources, including famous sportswriter Damon Runyon: “The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong; but that is the way to bet.”

It’s another day, another example of Clueless Joe Biden’s death by a thousand (classified) paper cuts.

Saturday, the Clueless One’s personal lawyers, who inexplicably have been given free rein in searching for more and more classified documents erroneously possessed by Biden, fessed up to having found six additional examples Friday in one of Biden’s homes.

Some, apparently were from Biden’s term as a senator.

Still no FBI raid or forcible entry, although I understand why the Feds are less interested in searching DR. JILL BIDEN’S pantry drawer than they were ruffling through unmentionables once worn by Melania Trump.

They may be political animals, but they aren’t stupid.

If you’re keeping track, this means documents have been found in Biden residences, in a garage with his prized car, and in an office he formerly used at a think tank funded hugely by China.

To borrow a pet phrase of Clueless Joe’s, Come on, man!

Word also has leaked out that feckless son Hunter spent time with the car and at the house at which it is headquartered, raising uncomfortable questions about this story becoming an inconvenient nexus of Bidens, questionable behavior and Chinese money.

It’s fair to speculate what revelations we will witness in coming days, with the usual stonewalling by White House Press Secretary Karine Gay Paris (pronounced Par-ee).

ITEM: Classified papers found in glove box of Biden’s classic Corvette.

WHITE HOUSE EXPLANATION: Joe thought it was paperwork documenting the mileage on the vehicle, which he may have to put up for auction to pay legal fees.

ITEM: Classified documents found on toilet paper rolls in the facilities on Air Force One.

WHITE HOUSE EXPLANATION: Clueless Joe was feeling guilty about all the carbon his jet was disgorging into the environment, so he was recycling the classified papers as toilet paper.

ITEM: Shredded classified documents found along the route of the parade egomaniacal Joe insisted on having as he was driven to his beach home.

WHITE HOUSE EXPLANATION: More green thinking, reusing classified papers for tickertape to feed the massive need for adoration of the Clueless One and DR. JILL BIDEN!!!!!!!

ITEM: Classified papers found in Hunter Biden’s room at one of The Big Guy’s mansions.

WHITE HOUSE EXPLANATION: Once again, it was a case of striking a blow for the environment. Instead of burning matches, or using a deadly gas stove, Hunter lit his crack pipe with self-combusting classified documents. Think of the destroying of message tapes on the intro to the old Mission: Impossible television series.

ITEM: After Clueless Joe wanders away from a podium amidst a speech, he leaves a sheaf of papers that are found to be, you guessed it, classified documents.

WHITE HOUSE EXPLANATION: We have none. Just take him away. Please.

Ivan Provorov and Tony Dungy committed the unpardonable sin this week, a pair of sports figures who refused to bow to the leftist political/media monolith. Now they reap the whirlwind of outrageous criticism.

Provorov, a white defenseman on the Philadelphia Flyers, refused to participate in the team’s pregame virtue signalling to the gay community. Specifically, Provorov refused to do the pregame skate with Gay pride-themed costuming, even rainbow stick tape.

Provorov cited the inconsistency of it all with his Russian Orthodox Christian faith. Provorov’s coach, John Tortorella, had no problem with the stance.

Truth be told, Tortorella probably is in the majority of the population. Sales of Provorov’s jersey skyrocketed after this. But the tyrannical minority in the lamestream media and social media, were aghast. HOW DARE HE?

The Woke crowd, and those who go along out of fear of facing their wrath, accused Provorov of hiding behind his faith, or failing to be a team guy in celebrating this greatest cause on the face of the Earth.

The NHL, which has turned into something of a Woke coffee klatsch (iced coffee, of course), has not announced any specific penalty.

The outrage over Provorov is ridiculous. What if the Flyers decided to have a Second Amendment night, with a pregame skate in attire sporting gun logos and miniature examples of our Constitution?

You think a player opting to skip that would be criticized. More likely, he’d be celebrated by our leftist thought leaders.

Yet both the gay and gun examples, at their base, are supporting constitutionally and legally mandated freedoms.

Were these Provorov critics incensed any time a player in any sport decided to kneel to protest during our National Anthem, or simply to remain in the locker room for that pregame display of Patriotism?

Provorov is to be respected for being true to his religion. If that offends you, sit in the corner and suck a thumb.

I never have had any personal contact with Provorov, but I did deal with Dungy when he played and coached for the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Dungy, at his base, is a gentle, soft-spoken, thoughtful person. He was and is just a decent guy who probably leans toward the liberal side of the spectrum, at least in the traditional sense of liberalism being outspoken on the rights of others, not just those who agree with you.

Dungy’s mistake was to announce he would be participating in Friday’s March For Life in Washington, D.C.

For Dungy’s effort, someone writing for The Nation, a publication somewhere on the left of Chairman Mao, referred to Dungy’s “right wing extremism.”

The writer also managed to pillory Dungy for allegedly being an “anti-gay bigot.”

Because Dungy, who happens to be black, works for NBC as a studio panel member and sometimes announcer, the screed in The Nation lamented his having such a widely watched platform.

It’s not like Dungy tries to inflict his personal beliefs on the viewers, unlike the NFL which, for example, has virtue signaling messages on helmets and the borders of the playing field, where they are captured by cameras and relayed to viewership maybe a thousand times or more per broadcast.

Dungy’s speech Friday linked the reality of a nation praying for the health of Buffalo Bills player Damar Hamlin after his life-threatening episode during a game, while virtually ignoring the multitude of aborted lives that take place daily in this country.

In these times of ridiculously hyperbolic and incendiary commentary from keyboard warriors, Provorov could have taken the easy road and just put on the gay apparel. Dungy could have just stayed home and kept his thoughts to himself.

That neither was cowed by the mob and took the easy way out speaks well for both men.

Life returned to what passes for normal in the Greater Johnstown School District Thursday, after a two-day shutdown due to what has been reported as multiple threats of violence against the district.

I’m thinking they were not threatening merely to break windows or slash bus tires.

Reports say two juveniles have been taken into custody regarding the threats, that word being issued at a press conference yesterday.

And, because the alleged makers of the threats are underage, details are not to be shared with the populace.

This means that whatever punishment they receive, should they be found guilty, likely will be mild and magically expunged from their record after a suitable passage of time, leaving them free to become repeat offenders down the line.

Ah, but we should feel good about a cryptic communication from law officials that the juveniles no longer are a threat. What’s the timeframe on that?

The relatively quick apprehension of the offenders was a positive, but fairly predictable.

Begin with the reality that such individuals are not too bright. Add in that they no doubt were only too eager to brag about their exploits to friends and/or family.

Maybe they even used a traceable method to make the threats.

Whatever the details the problem is solved, for now.

You would be justified in pondering whether any other mental midgets, emboldened by the school district being shut down for two days due to the threats of these two, might want a turn in the spotlight.

Allow me to restate a thought from a previous post. This sort of thing goes on unless or until the punishment is severe enough to serve as a deterrent.

Because of ridiculous juvenile identity protection protocols, we likely never will know if these same offenders show up later on the wrong side of the law. But that is a distinct possibility.

The Greater Johnstown School District enters day two in limbo tomorrow, another day of school canceled because someone is alleged to have threatened to shoot up one or more schools.

Amy Arcurio, who pulls down the big bucks as school superintendent to make such decisions, came out early Tuesday evening, just as she had a day earlier, with a written release citing an “abundance of caution” as the reason for keeping students home the next day.

Specifics have been few. Our local media outlets, both electronic and print, have done more of their superficial examples of coverage. They take what is spoonfed to them and regurgitate it for your enlightenment. No digging. No depth of coverage.

This is not exactly stellar journalism, but it has come to be accepted here.

I recall the time years back when one outraged microphone jockey bristled that he had gone to a news conference and asked a question that the speaker refused to answer. Said I to the people with me watching this broadcast report at that time, “Commit journalism for God’s sake, Find a source to provide the information.”

It is a basic truth of journalism, with which I had a 35-year association, that once two people know something, it’s no longer a secret. If you have developed sources on your beat through the years, you can find out a lot of stuff no one wants you to know.

Compile enough background, enough off-the-record information, and you often easily move on to getting someone on the record.

But I no longer do this for a living, so I must rely on the so-called professionals working in this town to provide depth of coverage for me.

Since they’ve dropped the ball, I have some thoughts on all this.

First, Arcurio and her “abundance of caution” are merely the current verbiage for CYA – Cover Your A xx (butt). I’m not sure I blame her, but it sure is a sad commentary on our current society.

The odds are something like 9999-1 that anyone actually would “shoot up the place.” Schools already have police stationed on premises. There are security guards. There are metal detectors.

Plus, you’ve warned them something is coming, so there goes the element of surprise. I think I’d be more worried if my children attended other school districts, thinking that maybe the Johnstown threat was just a diversion if the individual making the threat had some intelligence to go along with the psychosis.

This threat likely was designed to do exactly what it did, exert control over people usually in a position of authority. Make them squirm and dance to your tune.

Their willingness to do the CYA two-step is both predictable and unfortunate.

A police spokesman was quoted by one media member along the line of they’re working on it. I hope so. I hope they are working so hard they’ve about got it down to a suspect or two and are moving to arrest said person.

But an arrest will solve little. If it is a juvenile or young adult, as is most likely the case, the public apologists will come out demanding compassion and forgiveness. Just poor judgment, don’t you know. Maybe a little slap on the wrist and some time in alternative school and all will be well.

I think something a little more draconian is in order. Maybe not execution, but how about life in prison?

Never happen, but imagine the deterrent if punks and idiots of all stripe knew the punishment for such ridiculous behavior would be severe in the extreme.

Lack of discipline has turned too many schools into indoor zoos. Similar lack of discipline, and punishment for slackers in the general population, has done the same with society writ large.

We are reaping the ills of years of benign neglect in terms of failing to hold individuals accountable for their actions.

If and when this threat runs its course and the suspects are nabbed, expect them to be dealt with lightly, emboldening others to perpetrate similar acts down the line.