Sunday, October 04, 2015

Talkin' about the news tonight.

A few weeks if not months have gone by where I was discussing the Pope's Encyclical. I will scan the horizon and find topics I have given some thought to.

Before that begins, what I would like to do is bring to the surface how strange our society has become.

In our hearts, newspaper boys, have always been an expression of capitalism and ambition. Newspaper boys were always the topic of humor as they pitched newspapers into the shrubbery or through a plate glass window. There was a morality within that reality of a newspaper boy. How much did you tip him this week, one neighbor would ask of the other? Of course, there were the newspaper girls, but, they were a minority expression of ambition.

I am not sure how it happened or why, but, the newspaper boy ended and now adults deliver newspapers for not much more income as the newspaper boys collected and probably without a tip. That reality is about as sad as the American democracy and capitalism in the 21st century.

Along with the idea a boy loved his bike, there is an extremely sad scenario about a young boy abducted as he carried out his paper route. He was kidnapped and was put into human trafficking. At least that is the story.

Missing Since: September 5, 1982


It’s a story that shocked communities and catapulted Iowa into the national spotlight, changed state law and forever changed the way parents monitored their children’s activities.

Twelve-year-old Des Moines Register paperboy Johnny Gosch left his West Des Moines home on Sunday morning, September 5, 1982, to begin his paper route.  Normally, his father, John Gosch, accompanied him on the route, but on this day Johnny went alone.

He never came home....

Let's get something straight. Children are vulnerable. I don't care if they are girls or boys. There is no time of day they aren't hunted or desired.

Not long ago a young Jewish boy demanded of his parents to walk three blocks on his own to a summer youth program. Maybe I remember that wrong, because, the news report of his killer states the activity of the boy differently. What I remember were two parents that deeply loved their son and never wanted him to walk anywhere along.

Leiby Kletzky was eight years old and wanted to be regarded as mature enough where he didn't need his parents to walk a simple three blocks in a Jewish neighborhood.

He was abducted in that very short time, killed and dismembered. It shocked the entire Hassidic Jewish community of New York City. There was sincere mourning across New York and dare I say this country when the Leiby's remains were found.

August 29, 2015
By C. J. Hughes


A hardware store clerk (click here) killed and dismembered an 8-year-old Brooklyn boy in 2011, stunning both the close-knit Orthodox Jewish community where they lived and the city, was sentenced Wednesday to 40 years to life in prison.

Levi Aron, 37, who kidnapped Leiby Kletzky as he walked home on a summer day in Borough Park before killing him and stuffing some of his remains in a suitcase, barely spoke during the brief proceeding in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn.

When asked by Justice Neil J. Firetog to comment before being sentenced, Mr. Aron, who sat slumped in an orange prison jumpsuit, a skullcap atop his head, whispered a “no” that was barely audible in the courtroom.

Mr. Aron, who has a history of mental illness, had faced the possibility of a life sentence. But under a deal worked out with the district attorney’s office this month, Mr. Aron pleaded guilty to one charge of second-degree murder and one charge of second-degree kidnapping, which carry lighter sentences.

The plea, on Aug. 9, also came after psychological tests concluded that Mr. Aron’s mental problems would not qualify him for an insanity defense....


Keep them close. They'll grow up fast enough to find out how cruel the world can be.