In an Op-Ed piece in the Lexington Herald-Leader of 30 October, Robert Olson, characterized as a Middle East analyst, discussed the importance of Syria to many nations, including the U.S. It was an informative piece that also included Syria’s importance to Russia, Iran, and China, the gist being that these nations resent “unilateral approaches” of the U.S., to Olson an obvious villain, though the actual villains are the colonialists such as Britain and France, which drew the lines in the sand.
The element that makes all the Middle East important to other countries is oil, something to fight over if push comes to shove. Without that commodity being in the picture, other nations would be content to let the Muslims fight each other constantly, mostly over religion, something they’ve done for centuries. Other nations’ only interest would be in competing for the jihadists’ weapons trade.
Olson made this statement near the end of the piece: “Since many of these calamities are due to the U.S. decision to pursue a war of choice in Iraq, Americans are responsible for a goodly portion of these sad events.” All wars are wars of choice, i.e, fight or not fight, regardless of the reasons or non-reasons.
In the matter of Iraq, Olson didn’t mention that the top intelligence services of many countries, including Britain and Russia, insisted that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, but this was not a unilateral U.S. action anyway. Many other nations, especially Britain, formed the anti-Saddam coalition. The mistake was in attempting nation-building, a mistake now being seen in Afghanistan, where American GIs are routinely “back-shot” by their “friends.”
Saddam finally consented to allow inspectors back in Iraq in September 2002, after they had been denied access for some four years, while Saddam did who knows what. They returned in November 2002. From September until their return (and even after that until March 2003), Saddam could have done anything (and probably did) with his weapons, which were not found. The betting here is that they went to Syria, despite the Sunni-Shiite contention, another reason for the U.S. not to get involved in Syria.
Olson is the typical liberal analyst. By referencing “war of choice,” he actually meant “just” and “unjust” wars, as determined by any individual. But giving Olson credit for not meaning that (who knows?), it has to be remarked that the ONLY war of choice for which there is absolutely no explanation in which the U.S. has engaged since 1991 (the Kuwait thing, by any definition a “just war” sanctioned by the UN), was carried out in March-October 2011 by President Barack Hussein Obama, when he ordered the U.S. military to rain bombs and missiles on Libya.
Olson ignored Libya as if it doesn’t exist (even with its oil, sold mostly to Europe) even though the “Benghazi massacre,” which would never have happened absent Obama’s idiotic order to attack Libya in the first place, has dominated the news for seven weeks and been a primary subject in the recent debates. Instead, Olson whined about the carnage in Syria, though didn’t mention that Barack Hussein Obama raised Syrian insurrectionist hopes with his pronouncement that Syrian President Assad just had to go, and then, of course, didn’t deliver.
Even though Libya was not only not a threat to this country but had relinquished much if not all of its WMD (at least the nuclear elements) to this country, Obama wanted to bomb Qaddafi and sent his three “lady-Amazons” (Clinton, Rice, Powers) to the UN Security Council to “get permission,” completely bypassing Congress and in direct violation of both the Constitution and the War Powers Act as well as in direct contradiction to the advice of his top military officials.
The cover for this was that Qaddafi was killing his people just like Assad and all the other Muslim rulers do routinely. Somehow, Obama hasn’t noticed his responsibility regarding Syria, about the size of North Dakota. With Russia, Iran, Lebanon and China on his side, Assad pays no attention to Obama, who has disgraced the office and should have been impeached over his Libyan massacre. Now, the “Benghazi massacre” has come back to haunt him, and the only response the administration has made has consisted of one egregious lie after another.
One wonders about Obama’s motivation concerning Libya. Since he acted so erratically, it may be that he’s a hopeless narcissist, working out some sort of fantasy regarding his Commander-in-Chief position. How better to feed it than to take on a nation with a military force less than one-twentieth of one percent the size of the U.S military? He’s such a narcissist that he actually thinks he had something to do with the wasting of Osama. The book on that event will be written some day.
But Olson the liberal didn’t bother with Libya. After all, hasn’t Obama said terrorism was being defeated? Admitting Obama’s unspeakable errors regarding Libya, not the least being his administration’s intolerable lack of security for U.S. government workers there, would be unthinkable to any liberal. Yeah…Obama’s disastrous "war of choice"!
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Chauvinism or Common Sense?
WARNING! The following is a now unacceptable mishmash of chauvinism not easily tolerated by the timid mind vis-à-vis the requirements of diversity, which is the latest inhabitant to take up residence on Mt. Olympus, designated as the god-of-lunacy, that deity to which one may apply for deliverance from the horrors of unisex, now seen most prominently in the world of sports, including both those activities conducted according to the rules and the others, by far the majority.
It had to happen, not least because of Title 9, which changed the nature of the games forever, putting men in their place as unmercifully as a female divorce lawyer does in baring her teeth and all but masticating the poor male caught in her grasp. What happened, you ask? Women have invaded and will soon take over all sports enterprises in the land.
It started (not counting the redistribution to women of sports-department wealth on college/university campuses a few years back) when the gals demanded and, of course, received permission to invade male locker-rooms and interview players, thus invading their privacy amidst the smell of sweat and various liniments and the raucous remarks in the locker-room, known as the “land of the four-letter-word”…all while being sure to be properly ogled by players and TV-viewers, actually the main reason for the whole enterprise.
The big thing on campus is having lady managers for the men’s teams. Are there any male students as managers for the women’s teams? Surely not! They couldn’t lay their hands on the women. These girls are at the beck-and-call of the players and coaches, making one wonder if they have some kind of reverse-discrimination hang-up. This was never the case back in the day when men enjoyed camaraderie, the guys taking care of each other.
The lady reporters, all attractive, of course (eat your heart out, Brent Musburger), now roam the sidelines at football games to report instantaneously the grief being felt by any player traumatized by an injury or a personal problem like handling a (gasp) DUI charge. The zaniest thing, however, is the on-field halftime and game-end interviews with coaches, who have obviously been told to cooperate or else. They usually say something of magnificent wisdom like “my guys are getting beat,” and the lady interviewer treats it as something straight from…where else…Mt. Olympus, or maybe the Oracle at Delphi.
The most recent aggravation, however, is the lady play-by-play announcer or analyst, who seems to be connecting a teleprompter reading with each play and pitter-patter concerning same. The gals have never seriously played football so they understandably need help, but one hopes they will not get passionate about the action, in which case they sound like the proverbial fishwife. The ladies do play basketball and have some knowledge of the sport, but who wants to announce a women’s basketball game?
The NFL admitted it needed help when it allowed employment (or coercion) of scantily-clad “cheerleaders,” adding a bit of cheesecake to the game in case the guys get bored during the endless commercial “timeouts.” But everyone knows that has nothing to do with sports, just entertainment, so the ladies, who seem to be stopping by on their way to their regular jobs at strip joints, supply the ogling material. This also explains why the attendance is 100% for the Olympic “sport” of beach-volleyball, wherein the ladies cavort in their bikinis in the sand, even if the nearest beach is a thousand miles away. Women’s mud-wrestling will probably be next…all those clinging clothes!
Is nothing sacred anymore? The ladies do the newspaper sports-pages and write about things of which they can have little or no been-there/done-that knowledge. Okay…it’s a discrimination thing, as played out in Augusta National finally having to admit a couple of unwelcome women into membership. But it stinks, just like it stank when the social engineers insisted on integrated boot camps in the military. There are “guy” things and “gal” things, but today there are only “unisex” things, never mind that women and men are not the same biologically or emotionally or athletically. The boot camps had to be re-segregated for obvious reasons, but sports integration, unfortunately, is here to stay.
Then, there are the men who coach women’s teams and, in the vein of this subject matter, should bug out. There must be women who coach men’s teams but none readily come to mind. When the guy pats his point-guard on the derriere and sends her into the game he’s out of line, and his wife probably thinks so, too, although the money involved can look mighty good. The girls basketball coach at the University of Kentucky knocks down a cool $750,000 a year, while an associate professor might make about $50,000.
Women should coach women and men should coach men, and never the twain should meet, just as they should never meet on a battlefield. The same goes for the referees and the umpires. Nothing looks sillier than a 5-2, 110-pound woman referee staring up a 7-foot power-forward, or a 6-6 male referee staring down a 5-2 lady guard.
Okay…you were warned…call me a chauvinist! The women may have a bit of catching-up to do, but they should bust the glass backboard and take care of their own business and stop whining about equal opportunity. Nothing is equal in sports; otherwise, there would be no game.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
It had to happen, not least because of Title 9, which changed the nature of the games forever, putting men in their place as unmercifully as a female divorce lawyer does in baring her teeth and all but masticating the poor male caught in her grasp. What happened, you ask? Women have invaded and will soon take over all sports enterprises in the land.
It started (not counting the redistribution to women of sports-department wealth on college/university campuses a few years back) when the gals demanded and, of course, received permission to invade male locker-rooms and interview players, thus invading their privacy amidst the smell of sweat and various liniments and the raucous remarks in the locker-room, known as the “land of the four-letter-word”…all while being sure to be properly ogled by players and TV-viewers, actually the main reason for the whole enterprise.
The big thing on campus is having lady managers for the men’s teams. Are there any male students as managers for the women’s teams? Surely not! They couldn’t lay their hands on the women. These girls are at the beck-and-call of the players and coaches, making one wonder if they have some kind of reverse-discrimination hang-up. This was never the case back in the day when men enjoyed camaraderie, the guys taking care of each other.
The lady reporters, all attractive, of course (eat your heart out, Brent Musburger), now roam the sidelines at football games to report instantaneously the grief being felt by any player traumatized by an injury or a personal problem like handling a (gasp) DUI charge. The zaniest thing, however, is the on-field halftime and game-end interviews with coaches, who have obviously been told to cooperate or else. They usually say something of magnificent wisdom like “my guys are getting beat,” and the lady interviewer treats it as something straight from…where else…Mt. Olympus, or maybe the Oracle at Delphi.
The most recent aggravation, however, is the lady play-by-play announcer or analyst, who seems to be connecting a teleprompter reading with each play and pitter-patter concerning same. The gals have never seriously played football so they understandably need help, but one hopes they will not get passionate about the action, in which case they sound like the proverbial fishwife. The ladies do play basketball and have some knowledge of the sport, but who wants to announce a women’s basketball game?
The NFL admitted it needed help when it allowed employment (or coercion) of scantily-clad “cheerleaders,” adding a bit of cheesecake to the game in case the guys get bored during the endless commercial “timeouts.” But everyone knows that has nothing to do with sports, just entertainment, so the ladies, who seem to be stopping by on their way to their regular jobs at strip joints, supply the ogling material. This also explains why the attendance is 100% for the Olympic “sport” of beach-volleyball, wherein the ladies cavort in their bikinis in the sand, even if the nearest beach is a thousand miles away. Women’s mud-wrestling will probably be next…all those clinging clothes!
Is nothing sacred anymore? The ladies do the newspaper sports-pages and write about things of which they can have little or no been-there/done-that knowledge. Okay…it’s a discrimination thing, as played out in Augusta National finally having to admit a couple of unwelcome women into membership. But it stinks, just like it stank when the social engineers insisted on integrated boot camps in the military. There are “guy” things and “gal” things, but today there are only “unisex” things, never mind that women and men are not the same biologically or emotionally or athletically. The boot camps had to be re-segregated for obvious reasons, but sports integration, unfortunately, is here to stay.
Then, there are the men who coach women’s teams and, in the vein of this subject matter, should bug out. There must be women who coach men’s teams but none readily come to mind. When the guy pats his point-guard on the derriere and sends her into the game he’s out of line, and his wife probably thinks so, too, although the money involved can look mighty good. The girls basketball coach at the University of Kentucky knocks down a cool $750,000 a year, while an associate professor might make about $50,000.
Women should coach women and men should coach men, and never the twain should meet, just as they should never meet on a battlefield. The same goes for the referees and the umpires. Nothing looks sillier than a 5-2, 110-pound woman referee staring up a 7-foot power-forward, or a 6-6 male referee staring down a 5-2 lady guard.
Okay…you were warned…call me a chauvinist! The women may have a bit of catching-up to do, but they should bust the glass backboard and take care of their own business and stop whining about equal opportunity. Nothing is equal in sports; otherwise, there would be no game.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Thursday, October 25, 2012
DNC Memorandum #11
From the office of the chairWOMAN, 25 October 2012
**Listen up!!! There’s been some complaining account the recording “I am Woman” being played throughout the building every hour at 90 decibels. This complaining is to stop. The reason for this noise is that everyone is to be reminded that a major POTUS campaign theme is the “Romney War on Women.” POTUS’s campaigning with Sandra Fluke and his insistence that she speak at the convention are paying off, even though I had to shorten my remarks. A new program is in the works called Obamacondomcare and will become a part of Obamacare after the reelection. Under the act, a doctor refusing to do an abortion at any fetus-stage will face 30 years in prison, and a daily government-allocation will be made to all women older than five years of two super-slimy-fail-safe-exotic condoms, featuring the two-second automatic-unrolling feature for overwhelming passion- attack panic. Also, a billion dollars will be budgeted for research into converting the pregnancy problem from women to men, who, even in POTUS’s new homosexual marriage-mode, cannot conceive and therefore actually be married.
**Be WARNED that any mention of the film “Innocence of Muslims” in any town-hall or other meeting will be grounds for drastic discipline (even criminal charges) or outright termination (job, not life, for bimbo interns). POTUS and his people, such as State Secretary Clinton, have not yet devised the proper accounting for what happened in Benghazi (massacre, for recent Harvard grads). If any participant mentions that POTUS and Clinton have been “all over the map” on this, remind him/her that POTUS said Romney had been “all over the map,” too. For obvious reasons, the accounting will be made after the reelection and since it is an in-house accounting will make POTUS appear as commander-in-chief of the whole world while leading from behind, a brand-new concept not yet understood by the hoi polloi. Do NOT try to explain this concept. Three professors at MIT have worked on it for a year and recently were discovered baying at the moon in Harvard Square.
**Door-to-door canvassing is now top-priority. Since there have been reports of residents being traumatized by rings and tattoos, this is the new rule: Nose-tongue-eyebrow-navel-pinkie-lip-nipple- and other rings must never be in evidence, requiring removal of or otherwise hiding them. Long sleeves and full-length pants are to be worn in the case of tattoos on legs and arms, and turtlenecks must be worn to hide neck-tattoos, popular now. In the Bible-belt, there’s to be no cleavage shown except in venues such as men’s service clubs, in which case there’s no limit and staffers may wear Monica-pins, as well. In the rest of the country, most anything goes, though bikinis are not allowed. The ring business also accrues to safety, since two heavily ringed Howard-Dean canvassers were struck by lightning in Kansas in 2004 and didn’t survive.
**There have been further questions about Senator Reid’s assertion that Romney has paid no taxes for ten years, notwithstanding elements that sort of refute his claim, such as tax returns, making Reid either loony-tunes or a humongous liar. As it was in August, a request has been made that the DNC find Reid’s informant, since in the pressing business of the Senate and time-consuming vacations the senator can’t remember who it was. The only response (anonymous) I’ve received designated his informant as “a little bird,” which I did not find amusing. So, a tire-gauge and light-bulb personally signed by POTUS will be awarded to the staffer who solves this problem.
**Rumors circulating around the bottled-water keg (D.C. water unsafe) and non-salt, non-trans-fat, non-hamburger (eating grease okay if Senator Biden does), non-hotdog, non-dairy-product-of-any-kind, non-chocolate, non-smoking (smoking okay if Obama lights up), veggie-fortified, yogurt-enhanced snack-bar and body-mass-chart, carbon-cap-graph, endangered-species-obituary-wall-chart, blue/red-state-map, and Bush/BP/Limbaugh/Romney-dartboard that Candy Crowley will replace VPOTUS on the ticket account her sterling outing of Romney as a liar in the town-hall debate are untrue. A consulting firm determined that, while she possessed gravitas, she lacked the VPOTUS smirk used so effectively in the Veep debate. The rumor that I referred to it as the “jerk-smirk” is untrue and I will not say that again. Also, the rumor that VPOTUS plagiarized the smirk from David Letterman is untrue, as is the claim that Letterman told a gorgeous assistant in a usual tete-a-tete (use your imagination) that VPOTUS would wreck his jaw trying to emulate it.
**On the obvious assurance by the pollsters that POTUS will remain POTUS after the election, the usual jockeying for positions in the new Obama administration could be distracting. Do NOT be distracted but feel free to recommend me for any cabinet post, preferably State or Defense but NOT Homeland Security or Labor. My hair’s as good as Hillary’s any day. Come to think of it, so is a Golden Retriever’s. I have the credentials, not the least important being my second job as a Congressperson, though it doesn’t pay as much as DNC chairWOMAN. Note the sacrifice! Since to the victor belongs the spoils, read up on cronyism and act thusly in the coming days. POTUS is said to be planning a novel, win or lose, on the subject after the reelection, with the working title “Solyndra & the Czars.” His co-writer is said to be Chinese, recommended by the sculptor of the MLK Jr statue on the Mall, and rumored to have run the company that ran the POTUS/czar’s solar-panel company out of business.
**On the unthinkable and wholly impossible chance that POTUS will lose the election, be advised that there will be no severance pay and no laudatory referrals account the DNC predictably being blamed, thus making a referral worthless anyway. I will still be in Congress but don’t come near my office since all my time will be used in planning how to take Pelosi’s job, which pays more.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
**Listen up!!! There’s been some complaining account the recording “I am Woman” being played throughout the building every hour at 90 decibels. This complaining is to stop. The reason for this noise is that everyone is to be reminded that a major POTUS campaign theme is the “Romney War on Women.” POTUS’s campaigning with Sandra Fluke and his insistence that she speak at the convention are paying off, even though I had to shorten my remarks. A new program is in the works called Obamacondomcare and will become a part of Obamacare after the reelection. Under the act, a doctor refusing to do an abortion at any fetus-stage will face 30 years in prison, and a daily government-allocation will be made to all women older than five years of two super-slimy-fail-safe-exotic condoms, featuring the two-second automatic-unrolling feature for overwhelming passion- attack panic. Also, a billion dollars will be budgeted for research into converting the pregnancy problem from women to men, who, even in POTUS’s new homosexual marriage-mode, cannot conceive and therefore actually be married.
**Be WARNED that any mention of the film “Innocence of Muslims” in any town-hall or other meeting will be grounds for drastic discipline (even criminal charges) or outright termination (job, not life, for bimbo interns). POTUS and his people, such as State Secretary Clinton, have not yet devised the proper accounting for what happened in Benghazi (massacre, for recent Harvard grads). If any participant mentions that POTUS and Clinton have been “all over the map” on this, remind him/her that POTUS said Romney had been “all over the map,” too. For obvious reasons, the accounting will be made after the reelection and since it is an in-house accounting will make POTUS appear as commander-in-chief of the whole world while leading from behind, a brand-new concept not yet understood by the hoi polloi. Do NOT try to explain this concept. Three professors at MIT have worked on it for a year and recently were discovered baying at the moon in Harvard Square.
**Door-to-door canvassing is now top-priority. Since there have been reports of residents being traumatized by rings and tattoos, this is the new rule: Nose-tongue-eyebrow-navel-pinkie-lip-nipple- and other rings must never be in evidence, requiring removal of or otherwise hiding them. Long sleeves and full-length pants are to be worn in the case of tattoos on legs and arms, and turtlenecks must be worn to hide neck-tattoos, popular now. In the Bible-belt, there’s to be no cleavage shown except in venues such as men’s service clubs, in which case there’s no limit and staffers may wear Monica-pins, as well. In the rest of the country, most anything goes, though bikinis are not allowed. The ring business also accrues to safety, since two heavily ringed Howard-Dean canvassers were struck by lightning in Kansas in 2004 and didn’t survive.
**There have been further questions about Senator Reid’s assertion that Romney has paid no taxes for ten years, notwithstanding elements that sort of refute his claim, such as tax returns, making Reid either loony-tunes or a humongous liar. As it was in August, a request has been made that the DNC find Reid’s informant, since in the pressing business of the Senate and time-consuming vacations the senator can’t remember who it was. The only response (anonymous) I’ve received designated his informant as “a little bird,” which I did not find amusing. So, a tire-gauge and light-bulb personally signed by POTUS will be awarded to the staffer who solves this problem.
**Rumors circulating around the bottled-water keg (D.C. water unsafe) and non-salt, non-trans-fat, non-hamburger (eating grease okay if Senator Biden does), non-hotdog, non-dairy-product-of-any-kind, non-chocolate, non-smoking (smoking okay if Obama lights up), veggie-fortified, yogurt-enhanced snack-bar and body-mass-chart, carbon-cap-graph, endangered-species-obituary-wall-chart, blue/red-state-map, and Bush/BP/Limbaugh/Romney-dartboard that Candy Crowley will replace VPOTUS on the ticket account her sterling outing of Romney as a liar in the town-hall debate are untrue. A consulting firm determined that, while she possessed gravitas, she lacked the VPOTUS smirk used so effectively in the Veep debate. The rumor that I referred to it as the “jerk-smirk” is untrue and I will not say that again. Also, the rumor that VPOTUS plagiarized the smirk from David Letterman is untrue, as is the claim that Letterman told a gorgeous assistant in a usual tete-a-tete (use your imagination) that VPOTUS would wreck his jaw trying to emulate it.
**On the obvious assurance by the pollsters that POTUS will remain POTUS after the election, the usual jockeying for positions in the new Obama administration could be distracting. Do NOT be distracted but feel free to recommend me for any cabinet post, preferably State or Defense but NOT Homeland Security or Labor. My hair’s as good as Hillary’s any day. Come to think of it, so is a Golden Retriever’s. I have the credentials, not the least important being my second job as a Congressperson, though it doesn’t pay as much as DNC chairWOMAN. Note the sacrifice! Since to the victor belongs the spoils, read up on cronyism and act thusly in the coming days. POTUS is said to be planning a novel, win or lose, on the subject after the reelection, with the working title “Solyndra & the Czars.” His co-writer is said to be Chinese, recommended by the sculptor of the MLK Jr statue on the Mall, and rumored to have run the company that ran the POTUS/czar’s solar-panel company out of business.
**On the unthinkable and wholly impossible chance that POTUS will lose the election, be advised that there will be no severance pay and no laudatory referrals account the DNC predictably being blamed, thus making a referral worthless anyway. I will still be in Congress but don’t come near my office since all my time will be used in planning how to take Pelosi’s job, which pays more.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Sunday, October 21, 2012
Newest Can of Worms
The new can of worms now being opened in the Middle East is the direct result of one of President Obama’s most idiotic moves, namely, the unprovoked attack on Libya last year that he ordered and then went on vacation in Brazil to announce to the world, claiming earlier that the “little war” would be over in days, not weeks. It lasted seven months and went far beyond the initial aim, accomplished in four days, of establishing a “no-fly zone.” The administration has never divulged what it knows about the Libyan deaths caused by the U.S. and NATO, i.e., if it knows anything…or cares.
The act of making war on Libya was whitewashed under the rubric of saving the Libyans from their dictator/tyrant of two generations – Moammar Qaddafi. This is what the ladies the president sent to Washington presented to the Security Council, which, with key abstentions, said “Go get Qaddafi, we don’t like him, either.” Why should Russia or China care about Libya, population 2 million less than that of New York City, which sold its oil to Europe (not the U.S.) anyway?
Defense Secretary Gates, who had inveighed mightily against this tragic mistake and was in Russia when the dear leader announced his “little war,” pronounced it as done “on the fly.” Translated, this means without sufficient planning. As transparent as it was, his statement understated the fact – total disaster not surprisingly perpetrated by a president who probably doesn’t yet know a salute from an obscene gesture…or care to know.
Now, as Obama’s mentor, the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah (God damn America) Wright, would insist, the chickens have come home to roost. The problem: how to deal with insurgents/rebels to whom fighting (sometimes just each other) is all they know to do. Libya is a mess, for which the administration had/has virtually no understanding, as evidenced by the overwhelming incompetence recently exhibited regarding the safeguarding of American workers in that benighted country.
Four Americans died, one, the ambassador, probably tortured, as well. It’s obvious that the administration (Obama) knew exactly what happened but rather than admit it, simply manufactured a falsehood of immense proportions, blaming a planned terrorist attack on a movie about Mohammad, progenitor of the cult of Islam. Then, the apparatchiks like UN Ambassador Rice and press-spokesman Carney were sent out to TV-land to spout the line. It didn’t work and now the citizenry knows all about what happened – or at least as much as the administration, which, actually, may not be much at all.
But…what to do with those pesky insurrectionists who now have nothing to do in Libya except fight each other, which does get old after a while, especially for the al Qaeda types to whom beheading is such a joy. Thanks to all the goodie-good nations in 2011, they have more weapons of all kinds than they know what to do with, so why not collect the weapons, go on over to Syria (about the size of North Dakota) and join the rebels there – Muslims against Muslims…perfectly normal and in a small area of 23 million people – just the right size and type for close-up killing.
The Libyan “little war” was over in October 2011, but the Libyan government (such as it was, if anybody knew) was already parleying the next month with folks like the Turks in the interest of making Syrian President Assad get out of Dodge (okay, Damascus), preferably with his toes turned-up. The latest news is that this is what’s happening – sorta like al Qaeda bivouacking with the dissidents (though no one knows one from the other, with regard to agendas).
So, in April this year, the Lebanese impounded a ship headed for Tripoli, Lebanon, that was loaded with weapons from – you guessed it – Libya. The weapons were headed for the Syrian rebels and had to be transported across Lebanon, now under the control of the Sunni Muslims, no friends of Assad, who leans on Iran’s Ahmadinejad and the Shiites.
But why not just land the weapons, which bore various Libyan markings, in a Syrian seaport – Lattackia or Tartous, both close to Aleppo, Syria’s largest city? Don’t the Iranians land their ships in those ports? Well…yes, but Aleppo has been under attack by the Syrian military for a long time and Syria still has an air force that could wipe out any movement around either port. As the weapons are smuggled into Syria through Lebanon, the Middle East will become even more of an international catastrophe going somewhere over there to happen.
All of this is to say that if Obama’s attack, with his glorious new military tactic called “leading from behind” (the mother of all oxymorons), had never happened, this Libya/al-Qaeda intrusion vis-a-vis Syria would not be threatening world peace today. Qaddafi would have finished his purge, a very routine happening in Muslim-controlled countries (as in Syria now and Egypt and Tunisia earlier) and Obama wouldn’t be up to his ears in lies.
As it is, world leaders must have been wondering ever since Obama, with absolutely no provocation and no approval of Congress, decided to jump Libya – sorta like an elephant settling an argument with a gnat. He can’t come clean on this because there was NO reason for the Libyan massacre, either in March – October 2011 or that of the Americans on 11 September.
This nation is leaderless.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
The act of making war on Libya was whitewashed under the rubric of saving the Libyans from their dictator/tyrant of two generations – Moammar Qaddafi. This is what the ladies the president sent to Washington presented to the Security Council, which, with key abstentions, said “Go get Qaddafi, we don’t like him, either.” Why should Russia or China care about Libya, population 2 million less than that of New York City, which sold its oil to Europe (not the U.S.) anyway?
Defense Secretary Gates, who had inveighed mightily against this tragic mistake and was in Russia when the dear leader announced his “little war,” pronounced it as done “on the fly.” Translated, this means without sufficient planning. As transparent as it was, his statement understated the fact – total disaster not surprisingly perpetrated by a president who probably doesn’t yet know a salute from an obscene gesture…or care to know.
Now, as Obama’s mentor, the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah (God damn America) Wright, would insist, the chickens have come home to roost. The problem: how to deal with insurgents/rebels to whom fighting (sometimes just each other) is all they know to do. Libya is a mess, for which the administration had/has virtually no understanding, as evidenced by the overwhelming incompetence recently exhibited regarding the safeguarding of American workers in that benighted country.
Four Americans died, one, the ambassador, probably tortured, as well. It’s obvious that the administration (Obama) knew exactly what happened but rather than admit it, simply manufactured a falsehood of immense proportions, blaming a planned terrorist attack on a movie about Mohammad, progenitor of the cult of Islam. Then, the apparatchiks like UN Ambassador Rice and press-spokesman Carney were sent out to TV-land to spout the line. It didn’t work and now the citizenry knows all about what happened – or at least as much as the administration, which, actually, may not be much at all.
But…what to do with those pesky insurrectionists who now have nothing to do in Libya except fight each other, which does get old after a while, especially for the al Qaeda types to whom beheading is such a joy. Thanks to all the goodie-good nations in 2011, they have more weapons of all kinds than they know what to do with, so why not collect the weapons, go on over to Syria (about the size of North Dakota) and join the rebels there – Muslims against Muslims…perfectly normal and in a small area of 23 million people – just the right size and type for close-up killing.
The Libyan “little war” was over in October 2011, but the Libyan government (such as it was, if anybody knew) was already parleying the next month with folks like the Turks in the interest of making Syrian President Assad get out of Dodge (okay, Damascus), preferably with his toes turned-up. The latest news is that this is what’s happening – sorta like al Qaeda bivouacking with the dissidents (though no one knows one from the other, with regard to agendas).
So, in April this year, the Lebanese impounded a ship headed for Tripoli, Lebanon, that was loaded with weapons from – you guessed it – Libya. The weapons were headed for the Syrian rebels and had to be transported across Lebanon, now under the control of the Sunni Muslims, no friends of Assad, who leans on Iran’s Ahmadinejad and the Shiites.
But why not just land the weapons, which bore various Libyan markings, in a Syrian seaport – Lattackia or Tartous, both close to Aleppo, Syria’s largest city? Don’t the Iranians land their ships in those ports? Well…yes, but Aleppo has been under attack by the Syrian military for a long time and Syria still has an air force that could wipe out any movement around either port. As the weapons are smuggled into Syria through Lebanon, the Middle East will become even more of an international catastrophe going somewhere over there to happen.
All of this is to say that if Obama’s attack, with his glorious new military tactic called “leading from behind” (the mother of all oxymorons), had never happened, this Libya/al-Qaeda intrusion vis-a-vis Syria would not be threatening world peace today. Qaddafi would have finished his purge, a very routine happening in Muslim-controlled countries (as in Syria now and Egypt and Tunisia earlier) and Obama wouldn’t be up to his ears in lies.
As it is, world leaders must have been wondering ever since Obama, with absolutely no provocation and no approval of Congress, decided to jump Libya – sorta like an elephant settling an argument with a gnat. He can’t come clean on this because there was NO reason for the Libyan massacre, either in March – October 2011 or that of the Americans on 11 September.
This nation is leaderless.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Prez-Debate-II Recap
Obama and Romney sort of went mano a mano in their debate on the sixteenth, a bit of refreshment from the blinking lights and beeps signaling when a candidate can and cannot express himself. The vast majority of prepared questions were not asked, though one could never have believed they would be used. Some eleven or so questions were used and read by participants in the Town-Hall setting.
Moderator Candy Crowley of CNN (Obama cable-supporter) did fairly well although she made a critical error in trying to neutralize a humongous Obama lie concerning the Benghazi attack on 11 September. I watched as he and State Secretary Clinton appeared in the Rose Garden on 12 September and solemnly declared that the Benghazi slaughter was due to passions aroused by a film that Obama made sure everyone understood was made by an American.
Since he mentioned much later something about terrorists, Crowley tried to connect the two statements, which only made matters worse for Obama since it indicated that he knew the actual circumstances surrounding the Benghazi attack; otherwise, he would have had no reason to mention terrorists. He should admonish whoever prepared his remarks, and Crowley later acknowledged her perfidy in attempting to advance the cover-up.
Whereas President Nixon tried to cover up a simple burglary in 1974, Obama tried to cover up an incident in which four U.S. government employees were killed. Nixon resigned. Obama flies above an “insignificant” event like the betrayal of U.S. workers. Nixon was at the mercy of a democrat Congress, 56% majority in both houses, but Obama has the Senate in his pocket. Even worse, UN Ambassador Rice was sent out to perpetuate Obama’s humongous lie all over TV at least four days after the truth was known. Benghazi-gate is a much worse cover-up than Watergate, by any measure.
Strangely, as always seems the case, the moderators in the debates are culled from left- or far-left-leaning networks, respectively this year, Jim Lehrer (PBS), Martha Raddatz (ABC), Candy Crowley (CNN), and Bob Schieffer (CBS). The latter three networks are firmly in the Obama corner, as any valid consensus of observers would indicate. Indeed, a Raddatz ex-husband heads the Obama Federal Communications Commission and both she and her current husband have been connected to PBS, for which he is still a 30-year employee. ABC’s head guru, George Stephanopoulos, was Bill Clinton’s chief-of-staff.
Romney put to rest any question as to who is the better speaker, as well as who thinks better on his feet. Obama came out swinging but he was backed into his corner by Romney over such things as the energy quagmire, the huge added costs to the taxpayers of Obamacare, and the results of lowering tax-rates. Obama has no background in economics but Romney knows chapter-and-verse regarding the financial systems worldwide and how they work.
Romney’s fluidity of speech, sometimes almost too rapid-fire, contrasted sharply with Obama’s broken sentences, pauses apparently to decide what to say, and general unease, perhaps even anger. Romney kept battering Obama’s record for the last four years, particularly with respect to his energy policies, magnified by forcing Obama’s hand in the matter of his granting less than half the number of licenses for drilling, compared to preceding years.
Obama tried the lame claim that 5 million jobs had been created during his tenure but Romney shot it down by mentioning the 5 million jobs lost – zero accomplishment. Romney also bore down on the fact that the actual unemployment rate is 10.7%, for which Obama had no answer, not even arguiung the current untrue claim of 7.8%. Obama had no answer to Romney’s correct assertion that instead of cutting the deficit in half, as he promised in 2008, Obama has doubled it.
Perhaps the most amazing and totally unexpected statement made by Obama was that he took responsibility for the now-known denial of on-site requests for beefed-up security for U.S. workers in Libya that were made over a substantial period. State Secretary Clinton had already thrown herself under the bus for that debacle in her statement in Peru the day before the debate. Did Obama not know that, or was he just pushed to the wall by Romney and had to morph into Trumanism (the buck stops here). Throwing himself on his sword was totally out of character, this from the guy who said policemen acted stupidly and supposedly has no clue about the “Fast and Furious” botched U.S.-to-Mexico gun-running scheme that has cost many lives.
This reminds of how things are done in this administration. Obama ordered the U.S. military to carry out an unprovoked attack on Libya, a sovereign nation, last year and announced his action in Brazil, whereupon he went on vacation for nearly a week while Libyans were dying. Clinton took responsibility for Libya but announced it well over a month after the fact not in Washington but in Peru, safely out of the country. This is exponential weakness. After his Rose Garden deception, Obama took off for Las Vegas and points west (one activity a silly talk-show – entertainment) while Americans were dead and the Libya situation required the commander-in-chief, as Obama often alludes to himself, to be on the job in Washington. Disgusting!
This election is a turning point in the nation’s history. Will the U.S. slide into socialism conducted by weak-kneed leaders, or will it return to its roots?
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Moderator Candy Crowley of CNN (Obama cable-supporter) did fairly well although she made a critical error in trying to neutralize a humongous Obama lie concerning the Benghazi attack on 11 September. I watched as he and State Secretary Clinton appeared in the Rose Garden on 12 September and solemnly declared that the Benghazi slaughter was due to passions aroused by a film that Obama made sure everyone understood was made by an American.
Since he mentioned much later something about terrorists, Crowley tried to connect the two statements, which only made matters worse for Obama since it indicated that he knew the actual circumstances surrounding the Benghazi attack; otherwise, he would have had no reason to mention terrorists. He should admonish whoever prepared his remarks, and Crowley later acknowledged her perfidy in attempting to advance the cover-up.
Whereas President Nixon tried to cover up a simple burglary in 1974, Obama tried to cover up an incident in which four U.S. government employees were killed. Nixon resigned. Obama flies above an “insignificant” event like the betrayal of U.S. workers. Nixon was at the mercy of a democrat Congress, 56% majority in both houses, but Obama has the Senate in his pocket. Even worse, UN Ambassador Rice was sent out to perpetuate Obama’s humongous lie all over TV at least four days after the truth was known. Benghazi-gate is a much worse cover-up than Watergate, by any measure.
Strangely, as always seems the case, the moderators in the debates are culled from left- or far-left-leaning networks, respectively this year, Jim Lehrer (PBS), Martha Raddatz (ABC), Candy Crowley (CNN), and Bob Schieffer (CBS). The latter three networks are firmly in the Obama corner, as any valid consensus of observers would indicate. Indeed, a Raddatz ex-husband heads the Obama Federal Communications Commission and both she and her current husband have been connected to PBS, for which he is still a 30-year employee. ABC’s head guru, George Stephanopoulos, was Bill Clinton’s chief-of-staff.
Romney put to rest any question as to who is the better speaker, as well as who thinks better on his feet. Obama came out swinging but he was backed into his corner by Romney over such things as the energy quagmire, the huge added costs to the taxpayers of Obamacare, and the results of lowering tax-rates. Obama has no background in economics but Romney knows chapter-and-verse regarding the financial systems worldwide and how they work.
Romney’s fluidity of speech, sometimes almost too rapid-fire, contrasted sharply with Obama’s broken sentences, pauses apparently to decide what to say, and general unease, perhaps even anger. Romney kept battering Obama’s record for the last four years, particularly with respect to his energy policies, magnified by forcing Obama’s hand in the matter of his granting less than half the number of licenses for drilling, compared to preceding years.
Obama tried the lame claim that 5 million jobs had been created during his tenure but Romney shot it down by mentioning the 5 million jobs lost – zero accomplishment. Romney also bore down on the fact that the actual unemployment rate is 10.7%, for which Obama had no answer, not even arguiung the current untrue claim of 7.8%. Obama had no answer to Romney’s correct assertion that instead of cutting the deficit in half, as he promised in 2008, Obama has doubled it.
Perhaps the most amazing and totally unexpected statement made by Obama was that he took responsibility for the now-known denial of on-site requests for beefed-up security for U.S. workers in Libya that were made over a substantial period. State Secretary Clinton had already thrown herself under the bus for that debacle in her statement in Peru the day before the debate. Did Obama not know that, or was he just pushed to the wall by Romney and had to morph into Trumanism (the buck stops here). Throwing himself on his sword was totally out of character, this from the guy who said policemen acted stupidly and supposedly has no clue about the “Fast and Furious” botched U.S.-to-Mexico gun-running scheme that has cost many lives.
This reminds of how things are done in this administration. Obama ordered the U.S. military to carry out an unprovoked attack on Libya, a sovereign nation, last year and announced his action in Brazil, whereupon he went on vacation for nearly a week while Libyans were dying. Clinton took responsibility for Libya but announced it well over a month after the fact not in Washington but in Peru, safely out of the country. This is exponential weakness. After his Rose Garden deception, Obama took off for Las Vegas and points west (one activity a silly talk-show – entertainment) while Americans were dead and the Libya situation required the commander-in-chief, as Obama often alludes to himself, to be on the job in Washington. Disgusting!
This election is a turning point in the nation’s history. Will the U.S. slide into socialism conducted by weak-kneed leaders, or will it return to its roots?
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Saturday, October 13, 2012
Veep Debate Recap
If a wise man has an argument with a fool, the fool only rages and laughs, and there is no quiet. Proverbs 29:9.
The vice presidential debate (actually not a debate, just a series of arguments of sorts) was boring at best, insulting at worst. It was boring in the sense that the only consistent passion shown was that of Biden, who was ardently in love with himself and showed it. It was insulting in the sense that the rudeness exuding from Biden indicated that he judged the public to be so shallow that it would approve of his waspishness and count it as macho-stuff, the heavyweight rhetorically annihilating the bantamweight.
On substance, the contest was probably a draw, mostly because Ryan was far too polite to either nail Obama substantively on issues such as Libya or allowed the constant interruptions by Biden to disrupt any logical flow of facts and ideas. In this, moderator Raddatz was Biden’s accomplice. She could have at least occasionally told him to shut up but she didn’t. A former Raddatz-husband is the top dog at the federal Communications Commission and her current husband has been with National Public Radio for some 30 years. She also worked for NPR back in the day and is now employed by Obama-propaganda-arm ABC, so the liberal bias was/is obvious as expected.
The aggravating element connected with the whole process has to do with the much ballyhooed “rehearsals” conducted in preparation for the event. One could hope that the candidates have a good enough grasp of the total picture to simply say what they know, without having to perform by rehearsal-oriented rote.
Yeah…this is done as a safeguard against making gaffes, but it provides an artificiality that gives the lie to the whole shooting match. In any case, neither candidate seemed to have profited from his “rehearsals,” since neither did all that well, stammered around constantly and gave the impression that he couldn’t remember what he was supposed to say. Ryan, who is known as a “facts-and-figures” man, did poorly because he was either rattled by the constant interruptions or just forgot. Everyone expected Biden to be Biden, so his rambling didn’t register as a minus. He was supposed to be obnoxious and not too well informed. He delivered.
Since complete sentences – without the ums and ahs and backups-to-start-over – were often rare, even preparing a transcript would be hard to do, much less understand, but the body-language was instructive. Obama was sort of like a totem-pole in the first debate so it was obvious that Biden meant to hog the show, belittle Ryan and chose to use the smile/smirk/eye-roll approach. Sometimes he even laughed while Ryan was speaking. He made a jackass of himself, just as did Gore in 2000 when he was attacked by the “sigh syndrome” when George Bush was speaking.
Perhaps the most telling point made by Ryan was that President Reagan and Speaker O’Neill, a powerful democrat, worked together in the 1980s to bring about very good things culminating in the demise of the Soviet Union and a strong reconfigured military. It’s obvious that total gridlock faces the nation if Obama is reelected since his idea of governance (socialism) allows for no compromises and is totally antithetical to the American “enterprise” system that has made the nation the freest and strongest in history.
Strangely, Ryan didn’t mention that the top and bottom tax-rates when Reagan took office were, respectively, 69% and 14% but only 28% and 15% when he left office. This brought on the prosperity of the 1990s but President Clinton helped to create the downturn beginning in 1999 when he got the top rate raised to nearly 40% in 1993.
On the day before the debate, administration witnesses under oath made it plain in a House hearing conducted by Representative Issa that the State Department repeatedly denied requests for beefed-up security in Libya long before the Benghazi massacre. Ryan could have hammered that fact but he didn’t, either because he wasn’t aware of the hearing testimony or was too nice to employ plain facts.
Biden, who should have known within two days of the massacre that it was a terrorist attack, blamed the intelligence community for the administration’s bungling and said “we” didn’t know about the requests for extra help. He didn’t say who “we” referenced but press-guy Carney said the day after that Biden meant himself and the president. In other words, Biden, speaking for the president, threw Clinton under the bus…or he lied. Clinton had already thrown her staff to the wolves. What an unspeakable mess!
All the back-and-forth about Social Security and Medicare was just smoke, neither Biden nor Ryan making much of anything clear. Actually, there are no absolute details, just frameworks within which reform must be accomplished. Obamacare stands as it is and Ryan did make the case for doing something on the basis of everything from nursing homes to physicians opting out of serving old people if the plan isn’t changed.
Biden laughed his way through the whole thing, blowing off Ryan just like Obama through sheer arrogance and total detachment tried to do to Romney. It didn’t work because the intensity of his disdain for his opponent was greater than Obama’s, just in a different way. People despise condescension, and may well blow off Obama/Biden, the nasty-boys, in November.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Obama/Clinton Stonewall, Misread Syria
One can be thankful for C-Span. Through the years, I’ve watched especially the hearings held in Congress, with all their warts and foibles. I watched Ted Kennedy skewer Dr. James Holsinger, Bush 43’s eminently qualified nominee for surgeon-general, providing an example of the arrogant jackassery possible, exampled also by Joe Biden when he told Attorney General Gonzales, “I’ll be watching you, buddy,” or words to that effect.
In 1954, I repaired to the lobby of the local hotel in the evenings to watch the Army-McCarthy hearings (probably replays), the best entertainment in town though not on C-Span, of course. One of the most enlightening hearings was the House hearing regarding Katrina, the one all democrat members of the committee avoided, and for good reason. Truth can be a hard thing to swallow.
C-Span did everyone a favor this week in airing the hearings conducted by Congressman Issa concerning the catastrophe at Benghazi, in which the ambassador to Libya and three other Americans were murdered on 11 September in what was known immediately by the people on the ground as a well planned and orchestrated terrorist attack, something the administration, in the face of an abundance of intelligence, labeled long after the fact as a “protest” engendered by a movie trailer allegedly insulting Mohammad, though it merely described the man accurately.
An army officer and three State Department staffers, one an ambassador, were the witnesses in the segment of the hearing that I saw. With the exception of the lieutenant colonel, they were the obvious scapegoats sent out by the administration to do their duty and take their places “under the bus.” Their discomfiture could have been avoided if their superiors had stepped up to the plate and taken the responsibility for an event that competence on their part could have prevented.
Instead, one remembers the scene in the Rose Garden shortly after the massacre, when State Secretary Clinton and President Obama appeared to publicly consign the blame for the whole affair to an American’s film about Mohammad. As is his wont, the president blamed some part of this country concerning a tragedy – this time an individual – for being bad, another of his ways for apologizing for the very existence of the U.S.
Obama might as well have said that the Americans deserved to die because Mohammad was insulted and that free speech that decries Islam is a bad thing no matter how true and shouldn’t be allowed. Both he and Clinton, who made the same fraudulent case in other venues, certainly knew within at least two days how inordinately untrue their claim was, but they sent out UN Ambassador Rice and press-apparatchik Carney all over TV to spew the BIG LIE days after they had to know better.
Clinton, Carney and Rice should have been the witnesses in the hearing but it would do no good to call them because the president doubtlessly would invoke executive privilege in foreclosing that possibility. Or, Director of Intelligence Clapper might be called but the same thing would probably happen. These people are above the fray and will not fall upon their swords.
The lesser ones are expected to do the sword-number. After all, the term “terrorism” is not allowed in this administration. As Homeland Security Chief Napolitano insisted long ago, there’s no such thing as a “terrorist” – too harsh a term that she replaced with “man-caused disaster.” So, what happened in Benghazi was carried out by “man-caused disasters.”
The apparatchiks in the hearing, forced to tell the truth under oath, indicated that requests for more security forces in Libya had been ignored or denied for months before the slaughter. They indicated that the mishandling was not a matter of funding, of which there was plenty to meet all the necessities. The buck, of course, gets its first stop on Clinton’s desk and its second stop on Obama’s (as President Truman’s ghost would have it), except in this case the buck stops nowhere. It’s just “out there,” floating around in bloated-bureaucracy-la-la-land.
Congressman Kucinich, in a prepared speech, made the most telling points, especially that the Libya mess was fomented by the U.S. in the first place through an un-Constitutional act by the president, a fellow democrat, in simply on his own ordering the U.S. military to attack a sovereign nation in 2011 for no reason. Libya, with a population two million less than that of New York City, was a threat to no one.
Now, the president has dispatched some 150 military operatives to Jordan, next-door to Syria, where civil war rages, something in which this country must not be drawn. According to the Associated Press of January 2011, $100 million was added to the regular $363 million allocated by the U.S. government to Jordan, so how could Jordan’s King Abdullah say “no,” when he probably hates the whole impingement upon his nation?
Obama thought he could change the government of Libya and show his power, with the result being, as Lieutenant Colonel Andy Wood said in the hearing, the strengthening of Al Qaeda, not Libya or the U.S. What does Obama propose for Syria? Chances for his defeat in November seem slim but four more years of his chaotic, dangerous and unpredictable behavior is unthinkable.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
In 1954, I repaired to the lobby of the local hotel in the evenings to watch the Army-McCarthy hearings (probably replays), the best entertainment in town though not on C-Span, of course. One of the most enlightening hearings was the House hearing regarding Katrina, the one all democrat members of the committee avoided, and for good reason. Truth can be a hard thing to swallow.
C-Span did everyone a favor this week in airing the hearings conducted by Congressman Issa concerning the catastrophe at Benghazi, in which the ambassador to Libya and three other Americans were murdered on 11 September in what was known immediately by the people on the ground as a well planned and orchestrated terrorist attack, something the administration, in the face of an abundance of intelligence, labeled long after the fact as a “protest” engendered by a movie trailer allegedly insulting Mohammad, though it merely described the man accurately.
An army officer and three State Department staffers, one an ambassador, were the witnesses in the segment of the hearing that I saw. With the exception of the lieutenant colonel, they were the obvious scapegoats sent out by the administration to do their duty and take their places “under the bus.” Their discomfiture could have been avoided if their superiors had stepped up to the plate and taken the responsibility for an event that competence on their part could have prevented.
Instead, one remembers the scene in the Rose Garden shortly after the massacre, when State Secretary Clinton and President Obama appeared to publicly consign the blame for the whole affair to an American’s film about Mohammad. As is his wont, the president blamed some part of this country concerning a tragedy – this time an individual – for being bad, another of his ways for apologizing for the very existence of the U.S.
Obama might as well have said that the Americans deserved to die because Mohammad was insulted and that free speech that decries Islam is a bad thing no matter how true and shouldn’t be allowed. Both he and Clinton, who made the same fraudulent case in other venues, certainly knew within at least two days how inordinately untrue their claim was, but they sent out UN Ambassador Rice and press-apparatchik Carney all over TV to spew the BIG LIE days after they had to know better.
Clinton, Carney and Rice should have been the witnesses in the hearing but it would do no good to call them because the president doubtlessly would invoke executive privilege in foreclosing that possibility. Or, Director of Intelligence Clapper might be called but the same thing would probably happen. These people are above the fray and will not fall upon their swords.
The lesser ones are expected to do the sword-number. After all, the term “terrorism” is not allowed in this administration. As Homeland Security Chief Napolitano insisted long ago, there’s no such thing as a “terrorist” – too harsh a term that she replaced with “man-caused disaster.” So, what happened in Benghazi was carried out by “man-caused disasters.”
The apparatchiks in the hearing, forced to tell the truth under oath, indicated that requests for more security forces in Libya had been ignored or denied for months before the slaughter. They indicated that the mishandling was not a matter of funding, of which there was plenty to meet all the necessities. The buck, of course, gets its first stop on Clinton’s desk and its second stop on Obama’s (as President Truman’s ghost would have it), except in this case the buck stops nowhere. It’s just “out there,” floating around in bloated-bureaucracy-la-la-land.
Congressman Kucinich, in a prepared speech, made the most telling points, especially that the Libya mess was fomented by the U.S. in the first place through an un-Constitutional act by the president, a fellow democrat, in simply on his own ordering the U.S. military to attack a sovereign nation in 2011 for no reason. Libya, with a population two million less than that of New York City, was a threat to no one.
Now, the president has dispatched some 150 military operatives to Jordan, next-door to Syria, where civil war rages, something in which this country must not be drawn. According to the Associated Press of January 2011, $100 million was added to the regular $363 million allocated by the U.S. government to Jordan, so how could Jordan’s King Abdullah say “no,” when he probably hates the whole impingement upon his nation?
Obama thought he could change the government of Libya and show his power, with the result being, as Lieutenant Colonel Andy Wood said in the hearing, the strengthening of Al Qaeda, not Libya or the U.S. What does Obama propose for Syria? Chances for his defeat in November seem slim but four more years of his chaotic, dangerous and unpredictable behavior is unthinkable.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Tuesday, October 09, 2012
Football & NASCAR – Blood-sports
The Sunday and Monday sports sections of newspapers appear more than anything else as hospital-emergency-room reports of the activities of the preceding day/night. The reason: Television drives sports, i.e., the money generated by and through the medium dictates what is and is not exciting enough to garner viewers. Apparently, the marketers have discovered that athletic prowess and/or skill with machines are not conducive enough, and consequently have placed a premium on blood and gore to accentuate the mayhem involved in most competitions.
This is true on all levels of sports, beginning in earnest in high school. Football is now a blood-sport and fans either cheer or groan – depending on their loyalties – when the quarterback finally sits up, wonders where he is and may or may not be helped to the nearest disappointed trainer for the usual question of a concussion-victim as to his name and the date. At least two such NFL quarterbacks went down thusly over the weekend. One of them was having a bad day for the home team, so the fans cheered as he lay prostrate for several minutes. Weird.
Back in the spring, Bounty-gate took place when it was revealed that NFL New Orleans Saints players were being paid “bounties” for the deliverance of incapacitating injuries and agonies to their opponents. The defensive guru, JonathanVilma, received a one-year suspension by the NFL for his alleged participation in the program that allegedly rewarded players for “kill shots,” “cart-offs,” “knockouts” and other injurious hits on opposing players. Three others received lesser discipline, as if bloodletting and other trauma are judged by level of attainment. This didn’t happen in a vacuum, so the guilt probably can be shared up-the-line.
According to the NFL web-site remarking an Associated Press analysis, 3,377 players have sued the NFL, charging that not enough was done to inform them of the dangers of concussions in the past, or to take care of them today. Many things could be done to make football safer, but don’t hold your breath. Helmet-to-helmet blows and body-slam blocking are here to stay, lest the sport become boring.
I’ve never watched more than a few minutes of any NASCAR Race. Not knowing the finer points such as the use of a restrictor plate, watching cars roar by gets boring after a while for people like me, but I have to admit that watching the pileups shown on the news elicits ahs and ohs. However, I’ve always heard about Talledega as the real snake-pit, so I tuned into the last two laps on Sunday and – VOILA – just in time for that glorious 25-car pileup in the last half-mile or so as the drivers did whatever was necessary for top positions…and all those points and all that CASH. Apparently, no one was hurt in the four-lane-wide 200-mph melee, and I saw one car flying like a plane over the whole scene, its driver, who was trying to hold the lead, admitting later that the smashup was his fault. Two cars finished.
The cars were all moving in the same direction and that doubtlessly accounted for driver-welfare, though sometimes drivers are critically injured or killed, but I was reminded that the NASCAR officials had been questioned earlier this year about the constant bumping and spinning-out caused by the drivers, all of it intentional, whereupon the movers-and-shakers said there would be no adjustments. The fans love it. Macho-stuff for big bucks!
And that’s true. The narrow track at Bristol, Virginia, was dangerous and thought to need another lane a few years ago, and one was added to make it wider and therefore safer, whereupon attendance at the races went down precipitously. So, predictably, that new lane was taken out, thus guaranteeing that the drivers would once again deliver carnage as entertainment. NASCAR is safely in the blood-sport category again at Bristol.
Dale Earnhardt Jr., winner at Talledega five times and in the Sunday field, complained about what that race had become and said that there’s been enough carnage. Drafting (two cars bumper-to-bumper in order to increase power and cut down on drag) is inordinately dangerous but has become popular, with the rear driver just nudging the wrong way (or right way, depending on motive) spinning the front-car out completely, often wrecking many others, while the rear car goes merrily along…or not, depending upon the spin.
As I remember it in the long ago, tackling and blocking were carried out from the waist down and head-hunting was not the game. There were more pads than used now but the helmets were like cardboard compared to the current space-like contraptions, not that they do much good because tackling and blocking now are from the waist up and helmet-to-helmet or helmet-to-chin action provides for a sure “cart-off,” the surest way to big bucks. According to Bloomberg, the average salary for a NFL player was $1.9 million in 2007. Many, however, such as prized quarterbacks, make many times more and sign long contracts.
Restrictor-plates that diminish the volume of air intake to engines were required at Talledega to hold speeds to about 200 mph but they aren’t used in every race. There was a time when the drivers used skill and the car-owners depended on brains but it doesn’t take much talent or gravitas to nudge a car out of a race, just the killer instinct and the craving for big bucks. According to Yahoo Sports, Earnhardt made $30 million from all sources in 2009. In a 19-year career, Jeff Gordon had made $110 million in track-earnings by 2009.
It seems that leagues, amateur and professional, have made strides in foreclosing the use/injections of steroids and human-growth-hormone, drugs that turn ordinary guys into monsters, but in this TV-driven money-as-the-most-important-component age, blood-sport is alive and well…okay, unwell.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
This is true on all levels of sports, beginning in earnest in high school. Football is now a blood-sport and fans either cheer or groan – depending on their loyalties – when the quarterback finally sits up, wonders where he is and may or may not be helped to the nearest disappointed trainer for the usual question of a concussion-victim as to his name and the date. At least two such NFL quarterbacks went down thusly over the weekend. One of them was having a bad day for the home team, so the fans cheered as he lay prostrate for several minutes. Weird.
Back in the spring, Bounty-gate took place when it was revealed that NFL New Orleans Saints players were being paid “bounties” for the deliverance of incapacitating injuries and agonies to their opponents. The defensive guru, JonathanVilma, received a one-year suspension by the NFL for his alleged participation in the program that allegedly rewarded players for “kill shots,” “cart-offs,” “knockouts” and other injurious hits on opposing players. Three others received lesser discipline, as if bloodletting and other trauma are judged by level of attainment. This didn’t happen in a vacuum, so the guilt probably can be shared up-the-line.
According to the NFL web-site remarking an Associated Press analysis, 3,377 players have sued the NFL, charging that not enough was done to inform them of the dangers of concussions in the past, or to take care of them today. Many things could be done to make football safer, but don’t hold your breath. Helmet-to-helmet blows and body-slam blocking are here to stay, lest the sport become boring.
I’ve never watched more than a few minutes of any NASCAR Race. Not knowing the finer points such as the use of a restrictor plate, watching cars roar by gets boring after a while for people like me, but I have to admit that watching the pileups shown on the news elicits ahs and ohs. However, I’ve always heard about Talledega as the real snake-pit, so I tuned into the last two laps on Sunday and – VOILA – just in time for that glorious 25-car pileup in the last half-mile or so as the drivers did whatever was necessary for top positions…and all those points and all that CASH. Apparently, no one was hurt in the four-lane-wide 200-mph melee, and I saw one car flying like a plane over the whole scene, its driver, who was trying to hold the lead, admitting later that the smashup was his fault. Two cars finished.
The cars were all moving in the same direction and that doubtlessly accounted for driver-welfare, though sometimes drivers are critically injured or killed, but I was reminded that the NASCAR officials had been questioned earlier this year about the constant bumping and spinning-out caused by the drivers, all of it intentional, whereupon the movers-and-shakers said there would be no adjustments. The fans love it. Macho-stuff for big bucks!
And that’s true. The narrow track at Bristol, Virginia, was dangerous and thought to need another lane a few years ago, and one was added to make it wider and therefore safer, whereupon attendance at the races went down precipitously. So, predictably, that new lane was taken out, thus guaranteeing that the drivers would once again deliver carnage as entertainment. NASCAR is safely in the blood-sport category again at Bristol.
Dale Earnhardt Jr., winner at Talledega five times and in the Sunday field, complained about what that race had become and said that there’s been enough carnage. Drafting (two cars bumper-to-bumper in order to increase power and cut down on drag) is inordinately dangerous but has become popular, with the rear driver just nudging the wrong way (or right way, depending on motive) spinning the front-car out completely, often wrecking many others, while the rear car goes merrily along…or not, depending upon the spin.
As I remember it in the long ago, tackling and blocking were carried out from the waist down and head-hunting was not the game. There were more pads than used now but the helmets were like cardboard compared to the current space-like contraptions, not that they do much good because tackling and blocking now are from the waist up and helmet-to-helmet or helmet-to-chin action provides for a sure “cart-off,” the surest way to big bucks. According to Bloomberg, the average salary for a NFL player was $1.9 million in 2007. Many, however, such as prized quarterbacks, make many times more and sign long contracts.
Restrictor-plates that diminish the volume of air intake to engines were required at Talledega to hold speeds to about 200 mph but they aren’t used in every race. There was a time when the drivers used skill and the car-owners depended on brains but it doesn’t take much talent or gravitas to nudge a car out of a race, just the killer instinct and the craving for big bucks. According to Yahoo Sports, Earnhardt made $30 million from all sources in 2009. In a 19-year career, Jeff Gordon had made $110 million in track-earnings by 2009.
It seems that leagues, amateur and professional, have made strides in foreclosing the use/injections of steroids and human-growth-hormone, drugs that turn ordinary guys into monsters, but in this TV-driven money-as-the-most-important-component age, blood-sport is alive and well…okay, unwell.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Friday, October 05, 2012
Debate Recap & October Surprise
The presidential debate on 03 October in Denver was refreshing in the sense that it was not a moderator’s show. One remembers the circus MSNBC’s Chris Matthews made of one of the republican debates by prancing up and down in front of the candidates and firing at them rhetorically like a commando taking out the enemy. An effective rebuke couldn’t be made because there were too many candidates and too little time for any of them to actually make a point. Or, there was the time that NBC’s Brian Williams asked Texas Governor Perry how he slept at night…weird.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Now, the “October Surprise” has arrived… – DRUMROLL, PLEASE –… the unemployment rate has slipped down to 7.8%, just in time for the election, though people with walking-around-sense know that this is a contrived figure, an absolute lie – and a huge one. There were 114,000 jobs created in September, while 375,000 people filed first-time unemployment claims and employers cut 2,000 more. If attacked by unbelief, check these facts out with the appropriate government agencies (Bureau of Labor Statistics). The unemployment rate for July was 8.1%, increased to 8.3% in August but, yo-yo-like, decreased overnight to 7.8% in September, even though net employment was minus 263,000. The administration continues what it has been doing to cook the books, namely just whimsically contrive a certain number of folks who have dropped out of even looking for work until the right number is achieved.
The BIG LIE is alive and well, and Obama and czars are betting that the great unwashed is too ignorant or uninformed to understand. Disgusting!
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
In short, the debates usually furnish the opportunity for the “news anchors” and other highly overpaid celebrity news people to perform by displaying their knowledge (or lack of it) and their ability to “regiment” the whole affair, like a drill sergeant setting the cadence. Moderator Jim Lehrer of PBS has been around a long time, sensed that much was being accomplished in letting the candidates “argue it out” and was smart enough to just step aside and let it happen.
It was obvious that Romney had prepared for the debate, while the president had not, but Obama joined in the free-for-all so Lehrer actually was facing the wall. When Lincoln “debated” Douglas, there was no moderator to bang the bell, blow the whistle, flash the lights and generally further be a nuisance, like interrupting constantly to remind the contestants of the “rules.” It’s much better to thoroughly hash out two or three matters than be confined to “sound bites” and campaign rhetoric in attempting but not actually covering eight or nine. For instance, Bain Capital was not mentioned nor was governmental furnishing of birth-control or abortion vehicles.
The president exuded an air of simply “being bothered” by the whole thing, something to be endured but neither enjoyed nor particularly worthwhile, thus his appearing as if he had just strolled in after eighteen holes. He constantly looked down and grimaced, perhaps confident that he had the vote tied up and didn’t really need just another campaign appearance. After all, he has his loyal base plus the entire black and homosexual vote (miniscule as it is), the women (especially up to age 30), the Hispanics and the unions.
One remembers the debate of 2000, when Vice President Gore, apparently feeling much the same as Obama, was attacked by the “sigh syndrome” whenever George Bush had the floor. He was doubtlessly confident that the prosperity (though rapidly declining at the time) during the administration of Bill Clinton, the luckiest president in all of history, would propel him easily into the White House, so he sweated and sighed and sighed and sighed through the evening. Clinton had managed to increase top-rate income taxes by 28% in 1993, thus discouraging the job-makers from doing business, while also not answering the first efforts of al Qaeda to hurt the U.S. The USS Cole massacre, as well as other incidents, was a vivid memory in 2000. Gore bit the dust, even though he tried to steal Florida and had to be stopped by the Supremes.
The president indicated his unbelievable ignorance when he claimed that tax credits were earned by businesses when jobs were outsourced to other countries. Romney didn’t argue the point, only suggested that in his long business-history he had never heard that. The president was left with his jaw hanging and, of course, made no response.
As usual, much time was spent on education – safe ground, since everyone’s for education. Obama’s Education Secretary was school superintendent of Chicago schools when appointed, overseeing a system in which 79% and 80% of eighth-graders, respectively, are not at grade level in reading and math. The national averages of non-proficient readers and mathematicians are 29% and 26%, respectively. Chicago schools didn’t get that deficient overnight, so Secretary Duncan presided over that debacle in a system so dominated by unions instead of educators that it’s virtually hopeless, even though the teachers’ average salary is $76,000 per year, $21,000 or 38% above the national average (2009). This amounts to mediocrity expensively institutionalized.
No mention was made of the system in Chicago, Obama’s hometown. Instead, Romney argued persuasively that education is a state matter and noted that during his tenure as governor of Massachusetts the state had the best system in the nation. In the discussion about healthcare, he made the same argument and noted that Massachusetts inculcated a healthcare system when he was governor. He reiterated his promise to get Obamacare repealed and replaced so that states could handle the health situation without federal intervention such as the panels of bureaucrats to mandate who gets what services and when and where, if at all. Romney mentioned that $90 billion spent on programs and policies to develop so-called alternative energy – complete failure and payoff to cronies – could have been better spent on things like hiring teachers, 2 million of them.
It was the best presidential debate ever witnessed by the perpetrator of this blog. Obama was either in over his head or woefully unprepared. Perhaps he’ll figure a way to utilize a teleprompter in the next two sessions.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Now, the “October Surprise” has arrived… – DRUMROLL, PLEASE –… the unemployment rate has slipped down to 7.8%, just in time for the election, though people with walking-around-sense know that this is a contrived figure, an absolute lie – and a huge one. There were 114,000 jobs created in September, while 375,000 people filed first-time unemployment claims and employers cut 2,000 more. If attacked by unbelief, check these facts out with the appropriate government agencies (Bureau of Labor Statistics). The unemployment rate for July was 8.1%, increased to 8.3% in August but, yo-yo-like, decreased overnight to 7.8% in September, even though net employment was minus 263,000. The administration continues what it has been doing to cook the books, namely just whimsically contrive a certain number of folks who have dropped out of even looking for work until the right number is achieved.
The BIG LIE is alive and well, and Obama and czars are betting that the great unwashed is too ignorant or uninformed to understand. Disgusting!
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
In short, the debates usually furnish the opportunity for the “news anchors” and other highly overpaid celebrity news people to perform by displaying their knowledge (or lack of it) and their ability to “regiment” the whole affair, like a drill sergeant setting the cadence. Moderator Jim Lehrer of PBS has been around a long time, sensed that much was being accomplished in letting the candidates “argue it out” and was smart enough to just step aside and let it happen.
It was obvious that Romney had prepared for the debate, while the president had not, but Obama joined in the free-for-all so Lehrer actually was facing the wall. When Lincoln “debated” Douglas, there was no moderator to bang the bell, blow the whistle, flash the lights and generally further be a nuisance, like interrupting constantly to remind the contestants of the “rules.” It’s much better to thoroughly hash out two or three matters than be confined to “sound bites” and campaign rhetoric in attempting but not actually covering eight or nine. For instance, Bain Capital was not mentioned nor was governmental furnishing of birth-control or abortion vehicles.
The president exuded an air of simply “being bothered” by the whole thing, something to be endured but neither enjoyed nor particularly worthwhile, thus his appearing as if he had just strolled in after eighteen holes. He constantly looked down and grimaced, perhaps confident that he had the vote tied up and didn’t really need just another campaign appearance. After all, he has his loyal base plus the entire black and homosexual vote (miniscule as it is), the women (especially up to age 30), the Hispanics and the unions.
One remembers the debate of 2000, when Vice President Gore, apparently feeling much the same as Obama, was attacked by the “sigh syndrome” whenever George Bush had the floor. He was doubtlessly confident that the prosperity (though rapidly declining at the time) during the administration of Bill Clinton, the luckiest president in all of history, would propel him easily into the White House, so he sweated and sighed and sighed and sighed through the evening. Clinton had managed to increase top-rate income taxes by 28% in 1993, thus discouraging the job-makers from doing business, while also not answering the first efforts of al Qaeda to hurt the U.S. The USS Cole massacre, as well as other incidents, was a vivid memory in 2000. Gore bit the dust, even though he tried to steal Florida and had to be stopped by the Supremes.
The president indicated his unbelievable ignorance when he claimed that tax credits were earned by businesses when jobs were outsourced to other countries. Romney didn’t argue the point, only suggested that in his long business-history he had never heard that. The president was left with his jaw hanging and, of course, made no response.
As usual, much time was spent on education – safe ground, since everyone’s for education. Obama’s Education Secretary was school superintendent of Chicago schools when appointed, overseeing a system in which 79% and 80% of eighth-graders, respectively, are not at grade level in reading and math. The national averages of non-proficient readers and mathematicians are 29% and 26%, respectively. Chicago schools didn’t get that deficient overnight, so Secretary Duncan presided over that debacle in a system so dominated by unions instead of educators that it’s virtually hopeless, even though the teachers’ average salary is $76,000 per year, $21,000 or 38% above the national average (2009). This amounts to mediocrity expensively institutionalized.
No mention was made of the system in Chicago, Obama’s hometown. Instead, Romney argued persuasively that education is a state matter and noted that during his tenure as governor of Massachusetts the state had the best system in the nation. In the discussion about healthcare, he made the same argument and noted that Massachusetts inculcated a healthcare system when he was governor. He reiterated his promise to get Obamacare repealed and replaced so that states could handle the health situation without federal intervention such as the panels of bureaucrats to mandate who gets what services and when and where, if at all. Romney mentioned that $90 billion spent on programs and policies to develop so-called alternative energy – complete failure and payoff to cronies – could have been better spent on things like hiring teachers, 2 million of them.
It was the best presidential debate ever witnessed by the perpetrator of this blog. Obama was either in over his head or woefully unprepared. Perhaps he’ll figure a way to utilize a teleprompter in the next two sessions.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Wednesday, October 03, 2012
We Will Bury You!
Caveat: This material is not useful for atheists and agnostics, as well as practitioners/participants involved in any belief system other than Judeo-Christian, including Islam, the originator of which attempted to hijack some of especially the Old Testament in order to give written validity to his cult.
Historians, especially the “faith-based” ones, have written many books designed to make comparisons among the various cultures, going back thousands of years, with particular respect to their rise and fall. The Greek and Roman empires have perhaps been given the most attention, either one thought to be too powerful on the basis of known facts to be overcome by an enemy but, nevertheless, consigned to the “ash-heaps of history.”
The reasons have been many and varied, with all of them bearing at least a kernel of truth. Perhaps the most accepted reason for a culture’s disintegration and enslavement occasioned by another culture is simply that it rotted out from within, i.e., its people “couldn’t stand prosperity” and in their sensual preoccupations lost their focus – loss of government and consequent loss of the military, which is the only vehicle guaranteeing stability and security. Declarations and diplomacy are fine but worthless unless supported by military might.
An interesting phenomenon remarked in the Old Testament many times has to do with the instances in which God (not Allah or Buddha or Confucius) sort of intruded himself into his Creation and actually used individuals or whole populations or nations or armies to carry out his scheme of the day. Usually, the Israelites, the chosen people of God, bore the brunt of the schemes, their miseries delivered by an entity chosen by God to administer the appropriate punishment for their unceasing proclivity toward disobeying God’s edicts, fashioned to make them acceptable in his sight and amenable to all people rather than hung-up constantly on their own foibles, best described as orgy-oriented or greed-motivated.
An example is seen in the last chapter of II Chronicles, but actually throughout the OT books of history. God dealt with his people (no one knows exactly how) as well as with the leaders and people of other cultures/races. Using prophets like Isaiah and many others, God warned his people from time to time of impending doom if they didn’t shape-up. Sometimes they did, at other times, not. Sometimes, God even used angels to carry out his plan, one such angel dispatching 185,000 Assyrians who were threatening the Israelites, so other folks besides the Jews reaped the whirlwind for their actions when they countered the will of God.
After a long list of wrongdoing by Israelite kings (and the people), there is recorded in chapter 36 the information that the wrath of God vis-à-vis the Israelites had reached the boiling point and God sent the Babylonians to subdue Israel – by war – and carry them off to Babylon as slaves. About 70 or so years later, Cyrus, non-Israelite king of Persia whose army had overcome the Babylonians, indicated God had spoken to him and he allowed the Israelites to return to rebuild Jerusalem, which Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian king had sacked.
These verifiable historic matters, well documented in the OT, deal with events up to the time of Christ, after which there is little history noted in the Bible, with the last words of any kind written by John the Apostle no later than 100 A.D. The great unknown, then, has to do with when, if, or how God might have intruded into his creation since 100 A.D. There’s no written record, but God is not dead.
This remarks in many ways the state-of-the-union – and not as per any speech, usually sound and fury signifying nothing anyway. This country is usually called either a “Christian nation” or a “nation of Christians.” Either way, has God in some phenomenal way dealt with this country, and has he done so with other nations/empires, not vocally, of course, but by using leaders and populations to carry out a specific course of action? Did God give a push to the Greeks? Did God “use” the Goths and the Huns to decimate the Romans, just as he used the Assyrians to punish Israel?
What about the “Crusades period?” Who was right and who was wrong? The Roman Catholic Church was shot through with evil but, at least for the faithful peasants, it had to do with God and Christianity. The Muslims were the product of Mohammad, a killer and cult-leader, who began a system of terror that survives to this day, with the killing of innocent “infidels” practically an act of worship and martyrdom if the killer’s life is lost in the process.
Is it conceivable that God could use Islamists to teach hedonistic Christians a lesson, or that God might use the U.S. and other nations of like mind to rid the world of the ayatollahs’ indiscriminate terrorism? After all, the way of terrorism is the way of blasphemy since in the mind of God life is sacred enough to give his son to redeem it. The suicide/homicide bomber, often with financial compensation accruing to his family, kills wantonly.
There are no answers but one wonders in light of such things as the sanctioning of homosexual marriage and its consequent violation of the body, God’s handiwork, and the gradual disintegration of the family, God’s prescribed pattern for survival/stability, if this country is “rotting from within,” as did Rome and other empires. This is probably what former Soviet strongman Khrushchev meant in 1956 when he said, “History is on our side, we will bury you.” The history is plain enough! One wonders what entity might conduct the burial.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Historians, especially the “faith-based” ones, have written many books designed to make comparisons among the various cultures, going back thousands of years, with particular respect to their rise and fall. The Greek and Roman empires have perhaps been given the most attention, either one thought to be too powerful on the basis of known facts to be overcome by an enemy but, nevertheless, consigned to the “ash-heaps of history.”
The reasons have been many and varied, with all of them bearing at least a kernel of truth. Perhaps the most accepted reason for a culture’s disintegration and enslavement occasioned by another culture is simply that it rotted out from within, i.e., its people “couldn’t stand prosperity” and in their sensual preoccupations lost their focus – loss of government and consequent loss of the military, which is the only vehicle guaranteeing stability and security. Declarations and diplomacy are fine but worthless unless supported by military might.
An interesting phenomenon remarked in the Old Testament many times has to do with the instances in which God (not Allah or Buddha or Confucius) sort of intruded himself into his Creation and actually used individuals or whole populations or nations or armies to carry out his scheme of the day. Usually, the Israelites, the chosen people of God, bore the brunt of the schemes, their miseries delivered by an entity chosen by God to administer the appropriate punishment for their unceasing proclivity toward disobeying God’s edicts, fashioned to make them acceptable in his sight and amenable to all people rather than hung-up constantly on their own foibles, best described as orgy-oriented or greed-motivated.
An example is seen in the last chapter of II Chronicles, but actually throughout the OT books of history. God dealt with his people (no one knows exactly how) as well as with the leaders and people of other cultures/races. Using prophets like Isaiah and many others, God warned his people from time to time of impending doom if they didn’t shape-up. Sometimes they did, at other times, not. Sometimes, God even used angels to carry out his plan, one such angel dispatching 185,000 Assyrians who were threatening the Israelites, so other folks besides the Jews reaped the whirlwind for their actions when they countered the will of God.
After a long list of wrongdoing by Israelite kings (and the people), there is recorded in chapter 36 the information that the wrath of God vis-à-vis the Israelites had reached the boiling point and God sent the Babylonians to subdue Israel – by war – and carry them off to Babylon as slaves. About 70 or so years later, Cyrus, non-Israelite king of Persia whose army had overcome the Babylonians, indicated God had spoken to him and he allowed the Israelites to return to rebuild Jerusalem, which Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian king had sacked.
These verifiable historic matters, well documented in the OT, deal with events up to the time of Christ, after which there is little history noted in the Bible, with the last words of any kind written by John the Apostle no later than 100 A.D. The great unknown, then, has to do with when, if, or how God might have intruded into his creation since 100 A.D. There’s no written record, but God is not dead.
This remarks in many ways the state-of-the-union – and not as per any speech, usually sound and fury signifying nothing anyway. This country is usually called either a “Christian nation” or a “nation of Christians.” Either way, has God in some phenomenal way dealt with this country, and has he done so with other nations/empires, not vocally, of course, but by using leaders and populations to carry out a specific course of action? Did God give a push to the Greeks? Did God “use” the Goths and the Huns to decimate the Romans, just as he used the Assyrians to punish Israel?
What about the “Crusades period?” Who was right and who was wrong? The Roman Catholic Church was shot through with evil but, at least for the faithful peasants, it had to do with God and Christianity. The Muslims were the product of Mohammad, a killer and cult-leader, who began a system of terror that survives to this day, with the killing of innocent “infidels” practically an act of worship and martyrdom if the killer’s life is lost in the process.
Is it conceivable that God could use Islamists to teach hedonistic Christians a lesson, or that God might use the U.S. and other nations of like mind to rid the world of the ayatollahs’ indiscriminate terrorism? After all, the way of terrorism is the way of blasphemy since in the mind of God life is sacred enough to give his son to redeem it. The suicide/homicide bomber, often with financial compensation accruing to his family, kills wantonly.
There are no answers but one wonders in light of such things as the sanctioning of homosexual marriage and its consequent violation of the body, God’s handiwork, and the gradual disintegration of the family, God’s prescribed pattern for survival/stability, if this country is “rotting from within,” as did Rome and other empires. This is probably what former Soviet strongman Khrushchev meant in 1956 when he said, “History is on our side, we will bury you.” The history is plain enough! One wonders what entity might conduct the burial.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
Monday, October 01, 2012
Obama & Debate-Rehearsal
It’s ten p.m. at Andrews Air Force Base and President Obama is rehearsing for the 03 October debate, with Senator Kerry as the Romney Stand-in and Vice President Biden and Press apparatchik Jay Carney as coaches, the four hereinafter referenced as O, K, B and C, respectively.
**K: Why have this session here at Andrews at this unearthly hour? Teresa and I were just having dinner…French this time, with escargot and candle-light and…
**C: The commander-in-chief stays here uh, uh, quite a bit, Senator, since he spends er, uh, part of every day on Air Force One and may need at any time to take off for a speech-making event…anywhere in the world. He’d be leaving right uh, uh, now if he were speaking in London tomorrow morning.
**B: Makes sense there, Jay, buddy, gotta be prepared to move on that four-letter-word “fly.” Beats stayin’ in this #%^&*%# D.C. every day!
**K: Or was that escargot or maybe crevette with beurre blanc sauce or…oh, I see, perfectly understandable, Mr. President. I knew the advantages of being ready to move quickly, like that Christmas in Cambodia back in ’70 or maybe ’69…or was it Thailand…
**B: And then that big trip to Paree to save the world while old McCain was dodging the rats in the Hanoi Hilton…hoo-hah! (Kerry glares)
**O: H-m-m-m-m. Cool it, Joe. Glad you guys could make it, so let’s…
**K: Well, you might have spared using a Marine detachment, Barry…is it okay if I call you Barry? I mean I would have come if just asked over the phone. Scared Teresa into swallowing a bunch of…
**B: Snails, John, hahahahaha? Just a greasy french-fry – no pun intended – makes me gag. Of all people, you oughtta understand, John, with your military background and all those purple hearts. Did you actually lose a whole half-day of duty because of serious wounds?
**C: Gentlemen, uh, uh, debate host Jim Lehrer has said the debate will uh, uh, take up the economy, health-care and the role of governement so uh, uh, here’s his first question: “Why not just print money instead of all this uh, er, haggling over the national debt?
**B: Sheesh! How did Lehrer get that job? He’s way too #%$^&*# conservative…all that PBS stuff about fair play…even fired old Juan Williams, our kinda guy and just accused ’im of tellin’ the truth.
**K: Well…as the South found out with all that Confederate…
**O: You some kinda crazy, John. That’s racist.
**K: Of course it is, Barry. Remember, I’m Ryan…no, wait, I’m Romney so I’m expecting him to…
**C: Senator, there’s no way Romney would uh, er, say that…maybe Monopoly money but not…
**O: Just remember, I got Osama, and the economy’s a better place now and…
**C: Uh, uh, with all due respect C-in-C, what does that have to do with…
**O: Nothing, of course! The best debater skillfully changes the subject, especially if he hasn’t a clue about the question. Even Greenspan and Andrea couldn’t answer that with a straight face.
**B: Yeah, ol’ Alan threw up his hands and said he didn’t know how we got in this #%$&^*# mess. Hoo-hah! But ya gotta come up with somethin better than that, Barack.
**O: Naw…I read the book. Make a lie big enough and tell it often enough and…
**K: Voila! I remember…it was escargot…or was that day before yesterday with red wine? Okay, let’s make it Monopoly money, so maybe Romney would say something like “You can’t just keep printing money because it gradually or even rapidly loses its value.”
**O: It does? H-m-m-m-m, in that case, just break out the old worldwide credit card and…
**B: Great answer there, buddy Barry. That would be a #%&^$*# big deal. That’s the American way and ya gotta appeal to Americans in this election, doncha know? Let Romney appeal to the republicans.
**O: Or…I could say that it’s about time we taxed all that offshore money that Romney and…
**K: What! Are you nuts…(calms), meaning no respect, of course, but a lot of your biggest fundraisers wouldn’t even want Romey – or especially you – to bring up that subject.
**B: And especially you, Johnny boy…with you and Teresa practically owning #%&^$*# Aruba, oh hahahahaha, (quiets)…better check with Dr. Jill to see if…
**O: Yeah, I’d better check with my accountant since I know I got royalties stashed somewhere…I just don’t know where. How about if I say we oughtta soak the rich, especially since we sorta have our stash stashed in super-stash-land, so to speak, where it can’t be touched?
**C: Uh, er, that’s always a safe bet, just soak the er, uh, rich, or, er, uh, er, uh…
**B: You mean the rich that’s not set up on Aruba, huh, Jay, huh, huh, huh…JAY!
**C: (puzzled look) Yeah, something like that, er, uh, how do you separate out those with er, uh, Aruba assets from thise uh, er, who…
**O: Let’s don’t even mention the rich this time. Makes us look bad anyway, since we’re all rich and the little people, where most of the votes are, don’t like that. Let’s save that for the last debate, when folks won’t even be watching by that time. That comes on the same time as on Monday night football – NFL – nobody misses that. I had to put off my huge “Jobs Speech” last year because Boehner said so and I had to postpone the state-of-the-union in 2010 so folks could watch “Lost,” whatever that was.
**B: D’ya suppose Peyton Manning will be in the audience – the best thing that’s happened to Denver in…
**K: Which reminds me. Denver is the mile-high city…
**B: Whoopee…that’s what I call gettin’ real #%&^$#*# high…
**K: Not that kind of high, Joe. I’m talking altitude here. Maybe you’d better do some deep-breathing exercises, Mr. President. That thin air could cause oxygen deprivation of the brain and you could wind up stumbling into truth and that might not be…
**B: I’ll be there, too, so I’m all for it. Let’s break out some #%&^$#*# beers and start practicing right now.
**O: Cheers!
**B: Cheers!
**K: Gotta get home to Teresa and the escargot and a phone call to Aruba…all that cash!
**C: Cheers!
**O, K, C: (three hours later) z-z-z-z-z-z-z
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
**K: Why have this session here at Andrews at this unearthly hour? Teresa and I were just having dinner…French this time, with escargot and candle-light and…
**C: The commander-in-chief stays here uh, uh, quite a bit, Senator, since he spends er, uh, part of every day on Air Force One and may need at any time to take off for a speech-making event…anywhere in the world. He’d be leaving right uh, uh, now if he were speaking in London tomorrow morning.
**B: Makes sense there, Jay, buddy, gotta be prepared to move on that four-letter-word “fly.” Beats stayin’ in this #%^&*%# D.C. every day!
**K: Or was that escargot or maybe crevette with beurre blanc sauce or…oh, I see, perfectly understandable, Mr. President. I knew the advantages of being ready to move quickly, like that Christmas in Cambodia back in ’70 or maybe ’69…or was it Thailand…
**B: And then that big trip to Paree to save the world while old McCain was dodging the rats in the Hanoi Hilton…hoo-hah! (Kerry glares)
**O: H-m-m-m-m. Cool it, Joe. Glad you guys could make it, so let’s…
**K: Well, you might have spared using a Marine detachment, Barry…is it okay if I call you Barry? I mean I would have come if just asked over the phone. Scared Teresa into swallowing a bunch of…
**B: Snails, John, hahahahaha? Just a greasy french-fry – no pun intended – makes me gag. Of all people, you oughtta understand, John, with your military background and all those purple hearts. Did you actually lose a whole half-day of duty because of serious wounds?
**C: Gentlemen, uh, uh, debate host Jim Lehrer has said the debate will uh, uh, take up the economy, health-care and the role of governement so uh, uh, here’s his first question: “Why not just print money instead of all this uh, er, haggling over the national debt?
**B: Sheesh! How did Lehrer get that job? He’s way too #%$^&*# conservative…all that PBS stuff about fair play…even fired old Juan Williams, our kinda guy and just accused ’im of tellin’ the truth.
**K: Well…as the South found out with all that Confederate…
**O: You some kinda crazy, John. That’s racist.
**K: Of course it is, Barry. Remember, I’m Ryan…no, wait, I’m Romney so I’m expecting him to…
**C: Senator, there’s no way Romney would uh, er, say that…maybe Monopoly money but not…
**O: Just remember, I got Osama, and the economy’s a better place now and…
**C: Uh, uh, with all due respect C-in-C, what does that have to do with…
**O: Nothing, of course! The best debater skillfully changes the subject, especially if he hasn’t a clue about the question. Even Greenspan and Andrea couldn’t answer that with a straight face.
**B: Yeah, ol’ Alan threw up his hands and said he didn’t know how we got in this #%$&^*# mess. Hoo-hah! But ya gotta come up with somethin better than that, Barack.
**O: Naw…I read the book. Make a lie big enough and tell it often enough and…
**K: Voila! I remember…it was escargot…or was that day before yesterday with red wine? Okay, let’s make it Monopoly money, so maybe Romney would say something like “You can’t just keep printing money because it gradually or even rapidly loses its value.”
**O: It does? H-m-m-m-m, in that case, just break out the old worldwide credit card and…
**B: Great answer there, buddy Barry. That would be a #%&^$*# big deal. That’s the American way and ya gotta appeal to Americans in this election, doncha know? Let Romney appeal to the republicans.
**O: Or…I could say that it’s about time we taxed all that offshore money that Romney and…
**K: What! Are you nuts…(calms), meaning no respect, of course, but a lot of your biggest fundraisers wouldn’t even want Romey – or especially you – to bring up that subject.
**B: And especially you, Johnny boy…with you and Teresa practically owning #%&^$*# Aruba, oh hahahahaha, (quiets)…better check with Dr. Jill to see if…
**O: Yeah, I’d better check with my accountant since I know I got royalties stashed somewhere…I just don’t know where. How about if I say we oughtta soak the rich, especially since we sorta have our stash stashed in super-stash-land, so to speak, where it can’t be touched?
**C: Uh, er, that’s always a safe bet, just soak the er, uh, rich, or, er, uh, er, uh…
**B: You mean the rich that’s not set up on Aruba, huh, Jay, huh, huh, huh…JAY!
**C: (puzzled look) Yeah, something like that, er, uh, how do you separate out those with er, uh, Aruba assets from thise uh, er, who…
**O: Let’s don’t even mention the rich this time. Makes us look bad anyway, since we’re all rich and the little people, where most of the votes are, don’t like that. Let’s save that for the last debate, when folks won’t even be watching by that time. That comes on the same time as on Monday night football – NFL – nobody misses that. I had to put off my huge “Jobs Speech” last year because Boehner said so and I had to postpone the state-of-the-union in 2010 so folks could watch “Lost,” whatever that was.
**B: D’ya suppose Peyton Manning will be in the audience – the best thing that’s happened to Denver in…
**K: Which reminds me. Denver is the mile-high city…
**B: Whoopee…that’s what I call gettin’ real #%&^$#*# high…
**K: Not that kind of high, Joe. I’m talking altitude here. Maybe you’d better do some deep-breathing exercises, Mr. President. That thin air could cause oxygen deprivation of the brain and you could wind up stumbling into truth and that might not be…
**B: I’ll be there, too, so I’m all for it. Let’s break out some #%&^$#*# beers and start practicing right now.
**O: Cheers!
**B: Cheers!
**K: Gotta get home to Teresa and the escargot and a phone call to Aruba…all that cash!
**C: Cheers!
**O, K, C: (three hours later) z-z-z-z-z-z-z
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
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