Exponential Hypocrisy

With regard to the Sterling/Bundy so-called “hate-speech,” people are offended only if they decide to be. And with regard to hatred itself, people have a right to hate any individual, institution, government, or other entity they choose. They are not allowed to adversely impact any entity but they have the right of freedom of speech as long as it does not result in injury of any kind to other entities—the old yelling-fire-in-a-theater thing.

For instance, when Al Sharpton described whites as cave-dwellers in a speech, he did not offend me because I won't allow it. Or, when Sterling made reference to Jews, he offended them only if they respect him enough to allow it. When Bundy spoke of slavery, he offended blacks only if they think he's important enough to allow themselves to be affected. A Clippers player is offended by Sterling only if he allows it.

When Obama was asked about Sterling's comments in a press conference, instead of merely indicating that he wouldn't dignify Sterling with an answer he decided to get on Sterling's name-calling level and called him ignorant. He rose to the bait of being offended because he allowed himself to be.

This is the crux of the matter regarding the current effort in this country to effect mind-control and abridge freedom of speech. Government and private individuals and institutions have said that people may not hate and that they may not say what they like. This is the same as bureaucracies mandating the amount of salt on a hamburger or restricting outside smoking areas when one eighteen-wheeler or freight-train passing through the city pours more carcinogens in the air than 500,000 smokers.

Cultural attributes cannot be nullified by laws. Regardless of their denials, all people have prejudices and millions are racist, including people of all races. These attributes cannot be changed across-the-board by any other force, including churches, schools and non-profit welfare agencies. They are inborn or learned and are simply to be dealt with individually. Result: order, not anarchy in this country. Look elsewhere in the world and see the opposite.

The reaction fueled by the media is one of wholesale condemnation of Sterling by a nation now so allegedly pure that it won't countenance the remarks he made about Jews and blacks. Baloney! The vast majority couldn't care less about something in which they have no interest – the NBA or race. Fox's Jewish commentator Bernie Goldberg was outraged but expressed the gravity of the situation by ridiculing sister cable network CNN because it stopped its Flight 370 (239 dead) coverage long enough to cover Sterling. What hypocrisy!

Fox's Jewish commentator Charles Krauthammer, with whom I agree on most things, gushed that his teenage son belongs to a clique that sees no differences in people. Baloney! Fox's Bill O'Reilly has castigated NBC and its personnel for years. Hypocritical self-righteousness! Neither man would want his private conversations (often Sterlingesque, I'll bet) about people broadcast. The point is that these people are blinded to the realities because they're blinded to their own foibles.

Neither Sterling nor the other objects of ridicule should be offended by Goldberg, Krauthammer or O'Reilly...unless they want to be. It's worth noting that Sterling is Jewish and that NBA Commissioner Silver, who just fined Sterling $2.5 million and ordered that he give up his ball club and go nowhere near his own team or the games, is also Jewish. Having been on the job only three months, Silver went way over the line. How much did the Jewishness of all these men, except O'Reilly, dictate their actions?

It's doubtful that Sterling has been offended by the remarks of these men or anyone else because he doesn't intend to be. There are groups in this country who have made a cottage industry out of convincing people that they should be offended or hurt somehow by things they hear, thereby victimized. Baloney. This is a way of telling people they are too infantile to handle TALK.

The Clippers players are paid well for what they do and it's a cinch that the things they say privately about Sterling wouldn't stand the light of day. He is un-lovable, apparently unfaithful to his wife, crude and foul-mouthed. Nothing he said hurt anyone, however, and he had a right to say it, especially in private.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Media Gone Ape Again!

The media hasn't had as juicy a weekend since the OJ-trial 20 years ago as the one recently when all the news of the world took a back seat to statements made by a rancher out west and the owner of the NBA Los Angeles Clippers, both classified as (gasp) racist. Al Sharpton is organizing a protest. This is what Sharpton said in a 1994 speech: “White folks was [sic] in caves while we was [sic] building empires…. We taught philosophy and astrology and mathematics before Socrates and them Greek homos ever got around to it.” WOW! When Al, the darling of MSNBC with his own clambake, turns racist, he doesn't miss anyone, even the homosexuals.

This is what Obama wrote on page 133 of Dreams from My Father: “Change in the White House, where Reagan and his minions were carrying on their dirty deeds. Change in the Congress, compliant and corrupt. … Change will come from a mobilized grass roots. That’s what I’ll do, I’ll organize black folks.” He didn’t say he would organize all poor or disadvantaged folks, just black folks (his mother was white). Reagan and the vast majority in Congress were white folks and, presumably, he intended to turn them (Reagan's minions) around. That's 24-carat racism.

This is what Obama told his Hollywood millionaire friends in 2008 as he headed into Pennsylvania: “And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” That's about as racist as it gets. He indicated in 2012 that he would be more flexible toward Russia AFTER the election, tantamount to sellout of the U.S. (mostly white folks). Putin is probably still laughing.

Apparently, a woman taped (or so said) a phone conversation with Donald Sterling, Clippers owner since 1981, in which disparaging remarks by Sterling are recorded. Coincidentally, she's being sued by Sterling or his wife—nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Is this called “payback time?”

Sterling may not like black folks but the average NBA salary is right at $3.5 million, so he's doing right well by his players. One of them, Chris Paul (black guy), is guaranteed $83,074,518 by 2018. This doesn't mean that Sterling didn't use good judgment if he made racist remarks, although in the U.S. he has the same right as Al Sharpton and President Obama to exercise free speech and to do it publicly. Obama referred to his own grandmother (who raised him) as the “typical white person,” i.e., uncomfortable in the presence of someone unlike him/her.

The supreme irony lies in the fact that Sterling was scheduled to receive a second Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People at a May 15th banquet, but the NAACP has reversed the decision. Sterling received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the NAACP in 2009, also. Sharpton is scheduled to receive a Person of the Year Award at the same ceremony that Sterling would have attended. Go figure.

For folks like Obama and Sharpton, racism applies only to whites. Obama said a white policeman, who was only doing his duty in 2009, acted stupidly – without even knowing the facts, therefore, his remark was just racist. He referred to Sterling while on his current swing through Asia as being “ignorant,” but obviously didn't feel that to be a racist remark. Hypocritical arrogance like his and Sharpton's is ugly but says more about them than the people they insult.

Obama made his “flexible” remark when he thought no one would hear it, but the mike was open. Would he have put that remark on the Internet? Of course not. Sterling's alleged remark was made in a private conversation. Should that have been put on the Internet? Of course not. Yet, Obama wears Teflon but Sterling is dirty, like Reagan's minions as well as his Congress.

The most blame for these incidents should be applied to the media—all of the media that I have observed on both TV and in the paper. With the world going to hell in a hand-basket, the gossip-mongers in the media—both liberal and conservative—have gone ape over something so trivial as to be laughable. There's a touch of racial sensitivity in everyone—red, yellow, black and white—and it behooves the titillating media to shut its silly mouth.

There's been no harm done.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

President All "Teed-Up"

The beat goes on with respect to the Obama administration's mishandling of foreign policy. The commander-in-chief has now dispatched 600 troops to four east-European countries, two of which share borders with Russia – Estonia and Latvia. Neither of the other two – Lithuania and Poland – shares a border with Russia. So...what do 150 troops apiece in these countries have to do with anything since all four are members of NATO and are – by treaty – firmly entitled to defense against any nation that attacks them, especially Russia?

Perhaps the president has in mind the use of U.S. troops as sort of guinea pigs – like in South Korea – the attack upon which would precipitate all-out war. If so, that's comparing apples with oranges since the situations are nowhere near the same. In any case, NATO, including virtually all of Europe as well as Canada, would mobilize immediately, whether or not there were any U.S. troops in those countries. In short, the troops are totally unnecessary.

The usual bit about having them deployed to carry out training, etc., is laughable, as is the claim that they represent some sort of support from the U.S., which is already obligated. In short, the American people are not gullible enough to believe that 600 troops make any kind of difference in the situation, especially since Obama has already made it crystal clear that the U.S. will not intervene militarily in Ukraine, no matter what Putin does.

The president continues to embarrass this country on his Asian swing now in progress. He delivered himself of the proclamation in Japan that his further sanctions against Putin are “teed up.” Maybe one out of 100 million folks in this world know what “teed up” means, but the president chose that golf-term when he might have just said “prepared,” something understood in most any language. The sanctions will mean nothing if they are inculcated, especially since Europe is so dependent on Russia for its oil.

The Geneva clambake – Kerry's 15 minutes of fame the other day – has now proven to be a debacle since Putin has made it clear that whatever was signed there is not worth the paper and ink used. He's outfoxed NATO and the UN since he can make it appear that Ukraine is oppressing Russians in its East, just as he claimed regarding Crimea. Actually, according to the media, the majority of people in east-Ukraine would rather be part of Russia anyway, so what's the beef? This was the case in Crimea, as well.

It is abundantly apparent that Obama should have said nothing about the happenings in Ukraine. It all started with dissident Ukrainians (probably justifiably) declaring a Slavic Spring, i.e., taking to the streets to foment unrest and violence to unseat a lousy president. They were successful but merely produced a governmental vacuum with new officials somehow chosen by the people trying to fill it – unsuccessfully, not least because the country is bankrupt and has only a weak military, far inferior to that of Russia.

The U.S. has no treaty obligation to defend Ukraine so, unless he was prepared to do something substantive about the problem, Obama should have kept the lid on comments, especially any that indicated armed conflict. He didn't need to say that the U.S. would not fight for Ukraine. He didn't need to say anything, just as he didn't need to say anything about Syria. He and the whole world know that getting into these regional wars is a futile exercise.

Nations like Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria will have their civil wars notwithstanding what others think is right or wrong. Action may be necessary, however, when a sovereign nation attacks another sovereign nation such as was the case when Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1991 and Bush 41 put a stop to that grab, saving all the Arabian Peninsula, if not the entire Middle East. Even that may not have happened if oil (a worldwide concern) had not been a predominant factor.

Bush 41 had the advantage of a great economy and a military so powerful that no nation could compare. The U.S. has a miserable economy now and the military is being drastically down-sized. Obama needs to keep his mouth closed about any type of intervention and should also tell State Secretary Kerry that competing with Hillary for the number of miles-flown on hopeless enterprises is as silly as it gets.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

U.S. Administration—Exponential Ineptness

In my memory, there's never been a time when this nation suffered from inept leadership to the extent that exists now. This is humongously true regarding the executive and Congress and almost as obvious regarding the Supreme Court. The complete upheaval of healthcare operations in this country is a good example for all three branches.

The Obamacare package was passed through Congress with the explicit explanation by the democrat-controlled Congress that no one had read the bill. Certainly, the republicans hadn't, either, but not one of them voted for it in either the Senate or the House, thus absolving themselves of any responsibility for it. It would not have become law but for an unbelievable opinion by Chief Justice Roberts – swinging the Court – that a penalty is actually a tax and since government can collect taxes, Obamacare is, ipso facto, legal.

Translated, this means that a traffic fine is not a penalty but a tax; however, traffic fines are not reported on tax forms or collected by the State IRS, meaning that they don't apply. Under Obamacare, the IRS is responsible for enforcing the “tax,” which actually is not a tax at all but a government fine for not “signing-up.” The enforcement of any federal fine lies within the purview of the Justice Department, not the IRS.

Again without a single republican vote, the House democrats (feeling their oats after just retaking the House) passed the cap-and-trade bill in June 2009 without reading it. Indeed, 300 pages of it were added after midnight on the day it was passed. It was defeated in a democrat-dominated Senate...the smell was too great to overcome. It was designed to bankrupt electricity providers, as the president had promised in his 2008 campaign, with consumer-costs “skyrocketing” – his term.

On 14 April, Treasury Secretary Lew signed a loan guarantee (actually a giveaway) of $1 billion to Ukraine, the money to be borrowed, of course, from China since the U.S. is bankrupt and running deficits too huge to comprehend. The Chinese economy is also in trouble so this clueless administration is heading the nation for the proverbial cliff.

Ukraine was not having trouble and Crimea was not taken over by Russia until Ukrainian protesters took to the streets for their own “Slavic Spring” and threw out their government in February. Instead of wisely staying out of this mess, hopefully having learned hard lessons in the Middle East, Obama and State Secretary Kerry have attempted to become the world's “bully” and dictate what will happen to both Ukraine and Russia (tried to influence Crimea but looked foolish), without the actual resources to do anything. The Europeans – actually with something on the line – would just as soon be in Philadelphia.

Ukraine is not a NATO member so there is no NATO responsibility to do anything, especially – also with regard to eastern Ukraine – since a huge percentage (probably the majority) of Ukrainans there want to be part of Russia anyway, as was the case in Crimea. Virginia didn't want to be part of the U.S. in 1865, but Lincoln, without outside help, turned the state around. It's up to the Ukrainians to put their house in order, as Lincoln and the legitimate U.S. did.

NATO has 28 member nations that geographically encircle the west end of Russia, including the U.S., Canada and Iceland. Even tiny Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, that border on Russia, are NATO members. Any pressure by Putin on any of these nations would automatically – by treaty – invoke action by NATO, including virtually all of Europe, the Scandinavian countries, the U.S. and Canada.

This means that the United Nations would have no say concerning that possibility, contrary to its stupid resolution in 2011 that “permitted” the U.S. to attack Libya, a deed so foul as to still invade political nostrils. Current UN Ambassador Power (then just a White House hack) was an instigator of that genocide – along with Hillary Clinton and Susan Rice – and should keep her mouth shut about any American action anywhere. Rice is now head of NSA and Clinton is actually considered for the presidency—nauseous even to contemplate. Power is harmless since nobody takes her seriously.

Vice President Biden is off to Ukraine right away to spread the word of support, which for him is “God love ya!” Republican Senator McCain, as the case with Libya, Syria and most everywhere else, is yammering for the president to send weapons to the Ukraine government, such as it is, which would use them against Ukrainians. A bit smaller than Texas, Ukraine has 129,950 troops, according to the World Almanac, though many of them may now feel more allegiance to Russia than Ukraine.

In any case, Ukraine is not a U.S. problem.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

The Greatest Accident in History

The greatest accident in history,
He claimed upon his soapbox in the park,
Concerns the president now in D.C. –
He treats his job as being on a lark,
He claims the Constitution out-of-date
Because it mandates his prerogatives...
Because it simply does not liberate
The folks who form the nation's negatives.

He ridicules the laws to not enforce
Despite the oath to uphold them,
The nation's top lawman holds to the course
The president has set to ignore them;
And so he rules by fiat, more or less,
Because he says the Congress is inert
Perhaps he thinks himself sort of noblesse—
Executive to order...laws subvert.

His violations scream impeachable
But vapid House collectively lacks spine,
The president is just unreachable –
Yes...just because the Congress is supine;
Perhaps inaction is just ethnic-based...
If so, that makes the problem so much worse,
When laws by just that fact can be erased,
The nation suffers a despotic curse.

To think a president was once impeached
For perjury that had to do with sex
Compared to orders that have overreached
Regarding life-and-death—falsehood reflex—
Is simply to condemn to nth degree
A president who strives to be a king
– The greatest accident in history –
To once great nation...degradation bring.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Never Promised a Rose Garden

A delicious irony was played out in the Rose Garden adjacent to the White House the other day when the president and a bevy of democrats performed a political end-zone celebration complete with everything but the crotch-hops and chest-bangers and other obscene gestures that athletes sometimes produce after making a score. There was even a bit of trash-talk as the president gleefully excoriated the press corps for its savaging of the unbelievably flawed “healthcare roll-out” back on October 1.

The irony involves the degree of lying that has taken place in the Rose Garden in recent memory. So...one has to wonder at the president's exultation over his claim of 7.1 million enrollees in the plan. There's a great difference between an enrollee and an enrollee who has actually made a premium-payment and is therefore covered by an insurance policy. No statistic was given for that number and probably for good reason—either that it wasn't known or that it was and wouldn't have added to the celebration.

One remembers 12 September 2011, when in the Rose Garden the president said that the Benghazi Massacre was perpetrated by a senseless movie of 13 minutes duration that made it to You-Tube and stirred up a ruckus in Cairo, nearly 700 miles away. He was lying through his teeth, as was his state-secretary, Hillary Clinton. They both new better but the president was still insisting on that humongous lie in a speech at the United Nations two weeks later.

Or...how many times may one suppose that the president lied in the Rose Garden about the fact that under Obamacare no one would lose a desired policy or doctor? And then there's the matter of the “red lines” in Syria that Assad dare not cross—how many times did the president draw those lines in the lawn of the Rose garden but paid them no attention in the sand of Syria?

One remembers that, depending on the source, there were 30-40 million without healthcare (insurance) when Obamacare became law to reverse that situation. Under the law, 6 or 7 million lost their insurance, so added to the (split the difference) 35 million already uninsured the figure became 42 million without insurance. Now, the president crows about a 7.1-million sign-up without even indicating how many of those are among the 6 million who became uninsured under the law—the president's big LIE. So, about 34 million are still uninsured. Nothing's changed except that the entire medical enterprise has been upended in a nation owning the best healthcare and hospitals in the world.

The celebration in the Rose Garden was the product of juvenile minds conjuring up something to fool the public. The adolescent mindset is what triggers the antics in the NFL when someone scores or just when someone makes a tackle and then crotch-hops ten yards toward the opposite goal line beating his chest like a chimpanzee in the local zoo. The president had his cheerleaders on hand—like House Minority Leader Pelosi, who famously said no one would know what was in Obamacare until it was passed. Like all the other congresspersons who voted for the thing, she had never read the act and likely still has no idea what's in it.

In any case, there are problems; otherwise, the president would not have by executive order changed the new law about 29 times in order to influence the elections in November. Two of my family members have suffered, one because of increases in both premiums and deductibles and the other because his company is canceling its policy altogether and has explained the reason to be Obamacare. The extant policy didn't suit, probably because it didn't cover condoms. Shouldn't everyone have free condoms actually paid for by the people who have sense enough not to need them?

The system has been designed from the beginning to fail—to implode as the insurance rates went out of sight and people couldn't pay the premiums and especially the deductibles required before the insurance benefits kick-in. Already, hordes of doctors and a plethora of hospitals are out of the system, understanding that it just isn't worth it. Their decisions would have been made in Washington, not in their institutions or private offices. When the presidential-delayed company-mandate kicks-in, there will be weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth, but the president figures that won't happen (by his fiat) until AFTER November. This is an example of exponential cynicism.

The Rose Garden is most famous now as a place of the BIG LIE and adolescent shenanigans. And one plaintively cries, “How long, how long?” Almost three years—so sad for the nation to be in the hands of children!

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

TORNADO

Tornado season is here, reminding me of a harrowing experience 40 years ago in another life, April 3, 1974. At the throttle of Southern Railway engine 3003 on that beautiful, unseasonably warm day, I had had one of those great runs the dispatchers rarely handed out, on Train 172 at about a mile-and-a-quarter long. I’d left Oakdale, Tenn., about 2:30 p.m. and was slowing on the steep grade approaching Moreland, Ky., some 125 miles and three hours later and only minutes from my home terminal, Danville, Ky., when things came unglued.

Positioned on the cab’s east side, I didn’t see the funnel cloud brakeman Allen Knight saw when he looked back through the west-side window. We knew it was windy and the weather was threatening, but on the185-ton locomotive hadn’t felt anything unusual…until the utility pole at the main Moreland crossing snapped and came crashing down in front of the engine, high-voltage wires and all, and fire flew out from under the wheels. Fearing electrocution, I jumped up, wanting to get all of me, including my feet, on the seat cushion but couldn’t because the brakes would go into emergency if I took my foot off the “dead man’s pedal” (made of metal). Little blue, lead-thin lines crackled around the 600-volt cabinets only a few feet from our seats, and Allen yelled at me not to touch anything. Unknown to us, the 23-ton caboose was shaking violently and conductor George “Billy” Boswell and flagman Mike Richardson were simply “hoping for the best,” with nowhere to go. The tornado passed through the center of the train.

It was vital to get the train over the crossing since blocking it would make practically impossible the movement of emergency vehicles from Danville/Junction City to the south-end of the county on Hwy #127. The brakes went into emergency soon after the engines cleared the crossing, however, and we came to a grinding halt, the engine vibrating as if some gigantic hand were shaking it.

Nine of the ten mobile homes on a ridge on the west side disappeared. Another one a few yards away on the east side imploded, and I radioed the dispatcher in Somerset, Ky., that it looked as if Moreland was blowing away. The black-angus cattle in the field on the west side were rolling end over end down the fence-row or twirling around in the middle of the pasture, a funny, puzzled look on their faces. The steeple blew off the church over by Highway 127, which paralleled the tracks. Trees were going down and utility poles snapping everywhere.

When the wind died down a bit, Allen and I hit the ground to see if anyone was in the flattened trailer nearby and survey the situation. The man from the trailer said his family was safe in the adjacent house but bewailed the fact that his 23 guns had disappeared. Sitting on the ground leaning against the lead-engine’s fuel tank on the west side was a man who was obviously shaken, dazed and hurting. He said he was standing in his yard a few hundred feet down the track, but in an instant simply landed by or against the train. We helped him home, where his wife was plenty scared, and found out later that he had a severe injury.

Walking south down the tracks, we found pieces of the blown-away trailers and downed trees sandwiched between the cars in the train. Our worst fears were confirmed when we discovered the crossing completely blocked by two overturned boxcars. An automobile was on its side in the yard adjacent to the crossing.

We continued down the tracks, climbing over trees, and met Billy and Mike, who looked as if they had seen ghosts. They told us that cars weighing more than 50 tons empty had been lifted off their wheels intermittently throughout the train and set down beside the tracks or stacked on each other. They had had to claw their way over, under and around trees and other debris. The track was hardly damaged, unbelievable since derailments usually cause severe damage as wheels snap rails and chew up ballast and cross-ties.

After passing through the train, the twister continued northeast and caused one death locally, as well as considerable damage. As things calmed down, it became deathly still, as if nothing had ever happened, and then the rains came. We were told to stay there until well after dark, but finally instructed to proceed the twelve miles to Danville. The storm accompanying the tornado had knocked out all power, and there didn’t seem to be a light in the whole town. There were no rail-yard employees on duty in the freight-yard, and the usually bustling installation was like a ghost-town. I was relieved to find my family safe.

If the tornado had passed through either end of the train, one can only guess what might have happened. I’ve seen worse storms at sea with parts of ships simply blown away, but could not have imagined anything on land like that tornado if I hadn’t experienced it, up close and personal. The next day, I visited a farm where an owner-unrecognized horse had just shown up...just blew in the day before.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark