Obama Feminizes RANGERS

Warm Fuzzies All Around

CAVEAT ALERT: To many if not most in these days of political-correctness with its warm fuzzies and hugs all around, the following will be hyper-chauvinistic, so let the chips fall where they may, with no apologies! Recently, two U.S. army commissioned officers, female graduates of West Point, were given inordinate media coverage because they had passed the army's grueling Ranger School. Not usually mentioned is the fact that they had failed the program twice and so made it on the third try, making one wonder, especially when remembering that Osama's noisy assassination took place in the same location as Pakistan's military academy (less than a mile away) and other military bases without a shot being fired by any Pakistan military during the noisy 40-minute raid that included a firefight with Osama's body guards and a helicopter crash.

This in no way denigrates what the Navy Seals did since the whole shebang could have imploded upon them with significant loss of life but it's obvious that this government had made an arrangement with the Pakistan government that Osama's compound could be invaded with impunity; however, there's been little if any ballyhoo to that effect. This was an important qualifier for that mission, so one wonders about a qualifier for the Ranger School achievement. Subterfuge has been a hallmark of the entire Obama administration.

One of the women is a helicopter pilot, the other in the Military Police, neither job requiring Ranger capability. The president—father of two daughters—has okayed women in combat, an incredible decision, but they have not yet been assigned to the Rangers. Obama will see to this, messing up military combat readiness even more than he already has. He hasn't discovered even at this stage of his “evolving” that there are differences between men and women that totally negate political-correctness in favor of both readiness and common sense. By his own account, he “evolved” into understanding that men may marry men, meaning that a man is also a woman, so it's just a leap to throwing women into IED territory or foreign prisons, there to be treated with Muslim jihad favor—gang-rape, lopped off limbs, stonings and other types of humane treatment known as torture.

The Ranger School is tough and lasts 61 days. The TV clips showed the women crawling through mud just like the men and carrying heavy packs on their backs. In the women's class there were 364 GIs at the outset, with 94 men passing (26%) and two (one-half of one percent) women claimed as passing on their third try. Will the president—commander-in-chief—now decide that the god diversity calls for half of all Rangers to be women since they make up more than half the population and are actually men anyway?

Earlier this year, David Martin (CBS – Sixty Minutes) was allowed to see just some – actually very little – of what aspiring Marine lieutenants have to endure in order to be qualified as Infantry Lieutenants. In the group of Marine lieutenants beginning the ordeal were five women, one of whom allowed herself to be interviewed and filmed during part of the first day, which involves a grueling combination of exercises featuring everything from actual bare-knuckled fights among the aspirants themselves to an obstacle course to a grueling 16-mile hike carrying extremely heavy equipment. The first day is designed to make or break as far as effort is concerned, while others may fall out along the way. None of the five women made it past the first day.

By day 70, there were 59 Marines left out of the 85 that began the three months of torture designed to tax to the limit both the physical and mental capacities of the aspirants. On this day, the aspirants began cliff-climbing and -descending in the Mojave Desert...temperature 110 degrees. The packs they carried weighed 115 lbs, and there were no paths or directions. It was every man for himself and it was not a one-day affair. The general in charge of the training mentioned that the packs in some situations weigh up to 130 lbs.

Martin interviewed the candidate who was at the top of the class at that point, asking his weight. The young man, who stood 6-2, weighed 170 lbs. and had begun the course at a weight of 200 lbs. Losing 30 pounds in 70 days has much to say about what's involved in becoming a Marine infantry officer, and he still had two weeks to go. The general explained that in fighting conditions the enlisted men had to have faith in their leader, thus the rigorous training and weeding out of less worthy men, not on the basis of desire or mentality but on the basis of leadership skills and strength honed by the most demanding training possible.

There is also an infantry course for enlisted personnel, though nowhere near as demanding as that of the officers. One-third of the women who try make it through this course. Martin interviewed one of the women who passed this course but her remarks were surprising. She said, even though she completed the training, that the infantry was not the place for women. Two of her reasons were that the weight that had to be carried was too heavy (women might have been allowed the rope-climb without packs but I'm not certain) and that women's hips were not built for that strenuous requirement, translated as the idea of unisex being loony-tunes.

