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

Clinton & the Under-the-Bus Gang

It's mid-afternoon in a room over the Anything Goes Bar on a busy street in South Chicago. In attendance are university professors William Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn, the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright and former State Secretary Hillary Clinton, hereinafter referenced as A, D, W and C, respectively, though perhaps not respectfully.

**W: Welcome, Secretary Clinton, to the Union to Negate Demeaning of Erudite Realists, Theologians and Honest Educators Basic to the United States.
**C: Uh…the what?
**W: You mean you don’t know what the…in fact, I figured you’re here to join, now that you right soon might be rode out of your campaign, no matter whatever happens in that pit of vipers in Washington. You ain't got Benghazi and Gowdy off the radar yet and I heard Barack's mighty bothered 'cause it keeps remindin' folks about that Rose Garden lie and...hoo hahaha...he might endorse ol' Bernie and...
**A: (interrupting) Maybe you’ve heard of it by its acronym, Hillary, Under the Bus. It’s made up of the people who’ve been…
**W: kicked off the team 'cause they stood up for…
**D: Oh…don’t be so whiny, Rev. Just because Barry had to disown you after that awful performance at the National Press Club…after all, you got your reparations in the 1960s and…
**W: We ain’t got no reparations yet, Bernardine, and I’ll thank you again to call me Doctor, not Rev. You musta missed Farrakhan's clambake the other day...that million man thing where I spoke for five minutes at the Capital and he spread wisdom for two and a half hours. He made it plain that the reparations gonna be paid or he's gonna recruit 10,000 community organizers to tear up stumps, and that Baltimore mayor already said to give some space for protestin'...hoo hahaha...watch them buildin's burn.
**A: Cool it, Rev. We did that number years ago and even offed some folks, and now look where we are...under the bus, the two people who started Barry on his way. What brings you to this exclusive club, Hillary? By the way, we aren’t the only members. I guess you remember Tom Daschle, for instance, and Richardson and Lerner and Petraeus and Carney and McChristal and...
**D: I bet you need someone sorta...you know...outta sight...get it...oh hahaha...Manson rides again. Hillary, you made the evil republicans just the same as Iranian butchers when you laughed your way through those questions the other day...your personal enemies...oh how rich...republican be-headers...whee...the old carotid-artery chop!
**A: Stop it Bernardine! (turns to Hillary) Ever since those be-headings over there in Iraq and the one in Oklahoma a while back, she's been on a tear...caught a mouse last night and cut off its head with the scissors...gory. I stopped her from sticking a fork in the cat this morning.
**D: Reminds me of the old days...bombs away...whee...civil justice one-oh-one for the freshmen.
**A: Yeah blowin' in the wind...blowin' up everything...the old underground...those were the days...(starts humming)
**W: Knock it off, Bill. You can sing them ol' Vietnam folk-songs on your own time.
**A: Oh...sorry about that...we do get carried away once in a while. Teaching in the universities is s-o-o-o boring these days, even though they espouse our causes, mainly soak the rich...get 'em on their knees...make love not war, or maybe transgendering now...whatever. So, what's up, Hill, you in a bind with Barry or something? Is he threatening to tell all and sink your candidacy...oh hoo hahaha. You could both go the Big House! By the way, thanks for asking me to get the best minds available for some help with a problem. You got it, right here. I even tried to get Father Pfleger but he was doing the Barry-soft-shoe in some church on the north-side. No offense, of course.
**C: Oh no and Barack's not ever in a bind...he's Teflon. The newsies—except for that evil Fox bunch—give him a pass on everything, me, too, on most things. What he...or I...need is...uh...just a sec (whips out her ipod)...oh yeah, that's today...or was it yesterday, you say...or did I say...don't raise your voice, John, I remember. (clicks off) That was Kerry. The president is getting a lot of flak over the ISIS thing, not that he considers it serious, of course...just some Muslims having a fight. Whoa, strike that...never mention that I said Muslim. A bunch of gang-bangers are taking over Iraq and Syria...John's got the president on his back...needs to go over, smooth things out and spread money, the usual way, and wonders about the best place to stay...farthest away from the snipers.
**W: Gang-bangers!!!! Oh...hoo hah...hahahaha...gang-bangers! That's what we have right outside this door here, Hillary. That ISIS bunch is drivin' tanks and takin' over whole countries, not just blocks.
**C: Okay, okay! There IS a slight problem and the president believes his closest advisers—besides Valerie Jarrett, of course, Sharpton and CBS—need to think over this problem and come up with a solution since he's never going to put troops over there again, but that's his problem, though actually, that's the reason for my mission here...what to say about ISIS so I won't ruin my campaign, not that it's in any real trouble. Should I listen to the military guys and fry the place or pull our guys out? I have no clue!
**D: Simple...simple...simple! Just drop the big one over there and...oh...hoo hahahaha...instant incineration, another Hiroshima...I'm talking about Israel, of course...wipe out all those kikes...and all those peaceful Muslims will cut off some hands, stone some folks, then party all night to celebrate and pray five times a...
**A: Stop it, Bernardine! We have a real problem here and Hillary's up the well-known creek.
**W: Yeah...I tried to tell him the chickens would come home to roost when he bombed those helpless Libyans back to the Stone Age, like they came back after Nagasaki back in the day. You know what I say...
**D: Everybody knows what you say, Rev...God damn America...right? Well...maybe Allah's damning God...oh hoo hah, damning God...
**W: And some nutcase just walked into the White House a while back and...
**D: Oh wow...with some of that fertilizer stuff he could have pulled off...hey, surely not an inside job...I never trusted that Jarrett woman...or even Michelle...she'd already gone on her own little helicopter flight that day and left the door wide open, the floozy.
**A: You might tell Barry to borrow a few trillion from China and hire an army from Siberia or Burma, or whatever it's called now...those guys will...naw, it's too hot for them in the Middle east, temps in the 100s. But Stick with the Gulag gang-bangers from Siberia anyway...hoo hah hahaha...simple...(starts humming again)
**C: Actually, I'm wondering, Bill—and you're a little off-key...Bubba and I used to sing that between puffs—if you could figure a way to terrorize the fat Saudi king and the dictators of those other countries bordering Syria—about 1.3 million troops altogether—to just go in and smash ISIS and save their own oil...er...that is, skin. They got all kinds of jet-fighters, tanks, and missiles, the whole nine yards...and this problem would go away in a week and not threaten my campaign.
**A: Not to put too fine a point on it, Hillary, but I don't like the word terrorize...I'm not a terrorist. I'm a freedom fighter...
**D: That's right...bombs away...it's blowin' in the wind...stick a grenade in the fat prince's palace-hootch...oh...hoo...hahahaha. Freedom fighters in the marketplace! Barry got it right...man-caused disasters on the loose!
**A: That's enough, Bernardine. Timeout for you! (turns to Hillary) I'm serious about the army and Barry could be wrong or right about the gang-bangers as ISIS. If you still have pull, tell him to get his community organizers in place to train Chicago's Crips, Bloods, jailbirds and jail-bait to infiltrate ISIS and re-steal Uncle Sugar's stuff and give it to Ayatollah Khameini and that oughtta be enough to scare Baghdadi and his gang back into Libya where they might starve, and good riddance. Your problem would be solved, the campaign saved. But don't say or do anything until you sound out Putin or he'll rain on your campaign.
**C: Hey, you might have something there, and the president could organize in no time with his experience...have it all done by noon and then off for 18 holes while my campaign goes merrily along. Thanks, guys...gotta go.
**W: By the way, Hillary, did you ever get that little guy that made the film you lied about outta jail?
**C: A-A-R-R-G-G-H-H!!!!!! WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE????

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Odom/Hefner/Media Sleaze

Hold the presses, everyone, and get the cameras ready all you TV-news gals, because the big news every day for a week is about to have an update, a cause for rejoicing throughout the cosmos in every venue between heaven and hell! LAMAR ODOM MAY LIVE AFTER ALL!

Something like the above is indicative of just how mired in trivia and shallowness this country has become. Oh yes...there's another big news-item that has made the headlines every day lately and caused the off-the-shoulder TV-gals to tremble in ecstasy, not to mention the guys...PLAYBOY is through with nude pictures! Is the nation about to have a (gasp) REVIVAL over that swing away from the obscene?

Poor Lamar (former NBA star)! He coughed up $75,000 for a weekend at the—get this—LOVE RANCH (euphemism for whorehouse) to spend with two gals over the weekend, fortified himself with enough erectile-dysfunction medicine to last for a month (the directions say to be careful—heart attack risk—see a doc if erection lasts FOUR HOURS) so he could keep the babes occupied 24/7 or until he gave up the ghost, whichever came first. The ghost almost came first and might yet have the ghoulish last laugh.

Lamar apparently fortified himself with other stuff to guarantee a degree of ecstasy never before known to mankind. He seemed determined to make the frat-house boys seem like pikers...maybe even Bill Cosby, who was still roaring at advanced ages but has escaped jail so far though the gals keep climbing out of the woodwork to cash in as the lawyers salivate and Cosby's wife furnishes the media accolades of his goodness, preserved for only the likes of Michael the Archangel.

The girls got worried when blood started streaming from here and there and froth began oozing from Odom's mouth and called 911, else he might have oozed on down the drain right there at the LOVE-HOLE, otherwise known as a PIMP'S PARADISE, catering to the rich whore-mongers. When the media got hold of the terrible tragedy, Odom was made to look like a saint about to be taking the first steps toward canonization.

Lamar had other problems like the fact that he was helicopter-challenged. The local machine in the town of Pahrump (are you kidding?) was not big enough to accommodate Odom's 6'10'' frame so he had to be content in the nearest hospital, where he lingered for days between life and death and doctors throughout the country wondered how he managed to outdo the effects of uber-exotic-ecstasy...or maybe whether or not he ever bothered to read the directions.

As for Hugh Hefner, the Playboy progenitor, one might say that his selling of women for huge profits ranks among the rankest enterprises. He's had no change of heart even though Playboy has lost millions of readers. No...he came to the conclusion that the Internet afforded him too much competition, pictures of lewdness available to people of all ages—Face-book, iTunes, Twitter—at all times...and for nothing—FREE! The media is full of the ramifications every day, everything from Internet-rape to Internet-unmentionable.

The strangest thing is that no one seems to mention that none of this lurid stuff would be possible if there were no women to make it so. The proprietor of the LOVE RANCH is no guiltier than the gal who sells her body. Both are in it for the money. Both are dishonorable to the nth degree, as are Odom and Hefner.

I hope Odom gets well. I don't care if Hefner's outfit burns to the ground. But I hope I've seen and heard the last about both of these sleazebags. Neither is worth a centimeter of print or a mini-second of TV time. Men still come home from the desert with limbs blown off or blind or paralyzed but they go quietly to some hospital without a mention while the media gushes over scum. Disgusting!

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

The Clintons' Perfidies

The silly remark by Donald trump blaming George Bush for 9/11 said more about Trump (vengeful blabbermouth) than Bush but opens the subject of responsibility for that sad day. Bush had been in office only a few months when that massacre happened and had hardly learned the then-layout of the White House which he had only visited before. Holding him accountable made Trump appear totally devoid of any understanding of international affairs or how intelligence gathering seemed to have wilted on the vine before 2001.

Obama has unfairly blamed Bush for every bad decision he (Obama) has made. Bush, however, could have blamed Bill Clinton fairly and firmly for at least trying too little to see that the country never suffered such an attack, in the first place. Clinton might have taken issue with people like Trump over the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 since he, too, had taken office only months before; however, he did mess up royally in not neutralizing Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda during his term in office, thus perhaps assuring—if not guaranteeing—that 9/11 would never have happened.

In 1996, the Khobar Towers was bombed in Saudi Arabia, killing 23 U.S. servicemen and 300 others, the work of terrorists. In that same year, Sudanese officials offered to arrest Osama bin Laden and ensconce him in Saudi Arabia, where Clinton could get his hands on him, one way or another. The Saudis balked and Clinton, with considerable leverage, did nothing, whereupon Osama went to Afghanistan, there to plan other terrorist attacks, including 9/11. Fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 suicide-bombers were Saudis.

Two such attacks took place on U.S. embassies in Africa—Kenya and Tanzania—in 1998. Al Qaeda was hard at work and Clinton, with full knowledge of Osama's planning, managed to have missiles fired from ships in the Red Sea that destroyed a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan (ostensibly for making chemical weapons) and harmlessly impacting a handful of training sites in Afghanistan, also in 1998.

Yet, in 2000, U.S. drones overflew al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan, facilities that should already have been bombed out of existence, beginning at least four years before. Osama's headquarters had been in Afghanistan during that entire time, where plans were being made for 9/11. Also in 2000, the USS Cole was attacked in a Yemen port by the terrorists, resulting in 17 killed and 39 wounded.

This means that Bush came into office immediately after a U.S. president for eight years had been on international vacation, the worst result being the 9/11 bloodbath that might have been avoided if anyone in the administration had been awake enough to see the potential for al Qaeda massacres. What did Clinton know and when did he know it and what did he do, if anything? He certainly had knowledge of the enemy, as proven by what little he actually did to stop Osama...too little too late.

President Bill Clinton's negligence was replicated by State Secretary Hillary Clinton in 2012 when her ambassador to Libya, which she and Obama had treated to its own U.S.-manufactured massacre, killing Libyans over a seven-month period in 2011, repeatedly requested more security, all requests documented in multiple communications unearthed by the current House Benghazi Committee. State Department officials have admitted that Ambassador Christopher Stevens' requests were denied. .

According to Defense Intelligence Agency documents made available to the Defense and State Departments as well as the White House Security Counsel on 12 September 2012, the Benghazi attack had been planned ten days before it took place by a terrorist group called the BCOAR, named in honor of Abdul Rahman, the blind terrorist petrifying in a U.S. prison. In spite of this, Clinton and Obama appeared in the Rose Garden to claim the attack was just a protest of a silly 13-minute film about Mohammad. Then-UN Ambassador Susan Rice (now unbelievably the National Security Adviser in the White House) regurgitated that LIE on five TV stations a few days later.

Four people had been murdered in Benghazi and this was the best these three “leaders” could come up with to mask their incompetence. To show how ignorant of reality she is and therefore dangerous, Hillary recommended the other day that the U.S. declare and maintain a no-fly zone over Syria, an area now populated by planes and drones from both the U.S. and Russia. That level of stupidity and her compulsion to LIE automatically dis-qualify her for the presidency.

As for Trump...throwing the mouth in gear before engaging the brain is to throw forth sewage.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Please...Smoke-filled Rooms Again!

To those who are sort of long-in-the-tooth, the current presidential debates are more a sham or venue of entertainment than informative sessions. The first debate (Republicans), Fox-News engineered and way too long, involved too many aspirants for any to have time for answers, not to mention the fact that the “interrogators” were the center of attention as much or more as the wannabes. The vicious attack by Megan Kelly on Trump over something as silly as what he may have said about women was instructive, not to mention Baier's “command” that hands be raised in answer to a question a la first-grade mode.

The second debate (Democrats) was CNN-engineered and opened with a similar attack on Hillary Clinton, but at least on substantive issues—her well-documented flip-flops over serious matters. Thankfully, there were only five aspirants instead of ten (unlike the first, with a prelim of five). In an actual debate, there are no interruptions when a speaker holds forth. In these sham debates, there were constant interruptions and back-and-forth arguments (people talking at the same time) that negated seriousness...sort of like a schoolyard fight without the fisticuffs.

Debate-audiences are anathema, with their clapping, screaming and whistling as if attending a football game. No debate should take place before a live audience, or at least only before one that makes not a sound—impossible in TV-world, where sensation is the mother's milk of the bottom-line, sort of like a grand quarterback-concussion in an NFL game or the wild crash at a race-car event.

I remember the “good ol' days,” (pre-1972) when candidates, often after many suspenseful votes, were actually chosen at the quadrennial party-conventions. Speeches were designed to mean something. Now, they're delicately prepared exercises to show off rhetorical ability and not much else, with special effort made not to offend anyone, at least in the party, no matter how off-the-wall...Chafee, for instance, who changed from republican to independent to democrat without changing his stances, or so he said, thus implying that principles meant nothing. That's exponential opportunism, not statecraft.

As a youngster, I remember fortifying myself with a whole box of raisins in preparation for the day-long-into-the-night convention sessions carried only by radio (no TV then, thankfully), listening to the speeches, wondering about the “smoke-filled-rooms,” and then tallying the vote-counts. As I got older, I heard a bit less and did without the raisins (which I still chew, though, sometimes in conjunction with chocolate-chips). Even the advent of TV didn't materially harm the program.

Along came the flower-children of 1968 (well into the TV-era), who, rebelling against their parents of “Great Depression” and “greatest generation” fame and the Vietnam War, rioted in Chicago when the police had to scrape them off the ground at Grant Park and other places in various hippy-dippy conditions, like LSD-slap-happy. So, the convention-process was thrown aside, like throwing the baby out with the bath-water. The silly primary season(s) was born for 1972, and it's all been downhill since then, with the conventions a time for long-winded, meaningless speeches, drunkenness and good times.

Add in the debates, providing the interrogators the opportunity to be the stars, and the sideshow is complete. One remembers the debate staged especially for the LGBTQ gang in 2008—an exercise in perversion, giggles all around. Biden and Dodd, but not Hillary and Barack, ignored that scene designed to show enhanced political correctness since that outfit was not a huge voting bloc. Remember Gore getting an attack of “sighs” in 2000 or Biden an attack of “smirks” in Danville, Ky., in 2012. ABC's Martha Raddatz helped him through it.

Just as they love overtime sports events and long crash-filled car races, the advertisers love the long debates, with commercials on CNN going at up to $200,000 when the usual prime-time cost is only $5,000 for a 30-second spot. Trump called out the networks on this stuff and he and Dr. Carson threatened to renege if the time for the next fiasco is not down to two hours, along with opening and closing speeches, during which—if anything is learned—a candidate might actually state at least one position clearly.

Add in the networks' biases and the stage is set for what amounts to either a hatchet job or a “greatest thing since p/b/j sandwiches,” depending on the broadcasters' agendas. The debates stink. Bring back the smoke-filled rooms and forget the trivia.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Hillary Makeover

Dear Senator/State Secretary Clinton:

In light of the recent uptick in your unfavorable ratings, I’m offering the services as CEO of the Institute for Modifying All Governmental Entities (IMAGE, for short). It's the business of IMAGE to transform a candidate's persona into the opposite of what it's consensually conceived to be, thereby making it acceptable, even grandmotherly, a trait you wisely accentuate these days but sometimes negate by becoming shrill in your speeches and implying that Trey Gowdy is not quite out of the zoo yet. Proving that IMAGE can be effective, President Obama was reelected after dangerously evolving from a hugely popular one-man/one-woman marriage requirement into a two-men anything-goes-whoopee marriage allowance after he availed himself of the advice of the IMAGE agency designed to make perversion normal and titled the Exigent Variances Offsetting Lurid Victimization of Erotic Reverse-Sexers (EVOLVERS, for short). EVOLVERS psychologists helped the president ward off the insults of malicious conservatives who—not with tongue in cheek—accused him of giving the theory of evolution a bad name and insulting even orangutans. They also helped him rationalize and sell same-sex marriage as a fairness thing since it fails as both an intellectual and biological entity.

An IMAGE department that could help you immediately is the Bureau Energizing Nuance, Gregariousness, Hutzpah, Angst and Zen Ideology, known by its acronym, BENGHAZI. This agency is designed to help an individual walk back statements (even those made in the hallowed Rose Garden) so that an outright lie can be turned into a sanctified-verity. When you said “What difference now does it make” in that Congressional hearing, you nuanced a so what attitude, a killer for serious speeches about national defense or a try at empathy with grieving parties. You should not have said “now,” obviously. You didn't help your gregariousness-quotient when you roped the crowds away in that famous (or infamous) march down the street, with bodyguards menacing wannabe intruders into your space. Hutzpah is okay but not in the midst of angst, so you should stop railing against right-to-lifers until you can do so with a smile befitting that of a butcher fashioning the perfect T-Bone. BENGHAZI operatives will help you meditate, acquire the lotus-position and teach you a number of chants that will give you peace of mind even while Bernie Sanders out-polls you and Joe Biden threatens certain bleeping (little joke there) political death. You need BENGHAZI desperately to keep you from mistakes noted herein, not to mention potential miscues such as acknowledging again that you ever knew Blumenthal.

In a recent interview piece on TV (beware talking-heads) concerning false statements, you insisted rather lamely that you, after all, are only human, thus casting aspersions upon people who also consider themselves as “only human” but not outright liars. IMAGE has a section that can help you with the “woe is me” humanity problem. It's called the Regimen for Enabling Awareness of Life, or REAL, for short. When you tried to explain that the huge speaking fees you and Bill accept are necessary because you and he were broke upon leaving the White House and forced to make the sacrifice of speechifying to the great-unwashed hoi polloi for big bucks, sometimes even without teleprompters, you made people snicker since Bill had just collected $3,200,000 in salary over only eight years, without having to pay rent in the bargain. This represented a total unawareness on your part of what life is like for the hoi polloi. These are the people who vote, unfortunately, so you would do well not to insult their intelligence by essentially saying, as Yogi Berra (RIP) might have said, “If you see a fork in the cash-register, take it.” While you petrified your derriere sitting for days on airplanes and dealt with greedy tin-horn dictators and other filthy-rich folks as state secretary at the same time hubby Bill was collecting $45 million in speaking fees here, there, and everywhere from some of those same folks, you lost track of what it's like in Peoria, but the Peorians haven't. They know that “something for nothing” or “free lunch,” or a “free ride” (cliches used for effect that should never be used by a liberal/progressive like you since they smack of dreaded austerity as the inevitable bottom line) is witless, no matter candidate-promises like “two chickens in every pot,” which went out of vogue in the 1936 campaign, since lots of folks didn't even have the pots and resorted to soup lines and the CCC camps.

Along the same lines as REAL, is an IMAGE seminar entitled Governmental Rehabilitation Underlying Bureaucratic Erratic Rhetoric, or GRUBER, for short, named after the champion of the “I'm smarter than everybody” club that meets regularly with the president and UN Ambassador Samantha Powers, when she's not hunting for a new war like the one she, you and Susan Rice cooked up for Libya back in 2011 and suggested successfully that the prexy just skip Congress about it and let you go to the world-government United Nations for permission to bomb the bejesus out of Qaddafi for seven months before he went down fighting. Among other things, GRUBER will help you dispel the cockiness you should not have exhibited at the outset of your campaign when you claimed the time had come for a female president, as if gender is a primary determinant of success. You insulted the women voters when you did that since it was a backhanded way of putting them down for not having accomplished the presidency earlier because their (your) gender was too flawed to successfully grab the big enchilada. You were trying to be politically correct but there are times when such correctness is a synonym for silliness. Though clients hate it, GRUBER is designed to take them down a notch when they think they've “arrived,” like the time in a Congressional hearing when you told then-General David Petraeus to his face that belief had to be suspended when he ventured to speak, then later blamed the Benghazi massacre on a silly 13-minute film about Mohammad...not even remotely true.

Actually, most of the things mentioned thus far have been precipitated by some kind and degree of very loose handling of the truth, if indeed handled at all. As you know, the primary trait ascribed to you by most poll-respondents is that of dishonesty, so you need the IMAGE agency Section Negating Infamous Propaganda Eliciting Revulsion, referenced most often by its acronym SNIPER, to help you understand the penalties accruing to subterfuge, even though prevarication is virtually a way of life in government. When you made up that yarn in New Hampshire (a real tearjerker, by the way) in 2008 about dodging the wicked sniper fire in Bosnia in 1996 by running for your life and dragging your daughter along to safety you simply went too far since the cameras were rolling at that occasion and caught you descending from the plane to be met by the mayor of the city and a little girl handing you a beautiful bouquet. When the people learned the truth almost immediately, they tended to gag and toss their last meal. Since stretching the truth beyond the breaking point is a given even for you—as it is for most candidates—SNIPER will help you fashion falsehoods so that they rival verities from the Oracle at Delphi—wise and substantive beyond even the mildest reproach.

When you began the campaign, you came across as a first-grade teacher being too, too careful to sound authoritative while abiding and enunciating on the level of the kids—talking down—even though most voters think on an adult level. The department of IMAGE that will help with the substance of your already rhetorical excellence—except in kid-mode—is known as the Section for Preventing Erratic Eponymy Concerning Hubris-Led Epigrams Sustaining Silliness, known familiarly as SPEECHLESS. The operatives in SPEECHLESS will coach you into avoiding statements that—with all due respect—make you appear out of contact with reality, such as when you said recently concerning the latest campus massacre that something had to be done to solidify gun-control. Most folks don't like the word control to start with and referencing it vis-a-vis guns spins not only rednecks but nearly everyone else cognizant of Amendment 2 toward membership in the NRA. SPEECHLESS is valuable, also, in advising when speech-making is being overdone, such as evident in the volume of verbosity turned out in places usually far from Washington practically every day by the president that has made him strictly ho-hum. Even Joe Biden and John Boehner—not to mention Justice Ginsburg, who nearly fell out of her chair during the S-O-U declamation—find it hard to stay awake. SPEECHLESS would warn you away from making Planned Parenthood into an eponym of mercy rather than murder. It would have warned you not to extol the virtues of Bashar Assad just weeks before you and the president damned him as a butcher and called for him to get outta Dodge, a terrible epigrammatic mistake. SPEECHLESS would have suggested that you not appear on the late-night talk-shows to absorb ridicule and consequently trivialize your efforts as just plain silly. The agency even advises regarding appearance. For instance, appearing in that awful yellow pants-suit makes you look like a “sedated buttercup” rather than a “raging rose” or “battling begonia.” Also, you might try a business suit occasionally—suit and tie—in order to appear in command of something, rather than on the way to a tea party. Caution! You're not in the league with the female news anchors on TV, who are hired more for their cleavage and thigh than brains, so don't try to look sexy.

In light of your recent insistence that the U.S. (or somebody) must establish a no-fly zone over Syria, you need help from the IMAGE agency known as the Institute for Normalizing Sanity And Negating Inanity, Trivia and Yammering, known as INSANITY, for short. Your fellow debaters on CNN killed you over that weird strategy. Syria is the size of Washington (state, not D.C.), meaning that fighters at 600 mph can fly border-to-border in an hour or less. Imagine fighters from the U.S., Russia and Turkey jammed in that small airspace, the same as flying out of Oregon, Montana, Vancouver and from ships in the Pacific. One miscue and VOILA!...World War III. Shifting your mouth in gear before letting out the clutch on your brain means disaster. You must have been thinking of the alleged Libya no-fly zone in 2011, completed in four days, with virtually no opposition. INSANITY will help you decide which subjects to emphasize and which ones to avoid, like anything about Donald Trump since he gets far more TV exposure for free than you pay for.

Constantly showing your angst in public has made you seem like a spoiled brat always on the verge of banging her fists and feet on the floor and blaming somebody else (usually republicans or some police-chief or racists) for goofing up. The IMAGE arm that will help with this problem is the Agency for Reducing Gnashing of Teeth, known familiarly as ARGOT. ARGOT would have kept you from saying anything about your email problem, which you constantly worsen by blaming the republicans for what was absolutely devious and—with all due respect—dumb as a gourd. Notwithstanding any hacked secrets, the whole server-in-the-basement escapade made it look as if you had something to hide or an agenda to conceal, like selling speeches for more than a million Cs apiece or hiring a hit-man for Joe Biden. ARGOT would have kept you from rising to the bait when the CNN debate opened with a list of your flip-flops, suggesting instead that you simply answer, like the president, that you had evolved into a higher level of understanding, thus putting the ignorant interrogator in his place. Actually, he might have been a Biden-supporter just making you look bad in advance of the possibility of the veep doing unimaginable damage to an unpredictable WOMAN, the cad.

There are many other programs designed by IMAGE to help candidates. Nixon gave IMAGE credit for making him look human. IMAGE technicians helped Carter by perfecting a built-in jaw-mechanism to produce constant smiling. If IMAGE had been given a chance your husband could have been made to look like a choirboy (okay, stretching it a bit) though he would have presented quite a challenge. In any case, think about EVOLVERS, BENGHAZI, REAL, GRUBER, SNIPER, SPEECHLESS, INSANITY, and ARGOT. I can almost guarantee success if you let IMAGE handle your campaign.

Respectfully,
I.M. Otherself, CEO
IMAGE

Million-Man Anniversary

The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, head honcho of the Nation of Islam headquartered in Chicago, staged the 20th anniversary on the capital mall Saturday, 10 October, of his Million Man March of 1995 at which the Park Service said there actually were 400,000 in attendance. The theme for the affair this year was “Justice or Else.” To get some perspective on that theme, note that Farrakhan, in a speech in Miami last August, called for “10,000 fearless men” [to] “rise up and kill those who kill us; stalk them and kill them and let them feel the pain of death that we are feeling!” No doubt about his subject matter, to wit, “the cops must die.”

Not noted by the media this time around is the fact that Farrakhan also staged a 10th anniversary celebration on the capital mall in 2005. I listened to much of all three Million-Man celebrations. I'll note some observations about the one on Saturday later but provide herewith further perspective by what I had to say about that 2005 Million Man affair:

The MILLIONS MORE MOVEMENT held in D.C. last Saturday (Oct. 15) was billed as the 10th anniversary celebration of the MILLION MAN MARCH of 1995, the thrust of which then was that African-American men would return home, get their acts together, start taking responsibility for their families, pay attention to church and civic responsibilities, and, in general, become bona fide role models and providers for the children of their generation. These things have not happened by any qualitative or quantitative standard; however, this non-result was not mentioned last Saturday, not least because the event actually was the crowning of the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, head of the Nation of Islam, as the voice of black America, as well as the guru of black philosophy. He birthed the affair, just as he did the one in 1995, and made sure that the usual elitist black leaders such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton played virtually no role, thus insuring that they would not tear down his doll-house.

It was significant that, while all other speakers spoke from a small lectern to the side of a huge banner-draped lectern (or paraded back and forth in front of it) on the Capitol steps, only Farrakhan (born Louis Eugene Walcott and irreverently referred to as “Calypso Louie” in some quarters) made a speech from that grandiose lectern, which actually represented his throne. From there, with his easily recognizable bodyguards permeating the environs like quasi-military martinets, he looked down on the crowd, so small that it has elicited little if any mention, and said some of the strangest things that one can hardly imagine, such as the fact that the blacks, Latinos, American Indians, and the poor should institute their own departments of everything from agriculture to culture (apparently eschewing the U.S. Government departments headed by the cabinet secretaries), though he gave no directions as to precisely how that might be done.

Shades of the Alamo and Pearl Harbor were revived as it soon became obvious that the watchword/slogan of the event would be “Remember New Orleans,” an apparent effort to let that stand as the standard for exhibiting the persecution of blacks by the U.S. Government in general (FEMA) and all white people in particular. New Orleans has been adopted by Farrakhan as THE dwelling place of African Americanism in the United States, and will now take its rightful place as the defining moment for blacks, just as the Alamo was for the Texans, slaughtered there by the Mexicans in February/March 1836. According to Farrakhan in an earlier speech, the levees did not fail; rather, they were sabotaged, presumably by the U.S. Government. Farrakhan didn’t say Saturday. It is now becoming known that the levees were in bad shape. One source has mentioned that there were/are a hundred problems, but one is forced to wonder why New Orleans officials were not working on them. Since New Orleans is known consensually as probably the most corrupt city in the country, this is not surprising. Sending federal money to that benighted “bowl” (or cesspool, as some might put it) surrounded on all sides by water, most of it at levels above that of the city, besides being used for creating a perpetual atmosphere of false hope also amounts to tax monies from the whole country subsidizing the deep pockets of New Orleans officials.

The tenor of the affair started off well enough with the fine soprano, Brenda Jackson, giving a gorgeous rendition of Malotte’s The Lord’s Prayer only to depart from Malotte’s music in the final bars of the world-famous solo in order to give it “soul,” the result resembling the screeching of a banshee and the wonder that her tonsils didn’t explode across the Potomac. This set the stage for the actual “music” content of the event, which featured an inordinate grubbing up of hip-hop, thereby bumping, grinding, grooving, and otherwise christening Rap as the marching-order enhancement of the MMM. The main hipper-hopper spent a good deal of his time hitching up his pants, the crotch roughly in the same area as the knees, though he seemed perfectly amenable to as much of his backside as possible being gloriously shown to the public. The pant-legs trailed out behind his shoes, the better to wipe up the urine in the porta-johns or the dog do-do on the grounds.

Judging from the speeches, one was hard-pressed to determine what the main elements involved. The black national anthem was sung and, at least as seen from this corner, there seemed to be absolutely no American flags, except the one flying from the top of the Capitol and certainly not placed there by a Farrakhanite or hipper-hopper. This set the tone for MMM, to wit, “It’s us against them,” the us being the black, the people of color, the Native Americans, the Hispanics, and the poor, not necessarily in that order. The women were in attendance at MMM, and, indeed, Julianne Malveaux seemed to be running the show most of the time. A large number of women spoke, and they were about as strident as the men, so their presence did not materially change the ambience. Some made the plaintive appeal with regard to the need for their young people or somebody to stop the killing.

There was the usual demand for reparations, the demanders referring to themselves as being the victims of slavery. They didn’t look the part; in fact, most of them appeared to be doing well and it’s a lead-pipe cinch that many, if not most, of them have done well by simply functioning within the system. As more blacks enter the middle and upper-middle classes, there perhaps will be less of this stuff. Farrakhan floated the idea of New Orleans blacks suing FEMA, but since FEMA did not cause Hurricane Katrina and Mayor Nagin made little or no attempt to evacuate them from New Orleans, such a lawsuit, not that it’s even a possibility, could be very embarrassing and costly to Nagin, a black, and the city government. Evacuation is not a FEMA responsibility, and hundreds died for lack of getting out, especially the most vulnerable, those in nursing homes and hospitals. Nobody mentioned that the rescuers of some 10,000 or so people, risking their own lives hanging off helicopters, were white.

One is tempted to suggest that Louisiana/USA either give or sell New Orleans to Nagin and his crowd and let them worry with it, but that would be a mistake. Farrakhan mentioned Fidel Castro in glowing terms, so perhaps could borrow enough money from Qadiffi his soul-brother to buy the city, give it to Castro and make it part of Cuba, a sort of USA Guantanamo. Seriously, the African-American movement, such as it is and has been, is dead. This was accomplished at the MMM, when the coronation in the black community of an Islamic leader took place in a country demographically marked by Christianity and hated by Muslims the world over and constituting a target for their annihilation. Mores’ the pity, but conscientious African Americans will persevere and salvage the sunken ship.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Rant #2

**Fox News afternoon anchor Shepard Smith sometimes goes apoplectic and either gives tirades or tries to overwhelm an interviewee with an obviously biased attack over something or other. On 08 October, he had an interview (first-timer) with North Carolina Congressman Walter Jones, the subject being a letter sent out by Jones to constituents advocating for a new speaker with “integrity” to replace outgoing Speaker Boehner. This was just a few hours after presumptive successor Kevin McCarthy had stunningly announced his withdrawal for consideration. Smith tried unsuccessfully to cut Jones into little pieces. Then, he interviewed Dan Webster, the Florida congressman who's trying to get the job. While Smith agitatedly asked questions, Webster calmly threw him off stride. The brouhaha was occasioned by the rumors flying around Washington for years that McCarthy and North Carolina Congresswoman Renee Elmers, both married, were having an affair. If true, this would allow the mainstream media to orgy-monger loudly and long enough to bury any House movement with McCarthy in the speaker's chair. One thinks of democrat Texan Jim Wright, the first speaker to resign because of scandal (1989) or Georgia Republican Newt Gingrich, who stepped down in 1998 and resigned from Congress shortly after in 1999. One remembers the rigors of then-Senator Baucus in 2010 desperately trying to ram Obamacare through Congress while at the same time trying to situate his mistress in D.C. Sordidness is more the rule than the exception, it seems, in officialdom. Smith needs to take two aspirin and have a nap some days. And Baucus? U.S. Ambassador to China!

**The Clinton-Blumenthal saga grinds on with the introduction of still more emails on her private server. Seems Blumenthal had vested interests in the Libyan affair having to do with what countries get to do (or not do) regarding the private-contractor windfalls that every U.S. CEO dreams about. These “opportunities” are open for corruption on levels that are unbelievable. As State Secretary at the time of the Libyan invasion by the U.S. in 2011 (Clinton lobbied the UN—not Congress—for permission to devastate the impoverished country), what did Clinton do and when? Only the shadow knows, but at that time Blumenthal had been barred by POTUS from any position in the U.S. government. It's perfectly natural to wonder what Hillary got out of the skullduggery, especially in light of her former shenanigans. But, of course, as she said a while back, she and hubby Bill were broke when they left the White House, even though he had been paid $3,200,000 in the previous eight years and they paid no rent. Hillary isn't just a liar...she's a COMPULSIVE liar. It would have been easier to tell the truth that everyone knew but lying was so much more fun, apparently.

**POTUS seems never to learn the value of vetting a situation before getting mixed up in it—the Trayvon Martin and Ferguson, Missouri, affairs, for instance. He, as well as then-attorney general Holder, shifted their mouths into high before putting their brains in gear. Obama did it again in the Ahmed Mohamed affair that happened in the Dallas suburb of Irving. Without considering the ramifications of the young Muslim 14-year-old in his display of what he said was a clock he'd made and taken to school, the president reacted to the boy's handcuffs (the clock looked like a bomb, thus the cops) by inviting him to Washington as some sort of Muslim role model, presumably. It turns out that the boy's father is a strange anti-American character who believes 9/11 was perhaps an inside job with Bush 43 blowing the WTC away for some nefarious reason, maybe to make Muslims look bad, as if their imams need any help in that effort. The man also runs for the presidency of Sudan even though he lives in Texas. Of course, none of this might have mattered to POTUS anyway, since passing up an opportunity to show “tolerance” to Muslims should never be missed. One wonders what POTUS would have done if the boy had been a Southern Baptist. Yeah...nothing!

**The media is at it again, or at least the cable media and their 24/7 news alerts that graduate from being alerts to full-blown stories that last for days or weeks, depending upon the subject matter. The overnight shooting in Flagstaff, Arizona, at yet another college campus (one dead, three injured, one in custody) is the current subject. The cable folks won't let anything go if enough people can be rounded up to give their ideas or caterwaul for the cameras. After all, there has to be content to fill all those hours. The newsies give a tsk-tsk for copycat killings but keep these killings before the public to such an extent that other 15-minutes-of-fame wannabes who are also wacko can't wait to get in on the act...all those cops and crying and prison jump-suits and Face-book records/pix. Wow...become a celebrity! These things have always gone on but they were covered mostly just locally, and that was that. Now, there's a veritable industry built on the craziness, sadness, and sanguinary-value of mass-misery. These things should be reported and left to the authorities. Instead, the authorities show up for press conferences virtually on-scene to aid and abet what should be ignored in a timely (quick) fashion. Ferguson was still making news today. Egad!

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Rants & Raves

**Hillary Clinton is now against the trade bill she helped to formulate and promote while she was still secretary of state. The unions don't like it, Bernie probably doesn't like it, so between the unions and socialists (rock and a hard place) she just had to change. The unions carry the water even though they're dying on the vine, a shame because they can do some good things. Problem: They're as corrupt as management.

**NJ Governor Christie was talking tough this morning on TV...something about telling the Russians that either they bomb ISIS only or get out of Syria. He didn't say how they would be made to get out but, then, he has no military experience, so what else is new? Presidential candidates who talk war as glibly as that (or stupidly or whatever) need to be ignored via speech and ballot-box. Hillary called for a no-fly zone over Syria the other day, such zone now filled with Putin's helicopters and fighters. Obama reacted by saying there's a difference between running for president and being president. For once, he's right.

**The prez is slated to visit families of the recently slain in Roseburg, Oregon, Friday, meaning a trip that's almost completely cross-country—his kind of day to spend on Air Force One and get away from everything for a while. About as many folks are murdered each weekend in Chicago, his hometown, as were killed in Oregon, but he doesn't visit those families each weekend. But, then, Chicago is just a short hop, not worth the trouble. Hopefully, he won't tell the folks in Oregon that their loved ones were killed because of an eleven-minute film made by a mean American about Mohammad. Naw...he'll blame the whole thing on the NRA, the monsters, or Bush 41.

**University of Louisville basketball coach Rick Pitino must be asking, “What's a poor coach to do these days?” The lady who just wrote the book detailing the sex orgies used at UL in one of its dormitories (a sort of publicly-financed frat house) to attract the best high-school athletes has put a huge crimp in the recruiting process. The gals were made available to even the fathers of the recruits for a little roll in the bedsheets, demeaning the boys' mothers, of course, but...hey... basketball is big in Kentucky. One wonders how many other universities do the same thing. Only the shadow knows, but some other folks might be crawling out of the woodwork soon, especially if profitable lawsuits are contemplated, as they might be by John Edwards-type lawyers out for a big caper.

**Christie said the other day that 300,000 have now died in Syria, but didn't say how he got that information, which may be nowhere near the truth. He also called for a no-fly zone (didn't say how to enforce it, as if Obama could or would...he's not that dumb), so as president he would say to Putin, “Bring it on.” Crazy! Trump says to let Putin destroy ISIS and just get out of the whole mess. That makes sense. Russia left Afghanistan in a shambles at the end of the 80s, and the U.S. is leaving Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan in a shambles currently. Do these politicians have any sense of history? No! The Middle East is a place to go to get a nation's nose bloodied, with nothing to show for its efforts but loss of life and treasure.

**Old Joe may get in the race pretty soon...or not. But, puh-l-e-e-z-z-e, Joe, don't say it's because your late son wanted you to do it. That may be good for the “highly sensitive” (politically correct warm-fuzzy-huggers), but not for anyone who thinks occasionally. You would be Obama's third term, as would Hillary, but U.S. citizens are becoming acclimated to the welfare state now so even Bernie Sanders would have a chance. With you in the mix, though, the looming democrat debate would be an even finer circus. So, don't say, “It ain't so,” Joe.

**ISIS honchos are more clever than a monkey. Whilst setting up the future world-ruling Caliphate in Iraq and Syria, they are driving all the Muslims possible into Europe to therefore extend the Caliphate to strong/rich/developed nations without firing a shot. Muslim women/men out-breed the Europeans by about 3:1, so there's the painless (except for the women) answer. France will be known as Little Algeria and Germany as Sharia-on-the-Rhine. They out-breed U.S. couples by about 2.5:1, so that's something to consider when 200,000 arrive, as Obama/Kerry would have it, though the newcomers might “evolve” (Obama's term) into trading having kids for the “good life,” as is the case in this country.

**FLASH! In the p.m. News, UL President Ramsey and Athletic Director Jurich appeared to say they are INVESTIGATING that evil stuff the woman wrote about. They did not appear with Coach Pitino to say all three were investigating, and Pitino also appeared by himself to caterwaul about the problem. Translation: The prexy and the AD have appointed themselves as the fox to investigate the hen-house, meaning that Ricky Babe is on his own and slated as the scapegoat. Ramsey knocked down a cool $1.67 million in income this year, while Jurich manages a yearly stipend of $1.41 million. These guys are not about to give that up. Of course, Pitino makes much more...so let him take the heat and possible pink slip. Ramsey feuds with his board over his salary as a matter of course, so what else is new with the Card-house. Corruption, thy name is UL.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Univ. of Louisville Basketball

As Dirty as It Gets

So...a former stripper/prostitute who doubled as an apparatchik in the University of Louisville Athletics Department a few years ago has written a tell-all book about the perfidies of the wicked sports clambake and her equally wicked enhancement of them, even to the point of selling the bodies of her own daughters along with hers. This elicits a yawn/ho-hum if even more than a fraction of what she writes is true. Nothing new. The book has been thoroughly vetted.

The University of Louisville has been plagued for decades by shenanigans that would make decent people blush if they bothered to pay attention. The lurid actions noted in the book were designed apparently to lure high-schoolers to UL on fully paid scholarships to run fast, jump high, and knock the opponent senseless if possible, depending on the “sport.”

The basketball coach's drunken intimacy with a woman not his wife on a restaurant backroom floor a while back raised a few eyebrows not because it happened but because it got reported...vividly. Ho-hum. The woman later accused him of rape (charge went nowhere) and then tried unsuccessfully for extortion...wound up in jail.

The UL football coach was sacked at Arkansas a while back after sharing a motorcycle wreck with a woman not his wife—no one killed. By way of Western Kentucky University, he's now back at Louisville. The surprise is that he was ever fired, but Arkansas does have a lot of Baptists. In Bowling Green and Louisville, that's just par-for-the-course stuff.

You can see where this is going. Seducing teenage kids to the school by giving them stripper-shows and (for maybe a little extra charge to UL) a romp in the bedsheets with whoever is available was just common procedure. Predictably, alcohol (for minors?) played a large part in the sexual chaos/ecstasy. The basketball coach (same guy now as then) says he knew nothing about it and was SHOCKED to learn of it. Ho-hum. Recruiting is the name of the game and he's the recruiter-in-chief.

The period covered in the book was 2010-2014. The author is 43, so one wonders how old her three daughters and other girls were when all this enhanced recruiting took place. Were laws broken? If so, will the university ignore them perhaps like Penn State did a few years ago regarding a former coach's pedophilia, with some top Penn State officials severely punished (multiple charges and indictments) when their perfidy was outed? Not likely at Louisville, though if criminal activity was involved...maybe gangbusters.

The most recent pooh-bah involved, responsible for basketball operations (whatever that is), departed UL in 2014 to hire-on as a lowly assistant coach at a school nowhere near the rarefied sports strata occupied by UL . Why would he do that? Was he pushed? Who knew what when? The fun took place where most of the basketball players lived and the fun was shared by the recruits' fathers as well as UL players. Just one big happy orgy...and in a taxpayer-owned Playboy Mansion masquerading as a dormitory.

Since the most sought-after basketball athletes are black—also true at the University of Kentucky—this whole affair is a slam on African Americans...the notion that sex will attract when nothing else will. This implies that they mostly function on animal—rather than human—instincts. Build an athletic whorehouse and they'll come, and the dormitory-as-whorehouse remains open after they come, according to the author...disgusting!

Is UL an exception? The thinking here is that this goes on at most if not all major universities, with both the athletic gurus and coaches involved, just part of the game. Winning (all that matters + huge salaries) is not premised on actual coaching but on recruiting. At Kentucky, the recruit expects to be in school for only one year and then transported to basketball heaven, the NBA, his skills noted by the scouts during that year. The same is true to a lesser extent at UL. This minor-league system stinks and trivializes academics.

No UL employee is likely to be sacked, certainly not the basketball coach or athletic director. If anything substantive happens, it will have to do with girls being “used,” their ages being the determinant. That says it all concerning integrity in the corrupt sports-systems on the high-profile campuses, but if abuse of minors is determined, then look out! The sexual shenanigans can lead to prison.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Middle-East Exit-Time

Hands Off Civil Wars...Let Muslims Settle ISIS Problem

The view of republican presidential candidate Donald Trump may be the best regarding the dust-up among the UN, USA, Russia, Syria, ISIS and Iran, to wit, that the U.S. should just butt out now and leave the Russians and the Muslims to carry out the predictable carnage. At least, that's the way I read him though any politician or office-seeker is subject to an overnight change of mind.

The hawks like Senators McCain and Graham, both republicans, fear a loss of respect if that should happen, claiming that the militarily strongest nation in the world would be seen as waffling. The other candidates who share their view would do well to think twice before suggesting that the U.S. should become even more deeply involved than it is.

There are some ironies. President Obama told Syria President Assad to give up his office in 2011 and turn the country over to the “people.” He didn't identify the “people.” He told Libyan President Qaddafi to do the same, as well as Egyptian President Mubarak and Yemen President Saleh. None of them took him seriously although both Mubarak and Saleh did abdicate under the pressure of their own citizens.

Egypt immediately came under the control of the Muslim Brotherhood, featuring the barbaric Sharia Law as the governing instrument. Mubarak went to jail but has been completely exonerated, with his replacement, Mohammed Morsi (first democratically elected president) lasting only a year before he was ousted by the military and eventually sentenced to death. No Middle East nation—ruled viciously by the Islamic ayatollahs and mullahs—is capable of self-governance. This was found to be true in Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq, with actual elections held in the latter two, all completely meaningless.

Obama liquidated Qaddafi—took seven months in 2011 with civilian blood in the streets—but Assad demurred and continues to thumb his nose at the U.S., never mind that Obama set the infamous “red lines” that Assad ignored. Almost pushed completely into a corner by the hawks, Obama might have done something rash in Syria except that Russia's Putin acted as mediator, trading Assad's WMD for Obama's peace. I have a bridge for sale to anyone who believes that trade has been consummated.

Putin appreciates Syria as his outpost on the Mediterranean Sea and is now seeing to it that Assad stays in power, perhaps—or perhaps not, who knows?—under the guise of bombing ISIS into submission, thus hijacking the U.S air campaign against ISIS. Hopefully, the two air-forces will stay clear of each other but one never knows when the fatal incident will happen, like the assassination that triggered WWI in 1914.

Question: Does Putin have as much right to prop up Assad as Obama had in trying to remove him...or in the murder of Qaddafi? The stock answer is that Assad was killing his citizens by the thousands, though no one has a clue as to how many were actually wasted. The UN puts out figures but the UN has no credibility. The numbers of Syrian dead in 2011 rose so rapidly that one wonders if they were more propaganda than real though even one death is one too many. Thousands have died and thousands have fled but the Syrian “people” made the tragic mistake of uprising without either the military might or the leadership required to displace a stubborn chief-of-state, especially if he's an outnumbered member of a distinct minority and has a friend like Putin to furnish ammo and hardware.

Although he stated that he did not favor the action, Obama signed off on a $500 million plan to train 5,000 of the right Syrian “people” somewhere (Roosevelt's WWII Shangri-la?) to overthrow Assad. Fifty-four have actually been trained, with 50 of them now unaccounted for. The four “successes” sucked up $42 million worth of training, about $10 million per trainee. At that rate, 50 more “successes” can be realized with the remaining $458 million.

So...the U.S. is between a rock and a hard sand-dune. Trump may be right. Let the Muslims waste each other until there's a winner and then do business with the entity left standing. This means no more U.S. blood and treasure—especially blood—wasted in the Middle East, where all sides fight with materiel made in the good old U.S. of A. while U.S. citizens watch the scene on TV every evening.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark