N. Korean-Iranian Treachery

My physician friend, Robert Groves (now deceased), spent his childhood in what was then Persia, now Iran, where his father, under the auspices of the Presbyterian Church, was president of Alborz College. He once told me that the ultimate aim of an Iranian was/is to outsmart everyone with whom he has any relationship, no matter by what means.

This is especially meaningful now with the big news that Iran has shipped 25,000 lbs. of low-grade uranium to Russia, thus bringing very close the date upon which $100 billion worth of Iranian assets will become unfrozen by financial establishments worldwide. Iran will also be free then to sell oil on the world market, something current sanctions disallow, and participate in world financial operations.

Question: Since Russia is a cheek-by-jowl ally of Iran, what will happen to the uranium, which was 20% pure and being processed toward nuclear-bomb use? Former Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi shipped his weapons of mass destruction to the U.S. soon after the Iraq War came on line in 2003, but Qaddafi was not a U.S. ally and, in any case, this nation had no known use for the material, already able to virtually wipe out the world with its arsenal.

This is not true vis-a-vis Putin's situation. The shipped material can be brought on line in Russia, with its refinement continued and then shipped back to Iran or simply made a part of Putin's arsenal. That Putin has designs on the enlargement of both Russian territory and influence worldwide is obvious by his actions regarding Ukraine.

All the major intelligence agencies worldwide such as Britain's MI6, Israel's Mossad and Russia's FSB, not to mention the CIA, agreed in 2002 that Saddam had WMD in-country and, as already proven in his gassing of the Kurds and Iranians (during his war of the 1980s with Iran), could be expected to use it. Between September 2002 and February 2003, he shipped it out, probably to Syria, just using trucks at night.

Saddam had finally agreed to allow inspectors back into Iraq but delayed their entry from September to December of 2002 and then monitored where they could go, making their work useless. Despite the administration's insistence that Iran (with 24 days notice) must allow inspectors on Iranian military bases, the official word from Khameini is that this will NEVER happen, so the whole deal is back to square one realistically, though the administration will crow that a diplomatic victory has been gained.

As my friend indicated, the Iranians can be expected to continue their nuclear program somewhere, all agreements not worth the paper on which they're written, as was the case in 2002 when North Korea finally had to admit that its nuclear-arms effort had continued in direct violation of its 1994 agreement with the U.S. to the effect that the program would be shut down in exchange for help in building two nuclear reactors for peaceful objectives.

This admission came despite the fact that a U.S.-led consortium came up with the $4.6 billion for the power plants in December 1999. North Korea set off a seismic reaction when it made its second nuclear-bomb test in May 2009. In the Iranian mode, the North Koreans had hoodwinked the U.S. big-time. Obama and State Secretary Kerry will ballyhoo this great Iranian uranium-shipment as a colossal diplomatic victory but it means nothing except that Iran will now have access to enough money to do as it pleases.

The flimflam continues regarding the fight against ISIS, in which Obama and Kerry speak of the fight as belonging to the U.S. when in reality it's being conducted by both the ayatollah Khameini in Tehran and Vladimir Putin in Moscow. The U.S. has averaged about three airstrikes a day since last summer and has had no combatants in any strength on the ground.

Obama would show real intelligence if he withdrew all U.S. personnel from the Middle East as early as yesterday, told the arm-chair generals and colonels on Fox News to go fly a kite and let these worthies fight it out without any further loss of U.S. blood and treasure. The emphasis should be on homeland security (mainly rooting out Muslim cells), not being policeman to the world.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Preacher as Train-Wreck

God Will Not Be Mocked

In a Lexington Herald-Leader column of 27 December, religion-writer Paul Prather reckoned that he's a train wreck and his readers probably worse. He then goes on, quoting Frederick Buechner, to explain that the Christian gospel is part tragedy, comedy and fairy tale, pessimistic about human nature and optimistic about God's nature.

Train-wreck used as metaphor indicates a total catastrophe, at least consensually, since it is used quite often to describe most any complete disaster. I've worked as a railroad call-boy, clerk, switchman, brakeman, conductor but mostly as a locomotive engineer and have observed, participated in and labored to clean up many train wrecks and can claim that they come in all sizes, not all just total calamities.

There's the derailing of a few axles, for instance, just a slight derailment. Or, there's maybe 14 or 15 cars overturned, a serious derailment. Then, there's the real thing, a train-wreck of some 40 or 50 cars turned upside down, maybe on fire and all the rest. One sees an auto-carrier-car with its 15 or 20 new Fords on their roofs and says “train-wreck.” My uncle was conductor on a freight-train back in the 1960s when 95 of 167 cars in his train literally flew off the track just north of the old depot in Somerset, Ky., and I was engineering a train in the early 1970s through which a tornado passed in Moreland, Ky., blowing away trailers and some 18 cars of my train. Now that was scary.

Prather is probably a slight derailment and I'm probably a serious derailment but I don't think he's a train-wreck. Prather described a friend who is a train-wreck (lost it all and occupies a prison cell), so he probably would give the general population a better shake than train-wreck. I think God would, too, though we're all susceptible to going off the rails occasionally.

The Christian gospel is far from pessimistic about human nature; otherwise, God would have concluded mankind to be essentially unable to accept it and thus would not have bothered with it. God created people, not animals, in his image, according to scripture, meaning that he gave them the ability to think rather than act on instinct alone, and therefore choose to accept the gospel, as Prather obviously has.

The Christian gospel is far from optimistic about God's nature. Optimism is defined as “an inclination to put the most favorable construction upon actions and events or to anticipate the best possible outcome.” The best possible outcome (ask any fourth-grader) in any situation is the least possible amount of pain. The scriptures are replete with instances in which God dealt unbelievably harshly with people when “they had it coming” because, using their ability to think, they chose to do wrong.

Optimism about God's nature gives license to political correctness, among other things. Correctness (as well as law), for instance, demands that men may marry each other but scripture condemns that out-of-hand, so one can expect the nation that permits this perversion of God's plan to not look optimistically at God's nature. Homosexuality, pedophilia and pederasty were hallmarks of both Greek and Roman cultures. One need only to consider their histories to contemplate God's nature.

Far from being tragic, the Christian gospel is “good news,” though Christ and others experienced tragedy in implementing it. It is not comedy since God's business is serious business, not fun stuff. It certainly involves no fairy tales, though many of the elite theologians,with their Ph.d's (maybe Prather, too), consider it mostly if not all myth.

Prather equated tragedy with sinfulness, comedy (strangely) with redemption, and fairy tales with blessings. The real tragedy lies with a culture caught on the horns of its own dilemma (perversion glorified); the real comedy with an institution (like the church) ridiculing hilariously its own faith, and the real fairy tale with the notion that there will not be a day of reckoning. The real scripture says that God will not be mocked, Prather's notions of political correctness notwithstanding.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Micro-Agression & the Mural

Much Ado About NOTHING

The entire editorial page of the Lexington Herald-Leader of 21 December (not even any letters to the editor) was devoted to the permanent mural that has been covered in the university's hallowed Memorial Hall, painted by a highly respected artist in 1934 depicting Kentucky society/history. Two UK professors say it should stay and become a “teaching tool;” a historian says it belongs to the U.S. (Great Depression WPA project) so the General Services Administration should get in on the act; and a group of “students of color” apparently want it removed, since it represents “micro-aggression,” the newest term defining racism.

One of the professors suggested having an African-American artist paint a mural in that location to represent whatever a logical refutation to the offending mural would be, a sort of “dueling paintings” approach. Maybe the new painting would depict Simon Legree with horns cracking his bull-whip although only one in four southern families owned slaves and virtually none in the North.

The students of color mentioned the statues that offend them. On the Mall in Washington, D.C., between the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials is the statue of Martin Luther King, Jr., the size of a three story building on four acres, with MLK, arms folded and glowering down on the memorials to Lincoln, and the dead of WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. The statue was sculpted in China by a Chinese artist, shipped to the U.S. in pieces and put together on the National Mall by Chinese workers...no people of color allowed.

Even if Lincoln had been sculpted standing instead of sitting, he would not be as tall as King, over 30 feet. A short distance away, the FDR sculpture shows President Roosevelt (1933-45) life-size in a wheelchair. Does anyone ever remark the disproportional aspects of that arrangement? No. However, there's no memorial to the 360,000 nearly all white Union soldiers who died of combat or sickness in the slave-freeing Civil War. My great-grandfather and two great-uncles, all Union soldiers, survived that war although great-grandad was wounded once and nearly died of disease once.

Or, take World War I, in which my father served in the Navy making those terrifying Atlantic crossings at the mercy – before radar and sonar – of the deadly German u-boats. There's no memorial on the National Mall to the 116,516 nearly all white GIs who died in that hellish conflict at the rate of 320 per day. As a personal matter, should I be offended, as a white person, by any of this? What difference does it make how I feel since it changes nothing?

That's precisely the message to send to ALL the students, not just those of color. The only way they can be offended is to allow themselves to be offended, something anybody half-bright can do. The constant drumbeat for more “togetherness” dialogue despite constant dialogue for the last 50 years is silly. A strong mind will disallow offense. A weak, victim-hood mind basks in being offended. That's the way of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.

No “teachable moment” or “teaching tool” is needed because there's nothing to teach. I listened to a sermon a while back given in a white church close to an alleged slave-auction site on Main Street. The preacher was determined to lay an intensive guilt-trip on the congregants, none of whom or even their parents or grandparents had anything to do with that activity that ended in 1863. One wonders if she gave any thought to what a 14-year-old student of color might have thought about her vivid descriptions of an ancestor in chains. Obviously, she didn't or she knew that no young black was present or she was just dumb as a gourd.

During the basketball season last year, 23,000 fans (nearly all white) jammed Rupp Arena many times to see 12 students of color produce a record-breaking season for UK, with one white guy playing a few minutes infrequently. Did white people complain about that gargantuan disparity? No. They screamed themselves hoarse cheering on these offended (ask them) students.

Maybe the professors and administrators at UK ought to take back their university from teenagers and early 20-somethings of all colors and tell them to just suck it up and get on with it. Or is that just too, too offensive?

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Electoral Circuses

Christie's Folly

There's a certain sadness in watching the current circuses endemic to the U.S. electoral process—the whole mess, not just the ridiculous “debates,” which are not debates but just extensions of campaigns, with the networks turning them into profit. Ten people jawing at each other while moderators throw out gotcha questions and bask in the update of their resumes might be good entertainment for some but not me.

I check in for a few minutes (the preview debates are better) and then read or hear about them, admittedly from biased souls who make their living being biased souls spewing their conclusions as to the readiness (or the opposite) of the candidates for public office. The flamboyance factor plays well now, though facts often get in the way. Those lacking flamboyance (most of them) wax eloquent and serious but are so disagreed on solutions that one wonders if the nation will remain as leaderless as it is now...if that could be possible.

The process stinks. The primary campaign period should last no more than two months at most, with the final campaign for top spot confined to six weeks. The nation should not be put through two years of often acrimonious name-calling and opinions formed as responses to polls while candidates already holding office neglect their sworn duties for most of that period. Before the day of state-of-the-art communications time was needed. Now, the opposite is true, but with candidates in living-rooms ad nauseam anyway.

The many republican candidates are using the debates as 15-minutes-of-fame stuff, acting juvenile at best, as idiots at worst. N.J. Governor Christie said the other night that the U.S. should declare a no-fly zone over Syria, tell the Russians its location (Syria that hard to find?) and then shoot down any Russian plane therein. That's idiocy enhanced by a total lack of military knowledge, and other candidates have said the same thing.

What pilot knows his EXACT location when he's traveling at better than 600 mph? By the time he looks at his GPS coordinate, he's not there any longer. Christie's cockamamie remark points to the glaring weakness among all the candidates, to wit, no military experience, just like Obama, who nevertheless is smart enough not to put U.S. troops in significant numbers into a Vietnam situation, fighting not to win but to “contain.” Ohio Governor Kasich reckoned that the U.S. (surely not he) should punch Putin in the nose—playground mentality on parade. Egad!

What these wannabes fail to understand (except for Rand Paul and maybe Trump) is that the U.S. is not running the ISIS operation anymore, if it ever was. The Russians and Iranians have taken it over and Obama is a bystander. Putin knows about Afghanistan vs. the Soviets of the 1980s and if he wants to renew that debacle, let him have at it. Ayatollah Khameini is determined that Shiites kill as many Sunnis as possible, so let him have at it. Why pour U.S. bodies and treasure into that hopeless morass?

On the other side stands Sanders, Clinton and O'Malley, the first mentioned a self-confirmed, hard-core socialist whose greatest ambition is to confiscate 90% of the income of the wealthiest and give it to the rest, not bypassing that sacred middle class, presumably, that everyone keeps whining about. Clinton's greatest claim to fame (or infamy) is that she's the highest profile liar to crop up in American politics in decades. O'Malley is a bystander in it for the ride. None of them would know the difference between a salute and an obscene gesture.

Candidates keep insisting that the downfall of ISIS will protect the U.S. and therefore must be done, on the ground if nobody else offers. This is nonsense. Every agency from the FBI to the CIA to all the Homeland Security gangs are responsible for that job whether ISIS lives or dies or, most likely, re-starts if necessary in Libya. The key currently is absolutely barring entry into the U.S. of anyone from the Middle East or North Africa or who has traveled there recently. That's also a way of saying no Muslims, whose religion demands the deaths of infidels like American citizens.

One wonders if the nation can survive its electoral process, not to mention the results of such a flawed mishmash of lunacy.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

End-Times?

CAVEAT ALERT! This piece will have something to do with religion(s) and so people such as atheists and agnostics who for any reason impute no importance to faith (supernatural beliefs) are forewarned concerning time wasted. The emphasis herein will have most to do with the Judeo/Christian God and biblical references to same, as well as with Islam and its holy book, the Koran.

This is not a scholarly approach, just observations concerning elements in both Christianity and Islam having to do with the “end- times.” Some scholars consider end-time prophecies in both the Old and New Testaments, especially in the books of Daniel and Revelation, respectively, to be in process. There's no argument with that though it's unacceptable to believe that God knew everything that would ever happen before the Creation. One simple reason for disbelieving in predestination/foreknowledge is that there would be no need for prayer, since God has already mandated the answer.

It needs to be understood that the Bible is neither myth—any of it—nor a figment of imagination. Just the historical accuracies are enough to prove that its origins reach back farther, even, than the written record. The Koran is a creature of Mohammad, who hijacked a good bit of the Bible in its composition in the seventh century. Mohammad was the Jesse James of Arabia, attacking caravans for his livelihood and that of his 14 wives and families, one of which wives he took to bed when she was ten.

In both Christianity and Islam, there's an end-time scenario, with the Islamic one probably influenced by the Bible. Scholars disagree on interpretations but generally agree on the main points. The Antichrist of Christianity is reflected in Islam by the Dajjal, both of which command and subdue huge armies in bringing on the final things.

The Antichrist is to arise as a world figure, an icon at first of tremendous attraction gathering power among the nations followed by uncomprehending fear as he rules well for 3.5 years, then in chaos and war for 3.5 years, after which Jesus Christ, with an army from Heaven will subdue Antichrist, his henchman, the false prophet, and the army, setting up a thousand-year reign of peace, followed by an eternity of some sort (Heaven).

The Dajjal can come to power only after some entity or entities stir up enough chaos to foment a war. He and his army will subdue all peoples, either putting them to the sword or enslaving them except for Jews, who will be killed. Then the Twelfth Imam will arrive and dispatch the Dajjal, who will have one eye and a terrible scar on his face, and set up a kingdom of indefinite length with infidels either being killed or paying the tax, though Jews will be summarily killed.

Anyone trying to specify an end-times schedule is on a fool's errand, as many would-be prophesiers have discovered. However, particularly with the bloodshed, uncivilized treatment of innocents, and all around chaos connected to ISIS and the attempted structuring of a worldwide caliphate, Muslims may have reason to rejoice at the coming of the end, Dajjal taking over the whole ISIS enterprise.

Indeed, could al Baghdadi, ISIS strongman, be their Dajjal? Probably not, unless he loses an eye and is wounded facially, as was the recently departed Mullah Omar, head of the Taliban and terribly wounded battling the Soviets in the 1980s. He might have qualified. For Christians, Israel as a nation is the main qualifier to bring on the end.

Christians have only to look at the pathetic conditions in the world and wonder if evil has become so powerful that only God can redeem his creation for the final time through the advent and defeat of Antichrist and the resultant events. The ministry, crucifixion and resurrection of Christ created the redeeming vehicle (the atonement for mankind) for the final action. It remains for a “unifier” to arise as Antichrist. Is there one on the horizon?

When he was Iran's president, Ahmadinejad had $17 million set aside for the building of the the mosque for the Twelfth Imam in Jamkaran, just south of Tehran. In his 2004 UN address, he prayed for this man, also known as the Mahdi, to return, puzzling everyone.

None of this is to be construed as more than just a mention. However, both the U.S. and the rest of the world are in such immoral or amoral morasses, that one wonders if God could be fed up.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

P.S. This subject comprises much of the material used in my novel The Biggest Con, a brief description of which is found in the right margin. The time-frame for that novel is 2001-02 and has to do with events leading up to 9/11, the defeat of the Taliban, and events leading up to Saddam's agreement to re-allow WMD inspectors in late 2002.

Muslim Immigration

Trump Not a Bigot

The media elites, both liberal and conservative, as well as all other elites such as in academia or some church hierarchies have expressed outrage with Donald Trump's assertion that no Muslims should be allowed to come to this country until some questions are answered, perhaps one having to do with how a young couple with a six-month-old child (the folks next door?) managed the San Bernardino carnage, complete with assault rifles, pistols, and bombs. Trump has a point.

Trump did not articulate his point well because it smacked of some sort of discrimination based on religion, though one wonders if a manual for living—such as the “holy” Koran—can be accounted religious in that it demands the death or enslaving of the infidel, i.e., anyone not a Muslim...virtually everyone in the U.S. He would better have said, instead of Muslim, anyone from the Middle East or North Africa or anyone traveling recently in those areas, at least for starters.

Trump does not see this as a matter of religion but as whether or not the president intends to look out for the safety of U.S. citizens on their own real estate, in which case the government has a compelling interest in who is allowed in the country, especially based on past experiences and evidence. The 9/11 butchers were all Muslims, as were both the unsuccessful shoe- and underwear-bomber, the Times Square would-be bomber, the attackers of the USS Cole, the murderers in the Khobar Tower affair and the bombings with great bloodshed and death of two U.S. embassies in Africa.

This doesn't even touch the murderers at the Chattanooga armory, San Bernardino state facility, Benghazi, the four officers killed in their tent just before the overthrow of Saddam (grenade tossed by a fellow soldier), and the butchery at Ft. Hood, in which an army major on duty screamed “Allah Akbar” as he shot down unarmed civilians like dogs. There is nothing good to say about the connection of this country with Islam. There are two Muslims in Congress, neither of Middle East descent, who should be shamed by both the Koran and the willful murder of infidels for which it calls and which takes place throughout the world every day.

The strangest argument against Trump is that the Constitutional rights of the Syrians (all Muslims) are being violated, notwithstanding that the Constitution governs people in the U.S. and nowhere else in the world. No would-be immigrant has any Constitutional rights. Article 2, Section 2, of the Constitution designates the president as commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Section 1 indicates that he takes an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the document, without constraints as to how.

The Fourth Amendment indicates that citizens are to be secure in their houses, papers and effects and protected from unreasonable seizures. The lives of 14 citizens in San Bernardino and 3,000 on 9/11 were seized by Muslims and snuffed out in seconds. The president's job is to see that such seizures do not happen, one way being most logical, to wit, disallowing any possibility of seizure by keeping the threat out of the country.

The only meaningful mention of a “test of religion” as a qualifier is in Article 6 of the Constitution and mandates that no religious test may be used to qualify for any office or public trust. This applies only to the U.S. and has nothing to do with anyone anywhere else in the world, certainly not Muslims.

The argument that withholding immigration on the grounds of violating the “who we are” argument, i.e., that the U.S. is a melting pot to which all people have been invited is spurious in the case of Muslims. All ethnic groups – Irish, English, Chinese, Italian, German – came to this country to take advantage of opportunity. The notion that they came to kill Americans for any reason—especially religious—is too off the wall to consider.

This is not true of Muslims, even if only a handful are perpetrators of murder. It's almost impossible to weed out the perpetrators—as seen on 9/11 and in later bloodbaths—so the only way to have adequate protection is to not invite any Muslims (or Middle Easterners or North Africans) at least until something sensible can be done to assuage the fear of people who are looking over their shoulders. This is not barbaric or unpatriotic, just plain common sense.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Blowing in the Wind

The San Bernardino Massacre was serious enough to compel the president to address the nation from the (gasp) Oval Office though not as any fireside chat a la FDR of WWII fame or even of Jimmy Carter in his sweater. No...that wouldn't be good enough for the commander-in-chief. The podium with the presidential seal was brought in so the great unwashed could recognize royalty when they saw it...none of that sitting behind a desk stuff.

The president apparently has assumed that the citizens are all cringing in their cellars in the aftermath of the massacre and so must be reassured that he is doing everything possible to see to the collective saftety. In that regard, he introduced no new information, just mostly reiterated what the country is already doing, especially intelligence-wise, to forestall another butchering. What he didn't say was that another such jihad caper could happen anywhere anytime and pulled off by people totally off the radar.

This is what happened at San Bernardino. A couple with a six-month-old baby decided to do the massacre thing, dropped the baby off with its grandmother, loaded their materiel—quite an arsenal—and did the martyr thing while in the process murdering 14 and wounding a number of others before being shot to death themselves, making them fit for the best Paradise (or at least the nearest ayatollah) can offer. They were just your average young couple next door. This could happen anywhere, notwithstanding anything the president said.

These people are already in the country, many of them already apprehended...but not all. The Marathon Bombers were just two brothers, one with a wife and child and the other a college student. The younger chickened out on the martyr thing and accepted arrest but the older shot-it-out and set off for Paradise and the 72 virgins as if such a place exists. The two unsuccessful airliner bombers and the unsuccessful Times Square bomber—whether stupid or chicken—could have killed hundreds if they had detonated their devices. They were off the radar, too, so the president can't crow too loudly about intel.

The president finally got to what the speech was all about. When the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah (God damn America) Wright, the president's spiritual guru, became a problem for him, Obama gave a speech in 2008 in Philadelphia, tagged a speech on race, but it was actually an apologetic for Wright. He did the same vis-a-vis the massacre, i.e., tried to convince the public that Muslims are just plain ordinary citizens, nothing to worry about.

He sold the citizens short. By now, the citizens understand that the holy book of Islam, as attested to by Islamic officials, calls for the death or enslavement of infidels, practically all Americans. He finally threw Wright under the bus but not until the minister had exhibited his hatred of the U.S. vehemently on nationwide TV in a speech at the National Press Club. Now, even though the president was raised in a Muslim household, he needs to throw Islam under the bus, once and for all, denounce it as not a religion but as a violent cult begun by Mohammad in the seventh century and kept alive by radicalized “non-religionists” through the ages.

This would do no violence to Muslims themselves, who, as the president noted, are collectively peaceful; however, strict allegiance to Islam and to its leaders makes them enemies of the state on the basis of their declared marching orders as outlined in the Quran, their holy book. Some become radicalized like the Farooks of San Bernardino, meaning that others (next-door neighbors) could be just as radicalized, following the holy book. Allah Akbar, as shouted in some of the killings, like Ft. Hood, make these killings the absolute outgrowth of allegiance to the Quran. The president won't say it, but the problem is Islam.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Islam=Cruelty

The San Bernardino Massacre, now officially called by the FBI a terrorist attack though the Obama administration, unlike people who can think, refuses to call it jihad, i.e., butchering by Muslims in accordance with the mandate of the Koran. Indeed, the term terrorist is anathema to Obama, whose first Homeland Security honcho, Janet Napolitano, scrubbed the word “terrorism” from the lexicon and replaced it with “man-caused disaster.” So, SB was an Islamic man-caused disaster even though a woman did much of the killing.

So much for semantics! The official suggestion from the FBI and other law enforcement agencies now is that every citizen should be on the lookout for strange behavior by strange people at strange times and report same to the proper authorities. There's no argument with this, just plain common sense. However, it does smack of an important tool used in communist countries in which citizens are commanded to do the same thing, with the results often amounting to tortures and killings of people who have been reported on by even family members, not to mention neighbors, fellow workers, etc.

This gives an indication as to the viability of a democracy, in which people are morally expected to mind their own business and not interfere with that of others. In the SB case, it was reported that a neighbor of the assassins noticed peculiar activity at their home carried out at times by peculiar people, whom he did not report lest being accused of profiling. Attorney General Lynch was present in the press conference at which the FBI official made his statements, the implication of which was that profiling is absolutely necessary.

Profiling, however, is anathema to the political-correctness crowd, probably including the president. That word would traumatize the faculties at most universities and colleges. They would immediately bring up the issue of profiling vis-a-vis the black community, even though it would be perfectly reasonable in hunting down killers in Chicago, where 455 murders have been carried out this year, 95% of them by blacks on blacks, 20 more already than in all of last year.

Now that a definite link to ISIS by the Muslim/Pakistani woman in the SB killings has been recognized and noted for the public by the FBI, there will be a flurry of activity amongst the faculties against the profiling of Middle Easterners although people will be looking over their shoulders now or at their next-door neighbors if they see women in head-scarves or men of obvious Middle East descent, no matter how innocent they are of anything. Plain common sense. This creates a troubling circumstance, not least because mistakes in both reporting and responses could cause horrific outcomes.

The matter is compounded because it involves religion, not least because no fanatic is more dangerous than a religious fanatic, who considers his cause worth his very life...or hers. The SB butchers were riddled with bullets. The Charlie Hebdo and Paris theater/restaurant killers were shot to death or died at their own hands. The killers of 9/11 died in the plane crashes. Muslim Saladin and the Christian Crusaders were the ancient examples and probably set the tone for the extant divide/animosity between Christians and Muslims or that of their nations today.

In any case, the die has been cast, to wit, that unless and until Muslims convince non-Muslims (infidels) that their holy book does not demand that infidels must pay the tax (become slaves, except for Jews, for whom death only) or die, they will be the objects of surveillance, organized or otherwise. The SB killers were a man (worked for California at $70,000 per year) and woman who had a six-month-old baby and appeared as dangerous as a pumpkin. People have a right to be wary and should not be blamed for it.

The effort is made every day in this country by Muslim officials to the effect that Islam is peaceful. The problem is that Americans look to events like 9/11, SB, the Koran, the Iranian ayatollah and the ISIS headman Baghdadi for the actual truth, to wit, that at its core Islam is unrelenting cruelty. To honestly renounce Islam is to become believable.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Microaggression Nonsense

Re-Segregation, Anyone?

The latest buzzword connoting victimhood is microaggression. No, it isn't in the dictionary...yet, but it notes a very important social phenomenon, especially on college campuses, actually the locations of the origination of the new class of the abused, misused or whatever.

Its most recent high-profile representation was at the University of Missouri a few weeks ago, where some students alleged that other people (maybe students, maybe not) had traumatized them by referring to them in unflattering terms. In fact, some insensitive soul had apparently fashioned a swastika on a bathroom wall, using—of course—feces as the substance of the moment.

This was just too much although no one seemed to know what the Gestapo symbol referenced...could have been the Girl Scouts or even the Red Cross. The perpetrator was not caught either in the act or after for some elucidation on the matter. Even worse, an officer in some African-American campus organization felt he had been the object of verbal slander, an absolute no-no in the era of political correctness. His sensibilities had been traumatized, case closed.

The uproar was so...well...uproarious and intimidating that 32 football players threatened to strike if the president did not resign as early as the day before. He acquiesced, as did the chancellor, all in good spirits and acknowledging that being insulted was tantamount to death by debasement, something no one should undergo. Later, the coach, who sided with the players, gave up the ghost as well (and $2.7 million per year), proving that in Missouri the good guys sacrifice although losing seven conference games might have signified.

The microaggression movement has spread to other campuses, with speech police-persons hard at work to put the finger on verbal abusers. The movement has branched out into the world of lectures, speeches, pep-talks, class assignments, test questions, etc., i.e., any area in which a person—especially a super-sensitive student—can have his/her feelings hurt or be subjected to any proposition/interpretation concerning anything counter to his/her own.

The issue, of course, is racism, real or imagined, with the potential perpetrators being anyone who is not black. Okay, the blacks have included the American-Indians in suffering microaggression but that's it. The Indians don't seem to care that much but they have to be educated in victimhoodness. Actually, some whites have included themselves in this new victim class, noting, for instance, that having “under God” in the pledge or on coins causes them a bothersome rash due to the stress of being inordinately affected every time they pay for a whopper.

Into the mix constantly occurs the “educational achievement gap,” sort of like the “income inequality gap,” to wit, that the playing field has not been leveled for everyone to feel properly accommodated or referenced politely. So...what's a society to do to make everyone happy again?

CAVEAT ALERT! Dare one say it...re-segregation? How better to curtail microaggression on any campus than to guarantee it won't happen because the perpetrators have been banished to their own kind and the victims banished to their own kind, with all things being equal, of course? After all, Doctor James Coleman, University of Chicago distinguished professor who introduced school-busing, stated some 10 years after its inculcation that it didn't work, even though the buses and schools were equal.

Most states can divide their education establishments into black and white institutions in which no derogatory remarks will be encountered. This should already be done on a gender basis anyway, thus terminating the ceaseless cries of rape by sober coeds after being falling-down-drunk at frat parties and getting what they came for. The same stuff can be done in most public school systems (regarding education, not frat parties), especially in sizable towns/cities. Schools can be all-black or all-white or all-girl or all-boy. This would engender much greater learning.

What's to lose? Under current conditions, the education gap grows wider every year. Also, achievement across the board for both blacks and whites diminishes every year. Asians improve every year. If the racism and other education problems are being exacerbated daily now, why not defy political correctness (at the root of all this evil) and do something sensible? Top education experts (and most men) will attest to the fact that some types of segregation help. At this sorry point, they can't hurt.

Microaggression...what nonsense! This is only partly tongue-in-cheek.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Climate-Change...Ho-Hum

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change will be held in Paris, France, November 30—December 11. This is an annual clambake in which the climate-change alarmists try to convince the world that it is literally going to hell...at least heat-wise because evil human beings—translated, mostly Americans—are befouling the atmosphere with too much carbon dioxide, which mainly emanates from the world's oceans that make up 74% of the planet. One hopes the Islamic jihadists do not believe the number of attendees large enough to warrant another bloodbath.

This is a ho-hum affair, not least because no global warming, man-made or otherwise, has occurred during the last 18 years. Anecdotal episodes do not count. During this year, the volume of sea ice in the southern oceans has been at its highest since records have been kept.

This is from the UK The Daily Mail of 2 September 2014: “The speech by former US Vice-President Al Gore was apocalyptic. ‘The North Polar ice cap is falling off a cliff,’ he said. ‘It could be completely gone in summer in as little as seven years. Seven years from now.’ Those comments came in 2007 as Mr Gore accepted the Nobel Peace Prize for his campaigning on climate change. But seven years after his warning, The Mail on Sunday can reveal that, far from vanishing, the Arctic ice cap has expanded for the second year in succession – with a surge, depending on how you measure it, of between 43 and 63 per cent since 2012.”

Little if anything has changed since last year with regard to climate-change. Gore made a fortune with his scandalous book and film titled An Inconvenient Truth. The film was not even allowed to be shown in Britain's public schools until the teacher pointed out all the errors. The Paris meeting will not be about climate or science; rather, it will be about global politics. This isn't to say that honest people will not attend but that ignorant attendees will suffer yet another attempt by the United Nations to subvert actual science by actual climatologists.

After the Gore fiasco of 2007, with peace having nothing to do with climate, President Obama was awarded the same Nobel “Peace Prize” in 2009, less than a year after he took office for doing the same thing, warning the world that it was about to burn because of man's efforts to kill it by driving cars, heating/cooling their houses and otherwise using energy. Obama was all geared up in December 2009 to deliver the main climate speech at the UNFCCC convention in Copenhagen when it was discovered through their own email exposures that the main operatives for the UN had cooked the books and that global warming was a hoax.

This let all the air out of the frantic-efforts-balloon by the UN and U.S. alarmists to float a negative. It precluded the weird and stringent cap&trade penalties envisioned by the UN to especially hurt the U.S. economy, something Obama had promised in 2008 when he claimed he would make electricity rates “skyrocket.” He meant to sort of apologize to the world for the lifestyle of the U.S., even though 40% of the world's population lived in China and India, with less than 5% living in the U.S. Alas...the news of the hoax destroyed his teleprompter!

While the current administration—using unbelievably stringent “scrubbing” regulations—has forced many energy businesses to either go bankrupt of just quit, India and China go merrily along, with China, especially, building ever more coal-fired generators and India contributing huge atmospheric wastes on the basis of population alone. Since the dire warnings of the 1970s that a cold-age was about to decimate the world, little has changed, except that slight warming in recent years is probably due to a slight alteration of the sun-earth relationship having to do with sunspots, something over which people have no control...or even much understanding.

Ironically, The UNFCCC clambake was held in Cancun in December 2010, the better to make the scene more amenable to vacationing while doing the tough work necessary to keep the climate from changing. Cancun underwent violent and uncharacteristic cooling that week, chasing everyone off the beaches. A long ode to that climate-surprise:

Cancun-by-the-sea…Farewell

In balmy Cancun-by-the-sea
The I-P-C-C came to play
And thousands more insipidly
Joined in to play and look for pay;
They came from all the world throughout
To caterwaul of climate-change –
Claimed warming…yes…without a doubt,
Was making elephants act strange;
Nobelist Gore had made it plain
That man was messing with God’s plan
And, though some called him quite insane,
Insisted there were things to ban;
He said that light-bulbs had to go,
Their use of current quite too much,
He fought their incandescent glow,
Said only hard-of-heart used such;
He speechified…well…everywhere
That evil people hated ice
And thus deprived the polar bear
Of pleasant living – chilly, nice;
Yes, Algore made it very plain
That man kills Mother Nature’s way…
He causes earthquakes…stops the rain,
And kills the forests – gasp – so fey;
Obama’s reps were there to make
His case that carbon is so bad
That drastic measures we should take,
Lest all the world become quite mad
At Uncle Sam for burning coal
To make electric things…well…work,
That U.S. folks just have no soul,
Should pay the world for this strange quirk;
And gasoline – oh – say no more…
Is gross, so fossilized, impure,
Emitting evil, to the core,
And warmth the cosmos must endure;
He recommends to check all tires
And make their p-s-i just so,
Lest all the world have ghastly fires
As warming hovers to and fro;
Alarmists view the cattle herd
As damning air with methane gas
And claim that this is so absurd –
We die of beef, of course, en masse;
The prexy owns G-M, of course,
And, with the unions, Chrysler, too,
Yet, seems to want to try the horse
Since cars emit vile C-O-2;
If not the horse, then batteries –
But never mind the source of charge,
Which comes from coal-fired enemies
That poison air with their discharge;
Cancun was limping at its close,
The partiers…well…rather glum,
The Cancun temps at record lows
For days made partying so bum;
The coolness came from global heat
That mostly U.S. folks have brought –
At least that was the common bleat
Of those who braved the cold’s onslaught;
The beaches at fifty degrees
Invited mockery and flight –
Another reason global fees
The U.S. owes for such a plight;
Kyoto, with a whimper, went…
Japan and Russia…well…demurred,
And China promised to repent –
No one believed a single word;
The thousands on expense accounts
Or maybe through a U-N fund
Have left for home on fossiled mounts
With spirits sadly moribund;
So…Cancun is now history,
Like Copenhagen, laughingly,
COP 17 next year will be
In balmy Durban-by-the-sea;
The temps should reach eighty degrees,
But global warming could invade
As summertime brings gentle breeze,
And put Cancun in icy shade!
By then the warming may be moot
Since cooling has gone on for years,
But other culprits follow suit
To keep the world in doubts and fears;
Perhaps I-P-C-C will claim
That fateful cooling has set in,
That Bush and Cheney get the blame,
With Halliburton’s yang and yin;
These evil entities are said
By Truthers ranging far and wide
To do bad things, fill earth with dread
And laugh at simple fratricide
Like 9/11’s tragedy
When, with Osama, they bade well
To wreck U.S. economy,
Replace it with their greedy sell,
Or caused the levees’ weird collapse
When sweet Katrina swept the seas
Right through those wide and awful gaps
And brought Big Easy to its knees;
Yes, coolness is well on its way,
The I-P-C-C may suspect,
That’s why warm Durban-by-the-bay
Will sport the climate’s best effect;
The gurus at the C-R-U
Will not be there to scare the world,
The hockey-stick will be gone, too,
At Mann the insults would be hurled;
So…Cancun-by-the-sea…farewell,
You were a great time for hot air –
Not even it could make things jell…
For partiers, it was not fair.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Columnist Throws Temper-Tantrum

Eblen Tsk-Tsks U.S. Evils

Lexington Herald-Leader columnist Tom Eblen delivered one of his occasional “temper tantrums” in the 22 November issue, the subject this time being the objections by more than half the members of both Congress and the population, at least according to the polls, to Obama's plan for 10,000 Syrians to enter the country in 2016. Toward the end of his screed, he claimed that the main goal of the terrorists is to “make us afraid.” Well, no. The main goal, as any bright fifth-grader knows, is to kill us. Indeed, for multitudes of Muslims that is the centerpiece of the Koran, the Islamic “holy” book.

Eblen noted a Catholic bishop's statement that it takes up to two years to make the proper security-checks to admit Syrians. The government also uses the 1.5-two-year period. Since it has been impossible to make security checks since at least 2011 (no access to Syrian databases), the Syrians entering in 2015 (92 in Kentucky) and none to be entered in 2016 will have been vetted. So, Eblen is clamoring for Syrians to be allowed entry anyway, no matter who or what they are. Obama says widows and orphans but the betting in this corner is able-bodied well-fed fairly young men, as has seemed to be the case in Europe.

Eblen ran the gamut of alleged U.S. wickedness in this area – republicans, riots against Catholics in 1855, relocated Japanese Americans in the 1940s, the evil gun lobby, KKK Christians, even Timothy McVeigh, good old average American redneck gone bad. He didn't mention the Mexican War, a favorite among U.S.-haters, or the Indian reservations. He mentioned Eisenhower favorably but didn't mention that Ike's gang deported over a million Mexicans not just across the border but by bus, train, and even ship deep into Mexico. Eblen didn't bother to furnish context for the Japanese or Mexicans, for instance, but research is only for straight news accounts, not temper tantrums by the superior self-righteous.

Eblen used the term “fear-monger” to describe the objectors and accused them of speculation that “a few terrorists might slip in.” Only 19 Muslims killed 3,000 Americans on 9/11 while destroying billions worth in buildings, planes, etc. Only two Muslims killed or injured hundreds in the Boston Marathon Massacre. Perhaps 21 Muslims seem like a religious army to Eblen but most people would call them a “few.” Eblen is not a speculator, however, so numbers mean nothing to him. A handful of eight killed all those folks in Paris...just a “few.”

Eblen said most fear-mongers claimed to be good Christians, though he didn't explain by comparison what a bad or even a semi-sweet Christian is. He quoted extensively a statement of the 1.7 million-member Presbyterian Church (USA) that warned against letting a “fearful few drown out compassion, facts and logic.” That church has lost, using that figure, 59% of its membership since 1960 while U.S. population has increased by 78%. Using the current membership figure of the World Christian Database of 2.7 million, it's still lost 52% since 1960. In light of a statement that stupid, the loss is easy to understand. Even the Presbyterians gag, apparently, at such incredible lack of credibility by their denominational oligarchs.

So, assuming that Putin doesn't annex Syria and that ISIS might go away by...let's say 2017, the U.S. might have access to Syrian agencies by maybe 2019 (wild guess) for security checks. Of course, Obama (and compassionate Eblen?) are expecting another 200,000 in 2017, so one wonders where all these refugees will live in the U.S. until they're vetted. Hint: Keep an eye on that new guy next door!

The most telling aspect of this stuff is that it comes from people so caught up in their self-righteousness and so steeped in accusing those who disagree with them of venality that their elitism marks them as either in current academia or kindergarten.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Self-righteous Cartoonist

The brouhaha over the Pett political cartoon in the Lexington Herald-Leader of 19 November depicting governor-elect Matt Bevin hiding under his desk for fear his multiracial adopted children were terrorists has elicited much scorn, not because Bevin is off-limits for ridicule but because children of politicians—in good taste—are off limits even for mention unless they rob a bank or something. Pett has probably never drawn Obama's daughters in a cartoon caricaturing/ridiculing their father. If he has, kudos for coarseness/stupidity.

The subject was Bevin's announced plan to refuse more Syrian “refugees” into Kentucky until greater proof of their harmlessness is furnished. Presently, the U.S. has no way to properly vet Syrians or anyone else from the Middle East. A pause of six months concerning acceptance of Iraqi refugees was invoked by Obama's administration a few years ago when al Qaeda operatives who had been active in killing American GIs in Iraq were discovered living and planning in Bowling Green, Ky., hometown of Senator Paul.

Congress is devising a law now to do the same vis-a-vis Syrians but, not surprisingly, Obama has vowed to veto it because, as he says, “This is not who we are.” The Iraqi refugee-applicants were actually in danger of being assassinated because they had helped U.S. troops in Iraq (interpreters, etc.) but they were still excluded for that period. Just plain common sense. Kentucky Governor Beshear has accepted 92 Syrians this year.

There may be a darker side to the Bevin affair. The paper had gone to great lengths in the past couple years or so to bring off the defeat of Senator McConnell in 2014 and Bevin in 2015. A Washington operative of some sort, Sam Youngman, was brought in as a “political writer” perhaps to aid and abet in this. Youngman is now hitting Rand Paul hard.

In an article by Youngman on 28 October, the paper noted that Bevin was determined by the Bluegrass Poll to be five points behind his opponent for the governorship, Attorney General Conway. Six days later, Bevin won by nine points, a landslide. Four of the other six constitutional seats went to republicans, unheard of in Kentucky. A month before the election in November 2014, Lexington TV Station WKYT reported that the Bluegrass Poll had State Secretary Grimes ahead of Senator McConnell by two points, 46-44. McConnell won by 15 points, a 17 point blooper by the Poll.

Or was it? The Bluegrass Poll both times was financed by the Lexington Herald-Leader, Louisville Courier-Journal, Lexington TV-WKYT and Louisville TV- WHAS. The newspapers are mortal enemies of anything republican in a state that is almost totally red now, meaning that their influence over the public is nil. Were the polls rigged?

The C-J belongs to the Gannett chain, while the H-L belongs to McClatchy, both ultra-liberal outfits dedicated to the making of the country into a socialist state, the obvious objective of Obama, as well. They and Obama are the “This is who we are (or not)” gang, mired in self-righteousness and baloney to an extent incomprehensible, elitist and insufferable stuffed shirts mesmerized by their supposed domestic and international clairvoyance and outright “goodness.”

This attempted subversion of the capitalist system that has made this country what it is is part of that darker side, as well. Even citizens of Kentucky, one of the poorer states, can see through this effort, which would result in the oligarchs—movers and shakers in the media-business included—gaining a rich upper hand, as in other socialist/communist countries. The media, however, would be outlawed as soon as it became a nuisance, as in Muslim states, for instance.

In an H-L op-ed on 20 November, Pett made no apologies and indicated he was in Washington for a fundraiser to help overseas cartoonists less fortunate than he. Unbelievably while in Paris, State Secretary Kerry mentioned the 11 Charlie Hebdo cartoonists killed by Muslims, also in Paris last January, sort of declaring that butchery to be more justified than killing the huge numbers on 13 November because there might have been “legitimacy” to it (Mohammad caricatured as Pett might depict him...or not, for reasons of keeping his head in place). He realized the gaffe and so tried to explain it away by using “rationalization,” which made it worse. How dies one rationalize cold-blooded murder?

Amusingly, Obama in his G-20 eloquence in Turkey made a Freudian slip (or not) when he mentioned the U.S. attempting to help the “Shia” when he had to correct himself to say “Syria.” I was listening. Imagine teaming up with Iran and Russia purportedly to annihilate ISIS. He and Kerry (Pett's kind of guys?) are the nation's leaders...egad!

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Who We Are

There can be little doubt that all Muslims have been taught that the “prophet” (Mohammad) instructed followers to kill the infidel at every opportunity, either already extant or contrived. Even the Islamic “holy men” admit that this is true, notwithstanding any claim by them or most other Muslims that they pay that instruction no obedience. The madrassa is the Islamic religious school, and the Taliban thugs, for instance, were educated in these schools, financed in Afghanistan by Saudi Arabia. The central subject in the madrassa is the Koran (authored by Mohammad), along with the Hadith (sayings of Mohammad).

Whether madrassas or not, there are Islamic schools in Lexington and Louisville for grades k-8, neither noted as a madrassa. Hopefully, the drumbeat for killing the infidel is not a constant in these schools, in which religion and Arabic are taught. In the madrassas in other countries, it unquestionably is, especially for boys. In some countries such as Afghanistan, education for girls is discouraged, perhaps denied. In any case, Muslims are taught at an early age to kill infidels or subject them to the tax (slavery), except for Jews, who are to be killed...period.

Muslims entering this country—at least huge numbers of them—have been taught in the madrassas that infidels are to die or pay the tax. In the U.S., they are not a visible threat because they are a distinct minority and easy to profile (except for converts), a nasty term to the political correctness crowd but fact nevertheless. They probably number between six and seven million, about two percent of the population. Currently, the governors of more than half the states (Kentucky not among them) have refused Syrian refugees, though it's problematic as to their right to do that, though they can refuse all state services. Congress is passing legislation to declare a pause but it will be vetoed.

This is from ABC News of 20 November 2013: “The discovery in 2009 of two al Qaeda-Iraq terrorists living as refugees in Bowling Green, Kentucky -- who later admitted in court that they'd attacked U.S. soldiers in Iraq -- prompted the bureau to assign hundreds of specialists to an around-the-clock effort aimed at checking its archive of 100,000 improvised explosive devices collected in the war zones, known as IEDs, for other suspected terrorists' fingerprints. … As a result of the Kentucky case, the State Department stopped processing Iraq refugees for six months in 2011, federal officials told ABC News – even for many who had heroically helped U.S. forces as interpreters and intelligence assets.”

The threat attached to Muslim refugees from any country is profoundly remarked in the Bowling Green matter, in which the city had been infiltrated by Muslim thugs who could have blown Bowling Green away if they so desired. The notion that they can be vetted (bad ones weeded out) is wishful thinking since U.S relations with militant Muslim countries have been non-existent for years. The 9/11 bombers entered the U.S. legally and boarded airplanes legally. The shoe-, underwear- and Times Square-bomber would have killed thousands more if they had had sufficient training to set off their trigger-devices. They would not have been vetted out. Point: this country is imminently vulnerable.

The most galling thing, though, comes from an arrogant, pompous, self-righteous president who speaks of values and says constantly “This is not who we are” with reference to the Syrians. There are over 11 million illegal Mexicans in this country raising families, being provided government services, educating their children and all the rest at some expense to the taxpayers. This is called generosity on a massive scale, and I don't believe they should just be thrown out. In other words, this country has done its part, not to mention all the foreign-aid, the silly president's remarks notwithstanding. This is who we are!

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

No Muslim "REFUGEES"

Risk Too Great

In his news conference in Turkey on 16 November, President Obama made it plain that Syrians would be accepted as immigrants in the U.S. He's already pegged the number at 10,000 for 2016 with some 100,000 soon after. He takes this position despite an NSA apparatchik claiming Sunday that all immigrants will be thoroughly vetted to keep terrorists out but surely knowing that vetting Syrians is impossible since no lines of communication with the Syrian government or its agencies exist. Syrians have been coming into the U.S. this year, virtually un-vetted, and some governors are refusing to accept them. Kentucky, with 92 accepted this year, is eighth in the nation in acceptances.

The French have firmly established that one of the bombers of 13 November in Paris was a supposed “refugee” who had passed through Greece in October on a Syrian passport, easily entering France. Surely the French, who have been on high alert for a long time, have their own systems for vetting but he wasn't apprehended. The other assassins were mostly French citizens or Muslims living in Belgium...just rented a car and drove in. U.S. borders are already just as porous as France's.

I seem to remember presidential democrat wannabes Clinton and O'Malley tossing out the number of 65,000 in the CBS debate on 14 November, insisting, of course, on thorough vetting, which republican candidates Huckabee and Rubio have mentioned as impossible. On the Smerconish CNN program on 14 November, Huckabee also mentioned the fact that Syrians would not speak English. The president has not indicated where the “refugees” will live, go to school and work. Huckabee made the point that helping Middle Easterners settle in their own part of the world would be much better, in Saudi Arabia, for instance, with Americans footing the bill.

According to the Council on Jewish Islamic Relations, there are between six and seven million Muslims in the U.S., not counting Farrakhan's homegrown Nation of Islam, which was numbered at some 250,000 in 1975 but is probably much smaller now. The NOI does not furnish membership figures. According to the International Population Center at San Diego State, there were three million Muslims in the U.S. in 2000. This represents a doubling of the Muslim population in just 15 years.

An influx of Muslims from anywhere is unthinkable. Their birth-rates are much higher than that of Caucasians in the U.S., which just barely sustains the current population whose ancestors built this country. That may sound racist but it's just fact. In Europe, the white birth-rates are not high enough to sustain traditional European populations. This is one reason why Muslims are being allowed into Germany (800,000), for instance, i.e., to take the risk to furnish enough workers to sustain the socialistic governments/societies (no pensions otherwise). Just through births alone, Muslims will take over those governments in a relatively short time. The Syrian birth-rate is roughly four times greater than Germany's and about twice that of the U.S.

The president's childhood was Muslim-oriented. He knows the Koran and its adjunct teachings, which seem centered around killing or enslaving the infidel at every opportunity. The imams admit this publicly. Except for their sheer stupidity, the shoe-bomber, underwear-bomber and Times Square-bomber (SUV loaded with explosives) would have killed thousands of Americans, not to mention the incidental killings and injuries such as carried off by the Boston Marathon bombers. Has the president forgotten 9/11, with 3,000 killed by 19 MUSLIMS?

Except for sheer stupidity (arrived too late), the Paris soccer-field homicide/suicide bombers would have killed thousands more on 13 November. If just one “refugee Syrian terrorist” makes it into the U.S., he could kill thousands. The president's primary responsibility is the protection of Americans, meaning that all necessary precautions be taken, a major one being no more visas for people from the Middle East and North Africa. This is the first line of defense. This is a “red line” the president had better not cross. Citizens should rise up and demand that common sense rule.

Shepard Smith, chief afternoon whiner at Fox News, spoke passionately on 16 November about not “demonizing” populations, his implication clear. People are not “demonized” by other people. They “demonize” themselves, if anything. Muslims are killing each other by the thousands in the Middle East. There's no good reason to invite them to do the same vis-a-vis Americans on U.S. soil.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Jihad Johnny

Old Jihad Johnny slashed their necks,
Their heads bit dust, the bloody wrecks,
With well-honed knife he slit their throats,
Screamed “Allah Akbar, bloody shoats!”
The ayatollah loved the show
But kept his distance...blood could flow
And stain his long white priestly gown,
Though Christian slaves could scrub it down.
The imams hung around old John...
He lived in England till upon
The day he left to find out why
He killed small dogs, made children cry.
He found a home there in Iraq
When he discovered chopping-block
Was not for dogs or goats, indeed,
But infidels, to weep then bleed;
The mullahs taught him Allah's word,
That infidel-lives were absurd...
At least Mohammad got that down
When caravans were not in town
For him to plunder, take some slaves
To rape awhile, send to their graves.
Old John learned fast the art of slice,
The dog-blood never smelled so nice,
His job beat marching in the sand...
The imams rushed to shake his hand.
And as his evening prayer was said
He begged to fill Christians with dread,
His grand philosophy was terse –
Of Jews and Christians nothing worse
Than letting them live on and on
Midst Allah's word that they be gone.
Of all those known as infidel
Or Shiite, who should be in hell,
He was right glad to put them there
And gain rewards for courage, rare,
Although his victims were bound—tight—
Could make no threats, however slight,
To give someone a fighting chance
Just ruined with blood his safe romance.
John filmed be-headings, loved the fame,
When films were shown he loved the shame
When westerners defiled his name...
Yeah...to Iraq was glad he came.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Animals Running the Zoo

Coach Should Have Been Fired

The education gap between blacks and whites will continue to increase, not least because the younger generations of blacks have had it pounded into their heads by the likes of President Obama and his valued sidekick, Al Sharpton, that they are “owed” and must never be “disrespected” under any circumstances. The latest proof of this is found in the actions by black students at the University of Missouri. The strike by some 30 or so football players resulted in the president's resignation. That's power resulting from mob-rule but has nothing to do with education.

The blacks claimed they had been disrespected when verbally harassed by whites using the n-word, for example, even though they call each other nigger when the spirit moves them. The swastika plastered on a restroom wall by someone using feces they viewed as disrespect, though no one has ever said who did the deed. It could well have been blacks who did it. Actually, who cares?

A population of late-teens and early 20-somethings in both races can be expected to do weird things. Snobbishness and name-calling are just a couple things accruing to the immature. The important thing is that no one has suffered any actual injury and that equal education is still available to all.

There's more to the story, of course. UM President Wolfe came to the job from the business field and lacked (gasp and three palpitations) a Ph.D even though he was a graduate of the Harvard School of Business. He was not a professional educator at a time when university faculties (multitudes of Ph.Ds) are immersed in “diversity” as a sort of creed, about the same as religion. Freedom of speech is anathema to them...except for their Ph.D-inspired speech, of course. They pass this nonsense (and the correct speech) on to their students.

No specifics other than name-calling, as if anyone can stop that, have been given for the problem, if any. The black students blamed the president for not stopping it, as if he could. The strike will probably increase the name-calling since teens and twenties resent being told what they can and cannot say. Look for more feces on the wall. The problem has now been exponentially exacerbated.

The president took full responsibility for whatever happened, not that it was his fault. He did this after his board had a meeting in which it's a cinch he was told to apologize and get outta Dodge, not least because the football/basketball games fund the athletic department. His salary was $459,000 in 2014. His contract was extended by the board of Curators in August 2014 to run through June 2018, a strong vote of confidence. It's also a lead-pipe cinch that a generous settlement was involved in his resignation. At just his current rate (also free housing and car), he could demand better than $1.6 million, so he has the last laugh.

The football coach, Gary Pinkel, should have been fired. Stupidly, he missed a “teachable moment,” i.e., that both he and the players had signed contracts to do football for the university, not shirking that responsibility for a nitwit claiming to be on a hunger strike. Pinkel's loyalty was to the university and Missouri taxpayers, who generate his salary, a mere $350,000 base with perks ballooning it to $2.7 million last year. The players should have been given decrees of expulsion with one day's notice for a change of mind.

Missouri has 85 players on complete scholarship. When a player opts out, he should be given that opportunity and sent home. Now, thirty some players know they can also tell the coach what they will and won't do...or call for his firing if he raises his voice to them. In total, at the University of Missouri the animals are running the zoo.

This is what happened at campuses during the 1960s Vietnam era. Students occupied administrative offices at some. Students destroyed ROTC facilities at the University of Kentucky—animals running the zoos. Perhaps the most used Mizzou pix was of the JOURNALISM professor calling for some muscle to throw a reporter out of her public meeting. That's the prime example of today's higher education—never be INSENSITIVE. What crap!

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Carson & the Pyramids

Joseph & the Drought

Much has been made of Ben Carson's expressed belief that the biblical character Joseph was responsible for building pyramids in Egypt in which to store grain. The main consensus of archeologists is that the pyramids in Egypt were built as tombs for the rulers and their queens, including their riches so they would be well-off when they were reincarnated.

Carson has been mercilessly shredded for this position. I watched a clip of MSNBC's “Morning Joe” show in which the treatment by host Joe Scarborough, his co-host and a panel of guests accorded Carson unmitigated ridicule and scorn. One of the guests never stopped laughing and she was joined by the others sporadically. Panelist Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post said he was “speechless,” as if he ever made sense speaking, in the first place.

Scarborough allowed that Carson's belief involved “really quirky stuff” and said he'd like to know how old Carson thinks the earth is, even though the subject was pyramids and had no bearing on the earth's age. It's possible (probable) that neither Scarborough nor his colleagues had any idea of who Joseph was and simply accepted as truth that the only use for a pyramid was as a tomb. Case closed.

I'm not a Carson supporter but believe he could have a point. It's probable that the folks on the show have never read the Bible and believe—if they believe anything about it—that it's a myth. If they claim to be devout or somehow religious they can just be considered ignorant of their faith if they don't know who Joseph was.

Joseph was a Jew born around 1915 B.C. and sold into Egyptian slavery by his ten jealous brothers, who felt that their father, Jacob, favored Joseph over them. This might have been true. He lived somewhere in Canaan (Lebanon-Israel-Palestine area today) and entered Egypt at about age 17. Because of what some people call ESP but what Joseph insisted was an act of God, he could interpret dreams. He was in prison because of false charges made against him when the Pharaoh (ruler) had two dreams none of his magicians could interpret.

One of Joseph's fellow prisoners, now serving the ruler, remembered that Joseph had interpreted dreams he and another prisoner had had and that the interpretations were precisely correct, with himself as one living evidence, while the other prisoner was hanged, as predicted by Joseph, who was summoned, cleaned up and appeared before Pharaoh. Joseph interpreted Pharaoh's two dreams as meaning that there would almost immediately begin seven years of bounteous harvests of grain followed by seven years of catastrophic drought throughout that part of the world.

It was necessary for grain to be stored in hermetically sealed spaces for obvious reasons such as weather, rot and rats. A barn wouldn't do, a pyramid would. Joseph, whom Pharaoh appointed as viceroy (second in command of the kingdom) and gave complete charge of the storage effort, had to solve a problem. The interiors of pyramids include corridors and large chambers, ideal for storage. Using the radio-carbon method, archeologists have concluded the age of the pyramids as roughly between 2575 and 1640 B.C.

It's conceivable that Joseph, besides building pyramids, could have co-opted those already in existence, not necessarily disinterring corpses but simply using the huge extra spaces. The pagan religions might have proscribed that, but starvation is a serious matter. When the rain stopped after seven years, Egypt had grain while adjacent areas were decimated. Joseph died around 1805 B.C. at age 110 during the age of the pyramids.

I don't claim to know if Carson is right or wrong; however, this happened some 4,000 years ago and nobody has much of a clue about that era, only what the archeologists surmise. There was little if any writing (at least that's survived), there was no TV with which to explore the pyramids for public viewing, and, of course, there are no eyewitness accounts. Obviously, Joseph, for purposes of food-protection, could have done what others had done for other reasons. The historical kings, Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar and Cyrus, for instance, are prominent actors in the Old Testament, thus validating it historically.

The actual reason for slamming Carson is that he declares his Christian faith, making him roadkill for the liberal establishment. His detractors couldn't care less about the pyramids.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Caterwauling Professor

The predictable caterwauling column vis-a-vis a losing cause during an election cycle was published by the Lexington Herald-Leader on 06 November, authored by Ernie Yanarella, chair of political science at the University of Kentucky. The subject: Republicans winning four of six constitutional offices, including that of governor. Of just under a million votes cast, a fifth republican lost by only 2,000 votes though better than 53% of Kentucky voters are registered as democrats.

Yanarella blamed the democrat gubernatorial candidate for going too far to the right and juxtaposed FDR's New Deal with the newly elected governor's “Raw Deal”—boilerplate stuff, of course. He portrayed the elitism of most university faculties by these words, referring to the voters: “...to vote against their economic interests in favor of the Fool's gold of pickpocket politics [whatever that is], manipulative religious appeals and simplistic market solutions.” Translated: Kentuckians are simple-minded religious idiots, reflecting Obama's reference in 2008 to Pennsylvanians as bitter Bible-thumping, rifle-toting bounty-hunters beating the bushes for illegal immigrants.

It was the polling that seemed to make Yanarella come unglued. He just couldn't understand why the republican, Matt Bevin, won by nine points over the democrat, Jack Conway, when the Bluegrass Poll indicated right up to the election that Bevin would lose by five points, a huge 14-point miscue. The Bluegrass Poll is financed by the Lexington Herald-Leader, Louisville Courier-Journal and TV stations WKYT (Lexington) and WHAS (Louisville), using an outfit called SurveyUSA to do the work. These establishments hate Kentucky Senator McConnell in particular and republicans in general.

Last year, McConnell ran for the Senate (again), with State Secretary Allison Grimes the democrat opponent. The Bluegrass poll (same outfit) was prominent but Grimes even hired her own polling outfit when things looked bad. During a late September poll conducted by the New York Times and CBS 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 national polling agencies have the advantage of being entirely objective, whereas local polling can be purely subjective, reflecting agendas and not facts.

On 20 October 2014, 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%...a seven-point bulge over the weekend? Of course not! The inordinate disparity in the polls is obvious. During polling from January through June in 2014, Gallup discovered citizens leaning republican as opposed to democrat 45%-39%. This margin, validating Rasmussen and covering a six-month period widened greatly. McConnell won by 15 points, a monstrous landslide indicating that the Bluegrass Poll was either fixed or badly in need of brains.

Seven 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.

Yanarella referred to millionaire Bevin as “a seeming snake-oil business person with an apparent penchant for lying and not paying his taxes on time,” which proved that a UK department head actually believed the mudslinging ads, which, if true, would have meant that Bevin should probably be in jail, not moving into the governor's abode. Such gullibility must be—while not surprising—terribly embarrassing for an elite academic. Naw...he probably thinks an accident happened and he was the only one smart enough to see it.

As for the consistency of inordinate polling miscues, one concludes that the Bluegrass Poll was rigged from the start not just this year but previously as well, or that SurveyUSA is damned by sheer incompetence. Either way, the Lexington/Louisville media giants (truth above all else) glaringly misled the public. It's no wonder a Gallup poll recently found that only 40% of Americans trust the media. That's sad.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Sports GREED

Sports competition has been a part of most cultures, civilized or otherwise, for mega-millenniums though it's sometimes hard to determine which. General awareness of sports events and individual/team accomplishments has been effected as the means to transport information have advanced from print to teletype-print to radio to television. Many methods have been employed and upgraded, such as presses and satellite programs, to make this trail possible.

With awareness enhanced, sports-popularity has increased exponentially, along with the resultant quadrillions of dollars to be made as more and more people became involved as participants, organization-owners or spectators. The amount of riches took off when TV came on the scene, affording visual as well as vocal access to sports events, thereby exploding the spectator-population hungry for new ways to spend dollars on entertainment.

This has been good up to a point. Physical activity is beneficial health-wise, certainly, but also mentally. Coaches are quick to make the point that the ability to think can make an average competitor into a top jock...the old brains over brawn thing. Entrepreneurs making sports an industry often grow fabulously wealthy not just by the sports-efforts and gate-receipts but by capitalizing on the adjunct enterprises such as advertising, food concessions, hotel bookings and the like.

As usual, when money enters the picture the unscrupulous operators go to work, inculcating everything from outrageous athlete-salaries to gambling to “fixing” the outcomes. Team-owners/coaches/managers will often stop at nothing for both the win and the cash. This is the cause of the ever increasing episodes of injuries during athletic contests. Indeed, a few years ago, bounties were paid to members of the New Orleans Saints NFL team for inflicting injuries to their opponents, the objective—win at all costs, even those accruing to blood-lust.

Delivering brain-concussions to opposing quarterbacks became the same as tracking down horse-thieves (dead or alive) in the old days and collecting the rewards. The NFL—ostensibly because it gave no concussion-warning to athletes—has paid out more than $870 million to thousands of former players to satisfy claims related just to brain concussions, though it's hard to believe the players at the time didn't know they were sacrificing their brains for cash, being unable after a hard hit to remember the day or month. The drugs they took/take to become bionic men made/make them become the vicious scourge of the field but often societal psychos, as well.

Thanks to TV, the Cincinnati Reds' first baseman, Joey Votto, recently signed a 12-year contract paying him $251.5 million—not the largest in baseball—on a woefully losing team. The NBA (basketball) involves 450 players averaging $5.1 million for 82 games and, respectively; MLB (baseball), 750, $4 million, 162; NHL (hockey), 690, $2.6 million, 82; NFL (football), 1,696, $2.1 million, 16. In post-season games, players/managers rake in huge windfalls in addition. The base-price for a 30-second TV-ad in the football Super Bowl last February was $4.5 million or about $2.19 billion altogether for CBS, the real winner. That's $2,190,000,000 collected in maybe four hours.

As in everything from politics to big-business to the slush-fund Clinton Foundation (receipts of $140 million in 2013 with only $9 million given out in awards), money is the driver, with cheating in sports recognized by most folks as simply part of the game. Violating a rule in order to incapacitate a quarterback for the rest of the game (or better, the rest of the season) costs a 15-yard penalty, so any ethical approach is considered laughable.

Not too long ago, referees and umps made decisions and—right or wrong—that was that. Now, their decisions are placed under investigation by third parties either at the game or in New York City (baseball), thousands of miles away...cameras everywhere, with a whole new industry instituted.

The fact that things even out eventually for the teams—as once the case—is not accepted...too much money riding on every call. This third-party waste of time has made the games far too long, not to mention TV-advertisers simply calling time to get their peddling done, with league approval, of course. Money calls the shots and the love of it is trivializing sports, once an activity in which to excel for reasonable compensation, sometimes no more than simple pride in accomplishment.

More's the pity, but things will get worse. Remember Deflate-gate! Egad!

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

CNBC Debate...CBS Response

Rose-Gang Hot for Hillary

Okay...I surfed back and forth between the CNBC-conducted third republican debate in Boulder, Colorado, and the second game of the World series in Kansas City on 28 October. The debate developed more heat than light and was interesting from the standpoint of entertainment as much as anything else. The game took the lion's share of attention though I got to watch each debate-participant “perform.”

The debate-subjects are fairly well established by now and differ little from those of other debates and debates of other years. The candidates' approaches are fairly predictable and the slogan “take the country back” can be expected in overuse-mode, though taking it back from what is not well articulated...just sounds good.

Education, national debt, economy, jobs, national defense/policy, among others, are always in the mix. I was probably watching baseball when debaters discussed the Middle East...if they did, but that subject should have been thoroughly discussed. I checked with accounts of the Associated Press and the Washington Post and discovered that neither mentioned anything about the subject.

The debate was chaotic and again seemed to pit the moderators against the candidates—long-winded dissertations masquerading as questions and then arguments between the questioners and the respondents. The bias of CNBC is well-known as anti-republican so the hostility was evident. Some of the debaters actually agreed with each other and seemed reluctant to get too personal. They occasionally just told the moderators to bug-out while they finished speaking. This was refreshing.

I was watching when Senator Cruz—without rancor—simply reminded them of their bared fangs, using their own pronouncements (elements of personal ridicule) in the debate, which simply pointed out this bias/hostility. As usual, the whole enterprise was about the so-called moderators, who use the debates to satisfy their narcissism, barely keeping from actually informing the debaters of their intellectual superiority.

Of the ten major candidates, I tend to believe the four governors, sitting or former, bring the most skills to the job of governing. The three senators, all now in office in first terms, are bright and have more personal knowledge of foreign affairs with clearly opposing views. The three “outsiders” seemed to not do as well this time but likely will maintain their positions in the polls at least for a while.

By far the most interesting result of the debate occurred when I tuned in whilst having my toast and coffee the next morning to the CBS morning news program conducted by Charlie Rose, Gayle King and Norah O'Donnell, who had as their guest (victim?) Senator Rubio. Rubio had dared to bring up the subject during the debate of Hillary Clinton's enormous and oft repeated lie about the Benghazi Massacre, i.e., that it was not a massacre but merely a “protest” occasioned by an unflattering 13-minute film about Mohammad, the implication being that the poor Muslims just had to protest American style these days, with violence...perfectly understandable.

Notwithstanding that Clinton was flayed by her own admissions in the select committee concerning Benghazi/emails just a few days before, these CBS worthies—either electioneering for Clinton or simply dumb as gourds—declared war on Rubio (verbally, of course) but were thoroughly put in their places by the senator. Rose seemed astonished that Rubio would call Clinton a liar and even brought up the CIA and its director, David Petraeus, in trying unsuccessfully to defend her but had to give it up as Rubio insisted, especially on the basis of the damning emails, that she lied.

Then, surprisingly—perhaps because the CBS triumvirate were in shock—Rubio was allowed to lay out the whole 2012 situation, especially the fact that the Clinton/Obama insistence in September 2012 was that al Qaeda influence was dying in the Middle East, a circumstance absolutely necessary, they thought, for the 2012 election to be successful. Al Qaeda's influence was actually on the rise then and but for Romney's unbelievably weak campaign Obama would never have been reelected. The CBSers simply left Hillary to twist in the wind...they had no answers. They did THEIR candidate no favors.

Unquestionably, Clinton, a compulsive liar, is unfit for office—any office.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Biden's Narcissism

The most remarkable trait of many if not most politicians is an advanced stage of narcissism, sometimes called egoism or ego-centrism. Perhaps it is best described as inordinate self-love. Currently, Donald Trump is a good example, as are many actors and actresses...even preachers sometimes. The president is perhaps the nation's highest profile narcissist. He has turned speechifying into a near-daily exhibit of narcissism, costing mega-millions just for the cost of operating Air Force One to the far reaches.

Narcissists want to be noticed just for the sake of it...that 15 minutes of fame thing. If an occasion for self-glory is not available, one simply contrives the opportunity. This has been the case with Vice President Biden, who has tried twice for the democrat nomination for the presidency (1988, 2008) but was rebuffed by his party twice. For months, Biden has toyed with the public concerning another run but has always indicated that he needed more time to decide, thus guaranteeing that he would remain in the public eye, the mainstream media making sure of that.

He created the opportunity, though he would probably say—or has said—that friends and supporters have “urged” him to jump in against the presumptive nominee, fellow enhanced-narcissist Hillary Clinton, who was so determined in 2008 to keep attention on her and not Obama that she concocted a lie of immense proportions, to wit, that she had to dodge sniper bullets in 1996 in Bosnia when she was first lady.

The film of that episode (greeted on the tarmac by a little girl with a bouquet) almost immediately came to light and proved that no such thing ever happened. The humongous lie she and the president concocted concerning the Benghazi Massacre provided another example of self-serving—this time of two narcissists—lest the truth prove the total failure of their Libyan policy. The emails regarding this subterfuge that were just aired during Clinton's testimony before the House (Gowdy) subcommittee were damning and irrefutable.

Narcissists often are not fazed by ugly things like truth. In the face of her deviousness, Clinton barrels on with her campaign as if she's a paragon of virtue, and her party is complicit in this insult to the public...amorality enhanced. Democrats should be ashamed to foist her off on the country, and she should be ashamed, especially remembering the lie she told to the victims' survivors.

Old Joe set a precedent. Despite never announcing his candidacy, he set up a press conference to inform the public that he was withdrawing...in no less a place than the Rose Garden, fitting since that was the place Clinton and the president hallowed with their Benghazi lie. Yep...Obama stood solemnly by Joe's side to grieve and punctuate the solemnity for the Great Unwashed of this earth-shaking decision. Say it ain't so, Joe...but it was.

So...what to do next to keep narcissism alive and well? Grab an appearance on Sixty Minutes, of course! The interview of Joe and his wife was a sort of love-fest carried out by one of the important lady-anchors from CBS (where else)...warm-huggies all around! Joe described his mourning period as at least part of the reason for delay and ultimately stepping down from what he had not stepped up to. Sadly, his son Beau, died last May, and the nation has shared his grief. The interview was touching, with Joe insisting that he would still be around.

The garden-ploy and this TV performance invited cynicism/sarcasm. Most if not all men in Biden's predicament would have simply called a press conference, if that, and made a statement...certainly no Rose Garden performance as if the world was waiting for deliverance from perdition. There's nothing wrong with mourning and people are often stymied by it for a while, but when it's made public it draws attention not so much to the object of the grief as to the self-confessed griever. At that point, especially if the mourning is used as a reason for anything, narcissism rears its ugly head, attention being drawn for no good reason to the manipulator, in this case, Biden. Biden, Clinton, Obama...narcissists leading the nation. Sad.

Ah, vanity...thy name is Biden.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Hillary Deservedly Skewered

I had the time to watch via TV the House Select Committee's grilling of former state secretary Clinton on 22 October. I saw virtually all of the enterprise which, with breaks, lasted for eleven hours. I watch telecasts of many such hearings for the info (and entertainment), then compare what actually happened to what the various media-folks say happened. Often, I wonder if those agenda-driven newsies/pundits observed what I saw and heard.

In Congressional hearings, the aggrieved party vies to discredit the witness while the witness's party/supporters try to put the best possible face on the subject matter. Predictably, mainstream-media outfits saw no harm done vis-a-vis Clinton, notwithstanding that she was skewered royally by the facts presented, everything from her mismanagement (insufficient security) to—even worse—her pathetic lying not just to the nation but to the families of the four victims about what happened. Fox News could be expected—virtually alone among the biggies—to present the sordid picture factually and conservatively.

The democrat position in the hearing was that the hearing itself was a waste of taxpayer money since other hearings had already been held, but the dems didn't mention that the previous hearings were held before Clinton's damning emails, hidden on her private server for years, were exposed after it was learned that she had conducted government business via personal emails rather than through the required government facilities, perhaps because of extreme paranoia.

Some emails, both sent and received, were read in the hearing and were highly instructive (and hugely embarrassing for her and others, assuming they can feel shame) not only regarding Benghazi but vis-a-vis the intense jealousy and mean-spirited acts and language among government officials as well as their obsession with place and power. Clinton has been virtually canonized by the mainstream media, so she could afford to be at ease because she knew the major newspapers and TV outlets would portray her as a saint. Indeed, Congressman Smith all but sang Ave Maria to her in his witless babblings.

Sid Blumenthal, described as a Clinton friend, applied to the Obama administration for a job but was turned down. He and Hillary had a voluminous email correspondence, however, including his suggestions as to what to do. By email, he referred to Obama top aide Donlan's “babbling rhetoric” and described former defense secretary Gates as a “mean, vicious little %$#@&^.” Blumenthal, with business interests in Libya, emailed that the war [Libya] should be ramped up or the election in 2012 would be lost. Gates, who warned against the war, was in Russia when it started and described it as “on the fly” (without planning) and has stated that Clinton had no post-war plan but “played it by ear.” Libya today is a disaster.

For Clinton, the hearing was all ho-hum—been there, done that. She dissolved in laughter when asked if she had been alone at home the night of the massacre, reminding of her attack of raucous laughter during the Jake Tapper interview (CNN) when he dared to mention the emails, whereupon a Congresswoman said it was no laughing matter whether or not she had had other officials with her. She hadn't. Indeed, in the midst of the tragedy she had gone home to spend the night and was not in any “situation room” as she had been when the (more important?) bin Laden assassination was conducted.

This amounted to deserting her post. She said she talked with the president once during the day and not again. He's never said where he was so it's a safe bet he also deserted his post, shooting hoops perhaps...who knows? There certainly was no “situation room” emergency for either him or Clinton even though four Americans had been murdered and others put in mortal danger or wounded. The commander-in-chief and top aide were AWOL, no laughing matter.

Clinton was sort of speechless when reminded that, though she had no way of knowing what else might happen in Benghazi that night, she took no actions toward alerting the proper entities, such as special-ops groups, to move fast. Actually, the commander-in-chief should have been active at this point but no one knows even now, three years later, where he was.

The emails revealed that while Clinton was emailing her family and an Egyptian official that she knew the Benghazi dust-up was an attack by an “al Qaeda-like group,” she told the American people that it was a film-induced protest. Such deviousness represented an amoral approach that renders her totally unfit for any office, much less president. The emails also showed that after the attack and the big LIE Clinton virtually ignored the “Libya problem,” a total failure, with the emails showing that she was the American official who drove the nation illegally and anti-constitutionally into Libya, with a weak president mostly in acquiescence.

Strangely, at nearly nine p.m. (everybody ready to leave) in an effort to invalidate the hearing and at ranking member Cummings' behest, Clinton virtually eulogized Thomas Pickering, who, along with Admiral Mullen, conducted the Accountability Review Board concerning Benghazi in 2012, also amazingly mentioning Mullen since he appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee in 2011 as Joint Chief Chairman and insisted that the U.S. should take no action against Libya but was ignored. Thankfully, Clinton was stopped (fit of coughing, no thanks for that) or the thing might have gone and on.

Conclusion: Clinton was either hugely out of her depth or just didn't give a fig.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark