Amoral Creep Charlie Gilmour Sentenced To Sixteen Months Imprisonment

OS noted last December, in the wake of the shameful 'student' riots in central London, that the most notorious of sociopaths had been identified--Charlie Gilmour, adopted son of a rock star, and student at Cambridge University.

Fast forward to last Friday, and his sentencing hearing. The judge reviewed the little creep's behavior in open court, which included:

Gilmour was part of a 100-strong mob that attacked a convoy escorting the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall during last year’s student riots, the court heard on Thursday.

The Cambridge University undergraduate, who was also photographed swinging from a Union flag on the Cenotaph, leapt on the bonnet of a Jaguar carrying royal protection officers before allegedly throwing a bin at the vehicle.

Shouting slogans such as “you broke the moral law, we are going to break all the laws”, the 21-year-old son of the multi-millionaire pop star went on the rampage during a day of extreme violence in central London.

Video captured by police officers outside the Houses of Parliament showed Gilmour, from Billingshurst, West Sussex, waving a red flag and shouting political slogans. The judge watched one clip in which he was shouted: “Let them eat cake, let them eat cake, they say. We won’t eat cake, we will eat fire, ice and destruction, because we are angry, very f------ angry.”

As the clip was shown in court on Thursday, Gilmour sat in the dock giggling and covering his face with his hands in embarrassment.

Sweeeeet....

For readers in the US, think of a child of someone the likes of Bruce Springsteen, a student at Yale, climbing on the Lincoln Memorial, or the Tomb of The Unknown Soldier and urinating upon it. Just because he thinks he can, because normal rules don't apply to him. Because he's LittleCharlie, son of The Boss.

Charlie claimed he didn't understand the significance of the Cenotaph. He's a bleeding history major at Cambridge, and at college after college are posted the tragically long lists of the Cambridge boys who went to war and never came back, so that boys like LittleCharlie could attend Cambridge in a safe and free country. That did not go over well in court.

The judge, to his credit, lowered the boom on the little creep.

"Such outrageous and deeply offensive behaviour gives a clear indication of how out of control you were that day," he said.

"It caused public outrage and understandably so."

His conduct at the war memorial had prompted a deluge of "vituperative and in many cases obscene" emails and other forms of communication, he told Gilmour.

These were, he added, "not just to you but, it is with deep regret, to your whole family, who were of course totally blameless."

Well, one could debate that last clause a bit, but OS digresses.

OS hopes his readers hit this link to read the whole story. It includes video of LittleCharlies escapades. Such a misunderstood child.

OS is not entirely unforgiving, however. Here's hoping LittleCharlie will use his court-enforced gap year plus six months to, well..grow up. He'll be meeting some interesting people in jail, with life stories a good deal more tragic than his.

Meantime, someone else who appreciates the opportunity to obtain a Cambridge education can take his place. Charlie won't be needing that degree after all.

ATT/T-Mobile Chases Off Yet One More Customer, Only This One Has Thousands Of Readers

Karl Denninger pulled the plug on his ATT/T-Mobile accounts, and details why in his latest post.

While running TV spots touting the joys of their brave new alliance, once again our friends at T go about their daily business of crewing customers to the wall. It's who they are, it's what they do. They will, sooner or later, go down the crapper, because they have obligations awaiting them that can't possibly be met. That's where the taxpayer comes in, to provide the safety net. But, that's another story for later.

Meanwhile, they alienated a customer whose opinions matter a lot, to a lot of people.

Does anyone at a place like T ever sit down and do the math that says:

'OK, we may make a few hundred bucks on this quarter's earnings, but we've pissed off a long-time customer in the process. What will that cost, since he'll never ever come back? His children and family will never be our customers for the next twenty years or so. He and his friends all go church, PTA, golf course, pub, and compare notes with one another. Our credibility gets dinged with, say, fifty potential customers every time we screw one over. Does this make sense for our business?'

OS drives a vintage 2000 Dodge pickup around his county--trash to dump, plants for the garden, golf clubs, etc. It's really been reliable, and even fun to tool around in. However, every one of those trucks around here from that same vintage were sent out of the factory with paint jobs that completely, utterly, failed. They look atrocious. And don't get OS started about the dealership, and the assholes at Mercedes-Benz credit who raped the family on the financing...OS now faces a decision in the next year--put some bucks into fixing up the old Dodge, or buy an F-150 or Toyota.

Notice what's not on that list of choices?

With a business culture like this, do we wonder why we struggle as an economy?

Sean Egan Explains The Math On CNBC

OS posts this, as much for his own reference as to share with others.

Mr. Egan calmly explains the situation, so OS really has no insight to add, except to urge his readers, and the families and friends of his readers to view this interview.

It's not long, it's conducted in PlainEnglish, not FinanceSpeak.

The news is not good, but the truth is always best.

Pastor Peters On Harry Potter

Pastor Peter shares words of wisdom and compassion in this essay about Harry Potter, as the final movie arrives to the screen.

We need to listen to him, and a crucial point he has to make about our culture:

It is not the Harry Potter story I want to talk about but how different this story is from so much that children have around them. Their hunger for the books and the movies only shows what kind of things they lack and their hunger for them.

They live in a world filled with temptation and evil, with short cuts and easy paths. They live in a world filled with disappointments and are easily disillusioned by the failures of those whom they depend upon. They live in a world filled with loneliness and emptiness and their lives are solitary even with all the techno toys that would appear to keep them connected. They live in a world filled with the moment and they feel acutely the pressure to fill that moment, to be doing something all the time, to do several things at the same time, lest the moment pass and they have not used it to the fullest. They live in a world of facts, not fantasy, of play that mirrors real life in often brutal ways (video games). They live in a world of adults and this adulthood is thrust upon them before they have even learned to be a child, to play as a child, to live carefree as a child. They live in a world in which families are broken and wounded and these hurts are passed on to the children and multiplied as families divide.

Is it no wonder they might be captivated by a story of selflessness and sacrifice, of love that is truly willing to bear with and bear for the other?

This is a wonderful essay. Grandparents, pass this to your kids. Parents, pass it along to your fellow parents.

The House Republicans Finally Decide To Play Offense

From Politico:

House GOP leaders will allow a vote on a popular conservative plan to cut spending, balance the budget and put a cap on overall federal spending, the latest Republican attempt to lay down their marker in the debt ceiling debate.

The Friday morning announcement, which was made in a meeting open to only Republican lawmakers, won praise from rank and file conservatives, but it’s not the breakthrough deal that will solve the debt ceiling crisis. The proposal has little chance of passing the Democratic-controlled Senate.

President Teleprompter continues to BS-BS-BS/Blame-Blame-Blame, anything but actually lead...

Finally, the House GOP might be finding its spine...or not.

Sign Of The Time: Britney Spears Nashville Appearance Tickets On Groupon Discount

OS is enjoying a brief gloat over this one...

Here's hoping for a unbroken string of appearances that don't recoup, and a looong, peaceful and sober retirement for Miss Spears. There are, after all, a couple of kids to raise.

If You Put A Narcissistic Child In Charge, You Get...

...King Obama, throwing a hissy-fit when confronted with reality.

From Politico:

President Barack Obama abruptly walked out of a stormy debt-limit meeting with congressional leaders Wednesday, a dramatic setback to the already shaky negotiations.

“He shoved back and said ‘I’ll see you tomorrow’ and walked out,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) told reporters in the Capitol after the meeting.

President Teleprompter got hiz pantiez-in-a-wad when Rep. Cantor interrupted his long BS discourses, and aides asserted Mr. Cantor had not been sufficiently...deferential.

Who knew Cantor was expected to kiss the presidential ring in order to enter the Presence of Himself?

Adult conversation, anyone?

The Last Ditch Shares The Funny Of The Day

Link is here, a short, wry comment on the degradation of language that has led us to this present impasse.

OS, meanwhile, will turn his attentions to The Open Championship.

Live feed is on that site, as well as PGA.com and Facebook. Satellite TV feed features four channels. OS is watching the UK feed, since the ESPN staff feels compelled to chatter and gossip endlessly. They think the event is about them, poor boys.

Unintended Consequences: The Sister Wives Challenge Bigamy Laws

It had to happen, ya'll, sooner or later. It actually happened a bit sooner than OS expected.

The latest episode in Sister Wives is playing out in the courtroom, not on cable. On Wednesday, the Brown family — the husband, four wives, and 16 children who star in the reality TV show — plans to file a lawsuit in federal court in Utah. The family members say the state's anti-bigamy law is unconstitutional and that Supreme Court precedent backs them up.

Kody Brown and his family made their television debut on Sept. 26, 2010. "I'm a polygamist," said Brown. "But we're not the polygamists you think you know."

Brown and his four wives knew they were taking a risk when they signed the deal with the network TLC. But Robyn Brown, wife No. 4, told viewers they wanted to make a point.

"It's OK for us to live this way, honestly," she said. "I'm sorry — but this is a nation of freedom of choice. We should have this choice, and I want my kids to know that."

Where have we heard Wife Number Four's assertion before? Most recently, in the push for the legalization of marriage between persons of the same gender, if memory serves.

There were those who raised the question: If we legalize same-gender marriage, yea-verily give it societal blessing, what prevents the bigamist from making the same argument, and demanding legalization of multiple-wife marriages? Hmmm...

What if, for instance, a pimp with ordination papers is able to marry multiple wives, employing them as he sees fit in a culture that decriminalizes prostitution?

The potential for abuse grows alarmingly, does it not?

What if one of those wives, with a child or two, decides that hooking for hubby is a really bad life? What does the divorce look like, and property and custody arrangements flowing therefrom? What if the pimp decides he wishes to wed both men and women? What if hubby, or one of the other spouses, engages in criminal behavior? How does marital privilege apply?

What if all this is OK in New York, but not recognized in Oklahoma, and one of the escapee wives decides to escape with the kids back home to Lawton? Do the marshals come to arrest her, and take the kids back to the pimp-husband?

Think about the culture in which we now live, and ask if these scenarios are far-fetched.

On and on it goes. OS fears we have truly opened Pandora's Box. Bigamy laws serve to protect women and children from predatory men, and to clarify distribution of assets in the event of death or divorce. They create a bit of order in a disorderly world.

One man, married to one woman at a time. Period. A clear, easily-verified, unequivocal definition of marriage.

There is a true leap between the passive acceptance of 'ways of life other than our own', and active endorsement of them in the law. Having made that leap, we are about to discover what life looks like in this new world.

OS is not certain we will be happy with it.

One Way Or Another, The Free Money Is Going Away

Even the Yew Nork Times, who never saw a wealth 'redistribution' it didn't approve of, is admitting it:

Close to $2 of every $10 that went into Americans’ wallets last year were payments like jobless benefits, food stamps, Social Security and disability, according to an analysis by Moody’s Analytics. In states hit hard by the downturn, like Arizona, Florida, Michigan and Ohio, residents derived even more of their income from the government.

By the end of this year, however, many of those dollars are going to disappear, with the expiration of extended benefits intended to help people cope with the lingering effects of the recession. Moody’s Analytics estimates $37 billion will be drained from the nation’s pocketbooks this year.

Allllll that economic growth we were promised by The Stimulus, The Bailouts, The Deficits, and both Summers Of Recovery....well, somehow it didn't arrive on time.

Some other states will also feel a disproportionate loss of income unless hiring revives. In Florida, where nearly 476,000 people are collecting unemployment benefits, employers have added only 11,200 jobs in the last year. In Michigan, employers have added about 40,000 jobs since May 2010, but about 267,000 people are claiming jobless benefits.