Dear Al

Dear Rev. Dr. [other degrees & titles] Al Sharpton:

There are bunglers in the operation I head, the Institute for Modifying All Gregarious Entities, known familiarly as IMAGE, so I feel your pain when inferiors must be disciplined, dismissed, even water-boarded occasionally. To see the response to your recent leadership efforts resulting in only two New York policemen ambushed the other day when a dozen would have been preferred must be painful, although a policeman was killed in Florida the very next day. Consequently, I am approaching you with an offer from IMAGE that might help and has to do with reconfiguring your speeches/activities for better results. Obviously, you are among the elite in gregariousness.

The department of IMAGE that will help with the substance of your already rhetorical excellence is known as the Section for Preventing Erratic Eponymy Concerning Hubris-Led Epigrams Sustaining Silliness, known familiarly as SPEECHLESS. The operatives in SPEECHLESS will coach you into avoiding statements that—with all due respect—make you appear out of contact with reality. For instance, your promise made at Ferguson that the prosecutor won a battle in a war your folk will win was like the president's announcement that days-not-weeks would be the length of his seven-month war in Libya and that the result would be the Republic of Libya—free, free at last. Firstly, yours was a dumb exercise of conceit and, secondly, taking on all the police forces in the U.S. is quite silly. The winner of that war—which will not happen despite your erudition—would be quite obvious. You desperately need SPEECHLESS, and perhaps for a while—again with all due respect—that term should define your activity.

Another IMAGE department that will help has to do with methodology and is known as the Test-Energizer for Labeling Egregiousness in Preposterous Responses and Overreaching Mendacious Processes Tantamount to Erratic Rhetoric, known as TELEPROMPTER, for short. As you might guess, TELEPROMPTER instructors will show you the disadvantages of speaking without using notes. For instance, you spoke—surely off the cuff—the other day about death-threats you've received since the two cops were murdered. In the first place, nobody believes that and in the second place you made this tragedy all about you, just like Mayor de Blasio made Garner all about him and his son or just like the president made Trayvon Martin all about him and his non-son. Everything is not all about you except the fact that you are a tax-dodger owing the U.S and New York $4 million now (little joke there...no offense intended). Also, stop raising your hands and shouting “don't shoot.” Your detractors are accusing you of signaling a touchdown or successful three-point-shot when no game and no shooter (except maybe with a gun) is in sight. In other words, don't act like a wannabe referee, coach, umpire, gang-banger or a sort of looney-tunes cartoon character like Roadrunner, or a leftover from the Three Stooges.

In light of your recent efforts in behalf of urging protestors to shut down New York City at Christmastime, you need help from the IMAGE agency known as the Institute for Normalizing Sanity And Negating Inanity, Trivia and Yammering, known as INSANITY, for short. Your “I Can't Breathe” slogan is wearing thin now, especially since you breathe right well amidst your $5 million worth of assets scrounged-up on the backs of folks who actually trust you and whom you've brainwashed into lying down in intersections where they could have a hard time breathing if accommodating an 18-wheeler like just another of the many NYC potholes do. Nor do you do your Cause (whatever it is besides personal enrichment) any good when you trivialize it by commandeering churches—built to honor God, not you—to deliver your diatribes and enhance your Cause's demands for thousands of funerals for policemen to be held in them, perhaps presided over by the Rt. Rev. Dr. Imam Louis Farrakhan in a show of solidarity of your National Action Network with the Nation of Islam, both sharing the slogan “Dead Cops—Now!”

Constantly showing your angst in public has made you seem like a spoiled brat always on the verge of banging his fists and feet on the floor and blaming somebody else (usually republicans or some police-chief—little joke there, nothing personal) for goofing up. The IMAGE arm that will help with this problem is the Agency for Reducing Gnashing of Teeth, known familiarly as ARGOT. At the Brown funeral, you intoned that “Blackness has never been about being a gangster or a thug.” Making that statement encouraged people to think you protested too much, meaning what you said wasn't true. You need help from ARGOT, which also has an anger-management department.

I hope you will consider IMAGE as you plan the protests for yet another trip to St. Louis, as well as your 2015 events, especially the ones you have to invent.

Respectfully,
I.M. Reverself, CEO
IMAGE

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Testimony for CHRISTMAS

There are those who view mankind as just another mammal species in God’s handiwork. I don’t.

Holden Beach

He walked the shore, the sandy shore,
The breakers crashing with a roar,
And wondered as he searched the sea
Why Heaven, hell, or earth must be.
And as he waded through the surf,
His toes engaging miry turf,
He wondered still of Heaven, hell,
And if, indeed, they did indwell
The cosmic scene ordained by God -
Or, if, indeed, there was a God.
He mused aloud, “The earth I see,
Its plants, its creatures, soil and sea,
But even these give no clear sign
That God exists - His form define.”
And then he thought, “But, what of me?
I can control some things I see,
Yet, since I cannot these create,
I must defer to higher state.
And since that higher state at will
Can create things...and life instill,
That higher state is God, of course -
Of all the universe, the force.
But Heaven, hell, or end of time,
To these three things, no reason, rhyme,
Since none of these is known to me,
Since none of these is seen to be,
Since none of these is smelled or heard,
Since each of these seems quite absurd.”
But, as he walked, he spied a bird
Upon the sand…no longer heard,

And later saw a fish long dead
Where it had washed from clear sea-bed.
He then remarked, “Yes, all things die,
The creature, vine, the leaf, and I.
Each has beginning…certainly -
Each has an ending…plain to see.”
He ambled farther down the beach
On toward the end he soon would reach
And asked himself, “Do fish know love,
Or birds feel fear of clouds above?
Do trees know pity, leaves know care,
Or creatures have the grace to share?
Did the beginner have a plan
For merely woman, merely man,
Were all things else designed to be
Sustainer of humanity?”

At beach’s end, he turned around
And started back on solid ground
And pondered, “Since all things must die,
There must not be a reason why
The death of me is different
From any death that God has meant.”
But, then he pondered yet some more,
Not death this time, not as before;
No, this time life was his concern
As he endeavored to discern
If his life might be different
From other lives that God has meant.
He looked at flora, fauna, too,
And deemed that neither one could do
The things that could be done by him -
Indeed, existed just for him.

“If this be true,” he then inferred,
“That creatures all...the fish, the bird,
Exist for succor of mankind,
Then, I am special in God’s mind.”
With that in mind, he then took note
Of distant, distant, sea-borne boat,
And saw the mast by gaff-beam crossed
As it made way, though tempest-tossed,
And then recalled what sailors know,
That cross thus made, though gale winds blow,
Supports the sturdy sail required
To bring the crew to berth desired,
Where, though the sail be cast aside,
Once shore is made...and warm fireside,
Its work has been completely done,
With boat and crew in harbor won.
He walked the shore, the sandy shore,
The breakers crashing with a roar,
Remembered gaff-beam, mast, and sail -
The cross and cloth that would not fail.
He pondered all that God conceived -
The earth, the creatures, seas that heaved,
Beginnings, endings, Heaven, hell -
In vain, of course, he knew quite well…

He could not know Creator’s mind,
Few answers could he hope to find,
But sensed that only for mankind
Were gaff-beam, mast, and sail designed.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

National Police Force?

Then-presidential-candidate Barack Hussein Obama said this in a Colorado Springs campaign event on 02 July 2008: “We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.” Nothing could be weirder than this statement especially in light of the attitude Obama has had with respect to the nation's police forces, particularly during 2014...or could it?

This concerns not only the president but also Attorney General Holder, the nation's top law-enforcement official, who has shown the same disdain for police and made race a prime subject in his public utterances, even to labeling the society as “cowardly” with respect to the issue, whatever he meant by that description though he certainly meant “white” society. He and the president share the same habit of jumping to conclusions and making rash statements or taking untoward actions without knowing the facts about specific subjects concerning police matters.

Strong “national security forces” are an absolute necessity in any strictly socialistic government in which citizens are just cogs in the machinery run by the folks at the top, who arrive at the top through whatever means are deemed necessary, the devil take the hindmost. Such societies are sort of marked by the caste system flowing from a “them against us” mindset: black vs. white vs. Latino vs. oriental; rich vs. poor; educated vs. unschooled; south-side vs. north-side, etc.

This is not the American system, at least not yet—factions fighting each other until one is left standing and must keep the others in line, sort of like the Islamic model. It derives in a way from community-organizing, the pitting of one group against another for power or money or whatever privilege is at issue. The notion of mobilizing people for a specific purpose is not bad, even if it sometimes accounts for winners and losers, such as in mobilizing for elections, but organizing for ulterior motives that have to do with personal privilege above all else no matter the adverse impact on others is unacceptable.

Did Obama simply mean the National Guard or the Army Reserves (total strength 560,000+), essentially national security forces made up of civilians for handling floods and other natural emergencies, as well as occasionally for policing riots, looting and property-destruction such as in Ferguson, Missouri twice this year? Obviously not, since these were already in place in 2008 and are also responsible for out-of-country defensive tasks such as in Iraq and Afghanistan. Libya doesn't count since that was a “war of choice” waged by the president.

The U.S. Army numbers about 530,000 on active duty. Did Obama mean a civilian national security force just as strong as the army and costing just as much to train and operate? Besides, the U.S. military has proven that it achieves the national security objectives that have been set, so it is perfectly reliable. The country is not in mortal fear of any power on earth.

What would a civilian security force do and what entity would be devised to train it? The president is already the commander-in-chief of the entire military, though the military would never be expected to be used against the nation's citizens...or would it? Hitler managed to do that and was responsible for 11 million dead in the 1930s-40s. Weren't the dreaded Storm Troopers military? The SS (240,000 by 1929) operated the concentration camps. Hitler did have a secret police force called the Gestapo, more dreaded perhaps than the troopers.

Obama didn't elaborate upon either the need, makeup or the uses of a civilian national security force. Could it be that he was not aware of the National Guard and Army Reserves or the Air National Guard in 2008? Or...was he aware of these organizations and had something altogether different in mind? Who would decide what the domestic national security objectives would be? The Congress would handle the entire matter if the U.S. Constitution is obeyed. The days of feared militias, state and otherwise, have long since passed, and a civilian national security force is sort of out of the question.

So...who knows what candidate Obama had in mind? Given his well-documented antagonism (never mind his ceaseless flowery bloviating) for local police forces, perhaps he meant the nationalizing of every force and sheriff's department in the country with—yep—the president as chief-in-chief. That would be just the way to keep the cogs in place, with water-boarding a useful tool...a sort of Fidel Castro approach.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Obama-Holder-Sharpton—Anarchy

As the president's mentor, the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah (God damn America) Wright, would say, “the chickens have come home to roost.” Two NYC policemen were shot dead in cold blood in Brooklyn by a black man without even seeing their assassin on 20 December, the day after the president concluded his “Ladies' Day Christmas Press Conference” with a lecture about what his recently appointed commission that met the other day at the White House for the purpose of straightening out the nation's policemen was about to do. Across the table from him at that conference sat MSNBC's Al Sharpton, the instigator of movements such as the recent one in NYC calling for “dead policemen now.” Within the context of racism (white, of course), Obama cited Ferguson (Brown) and NYC (Garner) as examples of the need to “do something.”

Two white police lieutenants were beaten on Brooklyn Bridge (where else?) on 13 December as “protesters” continued to try to close down NYC at Christmastime, often lying in the middle of intersections, brainwashed into following people like Sharpton, whose latest claim to fame is cheating New York and the IRS out of $4 million. The bosom buddy of the president can get away with this stuff but nobody else had better try it. It was Sharpton, after the Ferguson riots, who promised retaliation for the death of Brown, a two-bit thief high on marijuana killed by a police officer he had attacked in his patrol car and was still trying to kill when he was shot. It was Sharpton who presided over both burnings of Ferguson as “protesters” exercised their right to “chill out” by looting and burning small businesses.

Without knowing any facts, Obama accused a white policeman in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who was simply doing his duty, of “acting stupidly” just days after taking office in 2009, and that seems to have set the tone taken by both him and Attorney General Holder toward policemen. Without knowing any facts, Obama rambled on TV for 20 minutes a few hours after the Brown shooting to essentially declare war on police departments. Without knowing any facts, AG Holder sicced both the Justice Department legal eagles and the FBI on officer Wilson (perhaps to bankrupt him) and the Ferguson Police Department, which had no representation on the president's new commission.

Garner, a huge man who possessed a lengthy rap sheet (31 arrests over 27 years), died as a result of resisting arrest, caught on camera, though his resistance is not noted in the mainstream media, only the actions of the policeman. His was a two-bit racket, too—bootlegging illegal cigarettes and thus depriving taxing agencies of $5.85 per pack. Significantly after the two policemen were killed in Brooklyn, Sharpton immediately spoke in behalf of the Garner family (his idea, for sure) to make it plain that the assassin's use of the names of both Brown and Garner in his instagram noting his projected murders had nothing to do with...what (justice, he said)? It had everything to do with Sharpton, retaliation, and his “protesters.”

The most pathetic and apathetic figure in the police murders was NYC Mayor de Blasio, who only days before had castigated the NYC Police Department as made up of insensitive policemen (actually, the whites, one supposes) badly in need of some sort of training allowing them to feel empathy toward the lawless, not exercising deterrence of their actions. Racism is his hangup and he would have been well-advised to simply avoid appearing with the police commissioner at the press conference held after the murders.

One wonders if the mayor would prefer to have all the black men in New York prisons discharged immediately to pursue their activities again on the streets of his city. It's abundantly obvious that NYC policemen view him with contempt. He went to some pain to throw the entire department under the bus, even using his son's ethnicity to shill his slander. Former NYPD headman Kerik stated on Fox News that he felt that both de Blasio and Sharpton had “blood on their hands.”

Now that Obama, Holder, de Blasio and the two-bit-crook Sharpton, without remotely addressing the actual problems associated with black lawlessness, have whipped the nation into a frenzy against law enforcement it will be interesting to see how they react to their individual perfidies. They've given the green-light to anarchy...open season on the protectors of society. Disgusting!

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Feinstein's Folly

It would be hard politically to devise a more scurrilous business than the release by Senator Dianne Feinstein's “Torture Document,” a monstrous distortion of events concerning the CIA, composed entirely by democrats and made public on the day that ACA fraud Jonathan Gruber appeared before the House Oversight & Government Reform Committee to testify about both the deceptions accruing to passage of Obamacare and his (and probably the president's) opinion of the voters as being stupid. She had already delivered a 40-minute tirade on the Senate floor in March, and the issuing of this document was the quintessential complement to that performance.

What the lady may not understand is that folks still remember vividly the events of 9/11, in which some 3,000 citizens lost their lives while merely doing their jobs as a result of the heinous crime perpetrated by the Muslim plane hijackers, who crashed four commercial airliners into buildings in NYC and Washington and onto a field in Pennsylvania. In other words concerning torture—Ho-Hum! Imagine the torture—though short-lived—experienced between the time it took a person to jump from the 99th floor until being smashed into nothingness on the street below...or fighting the butchers over Pennsylvania while the plane was being dived at 600 mph into solid ground. Compare that terror to something like sleep-deprivation used on terrorists to encourage their cooperation.

This is not to say that “anything goes.” Permanent damage is not acceptable but temporary discomfort is at the heart of the interrogation effort. The so-called torture was designed to satisfy this protocol. Water-boarding, for example, neither injures nor kills. It merely makes one fear drowning when actually he is not drowning at all. It's even used in some training exercises for special-ops groups in the U.S. military. Bombarding a prisoner with sound for extended periods will not damage that individual, only make him too unhappy to think it's worth it. The same is true with either cold and warmth, taking care not to induce pneumonia or other malady.

Some people have the notion that not even a prisoner's dignity—such as it is or isn't—should be degraded. Rubbish! Extreme embarrassment, such as nakedness, especially before the opposite gender, may work when nothing else will and causes no physical discomfort whatever. Thinking of the measures taken against American GIs by the Japanese and Germans in WWII or the the same against Americans in Hanoi during the Vietnam action, especially physical beatings, starvation and slavery, should make one wonder why the CIA was so easy on the jihad monsters. Read the book Unbroken for an idea, especially concerning the Jap POW butcher-shop called Omori and located in Tokyo Harbor.

Shades of the Church Committee! In 1975, Senator Frank Church of Idaho chaired a Senate committee in the wake of Watergate to shred to the bone the CIA, NSA and FBI. The solons seemed not to understand even after WWI, WWII, Korea and Vietnam that the world is not Camelot and that rogue nations play by no rules, not even their own at times. There's a time when fighting fire with fire is the only thing that works. The CIA is not a boy-scout-troop and is in the business of spying, just as other nations spend great resources of people and treasure in SPYING. Sometimes, the business gets rough and lives are made intolerable or lost through being apprehended or even assassinated.

As explained by former interrogator Dr. James Mitchell on a Fox News program recently, Feinstein's folly has put at risk the lives of former (and perhaps current) CIA operatives and their families. He's been receiving death threats and was phoned-up once and told to leave his house. These people have targets on their backs...and for what? Since there's no sensible reason for putting them at risk, one wonders if Feinstein operated out of simple spite, mad because of the possibility that some Senate info had been discovered by the CIA. The DOJ has been through all this stuff for years and made no charges.

Congressional staffers are privy to all sorts of information, with the always alluring possibility of blabbing for cash or other favors. Remember the office of then-senator Metzenbaum turning over rocks until discovering Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas hearing on his nomination to the SCOTUS in a grand effort at having her scandalize Thomas out of the job in 1991? The scheme didn't work but not for lack of trying by dedicated staffers. Maybe Feinstein feared something similar.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Religion & the Rain-Tax

Taxation without enough hesitation (to consider repercussions) in heavily democratic Maryland got so onerous that for only the fifth time in 45 years the citizens rose up mad as hell, said they wouldn't take it anymore, and elected a republican, Larry Hogan, to the state's top spot in November. A most unbelievable tax was recently imposed—something called the rain-tax, aka as the “storm-water remediation fee.” Citizens and institutions must pay a tax figured on the amount of rain-water (probably melted snow, too) that flows from their roofs, driveways, parking lots, maybe even umbrellas into Chesapeake Bay.

Presumably, anyone who can channel his offending H2O into another body of water—say, Lake Erie—gets off scot-free, but what a pipeline! Despite the fact that churches are not usually, if ever, required to pay taxes, like any other non-profit, on real estate or for police and fire protection and other government services, they are required to pay the rain-tax if their parking lots baptize the Chesapeake, according to Joseph Bottum of the Weekly Standard. The Chesapeake is holy ground, too holy for even holy water. Perhaps Pope Francis will look into this sacrilege, surely as important as his recent theological pronouncement that animals will go to heaven, presumably even the naughty ones.

But not to worry about those churches, at least in Prince George's County, especially the small congregations that would need life-support if the tax must be paid! All (or almost all) they need to do is install cisterns/rain-barrels, un-pave their parking lots and replace asphalt/concrete with rock (referred to in scripture as the church's foundation) or “permeable material,” and perhaps replace church roofs with sod—maybe even grow crops in season. If trees are planted in whatever surface will sustain them (maybe even bushes would suffice)...then—VOILA—the tax will be reduced.

Of course, anything government touches it also controls and usually corrupts one way or another. The partial-freebie includes the requirement that the church must become “green-oriented,” whether theologically apropos or not. Ostensibly, the objective is to keep pollutants from entering the bay. One wonders how making the churches conduct “green ministries” satisfies that objective, though the greenies probably claim that the church-rebates encourage some sort of filtering.

Since streets and big-box parking lots, not to mention their square-miles of tar-covered roofs, are saturated with oil, grease, dust and cigarette butts, one wonders if they will be plowed up—or even removed—and replaced with “permeable material” to filter that inevitable rain. Just thinking about it causes a dust-cough, not to mention thoughts of the streets back in the day when literal horsepower was the driver of transportation. Ugh! One can only imagine the runoff from the millions of horse-leavings lathering the streets and stables into the Chesapeake.

The methodology mirrors that of the black leaders in putting the arm on (or using) the churches for action in attaining civil rights...a sort of “what would MLK do” question concerning reversal of the climate. The Chesapeake is just the manmade-global-warming-hoax Jim Crow approach, dear to the president's heart. Who better to “get folks right with climate” (scare them out of global hell) than the preachers, who must now deliver “environmentally-focused sermons” in order to get the tax rebate...all in the name of the thoroughly discredited UN climate-gurus, not God, of course?

The darker side of this was reflected recently in Houston, where the mayor subpoenaed the sermons of some preachers that contained any references to sexuality and gender identity, running afoul of the city's gay-rights ordinance...in her opinion. After all, why shouldn't everyone be free to choose his/her own public bathroom? Almost overnight, she undid that piece of folly, and the preachers/churches in Prince George's County should take note. Those who settled this country did so largely to see that government never again infringe upon their right to freedom of religion and expression.

The mayor took her cue from the current federal approach to government, to wit, governance via fiat, aka executive orders. Explaining recently why he hadn't ordered up something some outfit wanted, the president said that he isn't an emperor. This was only partly right. He's an emperor with no clothes, and the mayor should take note of that.

In the meantime, maybe Maryland legislators should just ask the preachers to pray for seven years of drought, like what happened back in the day when the Israelites moved to Egypt to escape the famine so Joseph could save their bacon...literally. No rain—no problem—pure Chesapeake!

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

DNC Memorandum #17

From the office of the chairWOMAN, 11 December 2014

***Listen up! There are no apologies offered for the absence of memos since September. This has been a terribly busy time for the chairWOMAN account having to further deal with the IRS scandals, the Benghazi slaughter, Fast-and-Furious, Syria, ISIS, Ferguson, torture, Gruber, open borders, executive orders rewriting Obamacare/Immigration laws and the election in November, which at best was a Pyrrhic Victory for the republicans since they now have to fix the mess caused mostly by Pelosi and Reid (little joke[rs] there). Pursuant to the “Gruber Hearing” of the tenth, a new DNC agency labeled the Section for Consulting Healthcare Underwriters Managing Erratic Results (or SCHUMER, for short) is being organized and its mission/contents pinned soon to the Bush Dart-Board, now located by the salt-sugar-lactose-peanut-caffeine-free candy-machine, speaking of which everyone is urged to try the new yogurt-spinach-bar that can be ingested, injected or snorted, with a mortar and pestle and/or saline solution provided for the latter two.

***Staffers are directed to NOT—repeat—NOT mention former Defense Secretary Hagel's name unless it is unavoidable such as in the currently hostile press conferences. If the subject arises, the official line is that Hagel is suffering from PTSDDD (post traumatic stress defense department disorder, for recent Yale graduates on staff). Also, no interviews are to be scheduled with anyone connected to Fox News regarding any subject, especially with the lady-anchors, whose bare shoulders and thighs and outrageous cleavage-displays are designed for the huge republican-voting men's audience, which has the same degree of reverse hostility toward Obama as the New Black Panthers have for Georgia-crackers.

***The Gruber brouhaha has attracted unattractive worldwide attention (called L'Affaire Gruber-Mal in France, for instance). This has made it necessary to properly vet all individuals who are in any way connected to government or the DNC. The president, as well as Al Sharpton, his current aide-de-camp, does not trust the FBI, CIA, DEA, EPA, FEMA, the DCI or even OSHA to do the job so another DNC agency is being structured currently for requiring that every operative submit to the Mandatory Intelligence Testing agency (MIT, for short) before taking a job, with the exception of anyone responsible for the president's teleprompters for obvious reasons. In this regard, the wag who clandestinely left in the lounge that poster of the president saying that POLICE ACT STUPIDLY will be sent to the Durbin Re-indoctrination Center & Gulag when apprehended, regarding which Durbin will offer an end-of-year seminar on the similarity of American GIs to keepers of Stalin's gulags, Pol Pot's killing fields, and Hitler's Storm Troopers, a reprise of his statements during the Iraq War.

***The chairWOMAN has been rumored to have said in a speech to the Girl Scouts of Florida that women are justifiably and gradually taking over the government. This rumor is unfounded and the chairWOMAN will not say that again. However, she resents the complaints accruing to the Helen Reddy version of I Am Woman being played over the sound-system throughout the building on the hour. Women are now acting as observers of SEAL training in preparation for their joining the SEALS in the near future. The president requested a year ago a DNC red/yellow/black/white paper to explain why this is both necessary and useful. Only one paper has been submitted and this is unacceptable, so be forewarned...heads will roll if someone doesn't think of at least one valid reason other than “looks cute in uniform.”

***The evil Fox News perpetrators of perverse propaganda cited the president's 20-minute speech on the night of the Ferguson Grand Jury decision as a declaration of war against the police and his next-day travel to Chicago (aka the Illinois killing-fields) as his first campaign stop to promote it, especially as an answer to white racism in general and police racism in particular. The DNC has been tasked to spin this Fox egregiousness into the POTUS's love for the uniforms, but not to mention—NOT MENTION—his race in connection to the last two presidential elections. This is called “grubering,” perfectly acceptable in civil discourse since everyone knows the voters, or at least republican voters, are stupid and haven't noticed.

***As mentioned in September, POTUS is still considering instituting a Department of Gender and has requested another yellow/black/white/red paper on how to do this while still awaiting word from the LBGTQ group as to how many genders there are. This hasn’t been settled yet mainly because the American Conference of Transitioning and Ultimate Personhood (known for short as ACT-UP) still threatens to sue something or somebody if not included in the gender-count, but certainly not in the Q group. Also, a complaint from something called the Platonic Education Department Of Pleasing Habituations in Loving Eroticism (PEDOPHILE, for short) has been lodged with AG Holder, claiming gender-status and threatening action from some Catholic priests account violation of First Amendment rights. The DNC is preparing a summary of Plato's Symposium for all staffers in readiness for any sign that POTUS has evolved on this matter as he did regarding same-sex marriage.

***Be thinking seriously about 2016. Hillary at last report is receiving treatment for CLD (Compulsive Lying Disorder) and should be campaign-tuned for next year's early start. Elizabeth Warren's half-breed (with a little pilgrim thrown in) image is a great crowd-pleaser and she has promised to know the state capitals by April. The thought that another male of any color might be elected is simply too much.

***Have a GREAT HOLIDAY but remember that any mention of Christmas—if found out—means a pink slip.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Misuse of the SEALS?

Freelance photojournalist Luke Somers was killed by his jihad captors in Yemen the other night as Navy Seals attempted to rescue him, the second such attempt. There has been much praise for the U.S. action, authorized by the president. There is another side to this story, to wit, that Americans traveling abroad for no official purpose (military, diplomatic, etc.) should not expect the U.S. to come to their rescue when they are “captured” since to do so puts the lives of other Americans in jeopardy with the attendant fact that such rescues are probably not successful at least half the time.

Suppose the Seal team had lost a member(s) during that hazardous attempt. If that had happened, there would have been no military accomplishment, only the trading of one American life for another, with both being lost anyway. This seems unconscionable. Somers was in Yemen because he had decided to travel in a part of the world in which he knowingly chose to risk his life. The government had not sent him there. He hadn't even been sent there on orders of a news media outfit—he was a freelancer doing his thing, earning a living on the edge.

The aircraft(s) involved in the rescue could have been shot down or destroyed on the ground, with great loss of life in the Seal-6 team, among the pilots and all others on the ground. Thankfully, everyone got out, but one remembers what happened when President Carter sent a military team into Iran in 1980 to rescue the hostages. That caper was damned from the start and shouldn't have happened, but the things that went wrong cost lives, with nothing to show for the effort.

The killing of Osama bin Laden furnishes another example though it at least had a military objective if the killing of bin Laden could be considered such. In the 40-minute foray on the ground that included the crash of a helicopter and the ear-splitting noise of gunfire, Navy Seals could have been killed in exchange, successful or not, of their lives for that of Osama, who in 2011 was probably a virtual non-player in al Qaeda, simply stashed away safely in Abbottabad, Pakistan, a city of some 300,000.

Obviously, a deal had been struck between Pakistan and the U.S. guaranteeing no interference with the attempt other than what might occur in bin Laden's compound; otherwise, the mission would have been suicidal since the action took place less than a half-mile from the Pakistan Military Academy, Pakistan's West Point. The Regimental training Centers of the Pakistan Army are also located in Abbottabad. If any junior officer, aware or unaware of the deal, had instinctively ordered troops to fight the Americans, there would have been a total loss of the Seals either to death or imprisonment.

This is not to disparage either the mission or the president but if the affair had gone awry, the finger-pointing would have been vicious, just as it was for Carter. If Osama could have been taken alive, as Saddam was in Iraq in 2002, and perhaps transported to Gitmo, the mission would have gained a greater importance. But was it worth one American life in the long run?

The president is right in refusing to put an American fighting force anywhere in the Middle East now. In fact, the time has come to withdraw all official personnel from both Iraq and Afghanistan, including all embassy operatives and contract-workers. Any of these people could be captured by ISIS or al Qaeda, with the result being unsuccessful demands for ransoms or beheadings. The alternative would be the loss of life involved in future Seal-team operations to rescue these people.

Without question, all non-military or otherwise unofficial travelers such as Somers should be told by the government in no uncertain terms that U.S. GIs will not be sacrificed to save them if they choose to put themselves in harm's way. The media outlets should be made to understand that neither American lives nor treasure will be expended to attempt rescuing their operatives if/when they are held by Muslim butchers. The Defense Department should not be tasked with the risk attached to rescuing people who often just may be seeking their 15 minutes of fame.

This is another way of saying that the time has come for the Muslims of whatever stripe to be left alone so they can have their inevitable civil wars on their own turf. News of the actions and results is already channeled through Middle-easterners, so the media can arrange to protect its operatives or keep them home.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Obama's Houseboy—Sharpton

I've seen some disgusting political posturing in my time but none more egregious than the picture flashed on TV the other day of the Rev. (maybe Dr. by now) Al Sharpton comfortably seated across the table from President Obama in that much-ballyhooed session dealing with the war currently going on, as the president would have it, between U.S. police departments and black folks. Sharpton had just returned from his glorious rabble-rousing in Ferguson, culminating in about 25 or so small businesses burned out or burned completely down by—yep—black folks, a marvelous victory. No one from Ferguson was invited to the clambake.

Avaricious Al, who might abscond at any time without paying a hotel or restaurant bill, is one of the president's favorite corruption-parasites vis-a-vis both the federal and New York governments. He has the self-enriching habit of collecting income and social security taxes from employees in his National Action Network but never remitting them to the respective government treasuries. Known as “Always Available Al” when demonstrations are in order anywhere and any time, he lives very well and also conducts an inconsequential clambake on MSNBC, the network known—like the Marine Band—as the “President's Own.”

At last count according to the New York Times just last month, Reverend Ripoff owes the U.S. government a cool $3.6 million and the state of New York another $916,000, for a total robbery of the taxpayers of $4,516,000, but this two-bit crook sits across the table from the president to sit in judgment on policemen, not to mention his felony-conviction for fraudulently accusing a New York policeman and prosecutor (law enforcement folks) of the rape of Tawana Brawley in 1987. The whole thing was a hoax, euphemism for LIE; otherwise, Sharpton could have been accused if a rape had taken place.

By contrast, consider the IRS treatment of legendary singer Willie Nelson, a white guy. In 1990, poor Willie owed the feds $16.7 million. In the process of collecting, the IRS took almost everything Nelson owned, including his Texas ranch and 20 properties in four states. That still didn't pay off the debt, so Nelson struck a deal with the IRS to share the proceeds from his album “Who'll Buy My Memories,” which brought the IRS another $3.6 million, still not quite enough but Nelson settled a lawsuit against Price Waterhouse and completed some other projects to make up the rest. The debt was cleared in 1993.

Estimated to be worth about $5 million, Stingy Sharpton could pay off his debt...or the IRS, instead of looking up the records on other folks and furnishing them to the White House, could collect just as it did concerning Nelson. That won't happen while Obama is president, so the taxpayers can just eat cake while the man who helped instigate the fires of Ferguson preens in the White House and hobnobs with the likes of Nancy Pelosi and the other glitterati.

So far, it appears that Action-packed Al has not been able to induce looting and burning in New York City and other cities, having to do with another police matter, but perhaps he just hasn't had the time to sufficiently fire up the troops. The protesters are in place and are—no doubt at his bidding or at least approval—trying to bring things to a standstill in their locations. Or...could it be that the president hinted to the righteous, ravenous reverend that now is not the time to slander New York's finest, since New York Mayor de Blasio has already publicly thrown all NYC policemen under the bus...where they belong, of course.

The righteous rev, Obama and Holder got all heated when black teenager Trayvon Martin was killed by a Latino they thought was a white guy while banging the man's head against a sidewalk in Sanford, Florida, in 2012 and Holder sent in the troops to convict the victim/shooter, who was found innocent. They didn't bother to notice when another black teenager, De'Marquise Elkins, shot a white woman twice in Brunswick, Georgia, in March last year and shot her 13-month old baby, Antonio West, to death as he lay in the stroller she was pushing. No white people burned any buildings or looted any stores. Sanctimonious Sharpton was simply the wrong color to stir up some action among the uncivilized whites in Georgia.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Grand Jury Got It Right

A few years ago, I expressed disapproval of Barack Hussein Obama as president but it occurred to me that I didn't know enough about him to be so dogmatic whereupon I bought his book, Dreams from My Father, actually a sort of autobiography introduced in 1995 and updated nine years later. I was surprised at some of the information such as his drug-use as a student (later, too?). From both the words and between the lines, I gathered that he is not crazy about white people.

I've had my share to say about the Michael Brown shooting and subsequent events since August but at least had the media to keep me informed, along with its biases and unbelievable susceptibility to error. So, to be fair and just as I learned about Obama by reading his autobiography, I decided to look at the Grand Jury material furnished by the Ferguson prosecutor concerning the panelists' failure to return an indictment against Darren Wilson, the policeman who killed Brown.

In possession of the facts regarding the shooting, the prosecutor, Robert McCulloch, could not in good faith bring charges against Wilson, whom he considered innocent of any crime. Realizing, apparently, that there would be a huge backlash in the absence of a charge, McCulloch wisely simply sent the matter to the Grand Jury, which had been appointed in May and was still in session, to hear all the evidence that could be gathered and return an indictment for a crime...or not.

Usually, a charge for the Grand Jury to consider will be handled in a day and an indictment returned or not, with the evidence presented kept secret, at least for a time. McCulloch wisely chose to make public the entire Grand Jury evidence, including three autopsies, a mega-number of witness testimonies and graphic pictures, every shred of the forensic evidence and all other statements—everything—available on the Internet so everyone could make an informed decision about what happened.

The promise that this three-month proceeding and decision would be published was kept immediately but did not deter the “protesters,” local and professional, from preparing a riot, complete with the looting/burning for two nights of businesses, cars, whatever. They had no intention of examining the evidence and were encouraged by the actions of both President Obama and Attorney General Holder, who had already pronounced their verdict without knowing the facts that Wilson was guilty.

Using the Internet, I didn't examine all the evidence gathered during the mega-hours of 25 Grand Jury sessions but enough to understand that the Grand Jury could have made no other decision. The forensic evidence alone would have been enough but the eye-witness testimonies actually sealed the matter. About the best corroborating accounts were those of a repairman right on top of the scene and another individual who was just out driving around and happened on the scene. The latter witness was apparently in the habit of keeping a journal and updated it meticulously almost immediately after arriving home, before the facts could be forgotten or blurred.

The accounts of these witnesses, one oral and the other written, could virtually have been interchanged because of their near-total similarity, with their greatest usefulness having to do with Brown's actions, especially the position of his arms and his incomprehensible charge at Wilson amid warnings to stop and actual gunfire. The autopsy report on Brown noted that he was under the influence of cannabis (marijuana) to the extent that he was “impaired,” which might explain his strange behavior, including his attack on Wilson in the patrol car. No one in his right mind would have tried that.

It's doubtful that Holder has examined this report and virtually certain that Obama has not taken the time. Instead, he traveled the day after the shooting, looting and riots in Ferguson to Chicago, the nation's homicide Nirvana, where blacks kill blacks routinely, though police seldom, if ever, do. Holder, using taxpayer money, is still trying to squeeze Wilson and the Ferguson police, using federal prosecutors and the FBI in the process.

In his rambling 20-minute speech on the night of the shooting, ironically aired on TV in split screen simultaneously showing him orating and Ferguson burning, Obama made it plain that the police-people in this country are to blame for trouble in locales of “color.” He would be better served to read the report.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

The Lesson of Ferguson

The president is now convening bright folks to determine how the nation's inherently evil police departments can be trained to play nicer to their communities so the citizens will love them like brothers/sisters. The prez sees the police as the enemy, joining the Rev. Al Sharpton, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the Rev. Imam “Calypso Louie” Farrakhan and the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah (God damn America) Wright in being profoundly aware of this anti-religious circumstance.

This became apparent within days of his inauguration in 2009, when Obama, without knowing any facts, accused a white policeman of acting stupidly in Cambridge, where the lawman arrested a black man indulging in a daylight break-in. The man had locked himself out of his house, attempted to break-in, then resisted arrest when justifiably apprehended, but was fortunate enough to be a friend of the top banana. One hopes the prez wasn't dumb in accusing the policeman—just malicious—since ignorance would have been embarrassing for a law professor having the Constitution as his field of expertise.

The prez and AG Holder further perpetrated their war on and disdain of the police in 2012 in the “Trayvon Martin Affair” in Sanford, Florida, even though Zimmerman, whom they accused of murder, was neither white nor a policeman. They didn't realize the facts in time to keep from looking foolish, but Martin, recently expelled from school and doing pot, was shot by Zimmerman as he beat Zimmerman's head against a sidewalk. Maybe the prez thought the insensitive police should have shot Zimmerman instead of furnishing facts that prosecutors used to bring charges that didn't hold up at trial.

Obama and Holder hold racist views but they could at least have had enough intelligence to pick a case for exhibiting their views, intellectual superiority, and super-righteousness other than that of pot-high Michael Brown, who, within minutes of assaulting and robbing a store-clerk half his size chose to walk down the middle of instead of on the sidewalk of a two-way street, attacked and tried to kill a policeman in his patrol car and then tried to kill him outside of his patrol car. The policeman killed Brown in self-defense but the prosecutor, discerning the facts and perceiving no crime, nevertheless turned the case over to a Grand Jury appointed months before and already in session.

The Grand Jury spent three solid months examining witnesses and evidence—everything from three autopsies to scientific facts—and could find no crime with which to charge the policeman; therefore, ipso facto, the policeman was guilty, according to Obama and Holder, who is now trying to bring a civil suit against the policeman to prove who knows what, certainly not premeditated murder, which would be about the only acceptable grounds for a conviction. Meanwhile, the policeman, who may never have even seen Brown before that day, has been forced to resign his livelihood.

Within hours of the Grand Jury's verdict, Obama was on TV prating not about obeying the law but about the fact that police need to present a better picture of themselves to their communities—incredibly insensitive but structured on the racism one can discover by just reading his autobiography of 1995 entitled Dreams from My Father. He hasn't changed. His problem may be due to the fact that he's had all the better of it in being elected to the Illinois State Senate, the U.S. Senate and the presidency—twice...by white people. He simply can't look a gift-horse in the mouth...can't stand prosperity. Sad!

It may be that Obama tries to identify with blacks (he's half-white) to prove something...in this case, that he's on their side in hating the police. The fact that black policemen put white folks in jail doesn't register with him, only that white policemen put black folks in jail, never mind the reasonable explanation that the nation is 75% white and the high school graduation rate for black males is 47%. To qualify for police work, one has to be a high school grad, so black males disqualify themselves by the time they're eligible to vote.

This circumstance should be addressed by Obama but he's too busy engaging in community-organizing on a presidential level, using his expertise to further divide the races. A grade-schooler understands that Michael Brown would be alive today if he hadn't committed three crimes (assault, robbery, but not counting jaywalking) and attempted murder, but Obama may not understand...or institutional racism gone amok.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Obama/Holder Play RACE-CARD

Last August before they knew any facts, President Obama and Attorney General Holder decided that white police officer Darren Wilson was guilty of some degree of murder in the killing of Michael Brown, an African American, in Ferguson, Mo. Holder dispatched his operatives to Ferguson immediately, as well as FBI agents, to make sure that Wilson was found culpable in some way for Brown's death. Obama and Holder, again without knowing the facts, did the same thing in February March 2012 regarding the killing of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman, making sure that Zimmerman would be proven guilty, even though Martin was banging Zimmerman's head against a sidewalk in that killing.

Zimmerman, who was neither a law enforcement officer nor a beautiful person, was found innocent. He was not white but a Latino of mixed heritage. Race, of course, was the issue for Obama and Holder, anyway, both of whom seem to have trouble tolerating people they consider white. Obama once said of his grandmother who raised him that she was a “typical white person,” i.e., uncomfortable in the presence of people like him—black.

The prosecutor in the Brown affair, Robert McCulloch, could have charged Wilson with a crime if he'd recognized one. Or, the event could have been managed while an internal investigation was held, with charges made if grounds were discovered for same. The outcry was so great that McCulloch couldn't win either way so he turned the entire matter over to the Grand Jury, which as often as not is the way crimes are handled. After all, Obama and Holder had spoken and acted publicly, so the African-American population figured Wilson would go to trial, a satisfactory outcome.

This, however, didn't stop black demonstrators, local and otherwise, from burning and looting Ferguson in August since the issue was race and Ferguson, a suburb of St. Louis, is overwhelmingly black. A white officer killing any black is fair game for looting and burning in celebration of civil rights/disobedience. Ten days later (consult u-tube), Kajieme Powell, a black man who had just stolen some sodas and pastry from a nearby store, was shot ten times by two apparently white policemen in St. Louis less than four miles from Ferguson in broad daylight in front of witnesses. Neither Obama nor Holder took note of this killing, though Powell had no gun, just a knife.

Brown had committed both assault on a clerk and robbery at a liquor store in Ferguson just moments before he encountered Wilson, who was trying to apprehend him on the basis of the radioed description of the robber, who, indeed, was Brown, as noted irrefutably by in-store surveillance cameras. The Grand Jury failed to indict Wilson on 24 November, with the complete evidence of its proceedings now available to the public. Brown also assaulted Wilson while the policeman was still in his patrol car and tried to wrestle his gun away from him.

Brown then ran and was not shot in the back. It was only after he turned and confronted Wilson, refusing to heed the policeman's instructions and warning, and charged at Wilson that the officer used deadly force. All the credible witness-testimonies were corroborated by the physical evidence, including three autopsies, both official and private.

Using incredibly poor judgment, Obama, who probably thought he was too heavily invested in an indictment to do otherwise, made a speech that evening on national television, rambling for some 20 minutes mostly about how law-enforcement agencies need to get their act together and play nice to communities. He made it plain by word and body language that Brown's unfortunate demise was the result of a racist act. Wilson was white, Brown was black—case closed—racism. Strangely Obama has still never mentioned Powell but his TV act could be construed as telling the rioters and looters to go for it...burn Ferguson, thus creating catastrophic damage to the black community.

Holder's gang is hard at work now to bring a civil suit to claim that Wilson deprived Brown of his civil rights. Obama strangely flew off to his hometown, Chicago, the next day to further speechify and keep the fires fueled. Chicago is the murder capital of this country (408 homicides so far this year), but virtually all the black people killed there are killed by blacks, not whites or policemen. Shortly after his inauguration in 2009, Obama, without knowing any facts, accused a white policeman of acting stupidly because he justifiably arrested a black man...that just about says it all.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Pernicious Pension Problems

Pension funds for Kentucky state employees are in serious trouble since they are virtually un-funded because they are consistently under-funded. The day of reckoning will arrive some day, with teachers and others expecting what is actually unavailable, absent corrective measures taken immediately. The largest state pension fund has only 21% of the money needed for future payments and is continuing on a downward trend. The teachers' retirement system has only 51% of what it needs for future payouts.

The Kentucky Employees Retirement System was 85% funded in 2004. Since then, it has lost 75% of needed income. The legislature is responsible for setting up and reforming the state retirement systems. It has made some strange decisions over the years in comparison with the requirements of retirement systems in the private sector. A non-hazardous duty state employee (clerk) hired before 2008 may retire with a full pension at any age when he/she has worked 27 years. A hazardous-duty worker can retire after 20 years service with a full pension.

If the clerk began work at age 21, he/she can retire with full pension and draw it immediately at age 48, and draw it until death, with the average life-span of someone born in 2012 being 81 for women and 76 for men. A man who is 65 today can expect to live until age 84; for women, it's age 87, according to data compiled by the Social Security Adminstration.

The hazardous-duty worker beginning at age 21 may gain full retirement at age 41 and perhaps be paid a pension for more years than he's lived. By contrast, a railroad brakeman/switchman (a hazardous job) who's worked night or day in all kinds of weather may not retire for full pension until he's 65-67 years old depending on his birth-date, no matter how many years he's worked. The normal railroad retirement age with full pension is 65-67. The Social Security retirement age is 66, no matter the number of years worked.

The Kentucky state-clerk can take three months off, reapply for work in the same system, then draw his full pension plus his newly-earned income but never has to pay into the retirement system again. The hazardous-duty worker only has to take one month off for that deal. By contrast, a railroad retiree may not work again as a railroader without forfeiting his pension.

Kentucky schoolteachers may retire after 27 years of teaching with no reductions in their pensions. A teacher beginning at age 22 can retire at age 49, then work at anything else and earn another pension or Social Security, or move across the state line and teach until earning another pension. The same lawmakers who have voted themselves enormous pensions and perks, much in the news lately because of political shenanigans/appointments leading to huge pensions, have set up all these systems. To the worker in the private sector, this is a huge racket.

The teacher-system (KTRS) is urging lawmakers to issue a 30-year bond of $1.9 billion or $3.3 billion, according to the Lexington Herald-Leader, to save its system, i.e., borrow money now and pay huge interest virtually into infinity just so teachers can quit while relatively young and do whatever...or nothing. Is requiring them to teach until age 62, for instance, too much to ask? While teachers may complain of brain-burnout, they certainly work for the most part in ideal conditions that wreak little havoc on the body.

The same might be asked concerning the state-clerk, whose most rigorous physical demand may be walking from car to office and back each day. The argument that state employees work for less and so deserve extra consideration doesn't hold water now, if it ever did. The average annual salary for a schoolteacher in Kentucky (180 days of work) was $49,730 by 2012 and probably is more than that now.

None of this is to say that state workers do not deserve both adequate compensation and reasonable pensions. It is to say that the system needs new retirement guidelines, not more money. Paying people for up to three or four decades for doing nothing is more than the budget should be expected to handle. Until reform is effected—considering “grandfathering,” of course—the pension problem will multiply exponentially. Finding a legislator with enough spine to tackle this job is too much to expect, perhaps, but something sensible must be done.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Governmental Repression Sanctioned/Thwarted?

Predictably, the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Human Rights Commission voted on 17 November that Hands On Originals discriminated when it refused to print T-shirts for a Lexington, Ky., LGBT outfit planning for its “Lexington Pride Festival” in June 2012. Hands On Originals, a local establishment, claimed that to do the printing would violate its religious beliefs regarding homosexuality or homosexual practices. It took only 2.5 years for the Commission to make this grave decision final and official.

The Commission insisted that the application of the Lexington Fairness Ordinance did not violate Hands On Original's right to free speech and its right to the free exercise of religion. HOO presented the Gay and Lesbians Service Organization with information in 2012 leading to the printing by another establishment at no extra cost and the T-shirts were printed, no harm done. The undamaged GLSO, however, determined that HOO must be punished and brought charges to the Commission.

An editorial of 30 March 2012 in the Lexington Herald-Leader demonized the small business for its refusal to produce T-shirts for the local homosexual group. In its “news” accounts front section, the paper also publicized a protest meeting, entitled “staff report” and shaded for effect, thus affording GLSO free publicity, giving time and place for a “protest” against HOO. A boycott effort was also engendered, largely through Face-book or some such thing, the objective being to bankrupt HOO.

The Herald-Leader advertized a “grand protest” in a downtown park, conveniently located 2.5 miles from the HOO headquarters, which might have been hard for some folks to find in order to “march.” Sixty people showed up out of a population of 297,000 or so, an indication of a gigantic HO-HUM. The local school system shut down its business with the company and the university was not likely to renew a contract with HOO that was expiring ($200,000 in the nine months preceding the dust-up, according to the local newspaper).

Enter the Supreme Court in June of this year ruling 5-4 in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby that for-profit employers with religious objections can opt out of providing contraception coverage under Obamacare. “We doubt that the Congress that enacted the Religious Freedom Restoration Act — or, for that matter, ACA – would have believed it a tolerable result to put family-run businesses to the choice of violating their sincerely held religious beliefs or making all of their employees lose their existing healthcare plans,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the opinion, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Anthony Kennedy. This precise wording applies to the Hands On Originals case.

The Court simply vindicated HOO's decision that it had the right to conduct its business as it saw fit, i.e., refusing to participate in an effort it deemed contrary to its religious beliefs, thereby cutting its own profits in favor of not undercutting the tenets of its faith. This is about the same as a restaurant owner refusing to sell whiskey, whether accruing to religious belief or not, even though he catered to public business. Has anyone ever heard of a distillery suing a McDonalds?

HOO exercised its rights under both the religion and free-speech elements of the First Amendment and the RFRA and the GLSO could have done the same, preaching that homosexuality is normal. That’s even-up and fair enough, you say? Well…no. The Commission said that the GLSO could propagate its “gospel” concerning lifestyle but punish those who disagreed with it. Both HOO and the GLSO were public entities, one inviting acceptable business and the other inviting acceptable members as well as business. That is s-o-o-o simple.

The GLSO can approach the ACLU now and get out the big guns for free to go after HOO as a civil matter to be settled by the courts. The objective, of course, would be to force HOO out of business account forestalling bankruptcy brought about by the huge fees the lawyers would demand for representing it. This may not be too easy, though, since in September 2009 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth District ruled that a Baptist Children's Home, Sunrise Children's Services, did not violate state or federal laws when it dismissed an employee who was engaged in homosexual conduct.

The court ruled that the home did not violate Title VII, the federal employment discrimination law, or the Kentucky Civil Rights Act.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

A Stormy Christmas Cruise

The cruise-ship Crown princess completed a four-week exotic journey across the Pacific on Sunday in Los Angeles with some 170 of its 4,100 passengers or workers having suffered from the highly contagious Norovirus, which celebrates its activities in the human body by driving up the temperature, making the bones feel like they're under an 18-wheeler and causes all gastric-located substances to vacate the body from any orifice available, though perspiration pores seem ineligible, thankfully. The CP is known for this sort of activity, but nevertheless departed Sunday evening with a few thousands more for some exotic spots in Mexico, after being scrubbed with (at least hopefully) stringent Norovirus-killers.

All of which is to stir remembrances going back to Christmas-day 1948 not of Norovirus but of an even worse disruption of the gastrointestinal system—yep—seasickness, that affliction with no more cause than simple motion...okay violent simple motion. I was hardly a month out of boot camp during which I spent some three weeks in Sick Bay (infirmary) in Great Lakes Naval Base's Camp Moffett taking some 64 shots of Penicillin over eight days for pneumonia, a stroke of luck excusing me from a week of KP and maybe two weeks of other torture altogether. My recovery was hurried along when I was given a tray of alcohol filled with alcohol and injection-needles and told to run a thin wire through each one to scrape out human tissue.

On Christmas 1948, I was part of ship's company on the USS Coral Sea spending my work-time in dry-dock each day holding a fire extinguisher next to a welder making repairs, when the call came for volunteers for temporary duty on the USS Saipan, heading out that day from Norfolk to rescue 11 downed Air Force crewmen on ice-covered Greenland. Bored to madness and never having even seen the ocean, I volunteered, crammed all my worldly belongings in my sea-bag and joined the Saipan just in time for Christmas dinner with all the trimmings, including a fine cigar to finish in style.

We had hardly cleared Norfolk when we entered what was either a late hurricane or nor-easter or both. I was in the farthest aft compartment staked out on the top rack, with four more below me—perfect for such privacy as existed. Soon, the ship began to roll over-and-back and tremble occasionally from stem to stern with its twin-screws (propellers) actually coming out of the water and its bow awash nearly to the flight deck. This was a 700-foot carrier, not a kayak and I wondered about this, especially when the word was passed that no one—but, NO one—was to go topside (outdoors) for fear of being blown away...so, naturally I headed for the near topside catwalk.

I had ample time, before being caught, to witness what I could never have imagined in reading all the sea-sailing-novels (remember Howard Pease?) in the Danville High School library. On that large ship, I could look UP and see more water than sky and the waves rolling OVER the BOW. The cork-screw motion was too exhilarating for words. BUT, the violent motion brought on sea-sickness, even to the captain and a movie-news crew (probably the old Movie-Tone) aboard to film the rescue. Soon, the GI (trash) cans, decks and heads (bathrooms) were inundated with gastric elements from hundreds of Christmas dinners embellished with cigars.

Tables were not set up on the mess deck. Sailors who could went through the line (pork chops and the works) and sat around the bulkheads on deck but soon everything was sliding the 70 or so feet from one side of the ship to the other—an unholy mess, but it was funny to see guys try to walk across that mess only to go down and join it. I got lucky and listened to an old cook in the galley who set out piles of saltines on a table that night, told us young sailors to stuff our pockets with them and eat only them for a coupla days. I did that and was never sea-sick then or later no matter how rough the seas.

By the time we fought our way through those seas to Cape Farewell on 28 December, the Air Force had already rigged a plane with skids and picked up the plane-crew. For some strange reason, the captain decided to fly a plane off for mail or to deliver something, and I was told to point a fire extinguisher nozzle at its exhaust pipes (I'd never done that) while the motor was started. Fire flew everywhere and I lowered my head as the ship turned into the wind with wind chill at about zero. I felt my 125 pounds being blown down the deck but latched on to a landing wire strip and held on for dear life until I could make it to the catwalk. For an 18-year-old who had never seen the ocean, this was a thrill. The plane did NOT take off. The ship lost one gun on its bow and all of its antennas.

Ironically, a few months later while I was stationed on the USS Palau, a “baby carrier,” I got bereavement leave due to the death of my grandfather and was transferred by helicopter to the Saipan just off Gitmo for the trip home, during which we hit a storm so bad that somewhere off the coast of Florida the ship was turned around and headed back south until things calmed down. The outer hull had ruptured on the starboard side and clanged back and forth 24/7 thundering the noise throughout the ship, sorta like when as a boy I clicked a tin-can top back and forth with my thumbs and fingers. The two smaller destroyers accompanying us were heeling over at least 70 degrees before righting but kept on heading for Norfolk, mostly in the water rather than on it.

When I was a locomotive engineer decades later, a tornado ripped through the center of a freight train I was throttling near Moreland, Ky., and I saw a lot of havoc wreaked but I never saw any act of Nature then or ever again to compare with those two storms at sea.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

"Grubering!"

The “Jonathan Gruber Affair” is a tawdry bit of elitism managed by Gruber, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Gruber helped construct the ACA (Obamacare). Some of his remarks made at conferences in October 2013 at Washington University and the University of Pennsylvania had to do with the need to craft ACA with deception so it would pass Congress. Gruber alluded to the ignorance of the voters (entire population) in not discovering the lies in the ACA bill and therefore giving it a thumbs-down, but he was actually referencing the ignorance of Congressional democrats, since no Congressional republicans or (ignorant) citizens voted for ACA.

Gruber cited the need for non-transparency in getting the act passed, even though both the Senate and the House held democrat majorities. The two instances mentioned above were not the first evidences of his scorn for voters' lack of intelligence. The quintessential irony lies in the fact that Gruber is being paid $400,000 by the state of Vermont to explain how to finance that state's single-payer system. His way, of course, would be to simply enact a bill no one understands, especially the state's legislators.

An even worse example of chicanery in high places in 2010 occurred in the Senate and House in that the democrats admitted to never having read the 2,300-page bill before they passed it, not that they would have understood it anyway. House Speaker Pelosi had no idea as to what ACA entailed and even said no one (ignorant voters, including her) would know its substance until it was passed. She was right and thus added her abject incompetence to the chicanery. Senate Majority Leader Reid messed-up Senate rules long in place to get the act approved at midnight on Christmas Eve.

This sordid affair remarks the rancid means-to-ends which proponents of socialism will engage in order to establish the “nanny state.” Gruber knew—from just understanding the White House—that lies and deception are key to overcoming opposition, especially by people who are not ignorant and will prove it by standing in the way, as the Congressional republicans unsuccessfully did in 2010. Now, all taxpayers are aware of just how completely they've been had and Gruber has helped turn Obama's signature legacy upside-down.

A socialist system is run by oligarchs, few in number and enriched by their demeaning manipulation of citizens by any means in order to get a firm grip on their lives. The ultimate goal is the use of everything from wage- and price-controls to how much salt can reside in a hamburger to when, where and how medical procedures can be exercised, no matter the desires of the sick and afflicted. ACA represents that ultimate control, the very life and/or death of a person. This is what makes Obama's plan, calculated by Gruber, so degrading.

The president knew—as the nation's chief executive—that the basis for ACA was condescending subterfuge based on the supposed collective ignorance of not just the people but the legislators in his own party. His smirking announcements concerning one's keeping his own insurance and doctor accrued to an insensitivity that's hard to comprehend. He knew better, didn't care. As Supreme Oligarch, he, when he discovered that the ACA was not tenable for small businesses and corporations, simply signed executive orders delaying the ACA mandates at least until after the 2016 presidential election. He also violated the act by excusing about a thousand entities from its control.

The will of the people is the last thing the administration and sometimes the courts (also small groups of oligarchs) takes into account. In a recent ruling concerning homosexual-marriage in Kentucky, two non-oligarchic federal judges of the U.S Sixth Circuit overruled a third in insisting that the will of the people, not the courts, is what should be paramount. By both statute and Constitution, homosexuals may not marry each other in Kentucky, and the judges said the matter had already been settled by the citizens. That's called states' rights, anathema to Obama and the federal bureaucracy.

Unless he was lying when he said he lied, Gruber introduced a new term to the lexicon—“grubering!” In this case, grubering put the sad affair on the president's shoulders—complicity accomplished.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Shellacking #2

In his opening press-conference remarks on 05 November, President Obama implied that the blame for the second consecutive midterm shellacking he and his party had just suffered accrued to two-thirds of the citizens not voting. He didn't mention the midterm shellacking of 2010, when 40.9% of the citizens DID vote, giving republicans the House. Now, virtually the entire country is made up of red states on all levels of government including governorships and state legislatures.

Since 1982, the number of voters in midterm elections has hovered just over or below the 40% line, so the 33.9% in 2014 was way off the mark. Two-thirds washed their hands of the entire process this year, accenting the fact that citizens—if not actually losing hope—have decided that the government is so broken that nothing can repair it until a new administration takes over in 2017.

Even the pollsters (or at least most) were completely caught off-guard. For instance, in Kentucky Senator McConnell won by 15 percentage points, a 200% greater margin than prophesied by the Bluegrass Poll, financed by the Lexington Herald-Leader, Louisville Courier-Journal and TV stations WKYT (Lexington) and WHAS (Louisville), which had finally awarded him a face-saving (or so thought) five-point advantage. The Mellman polls hired by Grimes were so screwed-up that they defied consideration, much less belief.

The elections proved the president to be partly right, whether he understood or not, that his base—principally blacks, ethnics and women—took a powder. These folks stayed home. In Obama's keystone electoral states, California and New York, only 21.4% and 26.2%, respectively, of citizens bothered. In D.C., more than 50% black, the response was 25.9%. By contrast, in Kentucky there was a 44% turnout bettering that of 2010 at 42.4%. The poll probably closest to actual facts was the NBCNews/Marist outfit on 02 November that gave McConnell a nine-point edge, off by only 67%.

When asking a question of the president, a journalist invites a five-minute lecture, most of it plowing old ground—the great CHANGE he has wrought. I listened to maybe an hour and gave it up. The man loves to hear himself talk. He made it clear, however, that he intends to govern by fiat, aka executive order, until his term is over, starting with new immigration-rule outrages to be signed before the end of the year. He blamed Speaker Boehner for forcing him to do this...sort of in the vein of blaming George Bush for every allegedly bad thing Obama has misunderstood for six years.

It's this in-your-face-Constitution/Congress attitude Obama constantly advances that has turned off voters, who still hold the Constitution as virtually sacred. It showed up just days after his inauguration when Obama and Senator Durbin decided to deny the lawful replacement appointed by the Illinois governor to take Obama's vacated Senate seat, violating the Illinois Constitution. Majority Leader Reid, perpetual lapdog, even locked Roland Burriss out of the Senate. Burriss took the seat, however, with the courts making the three conspirators eat a ton of crow, but the die was cast.

Obama has publicly announced which laws his Justice Department would and would not enforce. He shredded by executive order the Affordable Care Act, changing such things as the time when specific components would kick in. The employer mandate has not been enforced yet and has even been further delayed by executive order, all of this in direct violation of the law Congress (actually just the Senate) passed.

On the local level, Obama and Attorney General Holder, without knowing the facts, intervened in both the Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown cases, and Holder even filed civil charges in the latter case...without a Grand Jury decision in the matter. The word is that Officer Wilson will not be charged as a result of the facts actually being presented to the panel. This ham-handedness trivializes the office but, worse, is an attempt to usurp the duties of other officials and institutions, such as the DOJ suing Arizona vis-a-vis the state's attempt to enforce immigration laws.

The midterms were an obvious repudiation of Obama, who himself stated that they would form a referendum on his policies. The worn-out cliches like “war on women” and “war on blacks” have also been not just neutralized but buried. Voters don't fall for those inanities anymore. The biggest loser was Hillary Clinton—come 2016—however, since she is even farther out of the mainstream than Obama.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Sports Now Defined as GREED

The World Series, like most other professional sports as well as college sports, is now the victim of TV and all the money that drives it. This shows up most graphically in the time now required for a contest to be decided, excluding games with overtime periods. The first game of the current Series required three hours and 32 minutes and the second, three hours and 25 minutes. Another game required four hours.

Granted, there was a lot of scoring in the games but considering the possibilities of home runs and double plays (fast actions) these games were far too long. Each team scored one run in the first inning of game two, which lasted a full 30 minutes, though one of the runs was a home run effected in just seconds. If that factor had prevailed throughout the game, it would have required four hours and 30 minutes to finish, more than a half-day's work. This stuff will kill the sport.

It's unfair to compare this Series with that of 1956, in which Yankee pitcher Don Larson pitched a perfect game on 08 October, the only one in Series history. The Yanks beat Brooklyn (now LA Dodgers) 2-0 in that game, which lasted two hours and six minutes and featured only five hits by the “bums.” But it's worth remembering that there were no conferences by the umpires on-scene conferring electronically with those in New York, who settled all issues, the whole business eating up time.

In the games mentioned above, pitchers and batters strolled, spit, changed their minds or did nothing for periods of differing lengths. Pitchers stared and stared at catchers, shook off sign after sign and finally decided to throw the ball. Batters had to step out of the box and readjust their gloves, many with a stroll around the catcher and umpire, after every pitch. Batters didn't wear gloves in 1956. Fielders wear gloves, then and now. No conferences with New York arbiters took place in 1956 or for all but a few years since. Umpire-mistakes were just part of the game and evened out for the teams.

Ballplayers were adequately paid but not made filthy rich back in the day. Today, long-term mega-million-dollar contracts are handed out routinely and can amount to well over $20 million a year, guaranteed, with enough incentives to sweeten the pot even more. According to the Major League Players Association, the average wage now is $3.39 million per year, or $20,926 per game.

Hall of Fame pitcher Jim Palmer helped the Orioles sweep the LA Dodgers in 1966. His player-share of the series proceeds amounted to $11,683.40. His salary for the entire season was $7,500. The winning player-share of the 2013 World Series won by the Red Sox was $307,322.68. Red Sox pitcher John Lackey's salary was $15,950,000 to pitch in about 33 games. The St Louis player's loser-share was a paltry $228,300.17. Highest paid St. Louis player's salary for the year was outfielder Matt Holliday's $16,272,110 for 162 games, $103,000 per game.

The losing players in the league championship series also got well. The Detroit player's share was $129,278.22. The LA Dodger player-share was $108,037,06. The division player-shares averaged about $35,000, so getting into the playoffs means big bucks, win or lose. The fan can be sure of two things: the players are or will be mega-millionaires, depending on longevity, and the national anthem will be tortured unmercifully by the non-singers (celebrity or not) who attempt to sing it. It should be presented by recordings of actual singers.

Besides their salaries, the total amount to the players in the playoffs and World Series came to $62,683,966.80 in 2013. These figures were higher in 2012. For the period 2007-13, the total amounted to $402,940,679.50 or close to half-a-billion. Is it wonder, then, why umpire-conferences were/are held to see if the guy actually was safe at first or home? The thing that saved the umpires on-scene was the fact that the New York-based umps just looking at replays from various angles had the last word, doing away with managers arguing themselves blue in the face and kicking dirt on the umps' shoes before being tossed.

A bad call at third with two out could mean the difference in millions of dollars, so look for more delays. Innumerable replays and extended commercials are killing the NFL, too. But it's all about the money...sport is just as defiled as everything else that greed drives (think steroids and HGH, too), but it certainly will survive...at least until the public gets fed up.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Polling as Data or Propaganda?

The Lexington Herald-Leader, Louisville Courier-Journal and TV stations WKYT (Lexington) and WHAS (Louisville) have combined their efforts for polling purposes this year, having the polling outfit SurveyUSA (called the Bluegrass Poll) conduct a number of polls regarding the Senate race between republican incumbent Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Kentucky State Secretary Alison Grimes, the media's choice. There have been a flurry of polls lately, SurveyUSA's results markedly different from highly acclaimed national polling organizations like the Rasmussen Reports and CBS/New York Times pollsters. A Bluegrass Poll in February showed Grimes ahead.

Another Bluegrass Poll was conducted in late August showing that the media's own poll had McConnell ahead by four points, triggering a Mellman Poll hired by Grimes in early September that showed Grimes was ahead by two points. During that same period, the nationally highly regarded Rasmussen polling had McConnell ahead by five points. Another poll was conducted by Mellman in September, with Grimes beating McConnell one or two points. During a late September poll conducted by the New York Times and CBS (both McConnell haters), McConnell was ahead by six points.

On 20 October, the results of yet another “Bluegrass Poll” were noted in the media with McConnell ahead but by only one point. On 17 October, Rasmussen reported its results, which had McConnell ahead 52%-44%. The inordinate disparity in the polls is obvious. During polling from January through June this year, Gallup discovered citizens leaning republican as opposed to democrat 45%-39%.

Six years ago, McConnell defeated Bruce Lunsford to keep his seat. A look at that race in 2008 is instructive. On 21 October that year, Rasmussen had McConnell ahead 50%-43%, while SurveyUSA (Bluegrass Poll gang?) on 20 October called the race even, 48%-48%. That's a huge differential, well beyond believability.

On 29 October just before the 2008 election, Rasmussen had McConnell ahead by 51%-44% but, strangely, SurveyUSA (Bluegrass Poll?) also had McConnell ahead by an even greater face-saving margin, 53%-45%, indicating an eight-point swing in just nine days, a total departure from reality and reason to wonder how something that unbelievable could happen unless Lunsford maybe robbed a bank. He didn't. McConnell won the election by 53%-47%. Obvious question: Were the Bluegrass and Mellman Polls real, imagined or just plain media propaganda?

Flash forward to 2014. The latest Bluegrass Poll, 31 October, showed McConnell ahead by 48%-43% with a huge margin of error of 4.1 points (only 597 likely voters polled), meaning that McConnell's lead could be 50%-41%. Just 11 days before, the Bluegrass Poll had a differential of only a point. The CBS/New York Times on 26 October—during that period—showed McConnell ahead by 45%-39%. Was the Bluegrass Poll attempting to somehow save face? Were the Mellman Polls rigged?

Should the voter believe the nationally acclaimed polls or polls ginned up by local candidates and institutions having their own agendas? The media instigators of the “Bluegrass Poll” have a long history of McConnell-bashing and have been fervent in their opposition to him, even though he's been a Senate leader for many years and likely will become Majority Leader if republicans win back the Senate.

Using “fixed” polls, besides being dishonest and condescending, may actually help get out the republican vote on the chance that some republicans actually believe them. CNN reported on 21 June that newspapers, TV news outlets and Internet news outlets enjoyed ratings-approvals determined by Gallop at 22%, 18%, and 19% of the population, respectively, for an average of 20%. So, who's gullible—the people or the media?

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Local Polling...Political Propaganda

The Lexington Herald-Leader, Louisville Courier-Journal and TV stations WKYT (Lexington) and WHAS (Louisville) have combined their efforts for polling purposes this year, having the polling outfit SurveyUSA conduct a number of polls regarding the Senate race between republican incumbent Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Kentucky State Secretary Alison Grimes. There have been a flurry of polls lately, SurveyUSA's results markedly different from highly acclaimed national polling organizations like the Rasmussen Reports and CBS/New York Times pollsters.

The media outlets commissioned a SurveyUSA poll (called the “Bluegrass Poll”) in February that showed Grimes ahead but not by much. They commissioned another “Bluegrass Poll” in late August but discovered to their horror that their own poll showed McConnell ahead by four points, at which point a Mellman Poll was hired by Grimes in early September that showed Grimes was ahead by two points. During that same period, the nationally highly regarded Rasmussen polling had McConnell ahead by five points.

Another poll was conducted by Mellman in September, with Grimes beating McConnell one or two points maybe because of one of her ads, as if anyone pays attention to those million-dollar sinkholes. During a late September poll conducted by the New York Times and CBS (both McConnell haters), McConnell was ahead by six points, perhaps pulling away.

At this point, desperation apparently set in at the Lexington and Louisville media-outlets-for-Grimes, so another “Blue Grass” poll was conducted by the same outfit as before, SurveyUSA, and, predictably, Grimes came out ahead by two points, despite the highly respected national polls showing the opposite. The highly respected national polling agencies have the advantage of being entirely objective, whereas local polling is purely subjective, reflecting agendas and not facts.

On 20 October, the results of yet another “Bluegrass Poll” were noted in the media with McConnell ahead but by only a point. On 17 October, Rasmussen reported its results, which had McConnell ahead 52%-44%...an eight-point bulge over the weekend? Of course not! The inordinate disparity in the polls is obvious. During polling from January through June this year, Gallup discovered citizens leaning republican as opposed to democrat 45%-39%. This margin, validating Rasmussen and covering a six-month period, has probably widened greatly.

Six years ago, McConnell defeated Bruce Lunsford to keep his seat. A look at that race in 2008 is instructive. On 21 October that year, Rasmussen had McConnell ahead 50%-43%, while SurveyUSA (Bluegrass Poll gang?) on 20 October called the race even, 48%-48%. That's a huge differential, well beyond believability.

On 29 October just before the 2008 election, Rasmussen had McConnell ahead by 51%-44% but, strangely, SurveyUSA also had McConnell ahead by an even greater face-saving margin, 53%-45%, indicating an eight-point swing in just nine days, a total departure from reality and reason to wonder how something that unbelievable could happen unless Lunsford maybe robbed a bank. He didn't. McConnell won the election by 53%-47%, vindicating Rasmussen but perhaps indicating skulduggery vis-a-vis SurveyUSA.

So...what's a citizen to do? Should the voter believe the nationally acclaimed polls or polls ginned up by local candidates and institutions having their own agendas? The media instigators of the “Bluegrass Poll” have a long history of McConnell-bashing and have been fervent in their opposition to him, even though he's been a Senate leader for many years and likely will become Majority Leader if republicans win back the Senate.

Grimes, apparently dissatisfied with disappointing “Bluegrass Poll” numbers, simply hired her own polling outfit, but what good is polling if it appears to be tainted and entirely bogus, as in this case? Her efforts seem to reek of desperation, but trying to fool the public, whether by polls or anything else, is not the way to go. That's an insult to Kentuckians, an elitist attitude remarking Kentuckians as so dumb they can't see through this subterfuge.

Using “fixed” polls, besides being dishonest and condescending, actually helps get out the republican vote on the chance that some repubs actually believe them. So, who's being gullible, the media perhaps? The next polls, if carried out, will be INTERESTING!

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Basketball Bacchanalia

Lexington Herald-Leader sportswriter Jerry Tipton (18 October) was underwhelmed (lacked the pizzazz of yesteryears) by this year's annual Midnight Madness event the night before. The effort, like the ones preceding it each year, trivialized the sport and sorta made monkeys out of those who perpetrated and attended it. Assuming the final okay for this coronation of campus royalty came from Athletic Director Mitch Barnhart, one wonders if he needs to step up to the next level of maturity.

The affair cost $300,000, roughly equivalent to a year's tuition and fees for 31 actual students. The basketball players are predominantly part of the minor leagues for the NBA and expect to be gone after one year of non-study unless they aren't judged high draft-picks as freshmen, in which case they stay for a second year of non-study. Their career as UK players, as often noted by Coach Calipari, is a one-shot stab at greatness, thus not an academic endeavor.

The big draw this year was a rapper (more accurately, “gangsta-rapper”) called Drake. According to Tipton, the big disappointment was that Drake didn't rap. Strangely, Rap is usually described as music. It's actually a recitation set to an accompaniment of percussion instruments, mostly drums, that might resemble a dance with grunts, groans and screams in deepest Africa engaged in just before some sort of tribal bloodletting or par-boiling a missionary.

Drake couldn't do his act in the Madness venue, even though the young people there were familiar with his lyrics/performances and were misled into believing he would regurgitate his thing. Otherwise, he wouldn't have been the main-liner. A look at some of his stuff is instructive for sound, fury and “poetry.” Drake's buzz-words are fuckin', nigga, bitch and shit. His masterpiece called “The Catch Up” features two “fuckin' niggas” caught up in a—you guessed it—gun-fight...something not unusual in Lexington these days?

In his classic called “The Motto,” he raps about the fuckin' man, the bitch, the real nigga and shit. This is his phrase in Motto: “almost drowned in her pussy so I swam to her butt.” Another: “I tongue-kiss her other tongue.” Get it? In his classic tune “Light Up,” he uses the term “mother-fucker.” This usage is as sacred to gangsta-rap as Christ's mother Mary is to Christianity. Here's a line: “Wait until the sun goes down and we gon' make this bitch light up.” His conclusion: “fuck niggas, bitches, too, all I got is money, this'll do.”

Contextually, one has to remember that the women's basketball team and women cheerleaders are part of Midnight Madness. In Drake's parlance the “ho” is mentioned, rap-term for whore, and these UK women were exposed to Drake, who sees them not as human beings but objects to use, abuse, discard. Was Drake's background even cursorily examined by Barnhart, Calipari, and—oh yes—Matthew Mitchell, the women's coach?

Mitchell added to the denigration of women by cavorting and aping somebody called Bruno Mars. I don't know what he performed but in Mars' classic “When I Was Your Man,” the singer lamented longingly about the fact that his shack-up partner (ho) is gone. In Mars' number “Locked Out of Heaven” (another masterpiece?), is this line: “Your sex takes me to paradise.” Hopefully, Mitchell didn't writhe that one.

Mars collaborated on this artistry called “Bubble Butt.” His line was one of the mildest: “Turn around, stick it out, show the world you got...”. From Mars' “Like Tonight,” this gem: “You've got your lips along my body And I'm not gonna stop you...”. What was Matthew thinking? He wasn't, obviously!

Yeah...Midnight Madness this year was Basketball Bacchanalia since it mainlined orgy as normal and should have been doubly offensive to the men's and women's teams since about the only players who spend many minutes in at least a men's game are African-American. Drake is black and Mars is Puerto Rican/filipino. The lurid background for this stuff (men sex/rape-crazy and women as chattel) insulted all the players. Spectators who think this was worth their time got what they deserved—TRIPE—in the presence of campus royalty, of course.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Obama, Pentagon & Climate

Participating in a conference call in Washington are President Obama, Defense Department Secretary Hagel, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dempsey, and climate expert Al Gore, hereinafter referenced as O, H, D, and G, respectively.

**O: The Peruvian president...can't think of his name right off, some Latino-sounding thing...just said in that meeting with you in that Chilean SPA, Chuck, that if we didn't change the climate soon nothing will be left – Right?
**H: Right...nothing left, right, left, right...
**O: That was 50 years ago, Chuck, when Kerry said we killed 200,000 Vietnamese a year...remember?
**H: O yeah, I was there...sorry about that...the drill goes through my head once in a while.
**D: Now, about this problem with ISIS, Mr. President, I...
**O: Okay, gotcha there, General, but we need to get on this climate thing...I mean if a guy can be elected president of Peru he's bound to be onto something, so we need to pay attention before he turns the OAS against us for not caring if...
**G: You got that right, Mr. President. The average height of the Andes is just 13,000 feet so you can see what an increase in ocean-depth might do.
**O: Right, Al...I doubt if there's a golf course anywhere near those mountains, which explains, Chuck and Martin, why I invited Al to this meeting. I promised change when I came to Washington and climate-change is part of that and, as you know, Al has a Nobel...
**G: You're too modest, Barry, everyone knows you have that climate Nobel, too, and didn't even have to share it like I did with that IPCC bunch of cutthroats throwing the whole scheme away with their stupid emails admitting to cooking the books.
**O: Yeah...ruined that speech I – or somebody had written one for me...been five years now – had at Copenhagen, all teleprompted and ready. I was all set to apologize to the whole world because we had three times too many cars in this country and...
**H: Let me just mention, Mr. President...about those soldiers we just sent to Liberia...or was it Sierra Leone...well, anyway, some of their folks are complaining about them coming home all infected with that ebola and...
**O: Chuck, if there's one thing I learned in community-organizing it was to establish priorities and stick with them. Now, this meeting's about important things like climate-change so we'll worry about some jayvee infection later. Ebola's been around for years in one form or another.
**D: While we're stopped here sorta, Mr. president, Ms. Rice just announced that Turkey's on board with their airfield but Erdogan has the same as called her a liar, so we need...
**O: That'll do, Martin, I don't ever want that word used in connection with Susan even if she did misspeak on those talk-shows. Just because Fox News made an issue of it doesn't mean...
**H: (nodding up from a doze) Did somebody say Fox News? That reminds me that their guy over there is givin' us hell for not...
**O: Gentlemen, back to the subject! Al, what do you foresee in the near future?
**H: Yeah, all the experts have been agreeing that no global warming has happened in the last 17 years but I took your word, Al, and had a hundred thousand fatigues made in the thinnest cotton around and I got soldiers freezing half-to-death on a short three-mile march.
**G: It's hard to be out front anymore. The Brits won't let my film be shown in schools until the teacher says it's political and not scientific. Everybody knows we're killing the earth, just like that Peruvian guy said...all these typhoons and hailstorms and...
**O: I've done my part with your idea, Al – cap-and-trade...break up these coal-burners, bankrupt 'em...can't get my Senate to go along...my House – bless Pelosi – went along without reading a word of that bill but the Senate...MY Senate has it...
**G: I know the feeling, Barry, but just do what everybody expects...get out that old executive-order pen and kill those climate-killers.
**H: Okay, that's settled...the old executive order thing, the courts and the Congress be damned! Now, are we gonna send the Airborne to...
**O: I will NOT be sidetracked, Chuck. You came awfully close to insubordination there. I need tangible plans for changing the climate and I expect you and Martin to have them on my desk by tomorrow. Valerie Jarrett doesn't like you military types to start with and Michele didn't change her mind about you when she became proud of the U.S. back in 2008, so don't push the envelope...plus...tell your guys to quit saluting me every time I turn around. I'm tired of all the hassle with bothering to return them since Fox News and John McCain watch my every move.
**D: What kind of climate do you have in mind, Mr. President? Hot, cold, medium, rainy, snowy...
**O: Look! I set the policy...you carry it out. Figure it out. Al here will help you, won't you, Al? Al? AL? AL?
**G: A little to the left, honey...now rub around my fifth vertebra in that monster muscle...that's so...z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z

And so it goes.
Jim Clark