The government is its own worst enemy in the matter of first discovering the answer to a problem and, secondly, doing anything about it. This is not to mention that the government is front and center in making the problem, in the first place.
Defense Secretary Panetta was all over television the other day decrying the sad fact that there are so many rapes in the military, presumably reported by women, such fact being the key to solving the problem. The media is full of the subject and has remarked about the problem at the service academies. There were 3,191 and 3,158 sexual assaults reported, respectively, in 2011 and 2010. This seems to be sort of in line with previous years, even more reported for instance in 2009 (3,230). Panetta said “officials” claim that the current number of sexual assaults is about 19,000 (52 per day) since most go unreported. This is about one rape per 84 service-members, a bit hard to believe but so be it. One wonders, though, how anything that’s unreported is so categorically defined.
The genesis of the problem lies in the fact that political correctness insists that there’s no difference between males and females. This amazing philosophy is and has been carried out everywhere in government, from the halls of Congress through all agencies and into the White House. Since there’s no difference between the sexes, there has to be “equal opportunity” at everything and at every level in the military.
Common sense dictates that this philosophy is a bunch of baloney, but common sense and political correctness are mutually exclusive. Go into any city and take the biggest, strongest, meanest women in the local university, teach them to play football and schedule a game for them with an average high-school football team in the city. The boys would kill the ladies. There’s a difference.
That’s just a difference in physical strength and the “killer mentality.” Gender-wise, the difference between men and women is much greater and far more serious. The natural attraction – and often, exploitation – regarding the sexes is obvious to even a middle-schooler. Put the guys and gals together and expect to have problems, and not just problems perpetrated by the guys.
The government created the rape problem when the screwball Congress-people decided that men and women should be thrown together even in boot camps. The fact that this had to be changed (the Marines never even obeyed the edict), lest the fighting force be reduced to absolute minimums in the ability to wage war, has not registered yet with the elitists who clamor for some sort of “equality,” when in some areas “equality” does not exist, never has and never will.
The obvious solution to the current problem is the segregation to the nth-degree possible of men and women in the military. This is not to say women should not serve, merely to say that they should not serve alongside men in close quarters, including but not confined to combat.
Common sense dictates that the fact that they (women) have to report rapes means that they’re out of their depth physically (unable to defend themselves) and therefore are unfit for rigorous duty. This is a terribly politically incorrect statement but it’s true. If they can’t defend themselves physically, how can they be expected to defend not only their country but, more especially, their colleagues?
One-hundred-percent separation is not likely possible but it’s a lead-pipe cinch that something like 95% separation is possible. For instance, no women should serve on a naval vessel unless the entire crew is female. All-male crews have successfully defended the country for centuries, so why not try all-female crews, where, at least hopefully, there would be no natural rapes? The same is true for other military teams, though women should never be in combat for the obvious physical reasons, including on any ship.
Then, of course, there’s the “he said, she said” factor. A woman knows that all she has to do is say she’s been raped and, ipso facto, she’s been raped. In the civilian world, whether she’s told the truth or not, the name of her alleged rapist is spread all over the media, even though he hasn’t even been tried. There’s nothing fair about this but that’s the way it is. Her name, of course, is not divulged. The policy in the military is to transfer out of her unit any woman who claims she’s been raped. The possibilities connected to this allowance are obvious, ergo, reports of rape.
This isn’t to say that rapes do not happen or that they shouldn’t be prosecuted. Apparently, not many are; otherwise, there would be large-scale imprisonments and dishonorable discharges. There’s rarely a witness to a rape, hence, nothing short of DNA to use to convict, and even that’s questionable because the perpetrator can always claim consensual sex, which is hard to prove to the contrary. The answer is so obvious that it will not be entertained in this era of political correctness…simple segregation. Rules can be changed. People can’t be.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Monday, January 16, 2012
What Would MLK Say Today?
In a column of 16 January – Martin Luther King Jr. Day – Lexington Herald- Leader’s Tom Eblen remarked that if the assassinated rights-leader were in Lexington, he would make it a point to spend time at Main and Esplanade Streets with the Occupy Wall Street protesters, who are still demonstrating at that location but without camping out, of course. Eblen might also have mentioned that at one time this location was a slave-auctioning site, though, come to think of it, he probably did – a sort of veiled allusion.
There’s no argument with the annual observance plus all the streets, buildings and parks named after King, not to mention the multiplicity of statues throughout the country. He was a great man and represented/conducted a great cause – civil rights. He was one of the most important Americans of last century.
Connecting King’s cause with the Occupy cause, however, is an imagination too far. King’s cause was by way of erasing differences in the classes while the Occupiers have made it practically a religious effort to promote class warfare, with the final result being that the government will punish the producers, taking what they cobble together and re-distributing it to the non-producers, the virtual definition of socialism/communism.
The Occupiers’ main ally occupies the White House, though (with a wink and a nod) he has surrounded himself with Wall Streeters and conducts huge fund-raising rallies to cadge campaign loot from them…promising a billion-dollar effort to retain his seat. The fat cats don’t give huge sums without something in return, so the conclusion to be drawn is obvious. To his give-’em-the-spin credit (or blame), he has united the unions and the entrepreneurs, sworn enemies, in support of his incredibly flawed administration, defined from the get-go by a tax-cheat as the Treasury secretary.
The guest speaker at this year’s main event in Lexington is Marc Lamont Hill, a Columbia University professor and TV talking-head. From a telephone-interview with Hill, Eblen furnished this statement: “And the gap [between what is had and what is possible, presumably for African Americans] isn’t an intelligence gap, an effort gap, it’s an opportunity gap.” There may be no intelligence/effort gap, but there certainly is no opportunity gap. The civil-rights laws of the 1960s, not to mention even the use of National Guard troops in an effort to inculcate fairness in schools in the 1950s, were designed to guarantee against an opportunity gap, even to the point of establishing quotas.
In fact, the abuse of these laws was demonstrated by SCOTUS Justice Sotomayor, who, using ethnicity as qualifier, ruled against whites in a job-promotion case involving test-scores, and was overturned by the SCOTUS even as she was being confirmed. Hill is too smart not to recognize the gap that actually does exist, to wit, a morality gap.
This introduces another claim by Hill, namely, that America’s core problem is poverty. The largest segment of the population living in poverty is the single-mom-and-family category, especially in the black community, in which more than 70% of babies are born without fathers of record. Contrarily, in 1960 before passage of all the entitlement-legislation, about 75% of black families were headed by live-in parents. If not for an inordinate percentage of abortions in the black community, the numbers of blacks on welfare now would be astounding.
The almost indiscriminate breeding – lack of morals, to many – is responsible for poverty, with the heaviest onus borne by African-American men who do not support their children (especially not marrying their children’s “mothers”), forcing the taxpayers to do it for them. This is not hate-speech, as Eblen probably would have it, but just plain fact.
Rather than express the truth, Hill takes the Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton positions – blame whitey. This wears very thin now, after 50 or so years, though the politically correct crowd, probably including Eblen, continues to flagellate itself over something for which it was not remotely responsible – slavery. Racist operators like Hill love it and make a cottage industry out of exploiting it. Only the gullible fall for it.
To see the disconnect of people like Hill with King, one has only to look at the 30-foot statue (tall as a three-story building) of King on the National Mall, created by movers and shakers in the black community. By contrast, the statue of Lincoln is 11-feet shorter and the statue of President Franklin Roosevelt, a four-term president, is merely life-size.
The King statue was designed in China, sculpted by a Chinese artist, delivered in pieces to the Mall and assembled not by Americans, union or otherwise, but by Chinese coolies. It’s no wonder that, towering Mao-like as it does over everything else, it could be called the Great Buddha on the Mall. King is depicted as looking (glowering) down on everyone and everything…within the shadow of the Great Emancipator and the World War II memorial. It’s an “in your face” monstrosity, something King would have rejected, preferring probably something on the order of a pensive Gandhi, perhaps his most important mentor.
Only someone who is politically incorrect would call attention to Hill’s propaganda and the garish statue, but so be it.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
There’s no argument with the annual observance plus all the streets, buildings and parks named after King, not to mention the multiplicity of statues throughout the country. He was a great man and represented/conducted a great cause – civil rights. He was one of the most important Americans of last century.
Connecting King’s cause with the Occupy cause, however, is an imagination too far. King’s cause was by way of erasing differences in the classes while the Occupiers have made it practically a religious effort to promote class warfare, with the final result being that the government will punish the producers, taking what they cobble together and re-distributing it to the non-producers, the virtual definition of socialism/communism.
The Occupiers’ main ally occupies the White House, though (with a wink and a nod) he has surrounded himself with Wall Streeters and conducts huge fund-raising rallies to cadge campaign loot from them…promising a billion-dollar effort to retain his seat. The fat cats don’t give huge sums without something in return, so the conclusion to be drawn is obvious. To his give-’em-the-spin credit (or blame), he has united the unions and the entrepreneurs, sworn enemies, in support of his incredibly flawed administration, defined from the get-go by a tax-cheat as the Treasury secretary.
The guest speaker at this year’s main event in Lexington is Marc Lamont Hill, a Columbia University professor and TV talking-head. From a telephone-interview with Hill, Eblen furnished this statement: “And the gap [between what is had and what is possible, presumably for African Americans] isn’t an intelligence gap, an effort gap, it’s an opportunity gap.” There may be no intelligence/effort gap, but there certainly is no opportunity gap. The civil-rights laws of the 1960s, not to mention even the use of National Guard troops in an effort to inculcate fairness in schools in the 1950s, were designed to guarantee against an opportunity gap, even to the point of establishing quotas.
In fact, the abuse of these laws was demonstrated by SCOTUS Justice Sotomayor, who, using ethnicity as qualifier, ruled against whites in a job-promotion case involving test-scores, and was overturned by the SCOTUS even as she was being confirmed. Hill is too smart not to recognize the gap that actually does exist, to wit, a morality gap.
This introduces another claim by Hill, namely, that America’s core problem is poverty. The largest segment of the population living in poverty is the single-mom-and-family category, especially in the black community, in which more than 70% of babies are born without fathers of record. Contrarily, in 1960 before passage of all the entitlement-legislation, about 75% of black families were headed by live-in parents. If not for an inordinate percentage of abortions in the black community, the numbers of blacks on welfare now would be astounding.
The almost indiscriminate breeding – lack of morals, to many – is responsible for poverty, with the heaviest onus borne by African-American men who do not support their children (especially not marrying their children’s “mothers”), forcing the taxpayers to do it for them. This is not hate-speech, as Eblen probably would have it, but just plain fact.
Rather than express the truth, Hill takes the Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton positions – blame whitey. This wears very thin now, after 50 or so years, though the politically correct crowd, probably including Eblen, continues to flagellate itself over something for which it was not remotely responsible – slavery. Racist operators like Hill love it and make a cottage industry out of exploiting it. Only the gullible fall for it.
To see the disconnect of people like Hill with King, one has only to look at the 30-foot statue (tall as a three-story building) of King on the National Mall, created by movers and shakers in the black community. By contrast, the statue of Lincoln is 11-feet shorter and the statue of President Franklin Roosevelt, a four-term president, is merely life-size.
The King statue was designed in China, sculpted by a Chinese artist, delivered in pieces to the Mall and assembled not by Americans, union or otherwise, but by Chinese coolies. It’s no wonder that, towering Mao-like as it does over everything else, it could be called the Great Buddha on the Mall. King is depicted as looking (glowering) down on everyone and everything…within the shadow of the Great Emancipator and the World War II memorial. It’s an “in your face” monstrosity, something King would have rejected, preferring probably something on the order of a pensive Gandhi, perhaps his most important mentor.
Only someone who is politically incorrect would call attention to Hill’s propaganda and the garish statue, but so be it.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Friday, January 13, 2012
Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde, POTUS & Carney
It’s just past one a.m. in the little room off the Oval Office and Dr. Jekyll and his alter ego Mr. Hyde are meeting with President Obama and his press czar, Jay Carney, hereinafter referenced as J, H, O, and C, respectively, if not necessarily respectfully.
**O: Glad you could make it guys, you’ve always been a big help when I need…
**J: Does he never learn, Edward Hyde? We are not guys, especially to the colonists. We are sirs…okay we can be blokes here, Barry since this is so-o-o informal and…
**H: Quite so, Henry Jekyll, but I refuse to meet in this notorious room again. Either we go into the Oval Office or I – as you colonists so aptly put it – take a powder. You asked advice about the Tea Party in this room when last we met, meaning this room is profane and in deference to King George the Third, I…oh, speaking of powder, did you line up the howitzers and blow away the tea party as I might have suggested then?
**J: Easy there, Edward! He just means that the Tea Party should have been sweetened with your profound rhetoric, Barry, absolutely deep-sixed by eloquence and intellect delivered by state-of-the-art teleprompters…most likely my suggestion, though I don’t remember much except how Slick Will made this into a fun room, fit for any kind of orgy, real or imagined. (all enter the Oval Office) And these Styrofoam cups have to go, Barry…it’s fine china for tea or nothing.
**O: Jay, go rouse the kitchen crew and get some appropriate china and delicacies up here in ten minutes or less but don’t mention why…and bring me a beer.
**C: Aye aye sir, commander-in-chief, I’m on my way. (leaves)
**J: Commander-in-chief, Barry? That sounds so…well…haughty.
**O: I’ve commanded everyone to address me that way now since my hugely successful invasion of Libya and the offing of Osama. This month, navy obedience is the order of the day…or something like that…something military, in other words. I checked with the Salvation Army.
**H: Oh, I say, how quaint! Anyone gets out of line gets a good lashing at the mast…39 stripes, blood splattering all over the Congress…
**J: What Edward means is that the mark of a leader is his willingness to exact discipline and…
**H: Ah yes, Barry – Libya! What a stroke of genius and it took only seven months to put the buggers away. All those neighborhoods blown to smithereens by your bombs…blood running in the streets. I watched it every night on BBC, but, I say, Barry, I didn’t know you could invade a sovereign nation by executive order…reminds me of the glory days of Admiral Nelson.
**O: I went to the UN, Edward, or rather, I sent three ladies to work their charms on the UN and say that Qaddafi was mean and had to go and that I could ignore the Congress, the Constitution and the War Powers Act and anything else like maybe a town ordinance or something and just blow him away. (Carney returns, carrying huge tray)
**C: The kitchen crew told me where to go, Commander-in-chief, so I…
**J: Egad, Edward, all that mismatched china…and doughnuts…ugh! When will the colonists ever become civilized?
**H: I can see the papers now, Henry. Commander-in-chief has White House kitchen crew drawn and quartered – navy stuff there, Barry – for disobeying direct order, especially concerning crumpets.
**J: What Edward means, Barry, is that your justice is swift and that the kitchen crew loses a quarter’s pay – three months.
**O: Can we just get down to business. This beer is warm, Jay…ugh. And why are we here? I forgot and even JohnKerry couldn’t remember.
**C: Sorry, commander-in-chief, but the kitchen crew thought it was for our visitors – they drink it warm, you know. And I checked the teleprompter while I was gone and found that we’re here because of the Arab Spring.
**O: Okay, so my problem, gentlemen, is that there’s a threat of an American Spring coming up and…
**J: Aha! And if it goes like the Arab Spring last year, you might be on the way out…is that it, Barry?
**H: Oh…how marvelous! Blood in the streets of Washington, just like 1812 when we burned the place down…oh, hoo hah, what a show! Do you think there might be some beheadings…all those Muslims lurking here and there?
**J: What he means, Jay, is that your problem is serious since the apparatchiks also have to go when there’s a revolution.
**C: H-m-m-m.
**O: Let’s be serious here. We’ve just had Occupy Wall Street terrorists camping out in public parks and…
**H: And doing rapes and all sorts of strange things and using the police cars for bathrooms…
**J: Cool it, Edward. What Edward means, Barry, is that protests can be dangerous.
**C: You think we don’t know that, Henry? Look what commander-in-chief did in Libya to celebrate the Arab Spring…all those dead Libyans. Now we have all those students raising hell about Wall Street and…well, just about all the czars in the White House came from Wall Street. We’ve been in bunker mode, hoping the idiots wouldn’t find out.
**O: Let’s stick to the subject, Jay. Henry, what should I do about an American Spring? I can call out the troops, you know, but that seems so…well somehow fey.
**H: Oh, hahahahaha, I say bring out the Bradleys and mow ’em down on Pennsylvania Avenue.
**J: He asked me, Edward, not you. Edward just means that a show of force is sometimes necessary, Barry. He’s not suggesting you pull an Assad on them…just scare the bejesus out of them but don’t use m-16s.
**H: I say, Barry, it’s like FDR said…the only fear is fear itself or something like that. Besides, you did in the Libyans, so the only enemy you have to fear is by way of reprisal…
**J: And reprisal means the Libyans and the Libyans couldn’t beat your Girl Scouts right now, Barry, since you pulverized them although it took months, not days, as you promised. So, as you Americans say…not to worry! There will be no American Spring.
**C: In other words (starts singing), happy days are here again.
**O: Stuff it Carney and go get me a cold one.
**J: Come, Edward, I can stand the colonists for just so long…uncivilized creatures!
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
**O: Glad you could make it guys, you’ve always been a big help when I need…
**J: Does he never learn, Edward Hyde? We are not guys, especially to the colonists. We are sirs…okay we can be blokes here, Barry since this is so-o-o informal and…
**H: Quite so, Henry Jekyll, but I refuse to meet in this notorious room again. Either we go into the Oval Office or I – as you colonists so aptly put it – take a powder. You asked advice about the Tea Party in this room when last we met, meaning this room is profane and in deference to King George the Third, I…oh, speaking of powder, did you line up the howitzers and blow away the tea party as I might have suggested then?
**J: Easy there, Edward! He just means that the Tea Party should have been sweetened with your profound rhetoric, Barry, absolutely deep-sixed by eloquence and intellect delivered by state-of-the-art teleprompters…most likely my suggestion, though I don’t remember much except how Slick Will made this into a fun room, fit for any kind of orgy, real or imagined. (all enter the Oval Office) And these Styrofoam cups have to go, Barry…it’s fine china for tea or nothing.
**O: Jay, go rouse the kitchen crew and get some appropriate china and delicacies up here in ten minutes or less but don’t mention why…and bring me a beer.
**C: Aye aye sir, commander-in-chief, I’m on my way. (leaves)
**J: Commander-in-chief, Barry? That sounds so…well…haughty.
**O: I’ve commanded everyone to address me that way now since my hugely successful invasion of Libya and the offing of Osama. This month, navy obedience is the order of the day…or something like that…something military, in other words. I checked with the Salvation Army.
**H: Oh, I say, how quaint! Anyone gets out of line gets a good lashing at the mast…39 stripes, blood splattering all over the Congress…
**J: What Edward means is that the mark of a leader is his willingness to exact discipline and…
**H: Ah yes, Barry – Libya! What a stroke of genius and it took only seven months to put the buggers away. All those neighborhoods blown to smithereens by your bombs…blood running in the streets. I watched it every night on BBC, but, I say, Barry, I didn’t know you could invade a sovereign nation by executive order…reminds me of the glory days of Admiral Nelson.
**O: I went to the UN, Edward, or rather, I sent three ladies to work their charms on the UN and say that Qaddafi was mean and had to go and that I could ignore the Congress, the Constitution and the War Powers Act and anything else like maybe a town ordinance or something and just blow him away. (Carney returns, carrying huge tray)
**C: The kitchen crew told me where to go, Commander-in-chief, so I…
**J: Egad, Edward, all that mismatched china…and doughnuts…ugh! When will the colonists ever become civilized?
**H: I can see the papers now, Henry. Commander-in-chief has White House kitchen crew drawn and quartered – navy stuff there, Barry – for disobeying direct order, especially concerning crumpets.
**J: What Edward means, Barry, is that your justice is swift and that the kitchen crew loses a quarter’s pay – three months.
**O: Can we just get down to business. This beer is warm, Jay…ugh. And why are we here? I forgot and even JohnKerry couldn’t remember.
**C: Sorry, commander-in-chief, but the kitchen crew thought it was for our visitors – they drink it warm, you know. And I checked the teleprompter while I was gone and found that we’re here because of the Arab Spring.
**O: Okay, so my problem, gentlemen, is that there’s a threat of an American Spring coming up and…
**J: Aha! And if it goes like the Arab Spring last year, you might be on the way out…is that it, Barry?
**H: Oh…how marvelous! Blood in the streets of Washington, just like 1812 when we burned the place down…oh, hoo hah, what a show! Do you think there might be some beheadings…all those Muslims lurking here and there?
**J: What he means, Jay, is that your problem is serious since the apparatchiks also have to go when there’s a revolution.
**C: H-m-m-m.
**O: Let’s be serious here. We’ve just had Occupy Wall Street terrorists camping out in public parks and…
**H: And doing rapes and all sorts of strange things and using the police cars for bathrooms…
**J: Cool it, Edward. What Edward means, Barry, is that protests can be dangerous.
**C: You think we don’t know that, Henry? Look what commander-in-chief did in Libya to celebrate the Arab Spring…all those dead Libyans. Now we have all those students raising hell about Wall Street and…well, just about all the czars in the White House came from Wall Street. We’ve been in bunker mode, hoping the idiots wouldn’t find out.
**O: Let’s stick to the subject, Jay. Henry, what should I do about an American Spring? I can call out the troops, you know, but that seems so…well somehow fey.
**H: Oh, hahahahaha, I say bring out the Bradleys and mow ’em down on Pennsylvania Avenue.
**J: He asked me, Edward, not you. Edward just means that a show of force is sometimes necessary, Barry. He’s not suggesting you pull an Assad on them…just scare the bejesus out of them but don’t use m-16s.
**H: I say, Barry, it’s like FDR said…the only fear is fear itself or something like that. Besides, you did in the Libyans, so the only enemy you have to fear is by way of reprisal…
**J: And reprisal means the Libyans and the Libyans couldn’t beat your Girl Scouts right now, Barry, since you pulverized them although it took months, not days, as you promised. So, as you Americans say…not to worry! There will be no American Spring.
**C: In other words (starts singing), happy days are here again.
**O: Stuff it Carney and go get me a cold one.
**J: Come, Edward, I can stand the colonists for just so long…uncivilized creatures!
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Sunday, January 08, 2012
Brokaw, Obama & Libya
I’ve just begun reading Tom Brokaw’s latest book, The Time of Our Lives. Each chapter begins with a fact and a question followed by three sections termed the Past, Present and Promise covering such subjects as education, government and social considerations.
I was brought up short on page ten with this paragraph: “The seething of the underclass [Arab Spring?] spread to Libya, where Moammar Gadhafi responded with vicious military attacks on the insurgents that drew international condemnation and resulted in NATO military help for the Libyan rebels.” (bold face mine). Whoa! Libya was attacked via executive order almost exclusively by President Barack Hussein Obama, who announced while beginning a vacation in Brazil on 19 March that he had ordered Americans to bomb the bejesus out of Libya (military targets, but what do bombs know?).
There followed intensive bombing of Libya primarily by the United States for ten straight days at a cost of $55 million per day, after which NATO was supposed to take up the action with Obama “leading from behind,” explaining that the U.S would merely continue to “support” the effort, which he said would be over in days, not months. The effort lasted for seven months and the U.S. wound up providing the lion’s share of everything such as the ammo and logistics, not to mention actual warfare. Cost to the U.S.: $1.1 billion.
In other words, Brokaw grossly misrepresented the truth. The Libya affair was exclusively an Obama project from the get-go, for reasons apparently known only to him since Libya, population two million less than that of New York City, with a troop-strength of only 76,000, has never been a threat to the United States or NATO, which, like the Pentagon, wanted no part of the affair but, also like the Pentagon, was bullied into it. Defense Secretary Gates described Obama’s massacre as done “on the fly,” i.e. with no planning, certainly not by the Defense Department. Both he and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mullen publicly announced their opposition in a Congressional hearing before Obama did anything. The president overruled them.
Obama instigated his own attempt at genocide by executive order, completely bypassing Congress, which was not consulted. Instead, State Secretary Clinton, U.N. Ambassador Rice and White House apparatchik Samantha Power took the project to the United Nations and bullied that bunch of screwballs into approving a resolution to establish a no-fly zone (done in about four days) and the catch-all mandate, “use all means necessary short of foreign occupation to protect civilians.”
The women’s case ostensibly had to do with Qaddafi mistreating his people, an everyday occurrence in the Muslim countries throughout the Middle East. For instance, this is from Voice of America on 21 December, “The United Nations says at least 5,000 people have been killed during the nine-month uprising against the government of [Syrian president Bashar] al-Assad.” In the early 1980s, some 20,000 Syrians were killed by the government of Assad’s father, then the president. This is everyday stuff where Muslims kill each other over religious matters and deciding who will run the country! One wonders if Brokaw thinks another NATO action in Syria might be forthcoming. Perhaps he will ask Obama.
Did Brokaw drink the Kool-Aid concerning Libya? Not likely! He’s smarter than that. The logical conclusion is that he spread the propaganda provided by the White House in the willful destruction of a sovereign nation, never mind that Qaddafi was a tyrant. Most Muslim head honchos are tyrants. His misrepresenting of the Libya matter is on about the same level as that of Dan Rather, his counterpart at CBS at the time, in Rather’s monstrous lie in 2004 concerning George Bush and the Texas Air National Guard.
On page 13, Brokaw wrote this concerning Richard Nixon (or Tricky Dick, as Brokaw called him): “His oval office was a bunker stocked with illegal conspiracies and presidential high crimes and misdemeanors.” Nixon, besides never attacking another nation (Cambodian incursion in 1970 was to interdict supply routes during Vietnam War), finally did bring an end to the Vienam War. Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution requires that Congress declare war, but Obama made war against Libya without even consulting Congress. He committed a high crime or misdemeanor, and the War Powers Act was not a factor since Libya had not in any way threatened this nation.
This is the appropriate requirement of the War Powers Act of 1973 for the deployment of the military: “into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, and to the continued use of such forces in hostilities or in such situations.” The U.S. was not involved in any hostilities in Libya or anywhere near Libya when Obama ordered U.S. military action. When Congress declares war, the commander-in-chief prosecutes it, according to the Constitution. In the case of Libya, the United Nations declared war and President Obama prosecuted it. Shameful!
Brokaw, who no doubt took/takes pride in himself as an honest journalist, should have written that President Obama had committed an impeachable offense. Instead, he advanced the well-known agenda of NBC, his former employer, i.e., he provided cover for Obama. The U.S. didn’t even buy Libyan oil, but European NATO nations such as Britain and France did, so those nations had every reason not to disturb the status quo. To satisfy Obama, they spent their own resources for seven months…and for what? No one knows now who/what the government is in Libya.
Rewriting history is not attractive or honest. Brokaw should be ashamed.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
I was brought up short on page ten with this paragraph: “The seething of the underclass [Arab Spring?] spread to Libya, where Moammar Gadhafi responded with vicious military attacks on the insurgents that drew international condemnation and resulted in NATO military help for the Libyan rebels.” (bold face mine). Whoa! Libya was attacked via executive order almost exclusively by President Barack Hussein Obama, who announced while beginning a vacation in Brazil on 19 March that he had ordered Americans to bomb the bejesus out of Libya (military targets, but what do bombs know?).
There followed intensive bombing of Libya primarily by the United States for ten straight days at a cost of $55 million per day, after which NATO was supposed to take up the action with Obama “leading from behind,” explaining that the U.S would merely continue to “support” the effort, which he said would be over in days, not months. The effort lasted for seven months and the U.S. wound up providing the lion’s share of everything such as the ammo and logistics, not to mention actual warfare. Cost to the U.S.: $1.1 billion.
In other words, Brokaw grossly misrepresented the truth. The Libya affair was exclusively an Obama project from the get-go, for reasons apparently known only to him since Libya, population two million less than that of New York City, with a troop-strength of only 76,000, has never been a threat to the United States or NATO, which, like the Pentagon, wanted no part of the affair but, also like the Pentagon, was bullied into it. Defense Secretary Gates described Obama’s massacre as done “on the fly,” i.e. with no planning, certainly not by the Defense Department. Both he and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mullen publicly announced their opposition in a Congressional hearing before Obama did anything. The president overruled them.
Obama instigated his own attempt at genocide by executive order, completely bypassing Congress, which was not consulted. Instead, State Secretary Clinton, U.N. Ambassador Rice and White House apparatchik Samantha Power took the project to the United Nations and bullied that bunch of screwballs into approving a resolution to establish a no-fly zone (done in about four days) and the catch-all mandate, “use all means necessary short of foreign occupation to protect civilians.”
The women’s case ostensibly had to do with Qaddafi mistreating his people, an everyday occurrence in the Muslim countries throughout the Middle East. For instance, this is from Voice of America on 21 December, “The United Nations says at least 5,000 people have been killed during the nine-month uprising against the government of [Syrian president Bashar] al-Assad.” In the early 1980s, some 20,000 Syrians were killed by the government of Assad’s father, then the president. This is everyday stuff where Muslims kill each other over religious matters and deciding who will run the country! One wonders if Brokaw thinks another NATO action in Syria might be forthcoming. Perhaps he will ask Obama.
Did Brokaw drink the Kool-Aid concerning Libya? Not likely! He’s smarter than that. The logical conclusion is that he spread the propaganda provided by the White House in the willful destruction of a sovereign nation, never mind that Qaddafi was a tyrant. Most Muslim head honchos are tyrants. His misrepresenting of the Libya matter is on about the same level as that of Dan Rather, his counterpart at CBS at the time, in Rather’s monstrous lie in 2004 concerning George Bush and the Texas Air National Guard.
On page 13, Brokaw wrote this concerning Richard Nixon (or Tricky Dick, as Brokaw called him): “His oval office was a bunker stocked with illegal conspiracies and presidential high crimes and misdemeanors.” Nixon, besides never attacking another nation (Cambodian incursion in 1970 was to interdict supply routes during Vietnam War), finally did bring an end to the Vienam War. Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution requires that Congress declare war, but Obama made war against Libya without even consulting Congress. He committed a high crime or misdemeanor, and the War Powers Act was not a factor since Libya had not in any way threatened this nation.
This is the appropriate requirement of the War Powers Act of 1973 for the deployment of the military: “into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, and to the continued use of such forces in hostilities or in such situations.” The U.S. was not involved in any hostilities in Libya or anywhere near Libya when Obama ordered U.S. military action. When Congress declares war, the commander-in-chief prosecutes it, according to the Constitution. In the case of Libya, the United Nations declared war and President Obama prosecuted it. Shameful!
Brokaw, who no doubt took/takes pride in himself as an honest journalist, should have written that President Obama had committed an impeachable offense. Instead, he advanced the well-known agenda of NBC, his former employer, i.e., he provided cover for Obama. The U.S. didn’t even buy Libyan oil, but European NATO nations such as Britain and France did, so those nations had every reason not to disturb the status quo. To satisfy Obama, they spent their own resources for seven months…and for what? No one knows now who/what the government is in Libya.
Rewriting history is not attractive or honest. Brokaw should be ashamed.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Thursday, January 05, 2012
The Senators & Comacho
In a monstrous display of hypocrisy, the Orange Bowl (04 January) head honchos accepted and then dis-invited Camacho sponsorship. The reason: Democrat Senators Lautenberg, Blumenthal and Durbin objected to Comacho, though they made no objection about other sponsors such as Bud Lite and Corona, beer-makers, and Bacardi, rum-maker. So…they were dismayed concerning Camacho’s legal cigars (surely shocked and appalled, the usual reaction by righteous senators when attacked by do-goodism) but figured beer and rum were okay.
After all, enjoying a cigar while driving might cause a bit of smoke to emanate skyward and cause global warming to melt the ice-caps and consequently waste the polar bears and cause Manhattan to become part surf and part beach, but driving while enjoying a good beer or a half-pint of rum could only cause someone to get killed, nothing serious. The choice was easy and the senators showed their superior intelligence in exerting their influence. By the way, the choice was also easy because none of this applied to their states.
This is no brief for tobacco, a harmful substance but certainly not more harmful than alcoholic beverages in any form. Indeed, where using tobacco may be harmful to an individual, it isn’t likely to cause harm to anyone else. Contrarily, the user of alcohol, besides also hurting himself just as in the case of tobacco, risks not only the possibility of hurting others but in thousands of cases every year causes death and destruction to others, making the probability quite substantive. Compared to the cigar-smoker, the imbiber of alcohol is a devil.
Apparently, the good senators felt that the cigar-flashing would deliver the wrong message to young people, as if the young people are not already more knowledgeable about both tobacco and alcohol (and all other drugs, of which tobacco is not one) than the senators. If that was their position, they were sending the message that tobacco is bad but drinking is okay; otherwise, they would have denounced all the forms of danger. To do that and be honest, they would have had to renounce both their drinking habits (if applicable) and the liquor lobby, the latter too great a sugar-daddy to politicians to upset.
The extreme irony, of course has to do with do-gooder Senator Dick Durbin, democrat of Illinois. This advocate for the youth is most famous for his comparing of American GIs (a segment of youth of which he has no understanding) in Iraq to Stalin’s murderous keepers of the Soviet Gulags, the equally murderous Storm Troopers of the butcher Adolph Hitler, who directed the dispatching of 11 million in the 1930s-40s, and Pol Pot’s murderers of millions in the “killing fields” of Cambodia – all recent history.
But that’s not all that establishes Durbin as a paragon of virtue with respect at least to the law and conscience. This is from the Chicago Tribune of 30 December 2008: "U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D- Nevada) said in a statement this afternoon the Senate will not seat anyone Gov. Rod Blagojevich chooses to fill Illinois' vacant Senate post, amid word that the governor is set to name former Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris. The statement also is signed by U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, who has repeatedly urged Blagojevich not to name a replacement for the seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama. The statement specifically names Burris, but applies to any choice the governor might make."
This is from Reuters of 30 December 2008: "KAILUA, Hawaii (Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Barack Obama said on Tuesday he agreed that Senate Democrats 'cannot accept' any move by Illinois' scandal-tarred governor to name a replacement for Obama's Senate seat." Get the picture? Durbin joined Reid and Obama in purposefully attempting to violate the U. S. Constitution with respect to the requirements for filling a vacated Senate seat. They committed treacherous acts although they were not successful. Burris was seated and served out the term vacated by Obama. All three – Durbin, Reid, Obama – at this point were tinhorn crooks playing one of the lowest games of politics – ganging up on the perceived vulnerable.
All of this is part and parcel of why citizens hold politicians in such low esteem, including Obama, who stays below the 50% mark in approval ratings, though much of that is due to his blatant incompetence and his proclivity for using the executive to browbeat the Congresspersons and anyone else he deems worthy of his disdain. Disgusting!
Equally disgusting is the subject at hand. Three senators, either so blind to reality or so opportunistic that they can’t see beyond the bridges of their respective noses, disparage the least harmful of two substances in the name of protecting the youth while consequently approving the most harmful. So…does the above apply…or are they just dumb as gourds?
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
After all, enjoying a cigar while driving might cause a bit of smoke to emanate skyward and cause global warming to melt the ice-caps and consequently waste the polar bears and cause Manhattan to become part surf and part beach, but driving while enjoying a good beer or a half-pint of rum could only cause someone to get killed, nothing serious. The choice was easy and the senators showed their superior intelligence in exerting their influence. By the way, the choice was also easy because none of this applied to their states.
This is no brief for tobacco, a harmful substance but certainly not more harmful than alcoholic beverages in any form. Indeed, where using tobacco may be harmful to an individual, it isn’t likely to cause harm to anyone else. Contrarily, the user of alcohol, besides also hurting himself just as in the case of tobacco, risks not only the possibility of hurting others but in thousands of cases every year causes death and destruction to others, making the probability quite substantive. Compared to the cigar-smoker, the imbiber of alcohol is a devil.
Apparently, the good senators felt that the cigar-flashing would deliver the wrong message to young people, as if the young people are not already more knowledgeable about both tobacco and alcohol (and all other drugs, of which tobacco is not one) than the senators. If that was their position, they were sending the message that tobacco is bad but drinking is okay; otherwise, they would have denounced all the forms of danger. To do that and be honest, they would have had to renounce both their drinking habits (if applicable) and the liquor lobby, the latter too great a sugar-daddy to politicians to upset.
The extreme irony, of course has to do with do-gooder Senator Dick Durbin, democrat of Illinois. This advocate for the youth is most famous for his comparing of American GIs (a segment of youth of which he has no understanding) in Iraq to Stalin’s murderous keepers of the Soviet Gulags, the equally murderous Storm Troopers of the butcher Adolph Hitler, who directed the dispatching of 11 million in the 1930s-40s, and Pol Pot’s murderers of millions in the “killing fields” of Cambodia – all recent history.
But that’s not all that establishes Durbin as a paragon of virtue with respect at least to the law and conscience. This is from the Chicago Tribune of 30 December 2008: "U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D- Nevada) said in a statement this afternoon the Senate will not seat anyone Gov. Rod Blagojevich chooses to fill Illinois' vacant Senate post, amid word that the governor is set to name former Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris. The statement also is signed by U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, who has repeatedly urged Blagojevich not to name a replacement for the seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama. The statement specifically names Burris, but applies to any choice the governor might make."
This is from Reuters of 30 December 2008: "KAILUA, Hawaii (Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Barack Obama said on Tuesday he agreed that Senate Democrats 'cannot accept' any move by Illinois' scandal-tarred governor to name a replacement for Obama's Senate seat." Get the picture? Durbin joined Reid and Obama in purposefully attempting to violate the U. S. Constitution with respect to the requirements for filling a vacated Senate seat. They committed treacherous acts although they were not successful. Burris was seated and served out the term vacated by Obama. All three – Durbin, Reid, Obama – at this point were tinhorn crooks playing one of the lowest games of politics – ganging up on the perceived vulnerable.
All of this is part and parcel of why citizens hold politicians in such low esteem, including Obama, who stays below the 50% mark in approval ratings, though much of that is due to his blatant incompetence and his proclivity for using the executive to browbeat the Congresspersons and anyone else he deems worthy of his disdain. Disgusting!
Equally disgusting is the subject at hand. Three senators, either so blind to reality or so opportunistic that they can’t see beyond the bridges of their respective noses, disparage the least harmful of two substances in the name of protecting the youth while consequently approving the most harmful. So…does the above apply…or are they just dumb as gourds?
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Monday, January 02, 2012
PQRI...a Bad Joke?
The latest bureaucratic muddle emanating from Czar-Land, otherwise known as the Obama administration, is something called the Physician Quality Reporting Initiative, which ties the payment for medical treatment of old codgers, presumably anyone 65 and up and therefore on Medicare/Medicaid, to a report-card indicating physician-capability. Governmental bureaucrats with non-physician backgrounds will complete the reports that will separate the good doctors from the bad ones and determine the amount of reimbursement…or none…for each. It seems unclear as to what this amounts to vis-à-vis the doctors especially with respect to punishment or certification but, as Speaker Pelosi would counsel, this will be known only after the program is in place.
This could do for the elderly patients what No Child Left Behind has done for education – kill the process. NCLB has developed a national cadre of the mentally-challenged…a hopeless failure. The PQRI, hopefully, will not kill medicine, but don’t bet the farm. If it does, the old codgers may suffer and/or die but…hey…life is not forever.
PQRI will require a bureaucracy of immense proportions since there are some 800,000 practicing physicians in this country. Since it’s unlikely that the physicians will be required to take a written test (imagine the number of non-physician folks required to grade especially the essay questions), the appropriate bureaucrat will probably have to comb through records, follow-up on patient complaints, check the legal archives for lawsuits, practically live in hospitals and physician-offices and try to evaluate such hugely important things as bedside manner or the proper care of a hangnail.
One can imagine the bureaucratic red-tape connected to having a body exhumed in order to discover if a physician took out the wrong lung or left a wayward sponge among the pancreas, the better to determine if the surgeon was perhaps drinking on the job, a certain no-no in PQRI, and must therefore be given an “F” on his report card and, worse, paid nothing. One can just imagine the increased activity in law schools, which always benefit enormously when the Congress/administration comes up with new legislation/regulations concerning anything. Top Czar Sunstein, the chief among regulators, has already stated that animals should have access to lawyers, so one can only imagine how many lawyers will be needed by both bureaucracy and doctors to save the country from malpractice.
What would be the subjects of testing – operating-room procedure; time spent with patient; bedside manner; office manner; sterilization techniques; legible writing of prescriptions (although PQRI demands everything but probing for the appendix to be done electronically, including records and prescriptions); treatment of colleagues, including harassment of nurses by either doctor-sex; harassment of patients; proper suturing/stapling/bone-sawing; full disclosure of successes/failures regarding surgical procedures, including the number of patients who lived/died, and proper preparation of patient for appearing before the “death panels?”
Obviously, nothing but a hands-on approach could effect the proper grades for the physicians. Consider the bureaucrat observing a heart bypass operation despite the fact that he doesn’t know a respirator from an ATM and wonders if the doctor is in danger of freezing the patient to death in hugely lowering his temperature, standard procedure. A grader, probably in disguise, will have to be in or preferably near the hospital nurse-stations to observe physician behavior, with an especial eye to harassment, discrimination, and proper completion of forms, not to mention off-color or ethnic jokes in case someone is offended.
PQRI is an idea that should never have come, an absolute absurdity. The paperwork alone would be monumental, causing a huge increase in what doctors already have to charge in order to hire the huge staffs to handle it. To have government bureaucrats determining the amount to be paid case-by-case concerning Medicare patients is unthinkable. This is regulation carried to a degree unimaginable in a democratic society, clearly driving the health-care system into a socialistic venue, which has always been the goal of President Obama. One can expect that all the thousands of new workers will be unionized as Obama’s debts to union money and warm bodies slaving on the campaign trail will be discharged.
Regulations by czars such as those concerning the proper light bulbs and the proper structure of processed foods, and presidential executive orders such as the assault on Libya resulting in no one knows how many civilian deaths have been the name of the game during Obama’s tenure. The republican candidates are railing against this takeover of the country by stealth, and they’re right. The time has come to put a stop to it and hopefully that will happen in November with respect to both the unbelievably weak Congress as well as the presidency. If this doesn’t happen, this nation will join olde Europe in heading for the ash-heap of history.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
This could do for the elderly patients what No Child Left Behind has done for education – kill the process. NCLB has developed a national cadre of the mentally-challenged…a hopeless failure. The PQRI, hopefully, will not kill medicine, but don’t bet the farm. If it does, the old codgers may suffer and/or die but…hey…life is not forever.
PQRI will require a bureaucracy of immense proportions since there are some 800,000 practicing physicians in this country. Since it’s unlikely that the physicians will be required to take a written test (imagine the number of non-physician folks required to grade especially the essay questions), the appropriate bureaucrat will probably have to comb through records, follow-up on patient complaints, check the legal archives for lawsuits, practically live in hospitals and physician-offices and try to evaluate such hugely important things as bedside manner or the proper care of a hangnail.
One can imagine the bureaucratic red-tape connected to having a body exhumed in order to discover if a physician took out the wrong lung or left a wayward sponge among the pancreas, the better to determine if the surgeon was perhaps drinking on the job, a certain no-no in PQRI, and must therefore be given an “F” on his report card and, worse, paid nothing. One can just imagine the increased activity in law schools, which always benefit enormously when the Congress/administration comes up with new legislation/regulations concerning anything. Top Czar Sunstein, the chief among regulators, has already stated that animals should have access to lawyers, so one can only imagine how many lawyers will be needed by both bureaucracy and doctors to save the country from malpractice.
What would be the subjects of testing – operating-room procedure; time spent with patient; bedside manner; office manner; sterilization techniques; legible writing of prescriptions (although PQRI demands everything but probing for the appendix to be done electronically, including records and prescriptions); treatment of colleagues, including harassment of nurses by either doctor-sex; harassment of patients; proper suturing/stapling/bone-sawing; full disclosure of successes/failures regarding surgical procedures, including the number of patients who lived/died, and proper preparation of patient for appearing before the “death panels?”
Obviously, nothing but a hands-on approach could effect the proper grades for the physicians. Consider the bureaucrat observing a heart bypass operation despite the fact that he doesn’t know a respirator from an ATM and wonders if the doctor is in danger of freezing the patient to death in hugely lowering his temperature, standard procedure. A grader, probably in disguise, will have to be in or preferably near the hospital nurse-stations to observe physician behavior, with an especial eye to harassment, discrimination, and proper completion of forms, not to mention off-color or ethnic jokes in case someone is offended.
PQRI is an idea that should never have come, an absolute absurdity. The paperwork alone would be monumental, causing a huge increase in what doctors already have to charge in order to hire the huge staffs to handle it. To have government bureaucrats determining the amount to be paid case-by-case concerning Medicare patients is unthinkable. This is regulation carried to a degree unimaginable in a democratic society, clearly driving the health-care system into a socialistic venue, which has always been the goal of President Obama. One can expect that all the thousands of new workers will be unionized as Obama’s debts to union money and warm bodies slaving on the campaign trail will be discharged.
Regulations by czars such as those concerning the proper light bulbs and the proper structure of processed foods, and presidential executive orders such as the assault on Libya resulting in no one knows how many civilian deaths have been the name of the game during Obama’s tenure. The republican candidates are railing against this takeover of the country by stealth, and they’re right. The time has come to put a stop to it and hopefully that will happen in November with respect to both the unbelievably weak Congress as well as the presidency. If this doesn’t happen, this nation will join olde Europe in heading for the ash-heap of history.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
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