The Navy Seal training is even more comprehensive and demanding than that of the infantry officers not least because much of it is in and below water and involves precision parachuting over all kinds of seas, terrain or time, day or night. No mention was made of these things vis-a-vis the Marine Infantry Officer training, done on the land. The president has said that the SEALS must get their act ready for women. He has never even been through boot camp, is militarily totally clueless, yet makes decisions that are so off the wall as to be embarrassing, to say nothing of the jeopardy into which he plunges the nation.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Hillary the HYPOCRITE

There are some things that, just on the basis of disgust, almost induce vomiting. One such thing happened on 26 August as the result of watching Hillary Clinton via a TV news broadcast, making a speech as if to a group of first-graders (aggravatingly condescending) regarding the Roanoke shootings. Her attempt at solemnity was so artificial as to be demeaning. Of course, she said we just HAVE to do something about guns or people who shoot them or whatever, the usual “progressive” claptrap.

As I watched, I kept remembering the scene at Andrews Air Force Base when she and the president met the relatives of the four men who were murdered in the Benghazi Massacre and regaled them with tales of the sacrifice of their loved ones having occurred as the result of “protests” caused by a silly 11-minute film about Mohammad by someone no one had heard of. Both she and the president knew they were LYING, trying vainly to effect a coverup for the negligence of the State Department presided over by Hillary and totally conducted by Obama.

The PREVARICATING had begun in the Rose Garden shortly before when Clinton and Obama, with straight solemn faces, LIED to the press and people assembled, as well as to the nation via the media, in regurgitating that same SUBTERFUGE about the unheard of film-maker, who not long after landed in a U.S. jail, whether he belonged there or not due to some other factors. Oh yeah...let justice roll down like a river—the State Secretary must be protected at all costs from a hideous scandal. They were not long in that little act of FRAUD in the Rose Garden, since the prez had just stopped by on his way to an Andrews flight for a California “whoopee” fundraiser and just had to go.

The intrepid State Secretary and president were so brave in that matter that they sent out the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice (now...you guessed it...head of the NSA), to parrot that same FABRICATION on five Sunday-morning talk-shows days after the fact, thus compounding the LIE into the BIG LIE, big enough that told often enough in enough places would surely become the truth...except that it didn't, even though the president tried to palm that same UNTRUTH off on the UN in a speech two weeks after the fact. No one—certainly not the president—has ever said where Obama was on the night of the Benghazi affair. One hopes he wasn't an Ashley Madison subscriber.

LYING is one of Clinton's most prominent attributes. She manufactured a WHOPPER in 2008 when she vividly described in New Hampshire how she had to run for her life in Bosnia in 1996, lest snipers blow her away. Actually, she was met at the airport by officials and a little girl holding out flowers to welcome a U.S. good lady. This was all on film but it apparently never occurred to her that she would be found out, whereupon when she was she said something like she had “misspoken.” She was the first lady then perhaps taking a vacation with Chelsea at taxpayer expense and dropping by the Tuzla Airbase.

Then, there was the “Petraeus Affair,” not the one concerning his mistress but the one that happened in a Senate hearing in 2008 in which Clinton said one must “suspend belief” when General Petraeus spoke. She called the general a LIAR to his face and in front of the other senators as well as the public since the whole shebang was televised. One wonders at the gall it took to do that until one remembers she was in campaign mode for the presidency.

Perhaps worse even than these breaches of the public trust is the fact that she conducted national and international business for four years in heading the State Department not through her government computer but through her private computer and very own server. This was unconscionable, SECRECY beneath contempt, but she apparently felt that she was above the law and accountable only to herself. With this background added to the others mentioned, she expects citizens to vote her into being the president and—worse—commander-in-chief. Just the thought of that is enough to cause another physical upset.

But the Clintons should take heart. According to ABC's Jonathan Karl on 28 August, hubby Bill picked up more than a cool $48 million in speaking fees while Hillary was State Secretary. And that's no LIE.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Bride/Groom in Dustbin

There are times when, contrary to what I've believed for a lifetime, I think that the current U.S. system of government is fatally flawed. The reason has nothing to do with the Constitution, when to which officials pay heed things run smoothly. The problem has to do with what the founders probably thought, i.e., that reasonable people would always occupy positions of authority in all three branches, both elective and appointive.

Across the board, this has never been the case, as can easily be seen by reading any high-school history book that hasn't undergone revisions by the politically correct, who have damned education for decades. However, the trend toward succumbing to the flaw seems now to be ultra-enhanced. For instance, the courthouse clerks in Kentucky are now revising marriage licenses since homosexual marriages do not have a bride and groom, terms appearing now on licenses.

This would not be the case if the founders were right in believing that reasonable people would always make and enforce laws. When five unelected officials out of a population of 320 million souls decided that men can marry each other they proved that the flaw becomes operative when government is administered by idiots. That sounds harsh, so...mentally-challenged or educationally-stunted or too-long-in-the-sun. Fill in your own blank.

Now, it appears that the licenses will use the terms “first party” and “second party,” though that sounds discriminatory and will make wild documents for enrolling children in school (adopted, of course or birthed when either party had been a bride or groom or husband or wife in another life). Grandparents will be known as grand-party #1 and grand-party #2, and for census and other official purposes will Party #1 always be the head-of-household, or will that anachronistic term be eradicated, also? Obits will read like a legal document.

There's another angle to consider. According to the Louisville Courier-Journal, a big deal in that city now is something called “polyamory.” Dictionary-wise, this seems to be a non-word but is operative when a party(ies) claims to be “polyamorous,” also a non-word. Polyamory seems to be based on consensual non-monogamy or ethical cheating (a beautiful oxymoron), to wit, people in something as confining as marriage to one person but desiring, with the other marriage party's consent, to get it on with others, as well.

Now that homosexual-marriage is legal, it's only a matter of time before “poly” parties will demand that marriages including most any configuration will sue for their “rights,” knowing that the Supreme Court has already made most any arrangement (perhaps animals excluded, at least for now) legal. The paper mentioned a study by an outfit called Avvo.com in which it was determined that four percent of the population (probably adults...who knows?) are in these “poly” relationships now.

According to the Centers for Disease Control this past June, only 1.6% of the population claims to be homosexual, so the Court has backed itself into a corner, what with the polyamorous crowd much larger than the gays and lesbians combined. So, Kentucky may soon have to add parties #3 and #4 or #more. This is the only way that children can be legally considered in the inevitable divorces (or killings) resulting from the poly-party hook-ups.

The Court would have to treat this as a “fairness” matter, of course. If two men can get hitched, then what about the polyamorous parties or bisexual parties or even transgender parties, whether in or out of transitioning mode from one gender to another? After all, even Muslim men are allowed four wives, although this varies for some. Osama bin Laden's father had 22 wives but only four at a time, according to Wiki, but the old man had financial pull with the ayatollahs, so who knows? Mohammad the prophet had only 12 wives.

The founders were not perfect but were not dumb as gourds, either. The sanctity of man/woman marriage was important in their day for legal, practical, and spiritual reasons and they would be appalled at what is unfolding morally in this country now. The effort to trivialize marriage has been operative since at least the 60s, when the flower-children came of age. Today, look at the Court to find the gourds.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Whither Black Angst?

Much has been written/televised by the media and pundits in recent years about the alleged disproportionate number of blacks killed by white policemen, usually asserting the reason to be racism. The sensationalism connected to this matter has made for instigating emotions of all kinds, usually condemnation across-the-board of white police officers by both whites and blacks, especially blacks. In a way, this is yellow journalism since many factors other than racism-as-cause impact the situation.

According to the Wall Street Journal of 14 May 2015 quoting a survey by the Bureau Of Justice Statistics, black officers make up 12% of local police rosters. According to the U.S. Census Bureau estimates, U.S. black population stands at 13.2% of the total population. The differentiation between the sizes of the groups is only 1.2% when compared to the total picture, and it's obvious that anyone killed by a police officer is likely to be dispatched by a white policeman since whites make up 88% of all police forces in the country. A miscreant is seven times more likely to be apprehended by a white than a black policeman just on this basis.

It's fair to wonder why more blacks are not policemen even though they are not far behind numerically regarding percentage. To qualify for a law enforcement job, an applicant must be at least a high school graduate. According to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, less than half of black males who enter ninth grade graduate in four years. Actually, only 54% of all black students graduated from high school in 2011, according to Tavis Smiley Reports in an article of September 2011. This compared with more than 75% for whites and Asians. Little, if any, has changed.

The Smiley article also stated that black high school seniors read on the same level as white 8th-graders. There surely were thousands of exceptions concerning that statistic, but, overall, that bespeaks a tragic blow to chances of blacks getting good jobs since just completing applications requires an appropriate level of understanding. The knee-jerk reaction on the part of many to this circumstance is that schools are failing in the education of blacks; however, national school-integration was accomplished 40 years ago, so blacks are exposed to the same systems as whites and Asians.

If a disproportionate number of apprehensions/arrests exist—it must be admitted that disproportionate occurrences of lawlessness are a consideration—what is the reason? Some might mention racial profiling and there's no argument with that at least in light of what black males describe as undue surveillance and even frivolous detainment for one reason or another. It's obvious that some prejudice exists...no white officer is perfect and, admittedly, there are some rotten ones. There also are some rotten blacks, whether policemen or not.

As the education gap has widened, with no hope of it narrowing any time soon, and the consequent job-frustration continues, there is a growing tension in the black community that's ameliorated by violence, personal and in the destruction of property, usually misleadingly termed as “protests.” Ferguson is an example, Baltimore another. Egged on by professional reverse-racists like Al Sharpton (convicted himself of fraudulent charges against a detective), these riots—not protests—will continue.

It hasn't helped that President Obama started his first term in 2009 by accusing a white policeman—without knowing any facts—of acting stupidly, though the cop was just doing his job. Later (again without knowing any facts), he apparently presumed that a white policeman had accosted and killed Trayvon Martin and had his attorney general mess into that affair, in which no policeman of any color was involved. When Ferguson happened a year ago and again without knowing any facts, he had the attorney general and a bevy of federal attorneys successfully ruin an innocent policeman's career. No criminal or civil charges were upheld.

It's no wonder, then, that blacks feel they have a right to tear up, shoot up, burn up, and loot in the interest of “protesting” when the president has all but placed his imprimatur (joined by the Baltimore mayor) on these actions. Nearly all of the alleged police strong-arming has taken place only after a suspect has refused to simply do as he's told until a problem is resolved. This includes menacing, with or without a weapon, as well as running.

The answers to this problem, which will worsen, are obvious but it's politically incorrect to suggest them.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Syntax & Schlepping

This is the heading over a column by Larry Keeling in the Lexington Herald-Leader of 09 August: Indictment or not, Rand to join dad as hopeless loser. An astute sixth-grader knowing the rules of grammar understands that statement to mean that Rand [Paul] is under indictment for something or other. This would be Keeling's fondest wish but it's categorically untrue. Paul is under no indictment for any crime, not even double-parking, so was this a mistake by an editor/proofreader...or was it intentionally structured to smear Paul, anathema to the paper and gloriously hated, especially since he won his Senate seat by defeating the paper's approved democrat.? If so, dishonesty is alive and well. Only the Shadow knows.

Keeling, a retired member of the paper's editorial clambake, offers a monthly column of often curmudgeonly (even acerbic) remarks, which makes it interesting to read, and in this same column indicated that his nose was all out of joint because the Historic Properties Advisory Commission would not vote to remove the Jefferson Davis statue from the Capitol Rotunda, notwithstanding that Davis, like Lincoln a Kentuckian, was the second most important U.S. citizen during 1860-65. It only enhanced Keeling's high dudgeon that a recent poll indicated that 73% of the state's citizens wanted the statue to remain where standing, even though Kentucky was a border-state that caucused with the Union.

In fact, despite the fact that my great-grandfather and two great-uncles fought in the Union Army I want the statue to remain where it is, never mind that Kentucky Senator and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wanted it moved, but that's understandable since he, unlike Donald Trump, is constrained by political correctness, especially in the wake of the recent brouhaha over the Stars-and Bars. According to the political elite, the 1860s should never be mentioned in polite company, and the Lexington statue of John Hunt Morgan is in mortal danger of total destruction, as well as those of John Breckenridge and Henry Clay. Soon, the correctness clique will probably move to burn down the Clay estate, although its nearness (just a few doors) to the mansion of UK basketball coach Calipari, Lexington's most esteemed citizen, may nix such a plan.

Keeling wrote the penultimate literary coup de grâce, however, when he accused the commission of (gasp) actually being on the “wrong side of history,” and not just on the wrong side but PERMANENTLY on the wrong side (caps mine). To his credit, he did not claim to have placed the commission there—lack of arrogance indicating humbleness and goodwill—but that they “put themselves on the wrong side of history,” something akin to civil suicide, since the psychologists, sociologists and J. Fred Muggs all agree that history is stern, unchangeable, and unforgiving, no matter how hard the politically correct crowd tries to revise/excise it.

This, of course, brings up the matter of history, especially in the matter of its sides – what kind; how many; permanence. Keeling didn't elaborate but one might infer that being on the wrong side simply means disagreeing with him, probably on the right side...he didn't say. However, for some there's the nagging feeling that history just is and has no sides at all; however, if it has good and evil sides Keeling probably places the commission on the River Styx with the boatmen transporting it to history's underworld-side. Oh, the agony of being on the wrong side of history!

In a parting shot—a beautiful piece of racist muckraking—Keeling admonished the governor for leaving the Trustee-Board of the University of Louisville “without a black member for the first time in 45 years,” thus compounding a negative legacy (whatever that means), and said he should remove the aforementioned commission if possible by issuing an executive order, which proves that Keeling is up on things politically and may petition the prez, who governs in that mode, not the governor. I believe that a qualified black should be appointed to any board but, unlike Keeling, not because of the color of his skin. In any case, lame-duck governors are sometimes pressed to pay off cronies, many if not most of whom have contributed ever so generously.

Ah...muckraking is such fun. Everyone should try it.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Debate-Gate

Fox Tries to Roll Trump

I try to stay abreast of political happenings and have suffered through many presidential- and other candidate-debates (actually very little debating) through the years. The 2016 elections are a long way off and so I decided to skip the latest presidential debate planned and programmed by Fox News the other evening. Ten “debaters” are way too many. Since there are 17 candidates, there was a mini-debate for the seven lowest in the polls that preceded the main event by a few hours. The whole thing couldn't pass the smell-test as far as fairness was concerned, especially since polls are often—if not most often—rigged to advance the agenda of the polling outfits.

I checked in on a few minutes of each debate mostly out of curiosity but had decided to check the media outlets after the debates to get a feel furnished by the commentators for what happened. I watched the beginning minutes of the main debate and realized in the first exercise (a showing of hands, as in grade school), offered by Bret Baier, who inquired as to which losing campaigners/debaters would pledge support in 2016 for whoever the republican candidate would be and promise not to become a third-party opponent in the general election.

All the candidates but Donald Trump pledged support and disavowed any third-party ambitions. His position was already well-known to Baier, so the transparency was obvious. Fox was out to “get” Trump, whose presence was the main reason the program broke viewing records for Cable. Fox's guru, Charles Krauthammer, apparently hates Trump—has called him a “rodeo clown”—and has let his disdain for the man be thoroughly documented in his daily appearances on network programs, especially the one conducted by Baier. I'm not a Trump supporter and agree with most of what Fox and Krauthammer put out, but the anti-Trump agenda has been withering and unfair.

The Fox “anchors,” Baier, Megyn Kelly and Chris Wallace, were well-prepared and knew exactly how they would conduct what would likely have many “gotcha” questions not just for Trump but also for the others. I saw Kelly begin her questioning of Trump, a nearly hysterical production of names Trump had called women, with her point obviously being that Trump was a woman-hater.

Both Baier and Kelly obviously meant to “bait” Trump into going off, which, of course, he did. This is why people tuned-in. Wallace did the same thing, hitting Trump with questions about bankruptcies. I just saw the start of that but I doubt that Trump thought of mentioning that Obama took both General Motors and Chrysler into bankruptcy in 2009, compliments to the losing shareholders of the whole U.S. government.

Later, in a tweet or something, Trump messaged about fire coming from Kelly's eyes or wherever, with this being taken as an insult regarding her “period.” This level of political incorrectness was just too much, whether Trump meant it that way or not. Male soldiers probably worry about combat alongside women soldiers over the same matter but, of course, would not say so publicly. So, Trump was dis-invited from something called the Red State Gathering in Atlanta over the weekend. He was to be the keynote speaker Saturday night. How better to get a crowd?

The debates make good entertainment for some but the actual debates are often between the interrogators and the candidates and not just among the campaigners. The pas de trois back and forth across the stage (Matthews, audience, candidates) by MSNBC's Chris Matthews in 2008 was the show-stopper of them all. These newsies are just as interested, if not more, in their performances as in the event. The ego-quotient is high all around.

Fox's most credible female anchor is Greta Van Susteren, who looks the part as well as gets the job done. Kelly is like all the other female anchors/reporters, dressed as scantily as possible and full of fury. The big winner may be Trump when the dust settles. While his TV antagonists and opponents “rehearsed” for the debate, he made it plain that he could respond on the spot. This was refreshing if not very informative.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark