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