Coach-Firings = Security!!!

The big news in the sports world these days concerns the annual orgy of college-football-coach-firings, though it’s been displaced, at least temporarily, by the “Tiger Woods Affair” involving the golfer’s strange non-golf-course-driving vis-a-vis his favorite Cadillac, to wit, crashing it into both a fire-plug and a tree, thus making all the dogs in his neighborhood wary of his property and probably furious about the whole thing. It’s no small matter that his wife took a club (a three-iron would do nicely) and busted out both rear windows while practicing her swing at 2:30 a.m.

The police have been thwarted in all their efforts to find out exactly what happened, but the answer is quite simple, though just a rumor. Treasury Secretary Geithner informed Attorney General Holder that Tiger was just like AIG – too big to fail – whereupon U.S. Marshals were sent to Orlando to see that the “Tiger-tale” would be either unavailable or spun into an action making him become ABC News person-of-the-week for not actually breaking the fire-plug and thus flooding his whole neighborhood. Thus endeth the lesson involving the “Affaire”...or at least the one involving the car.

Big-time NCAA coaches have either purposely hit upon a plan to set themselves up for life, or university presidents and athletic directors are too dumb to recognize talent (or non-talent), or recruitment-gone-south has saddled coaches with players who perhaps belong in trade-schools instead of shoulder pads until they graduate to the National Football League or to similar outfits in other countries such as Spain, where watching quarterbacks knocked senseless is almost as gratifying as watching bull-stabbings.

In the case of the first suggestion above, check out Al Groh, just fired at Virginia and paid $4.33 million to go fishing. Or, take the case of Louisville coach Steve Kragthorpe, who is pulling down a cool $2.2 million for the privilege of being fired and going job-hunting during the recession. Earlier this year, Billy Gillispie, the Kentucky basketball coach, collected $3 million from the University of Kentucky to be put out on the street and take his chances, with another $245,000 to his lawyers. It’s a cruel world out there for ex-coaches and their lawyers.

In a recent case, that of the firing of football coach David Elson at Western Kentucky, the financial profligacy is glaring. Elson signed a contract extension last January that named him the coach through 2016 – that’s just last January. He’s already been fired by the same guy, athletic director Wood Selig, who gave him that extension...and just a paltry $500,000 to be fired. The team has lost every game, not surprising at least in conference-play for its first year in the premier top-tier NCAA Division I, putting it in the company of such teams as Alabama and Florida, the best in the nation. The knee-jerk reflex was simply to fire the coach, not the athletic director for having a mind obviously on vacation or maybe entirely off the reservation. That half-a-mil is taxpayer money.

Louisville AD Tom Jurich, who hired Kragthorpe, said “It just didn’t seem like the right fit from Day One.” Kentucky AD Mitch Barnhart, who hired Gillispie, said that Billy just wasn’t a good “fit.” Properly translated, these statements mean that both Jurich and Barnhart are “bad fits” and should be fired and forced to make restitution for the millions they’ve cost their universities. But, just as with the failed banks, these coaches and athletic directors have been given huge bonuses for failing. Both Barnhart and Jurich should be at least in the $600,000 per year range with a couple cars furnished, along with country club memberships and all the rest.

Perhaps the latest of the elite is Charlie Weis, hired by Notre Dame in 2004, given an extension in 2005 worth perhaps $30-40 million to last through 2015, and – yep – just fired. Unless he allowed the ND brass to bamboozle him, he’s probably good for at least $15 million for the privilege of heading back to a coaching job in the NFL, from whence he came. Maybe Weis just wasn’t a good fit. Or, there’s Phillip Fulmer, longtime coach at Tennessee until last year, when the university paid him a cool $6 million for the privilege of being “sacked” – get it – SACKED, just like his quarterbacks too many times. Yeah, he was a bad fit! He only won 152 out of 254 games (a mere 60%), two conference titles and a national title.

A big deal is being made now of the $500,000 the University of Kentucky athletic department (separate entity from academia, of course, a huge business) is awarding the university for non-athletic scholarships, about 33 at $15,000 a pop. The football team gets 83 every year. Since the middle 90s, the university has awarded $4,845,000 to coaches (one basketball, two football) for the privilege of getting rid of them. That money would have meant 323 more scholarships at today’s price, much greater than 15 years ago, but it went down the drain and bought nothing. The only thing for a coach to do that’s better than coaching is – yep – getting himself fired. The students can eat cake.

And so it goes.

Jim Clark

UN-IPCC's IMAGE Problem

Dear UN-IPCC Scientist(s),

As CEO of the Institute for Modifying All Government Entities (known as IMAGE, for short), I’m writing to avail you of IMAGE services offered to anyone connected to any government/galaxy, directly or indirectly or accusatorily or inferentially or climatically...you get the picture, I’m sure. The recent exposure of e-mails circulating among the IPCC’s top fortune-tellers (little joke there) has caused much if not most of the public – especially that part with reading ability – to be concerned about your veracity, if not your competence. Recognizing the stark impeccability of your statements and writings, I’m contacting you to note some IMAGE services that can help restore the stupid public’s faith in you.

Accusations are being leveled in the nasty and tiny conservative media, especially within the talking-heads communities, that your warnings that the earth is doomed unless the polar bears are saved is completely contrived. The IMAGE agency that can help you with this charge is an academic one called the SOLAR UNIVERSITY for NORMALIZING SPECIOUS PROGNOSTICATIONS on TEMPERATURES, or SUNSPOT, using its acronym, aptly remarked since huge numbers of hopeless scientists with only Ph.d’s have noted that the “sunspot syndrome” has been cooling the planet for the last 10 years or so and that CO2 plays no role whatsoever in global warming, if any, that’s taken place since 1900. SUNSPOT professors are trained in the art of answering questions with questions and questioning answers with answers. In other words, their long-suit is teaching obfuscation rather than outright prevarication, thus affording you murky but respectable deniability in case you should happen upon an unrecognized truth that could be embarrassing.

IPCC folks have been accused of what the accountants call “cooking the books,” except that in your case it’s cooking the models. Redneck conservatism-freaks fondly call it “garbage in, garbage out.” The IMAGE agency that can help in this area is the ASSOCIATION for LABELING GENUINE OZONE READINGS as ERRONEOUS, or ALGORE, for short. Those pesky e-mails are said to indicate that your actual temperature readings were replaced by what the spin-doctors call...well, spin. ALGORE would have protected you in this area by technicians who can prove that a “black hole” in the ozone layer, caused by South Korean A-tests, caused moisture on the Moon and Mars to adversely skew the barometric-pressure-equations in your models, thus necessitating an IPCC correction, which can be understood only by the IPCC and no other entity, making you guys right...or something like that.

In the unlikely likelihood that you may actually and honestly have made a mistake – though merely impossible conjecture – a Plan B is always furnished by ALGORE to have your derriere well-covered through the scheme known as the PREVARICATION OPTIONS for LAMBASTING AUTHENTIC READINGS, known, of course as POLAR. The experts at POLAR devise ways for you to take contradictory data from other sources – especially those you have shut out from the “peer review” protocol – and explain how it means absolutely nothing, is totally inaccurate and politically motivated, is advanced by Rush Limbaugh and therefore mere hatemongering, and judged authentic by Dick Cheney, using evil Halliburton statistics. Thus, if your critics insist that 2 bear molecules + 2 bear molecules do not equal your total of 5 million bear molecules destroyed by General Motors, Chrysler and Exxon, POLAR will teach you how to prove them wrong, especially using a method devised by Bill Clinton, whose brilliance was forever established when he proved that “is” actually isn’t “is.”

The subject of prevarication leads to the next IMAGE agency that will give you help in the very important area of finances – the BUREAU for EARMARKS, AVARICE and RECOMPENSE, known, of course by its acronym, BEAR. Regardless of what anyone thinks about global warming or climate-change, the name of the game is always money. To continue your invaluable work, you must suggest strongly to legislators everywhere that they enact laws throwing money in huge amounts your way. IMAGE actually employs a package for this purpose using the agencies just mentioned and obviously called POLAR-BEAR, an apt title since anthropologists have determined that within the parameters of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, only four polar bears died – they drowned instead of starving. Thus, in his ability-to-misrepresent vis-a-vis polar bears and cap-and-trade, he has become a self-earmarked billionaire and already has intimate knowledge of how the system works, having been in both the Senate and the vice presidency and various zoos, assuming a difference among them. He has been approached regarding his availability to head POLAR-BEAR since he understands how misrepresentations and payoffs combine to influence legislators.

In closing, may I offer the fact that e-mails never die, though they may fade away some day. Indeed, IMAGE has hacked into UN servers on many occasions, thereby discovering markets for its business, though rednecks in Kentucky have classified IMAGE’s business as blackmail. In any case, please excuse the form-letter used in this correspondence. It was necessary because IMAGE can only guess at those to whom it pertains. Apologies all around for anyone who might be offended!

Best regards,
I.M. Reverself, CEO
IMAGE

And so it goes.

Jim Clark

Climatic Scare as Flim-Flam

Shades of George C. Scott and The Flim-Flam Man or Redford and Newman in The Sting, three fine movie-actors portraying the penultimate in the lineup of con artists working their scams on the hapless “mark” about to be had. The current best subject for a movie along the lines of scam-to-perfection would have to do with the climate-change con-men caught in the act of making a “mark” out of the whole world.

The tale would go back a few years, as shown graphically through the efforts of a hacker who somehow ferreted out unbelievably damning e-mails from a server of some sort in Russia, of all places. The would-be con artists messaging each other were/are a gaggle of scientists primarily responsible for the totally specious claim that people are killing the planet through ratcheting up global warming. These characters are the main players – or at least the highest-profile main players because of their “outing” – connected with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

These alarmists have been making the case that mankind, mostly by filling the air with too much CO2, is causing the earth to warm to such an extent that soon the oceans will rise precipitously, inundating whole island-countries, flooding U.S. cities and doing away with all those pristine beaches. They’ve concocted all sorts of graphs and written materials to prove this, and a very gullible and sizeable bunch of folks in high places throughout the world, especially including the United States, have swallowed the stuff, hook, line and sinker, just as any naive “mark” would.

The highest-profile American to purvey this propaganda is former vice president Al Gore, who produced a book and a movie entitled An Inconvenient Truth on the subject, one result being his being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last year, though Gore’s connection to peace is at least problematic. His movie is so rife with misrepresentations that a court order required that all of the lies had to be pointed out to the students in the public schools of England before they could view it, i.e., it was treated as political, not scientific. This, predictably, has not been the case in the schools in this country.

In the damning e-mails, especially involving researchers at the University of East Anglia's Hadley Climatic Research Centre in England as well as other scientists such as Penn State professor Michael Mann, a leading figure in the IPCC as well as a leading figure in establishing the “hockey stick” configuration (graph) supposedly remarking an inordinate degree of global heating in the last century, the obvious effort is made to stave off damage. Plainly, the claims made by this group are false, something other credible scientists, especially in the U.S. and Australia, have been saying for some time. Ocean ice during the past summer was essentially equal in volume to the ocean ice in 1981 for the same period, for instance. The earth has been cooling since at least 2002 and is projected to continue cooling, and this obviously has the alarmists in a tizzy. This cooling trend had to be covered-up by the IPCC.

Under the influence of the IPCC, international representatives have already met numerous times since 1997, lately in panic-mode, to “just DO something,” never mind that there’s no actual threat. The 31st session of the IPCC met 26-29 October 2009, in Bali, Indonesia (great vacation spot?). The main tool in whipping every nation into shape is the “cap-and-trade,” vehicle, designed to punish international malefactors, the worst among whom, predictably, is the United States.

Buying into this outrage, the U.S. House passed a cap-and-trade-act earlier this year, with its most notable distinction (other than its horrific constraints on property owners and intolerable cost to the taxpayers) being that none of the lawmakers had read the bill. That’s right...the bill, cooked up by the administration, WAS NOT READ. It has provisions that are horrendous, but the Senate is unlikely even to take up the subject, especially considering the elections next November.

The Obama administration, in the face of all of this and perhaps angling for one-world government, is gearing up for the big IPCC bash in Copenhagen next month, at which time the nations will tell each other just how much each will cut greenhouse gasses in the future. Guess who the bad guys are...you got it, the Yanks.

This clambake is already being watered down in its approach, not least because the climatologists without an agenda have finally started convincing the world that manmade global-warming is a FRAUD. The most credible science now (a very iffy entity at best) seems to be that the earth’s relationship to the sun (especially regarding sunspots) seems to account for some warming and that CO2 is not even a player.

The anthropologists/geologists agree that global warming and cooling trends have been a part of earth-stuff since the beginning. According to them, glaciers at one time reached into Kentucky and the tropical forest of the Amazon at another time(s) was on the perimeter of the Arctic Circle. Then, these guys come along and fraudulently push the panic button, as if they could actually do anything about Mother Nature. Weird! They can’t even get the three-day forecast right much of the time.

And so it goes.

Jim Clark

University as BIG BROTHER?

I never cease to wonder at the strange, sometimes ridiculously inculcated rules and regulations in institutions of higher learning having to do with everything from restraints on speech to the use of physical facilities. A student learns early (or else) that there are some words or terms that simply can’t be uttered or written, lest he wind up in some kind of kangaroo-court and consequently face expulsion, if not outright criminal charges or one of those awful group-therapy conclaves. Or...he may face big-time trouble if he expresses an opinion that can bring down the wrath of both students and faculty who subscribe to the absolute requirement in all venues of sophistication that political-correctness must be observed at all costs.

The University of Kentucky has just made it official that no one may smoke on any ground or sidewalk or roadway owned by the university. I’m not a smoker, so this circumstance obviously wouldn’t apply to me, but it reeks of the socialistic approach to everything, to wit, that punishment is the vehicle for bringing about any change, whether needed or not. The university has every right to ban smoking within its buildings. It owns both structures and the elements therein...everything.

However, on the outside, it owns only that which is tangible – the turf, concrete, asphalt, etc. It owns not one cubic centimeter of atmosphere outside those physical parameters. In other words, it does not own the air above or around any of those things, and the atmosphere is the location of the smokers exhaust. One might argue that laws prescribe the amount of exhaust allowed with regard to vehicles and indeed many elements of pollution. These apply to the atmosphere that everyone owns, so why not tobacco smoke?

There may be some validity – however vague – to the claims that secondhand smoke within buildings is harmful. Granted! Both owners and governments have taken notice of this and banned smoking in buildings. No thinking person, however, would claim that outside-smoking is harmful to anyone except the smoker. Consider: To heat many if not most of its buildings, the university utilizes a huge coal-fired facility that spews megatons of carbon into the air, although the actual amount most likely appears nowhere in UK public documents. Or...the university owns scores of vehicles and other machines that constantly spew pollutants as they are used 24/7 in carrying out campus upkeep, policing, transportation, etc.

To come close to the amount of pollution emanating from both the big furnace and the vehicles, there would probably be needed some 100 million or so smokers all doing the chain-smoke thing 24/7. Ironically, however, there are absolutely no regulations even pertaining to the amount of tobacco smoke allowed in the atmosphere...nothing such as the regulations that require coal-fired power-generating plants to install scrubbers and other purifying equipment costing millions in Kentucky alone.

So...why all the hassle about outside smoking – simply punishment leveled at people who are doing no harm? It’s the “Big Brother” syndrome that causes ridiculousness such as this. The university is saving people from themselves by making them either quit or cut down and, more importantly, saving the taxpayers money because smokers wind up getting sick and the state has to take care of them, notwithstanding that the potential costs of the years they forfeit because of their habit sort of offset the actual cost anyway.

The big thing in Kentucky now is not smoking anyway. The “Big Brother” syndrome has kicked in with respect to what’s probably a much greater danger than smoking – OBESITY. Only a small percentage of people at the university smoke, but the United Health Foundation said this month that 30.2% of Kentuckians are obese and that if the rate continues to increase they will eventually cost the state some $6 billion or $1,836 per adult in health-care spending. The same report indicated that smoking is on the decline in Kentucky, now down to 25.2%.

Obesity contributes to all the bad things such as diabetes, heart trouble, and high blood pressure. This being the case, one wonders what the university will do to curb obesity on the campus, a far greater health consideration than anything tobacco causes. These obese people, besides shortening their own lives, pose an even greater threat to the taxpayer, while the smoker population continues to dwindle, down 40% from 35.3% in 1990 to what it is now and dropping.

One supposes the university could mandate the amount of space (atmosphere) anyone on campus can occupy, perhaps based on the body-mass measurements found on charts in the offices of physicians. Students taking up too much space will just have to go home. Obese people (especially faculty) would huff and puff much more carbon dioxide into the air than skinny people, so should they be allowed only so many breaths an hour? After all, Al Gore said the polar bears depend on this.

Foolish? Of course! The outside smoking ban is even more foolish. Even more foolish is the notion that “Big Brother” has the responsibility to determine what can and can’t be eaten. People don’t always use common sense in what they do, but as long as they don’t hurt anyone else they should be left alone. After all, is it fair to discriminate against tobacco-smokers by not persecuting non-smoking tobacco- users...those guys that spit all over the campus, even during baseball games?

Egad! What’s it coming to? The university belches enough CO2 to make any global-warming, climate-change nutcase blanch, but lowers the boom on a guy just taking a smoke. What a laugh!

And so it goes.

Jim Clark

The Actual Reason for Show Trials?

Concerning Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, this is what the president said the other day, "I don't think it [the New York trial] would be offensive at all when he's convicted and when the death penalty is applied to him." Attorney General Holder said this: "Failure is not an option. These are cases that have to be won. I don't expect that we'll have a contrary result." New York Governor David Paterson claims that the White House warned him six months ago that the trial would happen, yet it was never announced then and has been made to seem to be a recent decision by the AG, not the president.

These are actions that insult the intelligence and make the public ever more distrustful of the administration. Both the commander-in-chief and the government’s highest Justice official have pre-judged a person headed to court, something that even fifth-graders are taught that the Constitution forbids. A person hailed before a criminal proceeding and a jury of his peers is deemed innocent until PROVEN guilty. Obama taught Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago and presumably is as smart as a fifth-grader.

So...what’s at work here? Khalid and the other jihad terrorists have been held by military, not civil (police) forces, at least most of the time, since their capture, i.e., under the direct command of the commander-in-chief, not the attorney general. This means that the decision to move them from POW status to criminal status was made/exercised by Obama, not Holder. Their point concerning the ultimate outcome is moot since they have no idea what the outcome will be. One has only to hearken back to O.J. Simpson (1994) to see what can happen in a civilian court trying a criminal case. In Simpson’s civil trial, however and using essentially the same evidence, he was found to be guilty as sin, i.e., responsible for making restitution to the aggrieved but, of course, remaining scot-free.

Years ago, the Congress could have acted to set up a system, probably a sort of military tribunal, to handle the terrorists and satisfy the courts but couldn’t bring itself to do that even though it could pass a $787 billion stimulus bill overnight this year without even reading it. The same was true for cap-and-trade. The “gang of five” was taken into custody years ago and has been interrogated more than just thoroughly, but it’s highly doubtful that any have been apprised of their Miranda-rights, an absolute necessity with regard to a criminal trial in a civilian court. And...not one word any of these guys has said can even be used in this show-trial. All they have to do – or their attorneys – is scream TORTURE and they’re home-free. Confessions or any information obtained under duress are not allowed. The technicalities to cause acquittal are obvious, even though torture has not yet been defined.

Unloading the responsibility for trial-related security upon the New York police, the president has forfeited the guaranteed security with respect to the citizenry that is and could remain in place in Gitmo, which by lease from Cuba is as much a part of the United States as Puerto Rico. Now, every jihad terrorist in this country will be figuring a way to strap on his “explosive belt” and head for the federal building where the trial will be held, as well as all other targets in the Big Apple. The cost in Gitmo would remain just as it’s been for eight years, but the cost to New York will be astronomical even if the feds help pay. The trials could last for months, years – who knows?

So...none of this makes sense, which leads back to the matter of WHY. A good guess has to do with the administration’s ongoing but virtually unnoticed (if it’s in place yet) effort to somehow disembowel the CIA and, to a lesser extent, probably other intelligence agencies, as well. Despite Obama’s firm promise at least as far back as April that no CIA agents would be prosecuted for their actions as they understood the law, all that has changed, although he and Holder are probably more interested in trying to hang somebody – anybody – in the Bush administration over the alleged torture issue. Actually, everyone doing anything vis-a-vis terrorism in the Bush years is at risk.

The problem for O and H is that the public will not be aware of these efforts accruing to yet another broken promise since the work involved will of necessity be carried out in the shadows. Not so with respect to an opportunity to air things in a public forum such as a high-profile trial! It seems obvious that the trials, with respect to establishing guilt/innocence/sentences/whatever, are only secondarily important to the prime objective, namely, the exposing of the Bush administration for doing harsh things in order to slow the rate of terrorism-acts, especially regarding this country.

The supreme irony lies in the fact that Barack Hussein Obama would water-board Eric Holder or do much worse (and vice versa) if to do so would effect the protection of family. One wonders if there are enough red-blooded men left in Congress to call these guys out. Obviously, no, at least not now, but maybe that can change when it finally sinks in that these trials are more political than anything else.

And so it goes.

Jim Clark

19 November 1863

What was perhaps the turning point of the Civil War was the bloody battle just outside of Gettysburg, fought in July 1863 in the placid countryside of Pennsylvania. Fifty-one thousand Union and Confederate soldiers were wounded, missing, or dead as a result of the desperate battle. On 19 November 1863, President Abraham Lincoln delivered the immortal “Gettysburg Address,” only some 269 words in length but a document that will forever live in the annals of American history. It is fitting in this bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth to recall Gettysburg on the anniversary of his giving this address, not his well-known words but words about Gettysburg and its meaning for today.

GETTYSBURG

The pain, like nothing he had known
Since lacerating foot on stone…
Yes, worse than tissue ripped to bone
When just a boy, one day alone;
Once more alone, with searing pain
- From head to toe a pain-link chain -
His first awareness in the rain
As consciousness he fought to gain.
His mind, befogged, began to clear,
No musketry he now could hear,
No longer…now…that rebel cheer,
Which once was music to his ear.
Flat on his back, he closed his eyes
Against the rain from graying skies
And flinched at hearing anguished cries
Of comrades facing pain, demise.
On yesterday the fight was waged,
As back and forth the lines had raged;
A sniper’s bullet rightly gauged
Had felled him in this crevice, caged.
He opened wide his cracked, parched lips,
To slake the thirst of countless trips
Through hostile fields...some canteen sips,
And chewed-up weeds, tobacco strips.
Now fighting just to stay aware,
He turned his head only to stare
At blood that oozed through matting hair
And dripped on rock…quite tombstone bare.
To turn his head was all that he
Could bear, since pain incessantly
Made movement an atrocity
More feared now than the enemy…
Still gone were sounds of musketry
As twilight settled eerily,
No pounding hooves of cavalry…
The only sound…cried-misery.
He thought of Alabama corn
Just breaking ground that April morn
When tears were shed and love was sworn
And he to shot and powder born,
And then the days of victory
And seeming death-immunity…
All now recalled despairingly,
While facing his mortality.
In haze, he pondered “civil war -
Uncivil war, this blood and gore,
Was it for this, or was there more
That made men kill their brothers for?”
As darkness crept across the slain
And earth was marked by bloody stain,
Red rivulets, formed with the rain,
Made ghastly the pock-marked terrain.
His feeble cries on deaf ears fell,
Or ears of those who shared his hell
And, thus, with him could only dwell,
But not his wretchedness repel.
The thoughts of cotton fields in bloom,
A teenage boy, a small schoolroom,
Danced in and out amid the gloom
With thoughts of an impending doom.
As night wore on, the groans grew less
Throughout the mud of helplessness -
In sound and number less and less,
As comrades entered hopelessness.
Sometimes a scream, sometimes a prayer
Would split the heavy, midnight air…
The screams and prayers of stark despair,
No loved ones…there…to know or care.
He fought to keep his consciousness
And thwart his awful pains’ duress
To make it till the dawn’s brightness,
When rescue would be his redress.
Toward daylight, thoughts consumed his mind
Of her for whom he so repined,
And parents to his will resigned,
And their entreaties he declined.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Then, slipping from his stubborn will,
No longer feeling rainy chill -
“Our Father” wafted toward the hill -
Then morning came...and all was...still.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And four months thence the president
Bestrode this place where lives were spent
And sanctioned it as monument
To those whose deaths were testament
That what was joined by rock-hard will
For four-score-seven lived on still,
Not split asunder…brought to nil,
But still a work that none will kill.
And yet in fourteen decades thence
The nation bears the evidence
That peace is simply recompense
In periodic segments whence
Its military might prevails
Against the day the nation quails
– When leadership is weak and flails –
Before its foes...and freedom fails.
And thence through terror six more years,
As those in God’s name kindle fears,
Bathe innocents in blood and tears,
Change peaceful scenes to fiery biers,
The nation once again must fight
And vows that Gettysburg was right,
Its symbol never dropped from sight –
That freedom reigns through blood-bought might.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Khalid & IMAGE

Dear Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,

As CEO of the Institute for Modifying All Government Entities (known as IMAGE, for short), I am writing to avail you of IMAGE services offered to anyone connected to any government, directly or indirectly or accusatorily or inferentially or...you get the picture, I’m sure. You and your colleagues will soon be moving to New York City to take advantage of the best opportunity imaginable to make your case that Islamic jihad is the superior way of life, taking into account the challenge of appealing to the infidels in America that you must, on the basis of spiritual considerations, kill them at every opportunity, though you probably will be too well guarded for any individual effort to be effective. I concede that if you try and are dispatched/martyred and thus consigned to eternal dalliance with the 72 virgins the effort might be worthwhile – but not even spitting at the judge would bring that about.

Victimization is currently the rage in this country, an outgrowth of the social phenomenon known as “political correctness,” which is the ruling factor in all governmental activities such as trials. To help you take advantage of this circumstance, there is an arm of IMAGE known as the Headquarters for Official Liberal Damnation of Egregious Rendition, known for short by its acronym HOLDER. Perhaps you’ve noticed in al-Jazeera, a copy of which you surely receive every day, that Major Nasan, the murderer of 13 Americans at Fort Hood, is being viewed by especially what’s called the “mainstream media” as being disturbed account of Pre-Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder, an ailment probably caught from GIs returning from the Middle East, notwithstanding its oxymoronic label. The administration also leans toward this conclusion, the tip-off being its insistence that jihad-conduct cannot be charged without further investigations.

Since you’ve been questioned in places other than Guantanamo and been exposed to water-boarding that resulted in your ratting out things like further attacks on the United States, you are, ipso facto, a victim, a magic word in “getting off” on most everything from double-parking to serial-killing. HOLDER will help you prepare news accounts eagerly awaited by such media as the New York Times and testimony – through your lawyers, of course – giving an account of how you were born in Kuwait but whisked away from that paradise (not to be confused with the Paradise of the Virgins) and made to grow up in Pakistan, where beheadings are always in order for anyone smelling of oil or with sand in his shoes, thus experiencing a damning childhood that finally eventuated in a psyche-warping rendition in Turkey or Poland or wherever.

Everything that happens will be televised so you will need to present an image to the public of a caring, religious soul merely carrying out Allah’s will for your life. IMAGE’s agency to help with that is the Theatrical Organization for Righteous Temporizing Undergirding Rhetorical Efficacy, or TORTURE, for short. TORTURE will help you know just how far to go in playing to the cameras during the trial, as well as how to make your pitch to the public as a victim of an insensitive country. TORTURE’s expert on both style and substance is the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright. He will teach you how to be heard over at the Statue of Liberty without benefit of microphones. He will teach you the words of some old gospel hymns he uses in his sermons and even a bit of tune to use for effect. He will show you the appropriate African dress and may even loan you some of his sermonic attires – wild when compared to the bongo-like delivery and the “pulpit shuffle.” Or, he may hand you off to Father Michael Pfleger, who will teach you the “altar-bump-and-grind” he used in Wright’s church to ridicule State Secretary Clinton during the campaign last year. Maybe you saw it – groovy stuff, a real crowd-pleaser.

Wright will teach you how and what to damn, mostly the United States. That will gladden the hearts of the liberals (mostly everybody in New York, where the jury will be impaneled) who feel guilty about the water-boarding and almost everything else. Rahm Emanuel, the president’s main gofer, will do some moonlighting for IMAGE (needs the extra money) and will teach you how, what, and when regarding apologies and may even furnish an apology-writer or apology-teleprompter (be sure the right speech is on it). Remember, whether in doubt or not, always apologize, and since you once attended a Baptist college in North Carolina you can help your case by quoting some of the sermons you heard, but you will still need TORTURE to help you in order not to offend the religious mainliners, who consider Baptists as heathens (just a bit of free advice).

IMAGE’s department responsible for properly stroking the powerful is known as the Consortium for Honoring Establishment Nincompoops and Egotistical Yahoos, known, for short, as CHENEY. Never underestimate the need for pandering, and the more shallow the pandered-to, the easier is the task. You may draw a tough judge, so it will be important to impress the Congress with your case in the hope that the solons will call for hearings in the middle of the trial, thus extending it practically indefinitely, as such hearings furnish the legislators with opportunities to show the folks back home their importance, particularly as they make their opening statements, which actually are campaign speeches. For instance, if you just casually mention Abu Ghraib in your testimony you’ll immediately invoke 10 or 12 hearings that could take years while you continue to enjoy life in the Big Apple, eating better than you have in years.

Snowing (American term for “conning”) the Congress-people is made easier since they will never read a transcript of the trial in order to stop appeals. The representatives and senators routinely pass legislation they’ve never read, notwithstanding their current non-efforts at reading costing upwards of trillions of dollars. In perpetual campaign mode, they have no time for anything but holding hearings, raising cash, and gaining earmarks, the latter two tightly connected. CHENEY will also see that you receive health benefits since your official entry into the country makes you a legal immigrant.

Finally, you will need help in the aftermath of your trial, especially with finances. You may be convicted of something but that’s actually the good part, especially since the ACLU will make sure you’re not dispatched by lethal injection or some other barbarous enterprise. IMAGE’s arm for this matter is the Bureau for Unusual-Specialties Honorariums, or BUSH, for short, aptly named since President Bush placed you in this enviable position. BUSH will set up your schedule for speeches, whether in person or via Internet, movies, etc. It will promise a movie on your excellent life directed by none other than Michael Moore and guarantee that Larry King will interview you Live (little joke there), no matter your location, complete with a panel of evangelists to explain that your goodness will make you rich.

You qualify for this service since you have unusual specialties such as combining a Baptist college, a North Carolina university, remarkable skill at beheading, and Osama bin Laden in the grandest terror of all times – known commonly as 9/11. You’ll be in great demand to describe your infidel-dispatching efforts in Serbia, the Philippines, Afghanistan and Pakistan, just to mention a few bloodbaths. BUSH can get you honorariums in the $500,000 per outing range, probably more in Chicago, where William Ayers, a crafty much-appreciated domestic terrorist with the Weather Underground (known as American al-Qaeda) teaches at the university.

In any case, let IMAGE hear from you, and, as a bit of advice, perhaps you might fast for awhile before coming to the Big Apple and shave off all that beard so you will have a gaunt, properly persecuted appearance. Also, plead “not guilty” since pleading “guilty” would be the same as suicide-less-accompanying-homicide and make you ineligible for the virgins. If you escape the death penalty, and thus martyrdom, you can be happy joining fellow crooks on Wall Street and their cohorts in government.

Respectfully,
I.M.Reverself, CEO
IMAGE

And so it goes.

Jim Clark