Professor Introduces Fourth Reich

Hitler Reincarnated as Trump

The far-left-fringe of the Democrat Party remains in meltdown following the election, the latest op-ed in the Herald-Leader by retired Berea College professor Mike Rivage-Seul using the customary resort to condemn somebody or something unquestionably bad, i.e., equating same with Hitler and the Third Reich. In his screed of 26 December, he uses Trump EPA-head nominee Scott Pruitt as the fomenter of an American “revolution” account his threatening to destroy the nation (actually the world) by changing the climate.   

Pruitt, Oklahoma attorney general, believes in states-rights, taking issue with Obama, who declared that he would shut down the electricity-furnishing companies and make every user’s costs “skyrocket,” besides saving the planet in the process. He's largely succeeded with the former, not the latter. Rivage-Seul repeats the totally false claim that virtually all scientists believe man is making the world intolerably hotter by emitting most of the carbon dioxide that enters the atmosphere.

Predictably, Rivage-Seul noted that Clinton got a plurality of the vote but didn't mention that the differential just in California (some 4.3 million votes) was more than the national differential-figure. This is why the founders instituted the electoral college guaranteeing that no one state could so domineer an election that it could by itself virtually choose the president.

The professor quoted Jefferson regarding the “unalienable right to life,” claiming Pruitt (actually Trump) will be guilty of something like monarchic power since his making the earth hotter would destroy life (“genocide far worse than Adolf Hitler's,” his exact wording), ergo, the responsibility of the people to rise up against a government not guaranteeing that life-right.

More to the point is the arrogance of the alarmists, who, despite no significant success in connecting CO2, man-made or otherwise, to climate change, are determined to force the U.S. into even more regulations.  Their ability to make measurements, charts and demonstrably proven inaccurate computer models does not deter them. 

The far saner reasons for climate-change are the variance in numbers of sun-spots (holes) in the sun's surface in given eras and the overwhelming influence of the oceans covering 74% of the earth's surface. These oceans sequester CO2 gained from land foliage and runoff, for instance, then release or withhold it automatically as a natural phenomenon to stabilize temperature. Man's pitifully small contribution means little.

The fact that climate has changed sometimes radically throughout history under diverse conditions (industrialization or not, for instance), means that outside forces, not men’s forces, change earth’s fundamental conditions.  This is why the sunspot/ocean theory is eminently superior to the man-made stuff regarding the climate.

The earth is part of the cosmos, mysteriously designed/inculcated with incomprehensible relationships among the suns/planets/stars, and no one can explain how that fact affects earth's climate. The experts claim that the Ohio River was gouged out by a withdrawing glacier during one of the ice-ages, for instance, without any help from man.

Man can deal with local atmosphere, ridding it of acid rain, for instance, or fossil-fuel emissions. The diameter of the earth is 7,926 miles at the equator (40 less pole to pole), but the deepest hole ever drilled (Kola Peninsula—Russia) went down 7.6 miles, a distance so miniscule by comparison that man has no idea what the earth-interior comprises, whether tectonic plates or anything else, much less can conjecture how this (earth's inner temps/configuration) affects climate.

The accidental self-exposed hoax (emails by UN scientists who cooked the books in 2009) proved the political aspect of this matter – cap-and-trade. Men of science are lucky to accurately predict weather four days in advance, much less presume to decipher the grand design, however they deem its origination. For people of faith, God created the cosmos according to his design, which indicates that God and not man controls the sun’s locus and sphere of influence, including the earth, the clearer implication being that God, not man, controls the cosmos and the earth, including its climate.

So...the sky is not falling nor has the global temperature warmed in the last 20 years or so, thus threatening that unalienable right.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Professor Excoriates Trump

Exemplifies Safe-Space College Campuses

The regularly featured words of wisdom delivered in the Lexington Herald-Leader from the halls of academia spewed forth on 18 December from Benjamin Knoll, a professor at Centre College, who began his op-ed thusly: “Not kidding around,” as if one, after reading his piece, might accidentally dissolve into laughter.  Actually, I did.  

The professor then points out seven areas in which, “Donald Trump is actively threatening to weaken American democracy.”  One wonders at the difference between actively threatening and just plain threatening, but why torture the semantics?  One suspects the professor actually meant maliciously threatening, but didn’t want to be accused of micro-aggression, currently academia’s boogie-bear, a definite no-no, almost as sacrosanct as not raping drunk/doped coeds at frat parties they attend to become drunk or doped or both.  

Knoll accused Trump of attempting to foreclose free speech by threatening the revocation of citizenship account flag-burning, apparently not understanding that legislation/referendums amend the Constitution, not individuals. He accused Trump of attempting to interfere with non-violent protests planned for inauguration weekend in D.C., though I suspect the D.C. police are gearing up for the non-violence, especially since the protesters that need watching will be the usual professionals that burned up Ferguson, Missouri, twice and Baltimore once.

The puzzler: Knoll cited the Trump campaign for promising to impose a ban on Muslim-immigration in violation of “First Amendment guarantees of freedom of religion,” apparently not realizing that the amendment applies only to U.S. citizens, not to Muslims from the desert or anyone else. In any case, Trump only reflected the thinking of Hillary Clinton's “basket of deplorables,” the great unwashed “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic” folks, and irredeemably so…hopeless cases like me.

Inviting potential/actual suicide/homicide bombers into the country seems rather dim-witted but warm-fuzzy, hugs-all-around elitist academics see the larger perspective, the protection of these non-citizen-butchers' right to practice their murderous religion in the U.S. They practiced that right in Cairo the other day, wasting 25 in a Catholic Church bombing. Or...remember gay Paree – that theater as well as Charlie Hebdo, Nice and now Berlin (trucks as weapons), Boston, etc. Awarding this “religious right” is like inviting cancer into one's body...stupid.  

Knoll accused Trump of defiling the press by “bullying and criticizing news reporters,” notwithstanding that all the top media except Fox News openly and unashamedly promoted Clinton, a basket-case herself as far as making sense is concerned. The professor then accused Trump of trying to silence critics through intimidation on Twitter but doesn't mention that he tweets, too, one of his latest being “I suppose it's possible that a war with China will help make America great again. I'll admit I'm befuddled, though. Can anyone help clarify?” Egad! One hopes Knoll forgot and was just “kidding around.”

Knoll accused Trump of falsely claiming widespread voter-fraud. Just the current attempts of Clinton-worshipers to defame the Constitutional electoral college provision is all that's needed to prove Trump's point.

Knoll continued the ninth-grade civics lesson by accusing Trump of “attempting to weaken American institutions by siding with a foreign government over the U.S. intelligence community about Russian interference with our electoral process.” Okay...the Russkies (definitely not Trump) are accused of hacking into the Democratic National Committee, where they discovered that then-head honcho Wasserman Schultz, Podesta and their partners in crime blew off democrat Hillary-challenger Bernie Sanders, and Donna Brazile (currently rewarded as Schultz's replacement) fed debate info to Hillary's apparatchiks, though it didn't help the empty pants-suit.

Knoll didn't explain how this affected the election unless he wondered WWPD (what would Putin do) as the deciding factor while voting. Unbelievably (well...okay...academia-speak excused), Knoll finished with this gem: “Now is the time for the American people to show that they deserve the democracy they have inherited...”. Absolutely not! They do not deserve the democracy they have inherited from Obama/Clinton. They deserve much better than that and hopefully Trump will help deliver it. If not, God help us!

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Trump & the CIA/FBI

CNN talk-radio host Smerconish is my favorite not because I agree with him most of the time—I don’t—but because he allows his interviewees sufficient time to state their opinions and seldom interrupts no matter how profoundly he may disagree with them…he doesn’t lose his cool.  He almost lost it, though, in his 10 December segment involving Trump communications director, Sean Spicer, and came out looking so bad he admitted he forgot his place in the programming.  

Smerconish tried to make the point that Trump doesn’t trust his own CIA with respect to whether or not the agency is right in accusing the Russians of hacking into the U.S. election in some way or other, noting that some entity DID hack into the DNC apparatus during the campaign and that it has been alleged that the Russians hacked into the RNC outfit, as well, with the resulting information concerning only the DNC being made public…supposedly unfair in favor of Trump. The info (allegedly via WickiLeaks) did culminate in the firing of then-DNC head honcho Wasserman just as she was to initiate the July convention.  

Much was also made of the fact that Trump does not indulge in the daily briefings that allegedly Obama receives.  It’s doubtful that anyone knows how diligently or seriously Obama takes the briefings, either.  As to Trump’s possible distrust of the CIA (anathema to Smerconish), Spicer ate Smerconish’s lunch in a lengthy back-and-forth in which Spicer had his ducks in a row and Smerconish did not.  The upshot was/is that no one actually knows what if anything the Russians did but Spicer made it very clear that the electoral college victory depended not at all on whatever hacking did or did not take place.  

Trump, if he does not trust the CIA, possibly remembers that the CIA reported allegedly false info (WMD in Iraq) that resulted in that wasteful and ineffective war.  I disagree because the intel agencies of a number of developed nations made the same claim, and I believe that Saddam moved the WMD probably to his neighbor Syria probably at night between September 2002 and March 2003.  This is the subject of my novel The Biggest Con.  

It is politically incorrect to say it but the truth is that the head of the CIA, John Brennan, is alleged to be a Muslim, as is Obama’s top aide, Valerie Jarrette, but not because of whatever religion may be involved for them. I believe Islam is a cult, not a religion, and therefore distrust the Islamic movement (caliphate) centered on ruling the world and killing “infidels” (especially Christians/Americans) and Jews.  Trump could feel the same way. The “Cairo Massacre” in Cairo, Egypt, on 12 December is instructive. The homicide/suicide bomber blew up a Catholic church and killed at least 25.  

It doesn’t help that FBI Director Comey and Attorney General Lynch, after Comey outlined an airtight case against Hillary Clinton, while She was State Secretary, on the bases of flagrant negligence allowing any hacker to access the nation’s secrets and indisputable perjury concerning same, brought no charges of any kind against her.  Under oath himself, Comey indicated her perjury in a Congressional hearing.  

So…it’s not surprising that Trump might view any of Obama-controlled agencies as objects of suspicion and even distrust, especially those that involve national security and law-enforcement, Smerconish’s insistence otherwise notwithstanding. When he takes office, the taint of Obama, Jarrette, Lynch, Brennan and perhaps Comey will be gone. Trump has already picked a CIA chief, national security adviser, defense secretary and attorney general and will then have confidence in what he hears. National Security Adviser Susan Rice (remember the lies she told five networks regarding the Benghazi Massacre) will also be gone, thus ridding the nation of incompetence and outright corruption in the highest offices.

The vote has displeased the progressives (Hillary's term, not just democrats anymore) so the effort is now to somehow invalidate an election Constitutionally conducted by claiming its outcome was determined not by Americans but by Putin, though there is absolutely no proof offered to that effect. Weird but true!

Ironically, even if some electors betrayed their trust on 19 December when the votes of the electors are counted, the election would be decided in the House, which is by a substantial margin republican.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Flawed Election Explanation

In an op-ed in the Lexington, Ky., Herald-Leader of 27 November, former newspaperman Al Smith attempted to explain why democrat Representative Martha Jane King of Logan County was defeated in the recent election, citing the usual things like being outspent (those evil Koch brothers and their Pacs) and spurious advertising showing her pictured with Hillary Clinton and blaming her for favoring most anything like abortion and same-sex marriages, things that rile a lot of folks and not just in Logan County.  

I don’t know how King feels about those or other subjects but I also don’t believe that sort of opposition ended her incumbency.  Courthouses in Kentucky and most state officials are still democrat, but the legislature and governorship have changed drastically, especially the House, which was not just overturned but turned upside-down (64-36, veto-proof) and made republican-run for the first time in nearly a hundred years.  The Senate has been republican for a long time.  

King became the victim of “Trumpism,” and it didn’t help her chances that Clinton’s abundantly transparent CQ (corruption-quota), with Trump using the term “Crooked Hillary” to good advantage, was divulged gradually all through the campaign.  Democrats were thrown out of state legislatures nationwide.  Guilt by association is a killer. Nationally, Clinton had avowed to continue Obama's tortured management, so the vote was also a referendum on the president.  

King lost her seat by a two-to-one margin, a landslide, just as Clinton lost the electoral college by a landslide 306-232.  Apparently, only one county out of 120 Kentucky counties (Jefferson) voted for Clinton.  In national elections, Kentucky has voted republican for years, at least tolerating the often-crooked democrat courthouse corruption, but trusting national issues only to republicans. Just one Kentucky member of Congress (from Jefferson County) is a democrat.  Nationally, only four states between the west coast democrat-cabal and the Northeast coast-cabal voted Trump, i.e., “flyover country,” where most of  Hillary’s “deplorables” live. The entire Southeast went for Trump.  

While Smith’s explanation for King’s defeat was flawed, he shed some light on the tolerated corruption of Kentucky politics, reminiscing about the days when “Doc” Beauchamp ran the state.  He might have mentioned that highway contractors sort of did, also.  Indeed, in recent memory, one can testify to the shenanigans and investigations/surveillances of former democrat governors and their administrations, as well as the legislatures.

Reaching back to the 70s, Governor (later Senator) Wendell Ford was indicted by a Grand Jury concerning an insurance scheme. His successor, Julian Carroll, was investigated by a Grand Jury in an insurance scam, after which his protege, Sonny Hunt, also a legislator as well as state democrat party chairman was convicted and did serious time. Carroll was under yet another federal investigation when he left office in 1979.

Carroll's successor, John Y. Brown, was investigated by a federal Grand Jury concerning a $1.3 million withdrawal from a bank (to pay gambling debts...maybe?) and was under surveillance concerning drug-trafficking, a cocaine-drug-smuggling ring operating in Lexington at the time. Governor Martha Layne Collins ran into a conflict of interest brouhaha over the gift of a $35,000 piano, whilst hubby Bill was convicted of extorting $1.1 million accruing to contributions from state contractors.

Her successor, Wallace Wilkinson, was investigated over numerous charges (remember the book sales) and a $418 million bankruptcy case. His successor, Brerton Jones, received illegally large contributions to his campaign from National Guard officers, who were later promoted or given government appointments, while the adjutant-general went to jail for 18 months or so. Jones's successor, Paul Patton, suffered a sexual harassment lawsuit by a woman with whom he had an affair and experienced both FBI and Ethics Commission probes.

More than a dozen legislators were convicted in the early 90s via an FBI sting (selling votes...remember BOPTROT-HUMANA) and the longest-serving House Speaker up to then, Don Blandford, was given 64 months in the Pen.

Yeah, politics are the damnedest in Kentucky. Al Smith knows and covered it.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Protesting Paranoiacs

One can only wonder what it would have been like in 2008 and 2012 if disappointed people vis-à-vis Obama’s election had taken to the streets like those disappointed about Trump’s election are doing in a few cities across the country.  What’s happening with these people furnishes a window into what the socialist-oriented think about this country.  

This is different from 2000, when the Supreme Court of Florida attempted to steal the election from George W. Bush.  That was an official, albeit illegal, action by a government, settled quickly by the Supreme Court of the U.S.  What’s happening now is a protest meaning nothing since it’s not an official undertaking by any group.  Hopefully, it will not eventuate in criminal activity but that possibility is real.   

If there had been a protest movement in 2000, the protesters would probably, as now, be largely black, teens and twenty-somethings.  This means disaffected ethnics and public school and university/college students in the main, another way of saying immature and ill-informed, especially in the universities, in most of which the faculties are far-left (progressivists) and prone to indoctrinate young minds with their socialist agendas.   

With the blessings of the current establishment figures in both federal and large-city governments, protesters have understandably been encouraged to make disruption of the freedoms of others as a tool to effect their agendas, the devil take the hindmost.  This was graphically illustrated by Obama’s DOJ (AG Holder) when it went after an innocent policeman in Ferguson, Missouri, a while back to try to wreck his life.  It was illustrated later when the Baltimore mayor indicated that protesters should have their “space” to do their thing such as attacking people and burning other people’s properties and/or destroying their businesses/livelihoods.   

This involves a third- or fourth-world mentality, to wit, that matters are settled in the streets and not at the ballot box.  It has been encouraged by Obama since it involves displacing one dictator with another, i.e., rule by a monarch.  Obama has repeatedly tried to govern by executive order, as a monarch would, disregarding the legislature and the courts despite the mandates of the U.S. Constitution.   

This is the socialistic approach favored by both Obama and Hillary Clinton, elitists who would hand the government over to a small band of oligarchs to work their will, gaining power and immense wealth, all at the expense of the little people.   Theirs is the something for nothing propaganda—the mythic level playing field—on which the government makes every decision, whether personal or institutional.  

The best example: Obamacare. This act was designed to fail at best or through ignorance at worst. Based on payments by insurance companies, which exist to make profits and not necessarily for public benefit, the pattern was to eventuate in single-payer mode, notwithstanding that Medicare couldn't even be managed by government and had to be turned over to insurance companies for its administration.  

MIT professor Jonathan Gruber, paid at least $400,000 for Obamacare-design, apologized before Congress for referencing the public as stupid, the notion being that the great unwashed would never catch-on to actual provisions, and he was right. In fact the democrats, who passed the legislation (no republican in House or Senate voted for it), didn't bother to read it but probably couldn't have understood it anyway.  

This may explain the plight of the protesters, who may actually believe the result of the election can somehow be overturned. This is tin-horn-dictator stuff. In Venezuela, street protests might work (or not) if they become violent enough, as has been seen in Muslim countries like Libya, Egypt, and Syria recently. In fact, Obama joined the protesters in Libya by siccing the U.S. Air Force on Qaddafi.  

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Teacher-Quota System Flawed

The latest gaffe of the Fayette Public School System, already dodging landmines for the last few years, is its insistence that it must do more to entice black and Latino teachers (Herald-Leader 31 October), their ethnicity apparently trumping their ability/experience. Caveat Alert: Notwithstanding the politically incorrect outcry of racism, this is madness.

The considered enticements include reduced apartment-rent, one-year gym-membership, and on-the-spot teaching contract, presumably meaning no vetting needed, just a teaching certificate. Reason: necessity to compete with other systems that offer more inducements, sort of like recruiting basketball players.

One can only wonder how Fayette teachers feel about this, especially those who have made significant sacrifices to satisfy requirements leading to greater proficiency, as well as non-ethnic applicants already deemed acceptable but waiting while the pigment-entitled pass them. Case-in-point: At the same time she became a Supreme Court justice, Justice Sotomayor was overturned by SCOTUS regarding her previous federal court decision favoring “reverse discrimination,” i.e., ruling that blacks bypass four more-qualified whites in fire-department promotions in a Connecticut city.

Ninety percent of Fayette teachers are white while 37.5% of students are black/Hispanic. About 90% of the UK basketball team (at least the ones who play in games) is black while the coach and 75% of the fans are white. So what! Ethnicity means absolutely nothing in either case.

The latest Prichard Report indicated that in order to achieve proper diversity among teachers the state would need to hire 6,882 black, Hispanic and teachers of other nationalities. The average teacher-salary in Kentucky, according to the Ky. Dept. of Education, is $52,618 ($58,385 in Lexington), meaning an additional outlay of some $400 million a year unless the white-teacher population is reduced by 6,882 teachers (5%) so political correctness can be achieved. How much sense does that make?

Supply obviously is a problem. Potential teachers must finish high school and college/university. In 2013, according to U.S. News & World Report (March 2016), 40.3% and 60.7% of black and white students, respectively, graduated college. The numbers graduating high school in 2012, according to the Huffington Post, were 69% and 86%, for blacks and whites, respectively. Hispanics came in at 73%. The pool for ethnic teachers is extremely small on just the basis of formal training.

Preparation is a problem. In order to teach, aspirants must pass a teacher-certification test. According to the Cincinnati Enquirer (April 2002), 36% of teacher-applicants at Kentucky State University (traditionally black enrolment) in Frankfort, passed that test, while the state average was 93% in the other state colleges/universities that year. That's deplorable though one hopes that improvement has been made since then, notwithstanding the constant turmoil at that school since 2002.

The test can be taken over and over until it is passed, and that's scary, as is the fact that until passing the aspirant may work as a substitute-teacher or in an emergency (whatever that would be). Students in the education dept. at KSU then were 60% and 40% black and white, respectively. When 74% of any class flunks its main standard of efficiency, the notion of a quota-system is absolutely off the charts when hiring takes place vis-a-vis preparation in an institution with that record. There's little reason to think much has changed at KSU.

Satisfying quotas, as Sotomayor might agree now (as well as UK coach Calipari), degrades the matter in question, especially the vital one of education. The Fayette system should remember this, no matter what political correctness dictates. Preoccupying itself with the hiring of potentially inferior teachers is unacceptable, just as basketball scholarships for white guys who can't jump.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

RIGGED

Democrats and even smart people have been horrified over Trump’s contention that the election process has been rigged from the start, but now, as Obama’s mentor, the Rev.  Dr. Jeremiah (God damn America) Wright, might say, the chickens have come home to roost.  Every entity from the DNC to Clinton’s governmental protectors is involved.

It started perhaps with the grand introduction at the Democrat Convention of “Gold Star Father” Khan, who waved a copy of the U.S. Constitution in the air and apparently tried to blame the death of his son, an army captain, on Trump, who had nothing to do with the war in which he was killed, but for which Hillary Clinton voted.  

Khan didn’t just volunteer and one can only wonder how much he was paid for that performance.  He has his own law firm, designed for leveraging the immigration of Muslims with the right amount of money into the U.S.  He also has worked with the law firm that represents Saudi Arabia in this country and does work for the Clintons, including their taxes.   

Saudi Arabia has contributed $10 - $25 million to the Clinton Foundation, which is perhaps the perfect place for laundering payouts, not to mention a vehicle for enhancing the Clinton personal wealth.  The leaked emails currently in circulation have proven how extensive that operation was/is.  As State Secretary, when much if not most of the groundwork was laid for “special privileges” for some individuals and countries—resulting in great current and potential wealth for the Clintons—Hillary rigged the actual U.S. government.

Some of the most definitive rigging occurred vis-a-vis the DNC (Podesta, Schultz) and its concentrated attempt to deep-six Bernie Sanders from the get-go, thus giving Hillary an easy, inexpensive road to the nomination. DNC Head Honcho Schultz was fired from the DNC, of course (pressure too great considering her dirty work), in favor of interim chairperson Brazile, not much of an improvement. Podesta remains a top Hillary gofer/rigger, however. He tries to make her appear honest but is mostly unsuccessful, perhaps because they are just alike—LIARS.

The most apparent rigging was the refusal of the DOJ (Lynch/Comey) to indict Hillary account her personal/illegal servers on which government business was carried out and her obvious and well-documented (print/TV) perjury, lying under oath in a congressional hearing corroborated by FBI Director Comey during a later hearing in the same milieu in which he was under oath. The private meeting of Bill Clinton with Attorney General Lynch (besides being absolutely stupid) just prior to Comey's disastrous press conference clearing Hillary is instructive in how to strike a deal. That's called rigging.

Evidence of this rigging has now been reinforced by the new communication of Comey with the Congress referring to the re-opening of the investigation into Hillary's misdeeds, which are many, varied and ugly, this time having to do with tweets and no telling what else concerning Clinton's top aide, a Muslim lady, and her husband, a creepy former congressman communicating on the Internet with underage girls. Imagine the stuff in government, whether classified or not, being in the hands of people like that, a Muslim and a pervert! According to the FBI, Weiner's laptop includes 650,000 more emails. Probably, a fifth-grader could hack it, let alone a foreign government.

And then there are all the gals who came out from under the rocks to accuse Trump of sexual assault/harassment years ago, without any proof, of course. One can only wonder how much they were paid. To think, like Khan, they would do that for nothing is absurd. They don't have to worry about being sued by Trump since he is a public figure and legally susceptible to any accusation. Rigging! Clinton campaign-money is in deep pockets. A million per gal would be chicken-feed.

A bright spot: Perhaps the credibility of the FBI has been restored. It was probably the only government agency still accounted as honest until Comey was left twisting in the wind by Lynch after her meeting with Bubba.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

To the Ground

It was his aim as it had been for years
To bring the USA down to its knees
As he applied the KGB's worst fears
To entities considered enemies.
No longer Soviet but just a state,
His Russia did not rule enough of world
But he intended to rejuvenate
The old state with its flag worldwide unfurled.
To do that meant the USA's downfall
But doing that was not like third-world chase,
No...militarily was not the call,
Implosion would this greatest threat erase.
But causing this main threat to just rot-out
Would seem impossible until he thought
Just how the USA had come about...
Discovered then the answer that he sought.
Contrary to his nation's origin,
At least since Soviet empire's demise,
The USA as such was to begin
When faith in God the pilgrims would devise.
He recognized that faith to be kept whole
Depended on the churches for its health
And so he schemed to prostitute their role
Through infiltration...taking them by stealth.
But his advisers pointed out the fact
That U.S. churches already were slack
In holding sacred what God would exact
In having strength enough to guard their back.
Not that God needed them for any cause
But that for Christians' good they should not slight
Commandments found in holy writ...its laws
For morals and for military might.
Advisers pointed out how church was weak,
Its worship often known as Christian Rock,
With “praise-teams” mouthing that all now should seek
God's heaven ere the twelve on earth-bound clock,
That churches had forsaken Christ as Lord
And in his place enthroned diversity,
That only “love” must count, never the sword,
Protecting every soul from enmity,
Not that this made much sense, advisers said,
Since there are entities that all should hate,
But many claimed the “red better than dead”
As their philosophy...thus him elate,
That he should have no doubt of U.S. rot
Because the churches – hellbent – lead the way,
Indeed, allowed two men to tie the knot –
An in-your-face affront to God's pure way.
The church, advisers said, performed charades,
It stood for nothing, fell for what would sell,
Becoming more like weird “gay-pride” parades
While dragging nation down to gates of hell.
He was convinced that, though not in his time,
...Although the church's decadence was quite profound...
That as the church forsook its sacred rhyme
The U.S. soon would be brought to the ground.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Columnist & Christian-Persecution

Eblen pooh-poohs Governor Bevin

Lexington Herald-Leader columnist Tom Eblen (18 September) latched onto what he called “[Ky. Governor] Bevin’s ramblings about the need to ‘shed blood’ if Clinton is elected” for one of his periodic rants concerning the evils of republicans/evangelicals. The context involved a tirade against such elements as Limbaugh and Fox News, crediting them with turning the GOP into a “white nationalist party” as if the Democrat Party isn’t at least 75% white, nationalist or not.   

He actually was citing Hillary’s “basket of deplorables” as the current repubs – folks who are “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic” and irredeemably so…hopeless cases.  Despite the fact that everyone besides Eblen knows Bevin was not talking about an imminent bloodletting, it is instructive to see from where Bevin could be coming, i.e., a look at both current events and history. The major thrust of the column concerned persecution of Christians.  

The media, including the uber-liberal H-L, has constantly related accounts for years regarding the beheading of Christians in Muslim-governed countries, unarmed people slaughtered like animals, as over the recent weekend in NYC and Elizabeth, N.J., not to mention 9/11.  Given a modicum of power, as is happening in Europe, Islamists would do the same in the U.S., their terrorist tactics just the beginning.  Clinton has announced that hundreds of thousands of Muslims would be admitted to the U.S. in her presidency.  That’s not a “Bevin rambling,” just a truth. The bloodshed of Christians is already in the U.S.  

The lessons of history are instructive.  Those Christians who withstood the rigors of the “Mayflower episode” in the early seventeenth century were fleeing Great Britain account religious persecution occasioned by their refusal to pay homage to the official Church of England.  That’s not even ancient history.  In that day, Christians were burned alive at the stake or hanged.

To teach Mayflower Christians a lesson, Britain later deployed the strongest navy and at least the second strongest army in the world, occasioning bloodshed on a grand scale…again, not even ancient history.  The colonists/Christians paid dearly in blood and treasure in that eight-years of hell in the 1780s.  Jesus told his disciples to arm themselves with swords, and that’s precisely what the George Washington-era Christians did to save this nation then and also in 1812-15.  

Flash forward to 1861.  To save the nation, Lincoln and citizens acting largely upon Christian convictions (observing Christian beliefs as initiating and constructing the Constitution) repelled those who would split the nation and in the process freed the slaves.  The cost was incomprehensible—an average of 340 deaths of mostly white males per day…for four long years.  This was a bloody Christian-persecution matter of only 150 or so years ago.

Eblen's approach to blood/guts motivation as a less sanguinary but equally vindictive matter was seen ten years ago when he as then-H-L managing editor in collusion with the editorial folks attempted to destroy the University of the Cumberlands, which had expelled a homosexual student not for his orientation but for “outing” it, actually flaunting it in social media along with pictures of men kissing each other. The private school had that right, as noted in its student-handbook, and as a “Christian” matter as outlined in scripture. At the time, neither the military nor the Boy Scouts allowed homosexuals to serve as a practical matter.

On seven days of a nine-day period, the paper made the subject front-page-above-the-fold stuff, positioned in the area devoted to the most important news of the world. In addition to the huge front-page segments, pictures, and headlines, the paper dedicated a huge plethora of columns and pictures to the subject on its interior pages, all in the front (A) “news, editorial, op-ed” sections.

Eblen furnished the date/information concerning a statewide protest to be held at UC, Williamsburg, Ky. On the evening TV- news accounts of that “protest effort,” there seemed to be more interviews with law enforcement people standing around sort of slack-jawed obviously wondering why they were there than with the participants, maybe 35. The UC Christians were persecuted by Eblen and his gang...or so they thought.

The same thing happened four years ago when the paper attempted to bankrupt Hands On Originals, a local shirt/sweater-printing company that refused, as a Christian-beliefs matter, to produce T-shirts for the local LGBTQ organization. The paper even advertised a grand “protest” downtown nowhere near the HOO location that was virtually ignored by the citizens. There was a lawsuit, of course, and the Court ruled in favor of HOO.

So...there's Bevin's “rambling” and Eblen's “rambling,” the former a credible warning, the latter a mean-spirited bit of hypocritical hogwash.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Election-year Limericks

Election campaigns can be such a bore, especially the quadrennial ones vis-a-vis the presidency, when lies seem most often to supplant truths as part of the standard to use in determining trust or distrust of the candidates. Observing the lowly limerick might be a lighthearted respite from the grind of listening to boring speeches filled with hyperbole and promises, most of which will never be kept after a winner takes office and discovers he must engage with both the Congress and the Courts to get anything done...or undone. A few limericks:

The Donald called her “Crooked Hillary,”
To whom the truth was her worst enemy
**She dodged truth like the plague
**As something far too vague
To trust it to the dumb citizenry.

He said he would make U.S. great again
As if right then it was as black as sin
**But little did he know
**All candidates thus so
Have always said the same...rarely begin.

Islamaphobes she said the Donald drew
To all his rallies...wicked through and through –
**Of Muslims she thought well
**Despite their wish of hell
For her and all her apparatchik-crew.

Trump's crowds were huge, just like his hair,
Protesters in it were not rare
**They tried to shut him down,
**The greatest show in town,
But quickly given quite a scare.

The Donald said McCain was no hero,
That people who got caught were kinda slow,
**But ere the votes cause fact
**Those words he must retract
As nothing more than hot air his to blow.

She said the Donald would be dangerous,
Would start a war account a simple fuss,
**He said she was too weak
**To give ISIS a tweak,
Much less a blow to bring on quietus.

She said Trump would protect his rhyming part
If ever Putin said he was not smart,
**Trump said that Clinton lied
**From morn till night betide,
And for the working poor she had no heart.

A government of Trump would just be rump
Opponents said in speeches on the stump,
**Aides running it each day
**With Trump always away
Just making deals more cash to to Trump to pump.

She said that Trump and Putin had conspired!
To hack both of her servers they had hired
**A fifth-grade prodigy
**Who had no tech degree
And so her own experts she quickly fired.

Bad vibes is what the Hill said Bernie had...
Though not admitting it this made her mad
**She said it was her turn
**Amid near meltdown burn,
She said old Bern was chauvinistic cad.

Hillary said she regretted she said
Half Trump's supporters deplored and head-dead,
**Percent eighty-nine
**She said would be fine...
The Donald just laughed...which made her see red.

Tisket-a-tasket Donald's weird basket
Holding some cases Clinton called basket,
**With xenophobes piled there
**And racists compiled there,
Donald just smiled there—she blew a gasket!

She said her basement server was okay,
But F-B-I director said no way,
**So then she blamed poor Powell,
**Who put up raucous howl,
From disbelief, then, no one could she sway.

She said she never, ever told a lie
But mentioned sad Benghazi with a sigh,
**She said what now the difference...
**Protesters simply jumped a fence...
And wielding signs bashed only four to die.

The Donald said illegals had to go,
That he would chase them down quite to-and-fro
**As if he really could
**Or even that he would
Since millions of them help this country grow.

Trump said Obama was not native-born,
That Hillary all truth would just suborn,
**Odd couple they had formed
**And government deformed...
Throughout the world invited naught but scorn.

She claimed her server was for privacy,
Her e-mails not for everyone to see,
**Too bad she just forgot
**That e-mails never rot,
To all the world top-secrets now are free.

Some citizens she called deplorable,
By contrast said she was adorable...
**To vote republican
**Meant brain that needed scan,
Assuming one be found explorable.

Some said she lacked lucidity
While others charged stupidity
**But all agreed Hill knew
**Already whom to screw –
The Sanders-gang unceasingly.

The Clintonite was said to be ahead,
She claimed her prime opponent's head was dead,
**Her charge—he lacked experience
**That coupled with a brain so dense
Meant USA was doomed if by him led.

As secretary of the State
And public figure quite sedate,
**A million miles she flew,
**Said nothing that was true...
With snickers round the world her fate.

He said he would construct a southern wall,
That Mexico would ante for it all,
**But Mexicans said, “Whoa,
**To pay we will forgo,”
Insisted that the Donald would install.

Broadcasted live on C-Span—perjury,
Caught under oath with falsehood—Hillary,
**She lied there in Congress,
**With charges no progress,
Loretta Lynching not—Hillary free!

For years she longed to be the president,
She said a woman's turn was evident,
**But basement server sank her,
**Erased e-mails betrayed her,
While twisting in the wind she wailed lament.

With braggadocio the Donald speaks
And talks of all the wonders that he wreaks,
**But he misspoke badly,
**Punctured his pride sadly,
His word about McCain with venom reeks.

The N-C-A-A cut N-C right out
Since transgender guys could not hang about
**In womens' restrooms where
**No urinals found there...
Ordered they go where their sex not in doubt.

Powell's e-mail hacker brought light to payback
To Clinton, who caused him unwelcome flack
**He said she was not nice,
**Had greed as profound vice...
With Trump a disgrace, he cut them no slack.

A basket of deplorable
With sanity improbable,
**She said supported Trump,
**Their brains a solid lump
That constitutes insoluble.

The homophobes, said Hillary,
Are Trump supporters, hatefully,
**They are deplorable,
**Are not charitable,
Do not observe diversity.

Yeah...I know – apologies! And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Political Potpourri

The professional football (NFL) season started Sunday on the fifteenth anniversary of 9/11.  I watched the pre-game ceremony in both New York (Jets and Cincinnati) and Dallas (Cowboys and NY Giants).  In both locales, the flag was stretched the entire length of the field and held off the ground by a multitude of people.  In New York, it bobbled up and down…so what!  In Dallas, it was held taut without an unintended squiggle.  The national anthem was literally butchered by a soul-singer in New York.  In Dallas, it was played excellently on the trumpet by a gifted musician.  The approaches/words speak for themselves.  The tune needs no embellishing.  Just the notes, ma’am, just the notes.

As if it mattered one whit, some of the players chose the day to exhibit their political/social stances, having been encouraged by Kaepernick, black quarterback of the Chargers, earlier during the exhibition season for not standing during the performance of the national anthem.  Some of the players also raised their fists.  Supposedly, this was to draw attention to injustices a la the menu of the “Black Lives Matter” movement.  Actually, at least for some if not most, the actions simply expressed their hatred for this country, in which mostly white spectators pay great gobs of greenbacks to see mostly black millionaires beat the stuffing out of each other…quite an irony.

Much is being made by the media reporters/gurus (is there a difference anymore?) about Hillary Clinton’s health problems at the Manhattan 9/11 observance/memorial.  She apparently fainted briefly and had to be helped into her vehicle for a short trip to daughter Chelsea’s house, where she apparently recovered, at least well enough to later be seen again in public.  It turns out that she had known since Friday that she was suffering from pneumonia.  She should have been cooling it until she gets better, especially at her age.  If she pushes it she may suffer a preliminary relapse instead of one that comes after this ailment is thought to be over and returns too soon to the grind…any grind.  

Speaking of which, in his excellent, just-published book (and major motion picture), Hillary's America, highly respected author/political analyst Dinesh D'Souza quoted famous (or infamous) eugenicist Margaret Sanger: “We are paying for and even submitting to the dictates of an ever increasing, unceasingly spawning class of human beings who should never have been born at all.” This is the elitist approach to the general population taken by the current “progressives,” of whom Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have been the highest-profile agitators for more than a year. These are the folks—well, just half, she said—who make up the famous Trump-supporting “basket of deplorables” in her well-teleprompted speech (not off the cuff stuff) a few days ago. Since she is guaranteed 95-99% of the black vote and most of the Latino vote, she was talking about white citizens, Trump supporters. And to think of the heat Trump took (by Hillary?) over what he said about some Mexicans! Hypocrisy, thy name is Hillary! She called the white folks racists, sexists, homophobes, xenophobes and (worst of all—gasp) Islamaphobes. These are Hillary's typical white people.

Speaking of which as D'Souza mentioned, it was southern democrats (immediate ancestors of the “progressives”) who were determined to keep blacks on the plantation...just give them something to get their votes and keep them quiet. Lyndon Johnson referred to them as N******s. Senator Bobby Byrd, besides being a Ku Klux Klan honcho in the 1940s, wrote in a letter to Mississippi Senator Bilbo back in the day that he would never fight beside blacks and referred to them as “race mongrels.” The elitists such as Hillary, Bernie and Obama know what is best for everyone (but not the Wall Street bankers). It's called socialism...rule by the oligarchs. Completely taken for granted by the elite “progressives,” blacks have sold their souls. They are whom Sanger had in mind for extinction.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Minister Confused by Sexuality

Actually a rather simple subject, at least for most people

In an op-ed of 03 September in the Lexington Herald-Leader, Presbyterian minister Robert Cunningham, citing a study, asserted that sexual orientation as an innate biological property (born that way) is “not supported by scientific evidence.”  The Bible, conversely, seems to insist that there are exclusively males and females, with no other genders, transgenders, homosexuals, lesbians, queers, etc., signifying, even though perverted behaviors common to these groups are profoundly condemned.  

Cunningham later doubled-down on his declaration: “To put it bluntly, nobody is ‘straight’.”    Written for shock value or not, he indicated that people who think they are of a specific sex are mistaken. Or, given the consensual definition of “straight,” everyone is homosexual or some other kind of sexual, quite a stretch, though he explained that this applies only if “straight” is considered more than heterosexual-attraction, as if attraction preempts quite observable biology.  

Cunningham represents the politically correct approach to somehow normalizing the LGBTQ population lest these folks be offended, never mind that birth-certificate data indicate only male or female.  Clinically, any other classification is impossible, a stretch of the imagination too far, meaning that another classification is merely claimed, not born, comporting with the biblical approach.  

Cunningham insisted that all people are haunted by their sexual desires, thoughts, secrets and practices, knowing that something is “off,” whatever that means.  However, the minister can speak only for himself but not for everyone else, not in matters that private.  He may have heard some weird things in counseling sessions, for instance, but they could hardly be held as universally applicable.  

Cunningham: “In other words, the data leave us searching for different ways to explain the immense pain that accompanies human sexuality.”  Whose human sexuality?  There seem to be a few hundred million folks who aren’t particularly pained by their sexuality – might even enjoy it.  Previous to this statement, he mentioned the “alarming mental health crisis within the LGBTQ population,” notably suggesting anxiety, depression, substance abuse and suicide, all of which are problems in the general population, not just confined to the LGBTQ community.  Just check the problems in especially drug-ridden, poverty-stricken eastern Kentucky that comprise everyday news items.  

Cunningham: “It may come as a surprise, but the Bible actually shares a complex view of sexuality.” This is the most outrageous statement in the op-ed. Essentially, sex is mentioned in two ways in the Bible, the normal one in which the admonition is always to a man and woman, who must be married to “have sex,” and be fruitful and multiply. The other is to condemn anything else like anal/oral sex, adultery and bestiality. In Matthew 11, Jesus held up Sodom and Gomorrah as the standard by which to measure evil regarding cities.

As a cultural matter, one need only read Plato, Aristotle and Socrates – homosexuals/pedophiles – to see how a nation is headed when it becomes obsessed with perverted sex, the Greek empire long since gone to the ash-heap of history. A current example is in TIME magazine in an article about a transgender woman with a female partner (both lesbians?), who starts the medical effort to become a man, decides she/he wants a baby, stops the testosterone gig long enough to conceive artificially ($12,000 worth), has the baby, then restarts the male-creator regimen, so the child will have both mother and father in one package. Lurid? You bet! The grossest picture shows her “chest-feeding” the infant.

This current obsession with the LGBTQ population, especially in the “mainline denominations” (most evangelicals justly horrified), is hard to understand because there's nothing to understand in the first place. Until about 1973, homosexuality was officially considered a mental illness by the professional psychology community. For instance, until Obama came along homosexuals (mentally unacceptable) were not tolerated in the military.

No clinical explanation contrary-wise has ever been offered. All one has to do to become officially homosexual, bisexual, transgender or queer (whatever that is) is simply affirm that to be true. This is sort of like a Boy Scout announcing he's a Navy Seal, and VOILA! everyone genuflects before him.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Debate Moderators or Narcissists

Debate-Season is nigh and there’s been much back-and-forth among the candidates and the news-people, though news per se is out the window now as commentators, sometimes masquerading as reporters, seem to be stealing the media.  This is especially true of the cable networks, which have an advantage over the long-established biggies since they are 24/7/7.  

The crux of the problem lies with the choosing of moderators, an especially thorny problem since according to the polls the public believes neither of the candidates nor the media is honest.  In the Activist Post on 19 April 2016, writer Joe Jankowski, quoting the Associated Press, asserted that only 6% of the citizens trust the media, so whoever might apply from that venue is subject to suspicion.  

According to CNN on 31 August, Clinton and Trump have, respectively, unfavorability ratings of 59% and 60%, meaning that a large majority of voters equally don’t trust either one to occupy the presidency.  Add that to the unfavorability rating of 94% for the media and what’s a voter to do?  

The candidates constantly make speeches the people don’t believe and the media constantly give reports of them that the people don’t believe, essentially because they believe the media have agendas and are more interested in somehow “fixing” the election than honestly describing the respective campaigns.  

The debates might actually be worth watching, if only to see how the candidates behave themselves and, of course, whether or not they seem knowledgeable about the many issues and problems of the day, both domestically and internationally.  Currently, both Clinton and Trump seem more interested in mutual character-assassination than anything else, which makes one wonder if they have little to offer otherwise.  

No debate-moderator should be a member of the media this time.  It has been only too graphic lately to see how the media try to campaign rather than be objectively seeking the truth.  Think Fox’s Meghan Kelly in the first Republican dust-up last year attacking Trump about women, virtually gnashing her teeth and being just short of hysteria on the non-subject.  

Or think of “powder-puffing” it with respect to Clinton and NBC, ABC, and CBS.  Newsies are attention-crazy and will argue with candidates or even help them along sometimes, depending on the candidate and circumstances.  Think Martha Raddatz helping a smirking Joe Biden in the veep debate in 2012 or Candy Crowley torpedoing Romney.  

And then, of course, there’s Dan Rather (CBS at the time), who made up an elaborate humongous lie (remember the “fatal” typewriter) about George Bush in an effort to deny him the presidency.  This caused some firings (even Rather, eventually) at CBS.  Rather also tried to sabotage GHW Bush years before, advertising his intent to bring him down on his evening news program, only to make a buffoon of himself.  

Media representatives are totally unacceptable as moderators. Remember Chris Matthews (MSNBC) pacing back and forth like a drill sergeant and firing away at the wannabes, his leg probably tingling at his own verbosity.  There are exceptions but most TV folks seem more interested in furthering their careers by one-upping the candidates and thus proving superior intellect.  

People who might actually be objective—former judges, for instance—would be much better possibilities as moderators.  Whereas they would command a certain respect from both public and candidates, the news-group and the candidates currently hold each other in mutual contempt.  They distrust each other to an even greater extent than the public distrusts them both.  

The loser in the current debate-format is the viewer/listener.  The moderators, besides being biased, are unable to demand a modicum of decorum, with the candidates arguing among themselves and with the moderators—one huge shouting match at times—and time limits are ignored by all parties.   

There has to be a better way.  

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Quarterback Quackery

The latest racially-inspired brouhaha comes from the world of NFL football and involves San Diego quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who has been busily explaining that his refusal to stand at games for the performance of the national anthem is his way of protesting the injustice delivered to African-Americans in the U.S.  There’s no argument with his right to behave thusly.

The irony, of course, lies in the fact that he, like most professionals in the National Football League, as well as those on taxpayer-supported college/university campuses, have enjoyed inordinate largesse from their society, not deprivation or sport-related discrimination. Indeed, Kaepernick, a black who was born illegitimately (though such is glorified lately), abandoned by his father and given up for adoption by his mother, was raised by adoptive white parents.

The U.S. is about 73% white though soon it will be predominantly Latino, with blacks coming in third.  This means that “reverse discrimination” is operative in professional sports, as well as on campuses, since sixty-seven percent of NFL football players are black.  Seventy-four percent of National Basketball Association players are black.  All twelve of the 2016 USA basketball Olympic champions were black…not one white player in that august body.  There’s no social injustice in Kaepernick’s sport or in the NBA, either.

In the major baseball leagues (American, National), 29% of the players are Latino, many of them unable to speak or understand English.  It’s doubtful that more than a handful, if that, are American citizens.  Strangely, where once blacks had a large population of MLB players (19% or 27%, depending on standards used) they make up only 8% now, even though their skill-level has certainly not declined. 

Perhaps this is explained by the fact that trash-talking, ridiculing opponents, taunting, writhing celebratory dances and other self-promoting juvenile activities introduced by black players a while back (and now adopted by many whites) are not seen in baseball games.  These irksome elements are practiced throughout professional football and basketball games, where skills and athletic finesse have been replaced by head-hunting and body-slams in both sports. 

Indeed, the New Orleans Saints coach was suspended for a whole season not long ago and some of his coaches also reprimanded for handing out “bounties” (cold cash) to players who inflicted opponents with injuries sufficient to necessitate their removal from games, sometimes trucked off to the nearest hospital.  Like in the old Westerns, these monsters-in-pads were called “bounty hunters.”

Nor has Kaepernick suffered from financial constraints.  His 2016 salary (including bonuses) will be $15,890,753, even though he may spend most of his time riding the bench or recovering from possible surgery, the better to be protected from concussions or other bone/organ traumas…and those headhunters, who, admittedly, have introduced him to periods on his back looking at stars floating by.

The average annual player-salary in the NBA, MLB and NFL, respectively, is $5.15 million, $3.2 million, and $1.9 million, not exactly chicken-feed.  Not counting post-season play, the footballers play 16 games, the basketballers 84 games and the baseballers 162 games.  They’re in the saddle for 7-8 months of the year, after which they can chill for a few months, though some baseball players may go home to places like Venezuela and Puerto Rico to play winter ball and visit family.

Suffice it to say that Kaepernick does not reference racial mistreatment in sports unless he is acting in behalf of white players who are in the distinct minority but not complaining if only because they would be accused of bigotry. Nor does he take note of the fact that by a vast majority white people have voted a black into the presidency during the last eight years.

Most likely, Kaepernick is caught up in the Black Lives Matter movement and is pointing the finger at mostly white policemen, never mind that blacks kill each other 95% of the time, especially in cities like Chicago, D.C., and Baltimore. If he were a person of official importance, his protest might mean something, but, just as in the case of other millionaire entertainers, it’s sound and fury signifying nothing...but ignorance.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Learning-Gap Redux...Again

CAVEAT ALERT:  The following will offend most, be approved by few, and castigated or not.   It concerns yet another “report” of the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence (a think-tank of sorts) concerning the “education-gap” existing between black/Hispanic and white students. There's little if anything new in the report, which carries no weight since it has no connection to the Ky. Dept. of Education, making one wonder if it's worth the money contributed to maintain it.

Hardly a day passes without the media or non-profit bashing the education establishment(s) for not doing what often is impossible. Item: The report indicated that in order to achieve proper diversity among teachers the state would need to hire 6,882 black, Hispanic and teachers of other nationalities. The average teacher-salary in Kentucky, according to the Ky. Dept. of Education, is $52,618 ($58,385 in Lexington), meaning an additional outlay of some $400 million a year unless the white-teacher population is reduced by 6,882 teachers (5%) so political correctness can be achieved. The report didn't elaborate.

According to the Herald-Leader (19 August), Lexington minister C.B. Akins, chairman of the Achievement Gap Study Group of the Committee, said the gap could be closed by implementing strategies backed by empirical data and that no further study is necessary regarding the gap-matter. The report indicated that the state has failed to erase barriers due to race, income, language and learning differences, as if those things can be changed by pedagogy.

According to the Fayette System's count, black and Hispanic/Latino students make up 22.4% and 15.1%, respectively, of Lexington's student population, or better than a third. The Prichard report also indicated that minority students are disproportionately suspended or not considered as gifted as often as whites. It stated that those most likely to face barriers include those with low family incomes; are learning English; have learning-disabilities; or are black, Hispanic, Latino, American-Indian or native-Alaskan.

One can only imagine the inordinate attention demanded in the classroom for these students at the expense of attention given to those who are able to learn at grade-level, a teacher's nightmare. Akins knows the answer to the problem but he, like everyone else, dances around it by blaming the education establishment for not using empirical data, whatever that is. He didn't say. Since school-integration of the 1960s, the gap has steadily widened and is still widening, with no end in sight. Hardly more than half of African-American boys graduate high school in the U.S.

At risk of being tarred and feathered by the PC police, dare one wonder, especially in light of the total failure of forced busing remarked even by its originator, Dr. James Coleman, if the gap might start narrowing if at least a fourth of Lexington's school facilities be labeled at least “preferably minority” and staffed entirely by black and Hispanic teachers/administrators and state-of-the-art equipped? The quick answer is “no,” but the school-board, with great community input, should at least explore that possibility. There might be a great surprise, especially from blacks, since on-scene, real-time competition and consideration would be virtually ethnic-free.

In Fayette County, there are some 35,000 families of which some 28,000 are husband-wife structured. Led by a female with no husband are 5,000 families. Led by a male with no wife are 2,350 families. As Akins is bound to know, some 7,000 or so families are not likely to furnish normal support for the children involved, therein lying the problem, exacerbated further by the fact that “single mom” families are likely to be poor and welfare-dependent. The schools can serve children two meals a day but that does nothing for academics.

A far worse problem, as noted on the Prichard web-site, is that on the basis of the KY ACT benchmark testing only 37% of all Kentucky graduates (2014) are college-ready, this in the wake of the disastrous, pork-filled Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1990.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Unfit to Command

In order to prepare for the quadrennial circus in 2004, I read the thoroughly-researched book Unfit for Command by John O’Neill and Jerome Corsi.  It had to do with John Kerry, the democrat nominee running for president against George Bush, the incumbent.  There were plenty of stories about Kerry’s unfitness but I wanted the truth from the horse’s mouth.  O’Neill had served in Vietnam and took over Kerry’s “swift-boat,” with crew of six, after Kerry’s departure to the states.

In order to prepare for the 2008 circus, I read Obama’s sort of autobiography, Dreams from My Father, that he wrote in the 1990s, obviously considering himself important enough in his thirties to be worthy of self-aggrandizement. I seem to remember that the publisher meant for the book to be about race or racial relations but that didn’t happen.

In order to prepare for the current quadrennial circus, I’ve read exhaustively-researched Hillary’s America by the highly respected political author Dinesh D’Souza. In reading all of these books, I’ve gained important insights about the candidates. One of the most clear-cut attributes that Kerry and Hillary Clinton share is that of telling humongous lies almost as a way of life. By his actions, Obama shares this trait in spades, while his book indicated his feelings toward whites—that “typical white person” tag he awarded the grandmother who raised him.

Kerry’s lies before a Congressional committee in 1971 regarding U.S. troops in Vietnam are the stuff of legend. He served as a swift-boat commander in actual combat territory for three months and received three Purple Hearts without any hospitalization or even one day off-duty, with two certainly but probably all three resulting from Kerry’s own mistakes such as launching a grenade too close to the boat and giving himself a tiny piece of shrapnel easily removed, no stitches, just a band-aid. Band-aids were the bandages needed for all his “wounds.”

With three Purple Hearts, a GI could request shipment home, and Kerry did though the usual tour in Vietnam was one year. Kerry became a war-protester and famously (or infamously or, more likely, not at all) “threw his medals over the fence.” One of his most repeated (by himself) lies was that he spent Christmas in Cambodia, with President Nixon assuring Americans that no GI was in Cambodia. Kerry was nowhere near Cambodia…at least 50 miles away. Nixon wasn’t even president in December 1968.

Kerry traveled to France to “meet” with the North Vietnamese representatives and parley for an end to the war. At least that’s the story, as if a junior Naval Reserve officer could do such a thing. As a GI, he probably committed a crime but who cared? He was a harmless egoist, who even had movies made of himself running up and down a Vietnamese beach and looking tough. He consistently wrote false reports and probably wrote the necessary documentation for one of his medals.

D'Souza goes far beyond just Clinton (and Obama) and traces the Democrat Party back to its beginnings, claimed by D'Souza to have started with Andrew Jackson. He applies through its history (time-line and main characters/entities such as Alinski and Tammany Hall) the ways it comports with Clinton's take on everything, including her seemingly pathological lying and deviousness vis-a-vis ethnic minorities, the Indians in Jackson's days and African-Americans today.

The latter group should read the book to see how blacks are perennially manipulated by democrats…for nothing but blind and misplaced loyalty to the welfare state meticulously designed to keep blacks “in their place.” D’Souza correctly calls this the return to the plantation mentality, beginning in the 1930s. The comparison to 1830 is startling.

Breathtaking is D’Souza’s accounting of the sheer greed that drives Clinton and hubby Bubba. She may break the national “glass ceiling,” but if she does she will introduce through its cracks corruption that matches or outdoes any that’s gone before.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Feminizing the U.S.

CAVEAT ALERT: The following may be considered by some (maybe most) as sexist, racist, misogynistic, homophobic, politically incorrect or just plain stupid, in light of which I couldn't care less.

Perhaps the nation has changed culturally and socially in the years post-1970 more than in any comparable period of time in its history.  Feminization of about everything has constituted the major element of change, seen most graphically during the Obama presidency.  

The democrat party’s nomination for the presidency of Hillary Clinton is the epitome of that change, which embodies both the feminization aspect and its consequent overwhelming influence, since Clinton, besides being a compulsive liar, has committed high crimes (perjuries, as acknowledged by FBI Director Comey) toward which the Justice Department, headed by—you guessed it—a woman, has turned a blind eye. Hillary has been lynched (freed by Loretta, that is), but not by Congress or any court.  

Hubby Bill was impeached over a lurid sexual matter for committing perjury—lying under oath—when he was president . Hillary Clinton has committed far more serious perjury in lying to Congress about the private unprotected email servers she used instead of the government’s server when she was state secretary, thus placing on the Internet secret government documents that have been hacked and are now being released by Wiki-Leaks honcho Julian Assange, no matter who the actual hackers were. Astute high-school students could have done it.

The ladies are accustomed to being given a pass now, no matter the subject, not least because men naturally defer to them, but the ladies outnumber men in law schools and are at least on parity in areas in fields such as medicine. They are gradually taking over the court systems as well as the legal profession.

 The ladies finish high school in numbers greater than men's and outnumber men now on college campuses. They've even discovered that they can scream “rape” now and, while not necessarily being successful in making it stick (in fact, rarely, especially on campuses), they can ruin a man's reputation since his name is, without charge/trial, spread by the media while the woman is given a pass and remains anonymous. A gal takes whatever revenge she can get when she acts a fool, gets drunk and hangs out in fraternity whorehouses, conscious or not.

TV has done its part in this cultural change. Women now beat up men physically on shows such as NCIS, something which, all things being equal, just doesn't happen. Women fill police and fire-fighting forces now, never mind that they lack the physical skills to either overpower criminals or carry heavy equipment up long ladders and carry heavy people down. Chirpy gals in cocktail frocks are taking over the TV news/talk programs, letting thigh and cleavage do what the often abrasive, high-pitched voices don't, i.e., hold attention.

Recently, two female army officers were assigned to Ranger training, the toughest in the army, and, as before with females and many men, they failed.  The men were out of luck.  The women, however, were given a second chance, which they failed, so they were given a third chance and subsequently were certified.   

The course is designed for two months and 40% of their class finished in that time.  One female took four months and the other had to keep trying.  The president had demanded that women be in the Rangers, never mind the problems presented.  The course hadn’t changed and by then neither had the women become stronger after extended time to “bulk up.”   

Congressman Steve Russell, a former Ranger, became aware that people at Fort Benning said the Army had lied and were complaining of special treatment for the women, and became concerned.  Only the most naïve believe that the women qualified...that nudge-and-wink thing.  

The course is utilized to develop leaders who can function in combat, necessitating command skills, the proper emotions, and the ability to function physically in instances in which great strength is required.  Women lack these skills, not because they’re somehow inferior but because they’re different.  No soldier (male) should have to enter combat while by instinct forced to protect a female officer, the protection of whom could cost him his life.  

Though one is deemed chauvinistic or worse to point this out, the truth is that mortal combat is a “man-thing.”  The president and the politically correct social engineers would have it that unisex is here to stay, but it has never existed and never will.  

For that matter, a president should always have had military experience, combat preferably but not required.  To call her/him commander-in-chief without it is sheer folly. A c-in-c who has never worn the uniform is an empty suit. Obama's ignorance of anything military is the prime example. Except for Bill Clinton and Barack Hussein Obama, all presidents since WWII have worn the uniform.

Women, who have proven they can be just as corrupt as men, have the right to excel in whatever field they choose except one—the military.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Black Soul

Christians Be Damned?

The enormity of the bad taste of the DNC regarding the manipulating of a Muslim man, Khizr Khan, to appear in the Democrat Convention to lecture Americans will grow each day as citizens continue to think about that in-your-face gesture.  The man’s son, a Muslim U.S. military officer, was killed over ten years ago in Iraq.

 The man has a right to grieve but so have many other fathers, nearly all of whom were/are not Muslim.  The objective was to somehow embarrass or harass presidential candidate Donald Trump, who has never held an office in the government and certainly had nothing to do with either the man’s deployment or his death. Khan waved a copy of the U.S. Constitution as if in Trump's face though it had nothing to do with the subject but, ironically, Clinton voted for the action in which the son was killed.  

The man claimed that Trump had never made such a sacrifice.  Neither had the Muslim father.  His son made the sacrifice and his father cheapened that sacrifice by taking credit for it and cheapened it even more by using that sacrifice in an attempted political hatchet job.  What could be sleazier or more self-serving?  

It has been no surprise that the media has awarded this man almost iconic status (even having him appear on TV, where he, a Muslim, called Trump, a Christian, a “black soul”) in using the hatchet job as a politically correct affront to Trump, apparently just because Trump has had no sons killed in Iraq, as was/is the case with millions of other fathers, whether Muslim or anything else.  

The Democrat National Committee probably thought this would play on the emotions of everyone in Philadelphia and via TV throughout the entire world.  It has done that and will until the folks see through the “big con,” and they will resent this outrage in the next hundred days until the November vote.  To have one’s intelligence, the democrat party, and every military non-Muslim (infidel) sacrificing soldier (nearly all of them) so insulted is to invite utter disgust.  

Then-DNC chairwoman Schultz, ironically a Jew condemned by Khan's holy book to death, must take responsibility for this outrage, though she has been fired for attempting to rig the DNC against Clinton's Primary opponent, Bernie Sanders. An apology to all Americans is in order since that same holy book demands that infidels (non-Muslims) must be made to pay the tax (be enslaved) or killed, except for Jews, whose only option is death.

This affair occurred account blatant stupidity or planned example of the new social paradigm—political correctness. Or, it was just to get another democrat-voting bloc as per the black and Latino blocs, while scourging Trump as a racist vis-a-vis Muslims. Trump has correctly called for a temporary ban on Muslim immigrants until they have been properly vetted, while Clinton has called for the immigration of hundreds of thousands of Muslim Syrians, who presently cannot be vetted for obvious reasons. A look at Germany and France is instructive.

In 2009 at Fort Hood, Khan's fellow-Muslim and his son's fellow-soldier, U.S. Army Major Hasan, screamed Allah Akbar and slaughtered 13 innocent Americans, wounding more than thirty more. He, not Trump, represents a “black soul,” as did each airline-hijacker on 9/11, killing 3,000. In political-correctness equity, the DNC should have had the Christian father of a fallen Christian son onstage to wave a copy of the Koran in Hillary Clinton's face. She, not Trump, voted for the war, in which both sons died.

Clinton got UN “permission,” not Congress's, for Obama to attack defenseless MUSLIM Libya, where innocent Libyans died in the streets for over seven months in 2011. Would Khan agree that she, too, is a “black soul?” What cheap, small-minded democrat hypocrisy!

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Quadrennial Circuses

In his speech on Wednesday evening (delivered too late for more than a handful of people to hear it in the East), President Obama said Hillary Clinton was more qualified for the presidency than any other president in the nation’s history.  That LIE was almost as huge as the LIE he and Clinton mouthed about the Benghazi Massacre in the Rose Garden the day after that atrocity and later—even worse—to the victims' survivors. Think Hillary in terms of Washington, Lincoln, FDR, Eisenhower and Reagan. Egad!  

The Democrat Convention was at times a comedy of errors, soap opera, and just screaming.  It opened on the note that the DNC chairwoman and the committee she chaired had rigged the game against Clinton’s main adversary, Senator Bernie Sanders.  Too embarrassing to be seen in public, she was denied her role of opening the convention and later forced to resign, though Hillary engaged her to be a “surrogate” during the campaign.  So much for integrity!  

This was not the first such reward.  Obama appointed Susan Rice to be National Security head honcho after she blatantly lied to the entire nation on five TV networks about that massacre.  No one knows yet where Obama was during that blood-bath when four Americans were butchered, but Hillary said in a hearing that she was at home alone.  She apparently wanted no 3:00 a.m. phone calls.  

The Baltimore mayor was finally chosen to open the convention.  She became famous after the Freddie Gray affair a while back when she said protestors should have their space for burning and looting activities.  Ironically, all charges (and convictions when she made the charges) by the prosecutor against the six police-persons were dropped during the convention.  

The actual activity was kicked off by a trio of rappers.  Rap is the latest form of “art” delivered to the world by the black community.  It’s called music—at least for entertainment awards—but it’s just a percussive beat with a lot of spoken words and no discernible melody.  It glorifies cop-assassinations, rapes of mothers (that mother-f*** thing) and being serviced by or beating the hos (the current term for whores), the activity that brings unfortunate children to life to be sustained by various government agencies, certainly not their fathers, who may or may not be known to their mothers anyway.  

Currently, the top rapper is Drake.  In his classic called “The Motto,” he raps about the fuckin' man, the bitch, the real nigga and shit. This is his phrase in Motto: “almost drowned in her pussy so I swam to her butt.” Another: “I tongue-kiss her other tongue.”  Think of that in terms of legendary black entertainers Nat King Cole, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Johnny Mathis, Sammy Davis, Wynton Marsalis or Quincy Jones.  This set the tone for the proceedings. Coarse! The two people who led the pledge to the flag faced the audience, not the flag. Weird.

The conventions mean nothing, of course, since the only reason for their convening is to nominate a candidate already decided by the primaries, whose rules vary from state to state and always favor the super-delegates—head honchos, gofers and party hacks. Poor Bernie had lost before he even announced since Hillary had sewed up the super-delegates. To her great chagrin she was forced to actually campaign (remember that roped-off march) to get the requisite number. The debates on Saturday nights were designed so no one would watch and give Bernie some recognition.

The overriding consideration for her candidacy and the convention has been that she is a WOMAN, ipso facto, automatically qualified, never mind FBI Director Comey's scathing press conference/hearing in which he said unequivocally that she LIED, an appellation that has been applied relentlessly and accurately in other matters. She lied under oath to a Congressional committee but AG Lynch refuses, obviously, to indict her for perjury, the crime for which hubby Bill was impeached, though he attempted to define the word is in the process, becoming the Grammarian-in-Chief.

The convention was strictly themed “women and blacks only.” They seemed to run the show, designed, whether consciously or not, to exclude men (at least white men) as extraneous to governing (if not dangerous), though ISIS was not mentioned, perhaps not least because men come in handy when wars are to be fought or actual police/firemen are needed, not girls.

I listened to a few major speeches in both clambakes. Veep Biden approached hysteria in condemning Trump and felt the need to memorialize his son again, playing on the emotions of the crowd. Incredibly poor taste. Veep-candidate Kaine fell into speaking Spanish a la Jeb Bush and Rubio—strange at a time when most folks think English should be the only language. Cheap gimmick. Michele Obama predictably reminded everyone that slaves built the White House. Trump spoke too long in Cleveland.

Perhaps the cheapest shot at Trump at the DNC circus was delivered by a Muslim whose American GI Muslim son was killed in the Middle East, who (Trump), unlike him (the father), had never made such a sacrifice. The only sacrifice made was by the son, not the father, but in any case had nothing to do with Trump but with Hillary. Muslims do not need to lecture Americans about anything except perhaps Obama about his rape of Libya.

Hillary made her grand entrance wearing a solid white pants-suit with white blouse. Imagine a man doing that—the white-suit thing. Caveat: I didn't listen to her. It's hard to listen to anyone who appears to be a compulsive liar. Anyway, she's about as charismatic as a hibernating bear. Maybe she should try rap.

In the good old days pre-1972, conventions meant something. The candidate was actually chosen then. I can remember that as a child 75 years ago, fortified with a full box of raisins, I was glued to the radio (no TV, a precious blessing) all day and into the evening and about as excited at the various roll-calls as at a football game. There were numerous roll-calls without those silly little speeches until a candidate finally received a majority of votes. Today's convention—a costly ego-driven sham!

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Minister Repents of Racism

This is the first sentence of an op-ed of 23 July in the Lexington Herald-Leader by Presbyterian minister Robert Cunningham: “I’ve spent most of my life ignorant of racism.” He claimed to be 35, also rolled his eyes at the notion of white privilege and that all forms of hatred were “doomed” when he became a Christian, presumably after age 18.  

This is the Merriam-Webster definition of racism: “a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.”  There’s no mention of hatred but further definitions of race include mistreatment of others so could involve hatred...or not.  

Cunningham wrote that he became convinced of personal racism and is repenting of it but was “slower to admit racial injustice as a social phenomenon.”  As an example, he noted that band-aids are the color of whites (not noticeable) but stand-out on blacks, thus causing them to look (feel?) different.  Actually, a check with Amazon indicates that band-aids come in “skin-tones” and can accommodate all people of color.  Look in pharmacies, as well.  What a stretch!  

He then juxtaposed Pearl Harbor/9-11 with Jim Crow/slavery, the former solemnized and the latter suppressed and patronized (by whites?) as in “It’s time to move on.”  Ask a white kid about Pearl Harbor and get a blank stare.  Ask a black kid about slavery and get an earful.  Perhaps Cunningham doesn’t realize that the most monumental statue on the Washington Mall is a sculpture three-stories tall of Martin Luther King, Jr.  

Cunningham, after a homily about Christ, ends with his intention to ask people of color how to help him use his new-found (white?) sense of personal privilege.  He's fallen into the Jackson/Sharpton trap for whites that consigns them to self-flagellation for the sins of their fathers, as if one can apologize for something for which he bears no responsibility.  

Some religious folks have a self-guilt problem.  In the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1995, a resolution asking for forgiveness of and exhibiting repentance for slavery was passed and presented to the three largest black Baptist denominations, whose leaders laughed it to scorn.  At least one accused the white Baptists of an attempt to proselytize.  Learning nothing from that, the SBC did the same thing last month, well-intentioned but stupid.  

In 1960, almost 75% of black families were headed by a father and mother.  The bulk of the civil-rights and entitlement legislation was passed in the mid-60s.  In the mid-90s, some 75% or so of black babies were born to “single mothers,” and had no documented fathers.  This is still the case, and slavery had nothing to do with it. Fornication does.  

The Jackson/Sharpton approach is that black children must be indoctrinated asap concerning their victim-hood, not because their fathers have abandoned them but because their ancestors were slaves.  The approach does not include the fact that the initial slave traders were blacks in Africa who kidnapped other blacks or physically overcame another tribe and enslaved it or sold its members to the white slave-traders for mere trinkets.  

Nor does the J/S doctrine include that slavery was introduced not by Americans but by British colonists in the seventeenth century long before there was a U.S. and that American citizens banished slavery in far less than a hundred years at the cost of 625,000 lives, mostly white American men.  Cunningham wrote that before his conversion, apparently, he thought the race-card was overplayed.  No!  That card was/is overplayed every day in the black community and by white politically correct morons, lest common sense prevail.  

My great-grandfather (wounded once and near death by disease once) and two great-uncles volunteered (couldn’t be drafted in Kentucky) and fought in the Union Army.  All three were born in England and had no slaves in Pulaski County, Greenwood area.  As a Baptist, I take no responsibility for slavery; rather, I’m part of the generation that tried in the 1960s to be of great help to blacks, but that well-intentioned legislation destroyed the black community, now a permanent underclass.  

The above is politically incorrect but so is Truth.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Columnist Skewers Ark-Evangelicals

Eblen Is No Ignorant Rube

One of the loudest critics (newspaper-wise anyway) of the Noah’s Ark project near Williamstown, Ky., has been Lexington Herald-Leader columnist Tom Eblen, who recently wrote that he had an attack of curiosity, never mind that such a thing (ark, not curiosity) ever actually existed, and made his way via I-75 (aka as Death Alley) to see the figment of imagination of whoever wrote Genesis.  

He described the ark (wooden but mythical, of course) and its dimensions, which were as close as possible to those described in Genesis.   It’s roughly the size of the baby-aircraft-carrier (USS Palau) on whose flight-deck I pushed Corsairs around in the late 40s (not 1840s, for Harvard graduates who get the usual revisionist history).  The carrier was 500 feet long, as is the ark, but the ark has more mass, I’m sure.  

Eblen made a point of the $40 ticket price (steep for viewing something that never existed) and the $10 parking fee which probably had no time-limit.  For a bit of perspective, I checked the best-seat ticket-price for the Taylor Swift concert in Austin, Texas, next October—$429 with fees of $17.70 (compared to parking?) and $1.47 for a total of $448.17.  

The ark-proponents insist that the earth and everything connected to it, including mankind’s earliest existence, is about 6,000 years old and made by God in six days.  Eblen wrote that the “scientists” (didn’t name any) claim the figure to be 4.5 billion years, making it terribly hard to explain away a differential of some 400,000,000,000 years.  Other scientists say it’s about a billion years older but who’s counting anyway, especially since not a living human can comprehend even 6,000 years, much less billions.  

Eblen is flustered because neither he nor the “scientists” can prove the ark-gang wrong.  There are virtually no written records except the scriptures that go back roughly to 4,000 B.C.  Some figures chiseled into rock have been found but no one knows when or what they mean.  Caveat: I don’t accept the 6,000 figure, mainly because scripture also says that to God a day is as a thousand years.  But I definitely accept the ark as a real boat in a real event, the flood. Anyhow, literally accepting the day-as-a-thousand-years figure, the time-line would call for 2,190,000 years instead of 6,000.  

According to livescience, dinosaurs disappeared 65 million years ago, assuming they (the scientists, not the dinos) actually had a clue, which means by my accounting that they were gone long before the time of the ark, according to the ark-gang accounting, thus destroying the doubters’ favorite arguments concerning how to even catch them (the dinos, not the doubters) without being eaten, much less herd them onto the ark and keep them fed and peaceful.  

Eblen claimed to be a “mainstream” (as opposed to “evangelical?”) Christian and so predictably led his essay into “evolution” (presumably of mankind), claiming that most “mainstream” Protestant denominations and the Catholics and Jews buy into that theory.  Exponential nonsense!  At least for me, a plain old Baptist.  

I definitely haven’t evolved from a one-cell slime through the ape ages to the Now, and I laugh heartily every time some arrogant anthropologist insists he’s found the “missing link,” only to discover the tail still affixed or the knuckles not dragging the ground consistent with arm length.  The evolutionists consider themselves the intellectual elite, and the evangelicals as poor, ignorant rubes.  Eblen is welcome to his orangutan ancestors but I’ll take mine any day...straight from Adam through the ages.  

I stand with the rubes and agree with them that man and woman were spontaneously created, no matter when.  I believe they were formed whole in an instant on the sixth day, no matter its time, length and place.  I doubt that dinosaurs (already extinct) ever saw the ark, but if they did, so what!

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

WHITEWASH

FBI Chief Comey the Scapegoat

At least 99% of the time when a citizen appears before the judge account receiving a speeding-ticket and offers the explanation of not knowing he was speeding, the judge will proclaim ignorance as no excuse and levies the fine. This is essentially comparable to FBI Director Comey’s predicament regarding Hillary Clinton and the accursed unprotected private server(s) in her basement and elsewhere upon which she conducted the nation’s business.   

After brilliantly making the case that Clinton was guilty as sin in his official/shocking announcement of her innocence, Comey, in the House hearing on the matter, reckoned that perhaps she was simply not sophisticated enough to recognize the markings of “top secret” on her emails, even though she had been a senator and, more damning, the secretary of state and therefore exposed to those markings for years as a matter of course.   

Using a private server, whether protected or not, she surely knew was an absolute no-no and might have put many people in danger since hackers in other governments and even ISIS could have gained access to classified material including names and places. Comey as well as said that anyone else in government who did what Clinton did would be cashiered if not charged with a crime. Security clearance would be out of the question. Imagine a president without security clearance.  

Possible lack of sophistication was an amazing conclusion on his part and an insult concerning her level of understanding.  Even more amazing was Comey’s assertion that during his office’s investigation no one monitored her appearances before congressional committees, something any citizen could do just using C-Span or any other network covering them.  He did indicate that she lied in those hearings but not to the FBI and said that a referral from Congress was necessary to monitor them, something beyond belief.  

This, of course, left her open to perjury charges since she was under oath in the hearings so it would seem that AG Lynch would insist on action concerning that matter.  She, however, has said the case is closed, meaning that Clinton can get on with her campaigning, and Obama let Air Force One be her campaign commute to North Carolina right after Comey had insisted that not even the president knew when and what his report would be.  Obviously, this was not true since the president would never have allowed that excursion absent the supposed privileged information already being in his possession.

Comey let her off the hook, he said, because an intent to do wrong was not provable. The speeder alluded to above probably did not intend to do wrong, either, and was just careless but that made no difference to the judge. It made a difference to Comey, who said that Clinton was “extremely careless,” so that apparently was okay because her carelessness handling secret documents did not rise to the culpability level of speeding.

This affair explains why people have such a deep distrust of government. Add into the mix that Bill Clinton had a 30-minute tete-a-tete with AG Lynch just before Comey’s announcement that he said nobody knew about…and the plot thickens…or sickens...or both. The agents guarding that meeting declared that no pictures or recordings of it could be made, as if that could happen.

So now the State Department is having its own investigation. This is John Kerry’s turf. Will he consider if Clinton receives any more briefings or a security clearance given that, as Comey might say, she is irresponsible and either stupid or is not acquainted with truth-telling…sort of like her humongous subterfuge regarding the Benghazi massacre, in which the president participated.

The whitewash is in. Comey cited the law concerning this matter but indicated that it had been used only once in 99 years so, presumably, couldn’t be used again. What rubbish! Resignations are in order. Don’t count on that!

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

Minister Takes on the Tolerance Movement

In an op-ed of 02 July, the Rev. Robert Cunningham asked, “How tolerant is your tolerance?”  He noted that the ideal tolerance is easily managed in one’s own “tribe” but in the presence of someone from another “tribe” its limits are defined in light of “progressive values.”  He noted that an opinion “not in line with the narrow parameters of our increasingly secular society is now disregarded or even scorned.”  

Far from narrow, the parameters of a secular society (if it feels good, do it) are virtually nonexistent.  Most anything goes.  Cunningham sympathized with the “tolerance movement” (whatever that is, probably political correctness or diversity or multiculturalism) since he said it’s a reaction to the history of shameful hatred endemic to conservative fundamentalism.  

Hatred of whom or what?  Cunningham, who described himself as conservative [but not fundamentalist], didn’t say, but one infers via such strong condemnation that he’s intolerant of conservative fundamentalists, though he wondered if they have inspired the tolerance-movement into becoming severely intolerant, i.e., militant against anyone or institution they accuse of being racist, homophobic, gender-insensitive or in any other way offensive to them.  

Regardless of the cause, though fundamentalists could hardly be blamed, the tolerance movement has become so powerful and vicious that homosexuals, for instance, can bankrupt businesses which do not cater to them.  In this, the tolerance movement has had inordinate help from the government, whether legislative, executive, or judicial, as the general public has had tolerance-movement views imposed upon it.

Strangely, Cunningham insisted that an individual has the right to impose (defined as “to establish or apply by authority”) his beliefs on others and that anyone who disagrees with that position subscribes to “an incredibly naïve and self-defeating construct,” never mind that the nation was founded on the principle that such imposition never be allowed.

Cunningham finally gets to the inevitable point – dialogue with humility, civility and love, the way of Jesus. This is people talking out their problems, of which the nation has had a surfeit for decades with virtually nothing accomplished. Political correctness has exacerbated the dialogue approach since it demands that no one be offended, i.e., be made to think or be so thin-skinned that they can’t absorb reality-talk.  

Intolerance, however, has its place and Jesus Christ was if anything inordinately intolerant.  He also didn’t seem to dialogue very much but considered his positions/teachings inviolable.  He made a whip and lashed the unscrupulous vendors who had turned the temple into a bazaar and threw them, animals, birds, tables and money out into the street – no dialogue there.  He did not impose his beliefs on either government or populace, merely preached, prayed, taught, acted.  

Per the middle parable in Matthew 25, he upbraided the slothful servant, who was fired on the spot.  At the Last Supper, he told the disciples to buy swords even if they had to sell clothes to do so and explained a few hours later that the weapons were for defense/protection, not aggression.  Jesus was not a wimp looking to dialogue with folks about truths he knew to be immutable. He looked the head honchos of his own faith in their faces and likened them to whited sepulchers full of dead men's bones and uncleanness...not much dialogue there.

In other words, Jesus made it plain that absolutes exist and are not susceptible to dialogue, which in the so-called mainline denominations have been compromised amidst all the dialogue that has already occurred, with the tolerance-movement winning the day. These denominations are dying.  

Cunningham got it right at the end when he wrote that the way people treat each other is more important than dialogue.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark