Potpourri

**The president has now made it to Aurora, Colorado, to visit the wounded and bereaved in connection with the theater murders last week. At least he didn’t turn the visit into a campaign rally, as he did in January 2011 at the memorial service near Tucson, Arizona, in connection with the shooting of Congresswoman Giffords. If he had attended the “prayer vigil” in Aurora, that’s what would have happened. He is now griever-in-chief.

Obama showed great compassion for the folks in Aurora and Tucson but one wonders how he feels about visiting the families in Libya who lost loved ones in 2011 when, simply by executive order (or the equivalent) and for no discernible reason, he commanded decent U.S. GIs to drop bombs and missiles on that country in March, then went on vacation and announced his military prowess in Brazil. His assault lasted for seven months under the guise of a NATO operation. Perhaps he should consider such a visit in light of what it might do for his current campaign.

Or, he might try to further meddle in Syria, where President Assad has made it plain that WMD will be used to defend against any attacking force from outside. He’s already said that Assad has to go, thus empowering insurgents (whoever they are – no one seems to know) on the basis of U.S. weaponry help, which will not be forthcoming. Even Obama knows better than that. Meanwhile, Israel has taken responsibility for seeing that the WMD does not fall into the wrong hands. A nice new war, anyone?

**The bloodiest day this year has just happened in Iraq, where folks have chosen-up sides and are having the civil war that they wanted long ago, with the U.S. standing in the way by its very presence there. It’s not a civil war actually but more of a religious clash as the Shiites (majority) and Sunnis (minority) have at it.

It’s Ramadan-time and what better way to celebrate this religious observance than by Muslim killing Muslim? They must fast during the day but there’s nothing wrong with making mincemeat of each other day or night. Have a good meal at sunset while discussing the day’s body-count, then have a nightly crusade to equal the score. What a religion…surely something to die for (and take a few women and children in the process)!

**As usual, especially because of the weirdness of the media, Americans seem to be having a hard time facing the issue (or is it a problem) with death. Summers can be so dull without some morbid titillation. There was the summer of 1995, when the O.J. Simpson murder fiasco of a trial happened in Los Angeles, with the TV crowd as audience and the judge manipulating his hourglasses. More recently, it seemed that the accounts of the Cayley Anthony murder-trial and attendant happenings in Florida would go on forever.

Now, the Zimmerman/Martin case is front and center in Florida, with a new tidbit every day for months coming from the media. The media is playing Aurora for all it’s worth, parading everyone who wants a bit of fame before the cameras. This will go on and on, with the usual subjects emanating from the “anchors” about gun-control, mental disorders, suggestive movies and all the rest. Cable has made “news” available 24/7, so news has to be generated to fill such a time-quota. One longs for the days of Huntley/Brinkley, when news was reported in a short time-frame and the networks moved on. Now, experts without any actual knowledge of a happening are grilled continuously and speculate all over the place.

The strangest thing happened with ABC – that Stephanopoulos/Ross thing in which these two TV worthies suggested strongly that the Aurora butcher was a member of the Tea Party (he wasn’t) and therefore perfectly capable of such a heinous crime. The transparency of this political gimmick is amazing but perhaps no more so than CBS’s Dan Rather’s unsuccessful attempt through outright lies to discredit George Bush in 2004 and help John Kerry. Michael Isikoff, writing for NewsWeek reported in 2010 that Korans had been flushed at Gitmo (they weren’t), thus setting off 15 killings in Afghanistan. He reports now for NBC, as a reward, surely, and can be seen nightly, lately from Penn State environs.

**The idiocy/corruption connected with sports on any level has been seen lately in the Penn State/NCAA affair. The Penn State officials (all, including the knowledgeable trustees) involved were on about a par with the Catholic bishops/cardinals in precisely similar circumstances, but the athletes and various athletic programs, who/which had nothing to do with the lurid Sandusky- pedophilia atrocities, are paying the price. This is nothing like the SMU affair two decades or so ago, in which NCAA rules had been violated.

The whole mess is a criminal/civil matter, not an athletic one, though corruption drives the total sports-scene, anyway. This is seen in the Olympics about to start in London – athletes from everywhere, some professional, some amateur, no telling how many on drugs, and all the rest, including the judges, who can rig anything for whatever purpose.

And so it goes in the hot, hot summertime.
Jim Clark